Chapter Eleven
1348 Words
I try to wrap my head around his words, but his presence still has me floundering with my thoughts.
“A mage is a supernatural enchanter. He uses his magic in ways that most human magicians don’t,” Semion explains, finally sitting on my dilapidated couch and pulling my hand to sit next to him. “And Rune… well, let’s just say our history went way back.”
“And you’re pissed because I killed him?” I ask, terrified of what it means to take a life, let alone a life of someone so important. “Wait, how the hell… did I really kill him? Earlier, you were upset because you said I let him go. Now you’re upset because I didn’t? How does this make any dang sense?”
Semion smiles and shakes his head, looking down at the floor before gazing back up at me. “You are probably the only person who has the ability to end his life, and the entire vampire race will eventually see that too.”
“Eventually?” I am trying to keep him talking, even though he’s speaking in riddles again, yet my mind is spinning with all the information he has thrown at me in one simple sentence.
Not only did I end a man’s life, but the vampire race will eventually understand? Nothing is adding up about all this insanity.
“Yes, eventually. Since you haven’t been a part of our clan, some of them are still leery of the trouble you could possibly bring.” His words are just more puzzle pieces that don’t fit.
I just look at him, dumbfounded, and needing him to actually explain instead of piling more insanity onto this clusterfuck of a situation.
“Riddle me this, Batman,” I say with mock humor as I look Semion in the eyes. “How the hell did I kill him if I turned the knife on myself?”
Finally, he drops the badass attitude for a second and shows vulnerability in his eyes, his hand coming up to rub at this bald head. It’s such a human gesture, showing his nerves, and it makes me wonder how often he has to school naïve girls like me about the inner workings of his kind.
“Listen, this whole situation is new to me,” Semion explains. That answers at least one of my questions. “A born vampire such as yourself is extremely rare. And being raised outside of our community without any guidance is even more rare. All I heard was that you bit him, and the supposed defense chemical he injected into his bloodstream backfired. You were the most powerful and only pure vampire he had ever encountered, so he was unprepared.”
I close my eyes, my hands held high to stop him. “Wait, born vampire? What does that even mean?” I seriously consider having my head examined with the mere fact that I am actually listening to such nonsense. I also wonder why the hell I didn’t just follow this man further into the cave instead of holing myself up in my home and just waiting for him to bombard me with all this rubbish.
He nods and looks back down at his hands, unfazed by my wayward thoughts. Maybe he can’t read my mind like I thought he could?
“All vampires are changed at some point in their lives… bitten and infected by another vampire’s venom,” he explains and hesitates, almost as if he’s unsure of how much he wants to tell me. Little does he know, I’ve got nothing else going for me and will probably demand all the information, regardless of whether he wants to share it or not.
Thankfully, I don’t need to prompt him much, because he continues as if I didn’t just get defensive in my mind. “But you—you’re different. I could sense it in your blood before Rune got his hands on you, and clearly before you got your hands on Rune in return. I have been sensing you for a long time.”
“Is that why I’ve been seeing you lurking at the club?” I ask, referencing the first day I saw him hovering in the shadows while I danced on stage, his presence emanating a completely different vibe than my ex-foster creep.
He nods again. “I’ve been watching you for quite some time, Tesla. Long before you knew I was there.”
I glare at him, my brows furrowing with curiosity. He can sense my confusion.
“Yes, way before you started dancing. I kept my distance though. I didn’t want you sensing me before I was really sure. It wasn’t until I realized a hunter was on your tail that I knew I had to make my presence known.”
“There’s no way you were there without tipping me off,” I say with a whisper hinted in my tone. I fear talking too loud will grab the attention of others, and my brain is still spinning with this overload of information. Then his words reprocess in my mind. “A hunter?”
“Yes, a vampire hunter. A magician, whose sole purpose on this earth is to hunt us,” Semion explains. “There are more Mages out there—more who hunt us. And you took out the most powerful of them all with one single bite.”
“What do they want?” I ask, feeding into his hysteria as if it is actually true.
“Extinction,” he blurts out. “They want the entire vampire race gone from this world.”
“So what does that have to do with me?” I can tell my shrug isn’t the reaction he is hoping for, but I can’t help it. Everything sounds so preposterous.
“You—” He pauses with a sigh, his inhale and exhale deep with frustration. I sit and wait for the feeling of the wind passing through me with each of his breaths. “You’re different than any vampire in our realm.”
He turns to me, grabbing both my hands and pulling me to him, my fists jammed into his chest, the cold feel of his flesh seeping into my bones. “You were born special,” he says, his breath now coating my face as he talks. “You could have led armies. You were destined to save our kind from the Mages who attempt to eradicate us.” He pushes me away, my hands no longer engulfed in his own. Without looking my way, he continues to speak and says, “But now you’re just a human. I failed you. I failed our kind by trying to keep you safe. There’s no other choice but to keep you far away from our world now.”
My heart, which beats now for the first time in years, is yelling at me to fix this. I need to make it better. I need to be the woman I was born to be, even if I don’t fully understand what that means.
“In my entire existence, I’ve never mattered in this world. I’ve never amounted to more than a stupid bartender or dancer at a strip club—and for what?” I say to him, grabbing at the man’s face and turning him to meet my eyes. “If there’s any way to fix this, I need to know. I will do what it takes to fix this. I will do whatever it takes to matter.”
He breaks his gaze from mine, looking back down at his hands that are now knotted in his lap.
“None that won’t cost your life.”
Without another word or explanation, Semion gets up and walks to the door, leaving me confused and in need of more information.
My body flinches with the sound of my door slamming as he exits.
No way can I let him go without more answers.
This can’t be the end of it.
- Writer
