Page 44 of By the Pint

“You’re fascinating, Casey. And gorgeous. And for some reason, I pissed all my sense of right and good and honourable down the drain, because I just … wanted to be near you. I wanted you to have all these uncontrollable urges aimed at me. Anger, arousal, whatever. Because I was having them for you.”

Casey gazed into my eyes, raking them down over the front of my sweater and back up again. I didn’t let myself press into his thoughts. “Well, mission accomplished then, I guess.”

“I’m sorry. I still want you to learn how to block out intruders. And I still want to be the one to teach you. It has to be soon, now even, because you know what will happen the moment Killian turns you?”

Casey nodded. The air between us became taut, like a corkscrew twisting into a bottle of vintage A neg.

“Once you’re turned, everything you understand about yourself right now will be wiped clean. You will no longer be you. No longer be Casey ‘The Temper’ Freckleman. No longer be this smart, serious, gorgeous guy that has the world in the palm of his hand. You won’t like the same things, hate the same things. What gets you horny now may not have any effect once you’ve been turned. You won’t even look like you. Your hair will go black, your skin grey, and those eyes”—those beautiful, warm hazel eyes—“will be red. You won’t remember anyone from your human life. Not even your parents, or Killian. And you won’t remember who I am. Or what I’m saying to you right now.”

Or anything we might have had, I added mentally.

He had the decency to look away from me, into his lap. “Yes, I know.”

Casey understood. I could see in his memories Killian telling him this over and over again.

“I still want to teach you though, because after you’re turned, they will hold you in the turning facility for a period of time. It might be years. It might be decades. You might never leave. If they discover you’re a telepath they will either conscribe you to service, or if you do not submit, they will … end you.”

His head snapped in my direction. Not new information to him. But not something he and Killian had discussed in depth, and in that moment, my anger towards that willowy prick bubbled anew.

“Even if you don’t remember who I am, or any of my teachings, you might instinctively remember how to block your thoughts.”

“Will I, though? If I forget everything else, won’t I forget that, too?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve never gone through the procedure this way. We can only hope that muscle memory will kick in.”

“How did you escape detection?” He kicked his legs, knocking the heel of his shoe against the fibreglass of the volcano.

“Turning facilities didn’t exist when I was turned. And I remember nothing from the early days. Or anything from when I was human. My sire, and Killian’s sire, was Ronald the Skewerer.”

Casey gasped. His arm shot out. He palmed my bicep, and just as quickly let go. Killian had never told him.

Understandable. Even nowadays one didn’t go around announcing Ronald the Skewerer as your sire. He was a true villain, in every sense of the word. Sure, we’d all done bad shit,murder even, but The Skewerer’s crimes, both in volume and nature, went so far beyond anything remotely forgivable as ‘just doing what vampires did to survive’. His most famous atrocity, and the reason he was ultimately captured, impaled, beheaded, cut up into teeny tiny ribbons, set alight, and scattered into the Seven Winds of Hell — in that order — was indiscriminately turning young men, women, and children to build his own private army. An army against whom, history still hadn’t made clear.

And somewhere in this whole mess, Killian and I sat. Somehow escaping his rule, somehow breaking free.

Casey wanted to ask me about my sire, but he forced his questions down, drawing the conclusion that nothing I could tell him would be of any value. He’d read all the books, watched all the documentaries. Ronald the Skewerer was a topic so far out of the realms of taboo it bordered on legend. “So, you and Killian are blood-brothers?” he settled on eventually.

“Twins, actually. Apparently, we were turned on the same night. According to Killian, we were acquaintances before. When we were humans. But I don’t see how he can know or remember that.”

“Maybe he does.” Casey’s finger twitched against the dark fabric of his trouser leg. “How do you know he doesn’t remember anything from his human life?”

I wanted to reach out and pull Casey into a hug. He was clutching at straws, and he knew it.

“Because I read his mind. I’ve seen every single thought Killian has ever had. And I was the one who figured out how to block my thoughts and taught him to do the same.”

“Oh,” was all Casey said in response.

“So, do you want to learn it, too?” I tried to add some lightness to my words, since the mood had soured somewhat. SinceIhad soured the mood, yet again.

Casey blew out a breath, scrubbed a hand down his face. His mind tumbled over images of Killian, and me, and The Skewerer, and himself as a boy. “I guess I don’t have much choice. This is what I want. I’ll make it work. I always get what I want.”

I studied Casey for a few moments. I deliberately stayed out of his thoughts or, at least, tried to. Tried to give him the privacy he deserved. Instead, I watched his Adam’s apple quiver in his throat. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he ground his molars. His perfectly manicured five o’clock shadow rippled with each clench. I raked a hand down my own hairless face, wondering what the scrape of a razor felt like against my skin. Had I shaved once upon a billion years ago?

“So,” I said, interrupting my own thoughts. “I will teach you how to close off your mind, then when you’ve done that, I will give you full access to mine, and hopefully you won’t get terminated after you’re turned.” I added a playful thumbs-up for funsies.

“And what about you? What do you want?”

“I only want you to promise me nothing else can happen between us. What we did at the Bloodsuckers in Business conference, it can’t happen again. Almost kissing last night. No more flirty banter.”

---