Page 46 of Crimson Storm

Wait...no. It couldn’t be. We’dkidnappedhim for God’s sake. Was this why he’d stayed with us when he could have escaped? Did hefeelsomething for me?

Did the pheromone thing affect human males as well as vampires?

If that was the case, I had to shut this down right now.

“You should be,” I said, staring into his intense brown eyes. “I’m a murderer.”

23

A Rather Significant Detail

For long moments, Shane stayed quiet and still. I’d shocked him.

Good.He needed to understand what he was dealing with. Therewerelots of good vampires in the world, but there were plenty of bad ones too.

We were headed right for a hotbed of them.

His experience with Marjorie had probably led him to believe all vampires were like her.

“You couldn’t be a murderer,” he finally said. “I don’t believe it.”

“Someone is dead because of me. Several people, actually.”

“Who?”

I peered through a knothole at the Yoders’ lifeless house, at Josiah’s vacant bedroom window. “My friend Josiah, the boy who lived here. We’d been friends since we were two. He liked me.”

“Of course he did,” Shane said, but I ignored his ignorant compliment and kept going.

“We were in an accident on the highway. All of us should probably have died on the scene, but a group of vampires was passing through and found us. One of them turned me.”

I took a deep breath before continuing, remembering that night. “I turned Josiah the next day. I bit him, drank his blood. One of my best friends. Idrankhisblood.He was the first and last person I ever bit.”

“You were a brand-new vampire,” Shane argued. “Marjorie told me what that was like. I’m sure you didn’t mean to.”

“I did. That’s the thing. I thought about it beforehand, and I chose to do that to him. I told myself I was saving his life, but the end result was still the same. A few days later he came home and slaughtered his parents then took his own life. A whole family wiped out. All their blood is on my hands. Even if I really do live for eternity, I’ll never live that down. I’ll never stop seeing that look in Josiah’s eyes when he told me I should have just let him die in the hospital. He was right.”

“You made a mistake. You’ve gotta stop torturing yourself, Abigail.”

I turned to Shane, angry though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Really?” I demanded. “Why? I think it’s only fitting that I torture myself. It’s no less than I deserve.”

Wow—I sound just like Reece.

It was impossible not to think of him in this place. He’d been there that first night of my vampire life. He blamed himself as well.

Now it was Shane’s turn to get angry. His face reddened, and his voice dropped into a lower register.

“Do you think you’re the only person in the world with regrets? The only person who screwed up and can never take it back? Ididwant to help you, like I said, but you were right—thereisanother reason I came with you willingly, Abigail... a reason I didn’t escape when I had the chance.”

I blinked. Blinked again. Shane had shocked me.Didhe actually have some ulterior motive all along?

“What is it?”

“When I told you about my parents earlier, about how they didn’t approve of me and Marjorie, I left out a rather significant detail.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “They’re vampires.”

Crackling electricity zapped all my senses. “What?”

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