Page 47 of Lucien

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“It’s simply a bore to explain. I’ve raised you enough. You know the basics. How to hunt, how to turn another. I don’t feel like playing Papa anymore.”

Evrard opened the carriage door as if to leave, and the rich scent of wet soil flooded the carriage. Panic gnawed at Lucien’s gut. “Why did you even turn me, then? Why did you choose me?”

It was a question that had been plaguing him since the day he’d died. Despite their constant physical proximity, Evrard barely seemed to register his existence half the time. So why had he been turned at all? But asking direct questions usually only resulted in strained silence. Evrard passed on knowledge when he wanted to, never more and never less.

This could be Lucien’s last chance for answers.

Evrard shut the door quietly, turning to face Lucien fully. It was almost more than Lucien could bear, the weight of those black eyes boring into him.

“Chooseyou?” Evrard’s voice was quiet, contained, but it still rang out over the drumming of the rain. “You think you were chosen? Let me tell you something. I was on a rampage on that battlefield. Half-mad with the need for blood. The need to kill. It was a veritable buffet of dying soldiers, and no one to care if a few more died, or by whose hand.”

Lucien remembered it. The screams. The pain.

“By the time I got to you, I was stuffed full. I couldn’t stomach more than a gulp or two. So I thought, why not? I turned you instead. I thought it would be…amusing. A distraction. You weren’t special, Lucien. You were just there.”

So Lucien’s life—his humanity—had been taken away as—as anamusement? He’d thought there had been some point to it. He might no longer be human. He might be a goddamn monster. But at least he’d been wanted. He had a…father figure…of sorts.

But he was just an annoyance after all. An afterthought.

And what was more, now his maker was leaving. He would be alone.

Panic drove him to speak, to beg. “I can be better. I can be useful.”

Evrard laughed dryly. “To what end? What are you failing to understand? It’s all pointless. We’re lost souls, Lucien. The damned.” He flicked lazy fingers into the air. “I don’t care what you do. You can make yourself another companion if you like. But whoever you choose, you’re damning them too.”

Slender pale fingers gripped Lucien’s chin. “How strong is that moral compass of yours? Will you suffer alone or drag another into hell with you?” Gazing straight into Lucien’s soul, those black eyes lit up with more interest than Evrard had shown the entire past year. “What delicious pain you have, young one. Maybe you’re a little diverting after all.”

But in the next moment, he’d dropped Lucien’s chin, the carriage door opening and closing behind him in the blink of an eye. His parting words rang through the air.

“But not diverting enough.”

Luc woke with a startled grunt, his mood dark, his monster agitated.

He soothed himself by turning to the side, looking to Jamie’s peaceful sleeping form. His human didn’t stir in the slightest at Luc’s rustling.

Luc must have really rung him out.

Luc sighed. He hated sleeping—the little that his body required of him—for this very reason. He hateddreaming. The mind’s way of forcing him to relive old memories against his will.

He wished he had Jamie’s gift. To be able to see glimpses of the future rather than his dreaded past. If Luc had seen Jamie coming, if he’d known what had awaited him, maybe he wouldn’t have done all those awful things. Maybe he would have had the patience to resist his monster.

Or maybe it had all been inevitable from the moment he’d turned.

Fucking Evrard. Selfish, distant, and entirely unconcerned with the vampire he’d created.

Although, Luc supposed, looking back, that maybe Evrard had tried his version of his best. The other vampire had clearly been losing his grip on his humanity, giving in more and more to his monster’s urges. The fact that he’d lasted a whole year guiding Luc as much as he was able…it was almost admirable.

Almost.

Luc had heard from another vampire in passing years later that Evrard had been put down somewhere in Romania, a feral beast ravaging the countryside.

He’d lasted only five years after leaving Luc’s side.

At the time, Luc had thought he could bear the loneliness. He’d decided he wasn’t going to take anyone else with him on his road to damnation. After all, he’d believed in heaven and hell then. He’d known deep in his marrow he was going to burn for eternity, if he ever perished.

He’d tried to find other vampires to bond with as a substitute, but any encounters had only led to brief exchanges of information and then the inevitable fighting. Brutal territory disputes and threats of beheading or fire.

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