Page 25 of Blood Secret

7

Vale

She was,without a doubt, the most impossible person I had ever known. She had all the worst traits of both a human and a witch.

I got up from the bed to give her space and used the opportunity to look outside.

It took a little craning of my neck to get a glimpse of the street, but all looked calm. It was well after one o’clock, and I still heard voices coming outside the corner store, where a small crowd had been gathered when we left the taxi.

“It’s sick,” she announced.

“What is?” I didn’t turn around.

“Wanting to believe somebody drugged me earlier tonight. It was preferable to what I saw out there in the alley being the truth.”

I nodded. “It’s not difficult to understand. We don’t want to accept the truth when it’s a truth that’s been presented as a lie for so long.”

“Of course, she wasn’t human,” Janna murmured to herself. “She didn’t even get hurt when she hit the dumpster. I wondered why she bounced back like that.”

“Exactly.” I took a quick look out of the corner of my eye.

She was utterly drained, paler than usual, eyes as wide as saucers with dark rings where tears had ruined her makeup.

I wondered in the back of my mind if I could’ve been more sensitive when announcing her parentage, but she was a strong girl, and I didn’t have the time to coddle her. Or the patience.

“Where is my mother? My real mother?”

“I don’t know exactly where she lives. I never met her before yesterday, when she sent me to you.”

“And she’s a witch, huh?”

“A very important one. Normally, I would’ve been assigned to protect her, not you. I’m sure there’s another Nightwarden guarding her now.”

Normally, if she had imprinted on me there couldn’t be a second imprinting, but it was clear the High Council had loosened their rules for her sake.

“A Nightwarden? Is that what you’re called?”

“Yes. We don’t exist alongside other vampires, like the ones you’ve been spending time with.” I turned from the window and cast a disparaging look her way. “What were you thinking?”

She drew her knees to her chest with a shrug. “I told you. I draw them. They’re interesting. Beautiful. I thought it was a fetish. That’s all. Strange, creepy, but innocent.”

“There’s nothing innocent about them.”

“Tell me something else I don’t know,” she groaned, miserable. “It all makes sense now. I didn’t want to believe it. God, it all sounds so impossible. Like there’s a whole other world out there I know nothing about.”

“That’s because there is,” I agreed. “Our worlds coexist, but they’re very different. And it’s better that they intersect as little as possible.”

“Why did they let me in there, then, if vampires and humans aren’t supposed to intersect?”

“That’s different. Would the wolf refuse the sheep, when the sheep is ignorant enough to step into their den?”

She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you’re putting it like that.”

“How would you describe it? Humans offer themselves up like dinner to them. All because they find them fascinating, special, different.” I sneered. “Beautiful.”

“Watch it,” she warned.

“Your instincts should’ve been stronger,” I snapped back. “Or, what’s probably closer to the truth, you should’ve listened to them instead of insisting they were wrong. Because I find it hard to believe that you never felt there was something off about that club. You talked yourself out of it, just like you spent so much energy trying to talk yourself out of what you saw clearly in that alley. You watched me kill that vampire. You knew she was trying to put you under her thrall. But you still fought it, told yourself you were drugged. That insistence on denying fact almost got you killed tonight.”

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