Page 43 of Because the Night

“Later,” says Lucas, cutting him off.

The big blond dude heads into the armory. He and Henry had a couple of laptops set up on the table in there earlier. Guess it’s their new HQ.

“This way.” Lucas leads me down the hallway of the underground lair. He retrieves the key from atop the frame and unlocks a door. “After you.”

It’s another room I haven’t been in before. Inside is an office with a large, ornate mahogany desk and matching chair. Three walls are taken up with more books and curios. The man is seriously such a hoarder. And on the last wall is a chipped and faded painting of a woman.

I can definitely see the resemblance. She has blonde hair, green eyes, and the same soft curves as me. The same heavy jawline, full lips, and direct gaze. Huh.

“You did well tonight.” Lucas shuts the door and leans his back against it. “Though, you still seem pretty wound up. We should do something about that.”

I nod to the painting. “Tell me about her.”

“Her name was Ana, and she was my brother’s wife,” he says. “It was an arranged marriage. He was the oldest son and heir, but I was known for my skill at hunting. It gave me an excuse to spend most of my time in the hills. A man was attacked in our village, and I was given the task of tracking the creature responsible. It turned out to be a vampire. He was impressed with my skills and decided to turn me. And I then offered to turn Ana.”

“But not your brother?”

“No,” says Lucas. “Marc has always been an ass. I had no interest in spending eternity in his company. But I had feelings for Ana.”

“Were they reciprocated?”

“Yes. But she held sacred the marriage vows she had made to my brother. Nothing happened between us. I knew she wouldn’t agree to be turned. She had children who needed her. My brother was often busy elsewhere, and she enjoyed much of the simple life she lived.”

I sit in the seat behind the desk and cross my legs. “Okay.”

“A year later she died in childbirth. But not before my brother had gotten the story out of her about how I’d been made into a vampire and offered to make her one, too.” Lucas crosses his arms. “Finding out I had feelings for his wife…let’s just say, he didn’t take the news well. Marc searched for a vampire who would turn him and eventually found one. But he wasn’t as strong as me, and he knew it. The one who turned him was only afew years old; whereas, my sire was ancient. The bubonic plague killed most of what remained of our human family soon after. The truth is, Marc was my last real link to that life, and I was reluctant to destroy it. Pure sentiment on my part. Every century or so he made a halfhearted attempt to kill me, but it was almost a game between us.”

“You think someone trying to kill you is a game?”

He sighs. “You have to understand, he had much the same number of years as me to become an expert at whatever he pleased. I know he spent time learning fighting from the Huns and the Knights Templar. Had he been fully determined to kill me for falling in love with his wife, I would have known.”

I frown.

“Then in 1955, he killed my spymaster, Meriwa. I had asked everyone to stay away from him. But she didn’t like loose ends and wanted to keep better track of his movements. Not to kill him, you understand, but just to know where he was and what he was planning. He sent her ashes back to me in a silver chest. She had been part of our family for four-hundred years. That’s when I decided the time had finally come to end my brother.”

“And that’s why you went to sleep?”

“Their deaths weighed on me for various reasons. It would seem I was premature in mourning my brother, however.” He watches me in silence for a moment, before saying, “After Ana broke my dark and creepy heart, as you called it, I tended to steer clear of anyone who reminded me of her. Until you. I won’t let him hurt you, Skye.”

“When did all of this start between you and your brother?”

“Arthur had just defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Badon.”

“Wait. King Arthur? I thought he wasn’t real.”

He shrugs. “The mythology surrounding him is mostly nonsense, but the man himself was real enough.”

“What year was it?”

His lips skew to the side in annoyance. The dude definitely has hang-ups about his age. “Around the start of the sixth century.”

“You’re, um, fifteen-hundred years old?”

“Give or take.”

“You are one-thousand-and-five-hundred years old. Approximately. And you’ve been carrying that picture of her around the entire time. That’s either dedication or taking the idea of emotional baggage way too far.” My eyes must be as wide as the moon. “But you know I’m not her.”

“Oh, I know. Ana was soft-spoken. You have yet to have a thought cross your mind that you don’t believe needs announcing.”

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