Page 11 of Born in Blood

He turns to me, eyes shining with unbridled hope, his hand still clutching his father’s throat. “You can?”

I nod. “There is a price to pay.” I crack my neck and groan with the release of tension it offers. “But if you are willing to pay it, then I will give you the truth.” My fangs ache. It has been a long time since I have enjoyed killing anyone as much as I am about to enjoy this. “Are you willing to pay, Axl?”

His dark eyes narrow on my face. He could ask me what the price is, but he does not. I suspect he already knows. Still, I offer him a clue anyway. “Blood never lies.”

He pushes his father to the floor with a roar and steps back, running his hand through his hair. “I’ll pay whatever price there is to pay.”

Hunger and anticipation snake through my veins.

“Son, I never—” Alastair’s protest is cut off by my teeth sinking into his throat as I hoist him to his feet. He melts into my arms, blubbering and clinging to the despicable foreigner like a lover. His blood coats my tongue, and I focus on his mind and tune everything else out.

Margaret’s fingernails claw at my arm through my coat, and I silence her with a hand around her windpipe. I squeeze tightly, aware of her heart slowing to a stop as the life leaves her body.She drops to the floor with a thud, and I feel not a single ounce of pity or grief from her son. I continue combing through Alastair’s memories, and they are legion. Some of Axl which I would linger on if I had the time, but I do not. Instead, I search for Frederik. For the young boy with the sparkling blue eyes and infectious laughter.

But Alastair’s memories of him are not as vibrant as Axl’s are. They are clouded by hatred and shadows. Painful and brutal. Finally, I find the day I am searching for. Frederik’s blue eyes wide with horror and brimming with tears.

The last words he spoke: “Please, father. No!”

And the last words which were spoken to him: “I am not your father, Bastard! You are the spawn of a dirty foreign devil.” I relive the memory with this pathetic excuse for a man, of him smashing a rock over the boy’s head and then carrying his lifeless body to the lake and submerging him there. I witness his conversation with the previous viscount afterward, where the two of them agreed to the price of silence.

Alastair Thorne II now has the gall to cry, his fingers grasping at my coat but failing to find a hold as the pain of the memory washes over him. And now that I have what I need, I make him feel an entirely different kind of pain. I sink my teeth deeper into his flesh, tearing at the tendons and sucking greedily. When the flow of his lifeblood slows, I yank his head back by his hair and rip out his entire gullet, blooding gushing freely from the wound.

Once more, I tap into his mind and ensure that mine are the last words he hears.This is for your sons. For Frederik. And for Alastair.

Chapter

Five

AXL

I’m sure my heart has never beat so fast as it does at this moment in time. Despite the furious hammering of that organ, the rest of my body is frozen. That my feet seem to have taken root, here of all places—a room that I detest—is particularly troubling to me. For what if I am never able to move? What if this is the price Alexandros spoke of? To be trapped for eternity in a room with the two people I hate more than any others. The two people who should have offered protection, yet they did everything in their power to destroy us.

I sometimes wonder whether it was Frederik or I who suffered the worst fate. To have been left here without his warmth and love—in the company of naught but coldness and cruelty—that is surely a fate worse than any death.

“Axl.” Alexandros’s deep, velvety voice washes over me and somehow slows the erratic racing rhythm of my pulse.

My eyes drift upward, lingering over the bloodied corpse of the man who was my father, and then to the lifeless figure of my mother. I am unsurprised to find that she does not look all that different in death than she did in life. Finally, my gaze falls upon Alexandros’s face. Not even a trace of blood remains on his lips despite the ferocity with which he just feasted. Incredible.

“Two thousand years of practice.” His voice is calm and reassuring.

“You’re two thousand years old?” My incredulity feels at odds with the situation, given that he just slaughtered my parents in front of my eyes, but it is the question that falls from my lips regardless.

He places his finger beneath my chin and tips my head up a little further, and I am unable to escape looking into his black eyes. “A little over actually.” His tongue darts out and moistens his lips. “He beat Frederik over the head with a rock.” He says it so matter-of-factly, and I both hate and love him for it.

I wonder if he suffered for long. If he called out for me and wondered why I didn’t come. A sob heaves from deep within my chest.

Alexandros cups my jaw, thumb and forefinger gripping me tightly. “He did not suffer.”

That is some comfort at least. “Why did he do it?”

“Frederik was not his son.”

Closing my eyes, I let that wash over me. I suppose it explains why Margaret was so cold toward us. Why she never once defended us. Was she too overcome with guilt to be a mother? More tears leak from my eyes, and I curse my own softness as I scrub them away.

“I warned you the truth would come at a price, Axl.” His voice anchors me back to him once more.

He glances at their dead bodies, then back at me, his eyes searching mine. Does he think any of what little compassion I have left in my heart is for them? I roll back my shoulders and jerk my chin from his grip. “If this was the price you spoke of, then it cost me nothing.”

“I don’t wantto take her with us. Evangeline,” I say as we reach the door of the expensive, upper-class lodging house in the heart of Whitechapel, having mulled on it the entire way back from Willesden Green. I want a new start. A fresh slate. Nothing from my past life hanging around my neck, and the girl is a part of that, no matter how fleeting our acquaintance. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

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