Page 52 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

I wasn’t sure what she meant. Then, in the next moment, I felt my eyes go wide as my heart suddenly raced to a gallop. I drew in a shuddering gasp. Tension shot through my entire body, like everything inside of me spasmed at once. My heart shuddered once more in my chest, then went still and silent. And then, even though I didn’t remember closing my eyes, the world went dark around me.

Veronika took me back to her home and then stayed by my side until I woke up, hours later. She spent the next three months explaining what had happened to me, and more importantly, training me how not to hurt people. She told me that I was in the most crucial stage, right after someone was first turned into a vampire. During that time, if a fledgling is allowed to kill, their vampiric nature takes over completely, suppressing their humanity. It drives them to be monsters for the rest of their immortal existence, unable to feel love or compassion, or anything at all.

Granted, she wasn’t precious about feeding or anything—she had no qualms about taking what she needed when she needed it. But her victims always walked away no worse for the wear. And so did mine, for that matter, under her watchful eye. And I eventually realized that, even if she had embraced that aspect of her nature so thoroughly, Veronika loved humanity. So much so, in fact, that she had dedicated her immortality to protecting innocent people from the types of monsters who had murdered me. It had been no coincidence that she had been there to save me.

She had been hunting the vampire who had killed me.

“I do not stand for the slaughter of innocents,” she’d told me, dismissively, when I had asked her about it. “Nor should any vampire. Such barbarism is beneath us. And someone needs to ensure that the most feral among us are not left to hunt and kill unchecked.”

Though I didn’t exactly love the fact that Veronika had turned me into a vampire, it was better than the alternative. There was little doubt in my mind that the vampire who attacked me would have killed me. Or, based on the only words he’d ever spoken to me, he might have turned me in that alleyway and then taught me how to be a merciless killer, just like him. The only reason he hadn’t was because Veronika had destroyed him first.

He had looked at me and seen darkness.

Just like Giles had.

When our three months were up, I had returned to my old life with Veronika’s blessing. And I had been able to live a lie for a long time. Long enough that I had almost convinced myself that I could have a normal life again. Albeit with a lot more blood and fangs than I’d initially planned on. I very nearly graduated from college, in fact.

Then, Giles found me.

And he had forced me to become the very same type of monster that had taken my life.

It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? First the creature who had attacked me and then Giles had both looked at me and seen darkness. That I was a monster in the making.

And now, in the aftermath of that, a part of me wanted to give in to the darkness. A part of me noticed a beating pulse and wanted to tear into it, to feed and feed and feed.

Tobias deserved way better than to be stuck with someone like that.

Tobias’s phone rang at twilight, when we were just outside of Poplar Creek.

“I don’t know if the hunters actually mean you guys any harm, but the mirror did show me that they’re about to be in big trouble.” Ethan’s voice came through the speaker on Tobias’s phone, and he sounded mildly alarmed. “They’re at a house at the end of a cul-de-sac—I’m guessing it’s the one with the spirit you guys are trying to exorcise. And the spirit is about to kill them both.”

“Shit,” Tobias said, grimacing. He glanced at me. “I mean, this isn’t really our problem. We could just—”

“No,” I said firmly. “We’re obviously not going to let this happen, now that we know it is going to happen. These hunters are dicks, and they might be dangerous, but we’re still not going to stand by and let them get murdered by a vengeful spirit if there’s any chance we can prevent it.”

“If we drive there right now, will we have time to stop this?” Tobias demanded, turning his attention back to the phone. But from the scowl on his face, it was clear he didn’t like this one bit. “Will we make it in time?”

Ethan paused and I heard him posing Tobias’s question aloud, presumably to the mirror he was using. A moment later, he said, “If you go directly there. Yes. Barely.”

“Please keep checking the mirror to see if these assholes are planning on messing with us,” Tobias muttered. “We need to know if they’re going to be a problem.”

Then he hung up and took the next exit off the highway, driving at unreasonable speeds. We began weaving through the quiet streets of Poplar Creek. His whole body was rigid with tension and he gripped the wheel so tightly his fingertips turned white.

Somehow, I could sense that he wanted to reason with me—to point out the very obvious fact that, by saving these assholes, we might be creating a whole hornet’s nest of problems for ourselves. But he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Besides, I understood that just fine, all on my own.

Still, the moral arithmetic was easy enough for me to do. We couldn’t just let them die if we knew we had the ability to stop it. Whatever danger these guys might present to me was tomorrow’s problem.

A few minutes later, we reached the house on the end of Pickery Road. If it was possible, it looked even more menacing in the lengthening shadows of dusk, as though it was alive and watching us as we stood in front of it on the street. The door was somehow intact once more. And even though I knew it was impossible, the house seemed to be grinning at us, like it knew we would soon have to venture inside.

Tobias and I exchanged a dark look when we reached the front door. My grip tightened around the ridiculously expensive piece of blessed iron Tobias had purchased for me.

“Are you ready?”

I nodded.

“Put your arms around me and catch my weight. I’m going to check inside.”

I didn’t even have a chance to make him explain himself, because his eyes rolled back in his skull, and he suddenly went limp. I caught him—barely—before he fell.

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