Page 73 of Destined for Shadows
Chapter 22
Bartol
Riding in a human vehicle made Bartol edgy even though he’d done it quite a few times recently. He suspected it was the part about having to sit while someone else was in control. Someday, he would have to learn how to drive the modern version of a car, but he wasn’t quite ready for that yet. He still needed to master how to operate a computer, which he’d been told repeatedly was very important, despite the fact humans had existed for thousands of years without them.
“Are you doing okay?” Melena asked, glancing over at him from the driver’s side of the Jeep.
They’d been traveling around the area southeast of Fairbanks for most of the day as they searched for Cori’s former husband. As of yet, they’d only found two unidentified vampires close enough in age to fit. Neither turned out to be Griff.
Bartol stared out the window at the passing trees. “I’m fine.”
“You’re having a hard time sitting still for this long, aren’t you?”
“I do it all the time at home,” he replied.
“Right.” She adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. “Which is why your house—inside and out—is clean and spotless. Because you sit around all day.”
“That is different.”
Melena sighed, quiet for a moment. “Has it been tough having Cori staying with you?”
Bartol could already see where this conversation was headed. “The human woman is tolerable, mostly.”
“Tolerable.” Melena laughed. “That’s the understatement of the year. You probably think she’s a pain in the ass and can’t wait to get rid of her.”
Was the sensor baiting him? He decided to play along.
“Her cooking makes up for her other deficiencies. She’s also better than expected at picking up after herself, and she’s at least trying to give me some space,” he replied.
Cori hadn’t been half as bad as he’d thought she would be when he decided to have her stay with him. He still marveled at the sheer amount of food available in his kitchen. Every time he went in there, he didn’t know what to eat. Cori had stocked the cabinets and refrigerator with everything he could imagine and many things he couldn’t. The only thing he didn’t like was how she’d taken over his bathroom with her myriad female products, and she’d decorated! Nothing about his bathing chamber appeared the same anymore. Bartol felt as if he was stepping into another time and place whenever he went in there.
Melena tapped the steering wheel. “This is probably none of my business, but I’ve got to ask. Have you ever been in a serious relationship with a woman before?”
He considered not answering her, but perhaps it was for the best that he did. If the sensor was ever going to stop her matchmaking manipulations, she needed to understand why Bartol would never be right for Cori. “When I was young, I thought I was in love with a few different women, but it never lasted more than a year—if that.”
“Why not?”
He thought back to that time. Kerbasi had meddled with many of his memories, but he hadn’t quite reached the first century of Bartol’s life when he was young and inexperienced. The guardian must have thought those weren’t worth the effort to manipulate.
“Boredom in most cases,” he replied honestly. “Human women were fascinating at first because of their short lifespan, and their need to fill their brief years with as many experiences as possible—at least, for the ones that interested me. I went through several before I realized such relationships could never work. They wanted to settle down and have children at some point, which I could not offer them.”
The sensor turned off the highway onto a dirt road. They’d been crisscrossing the area, trying to cover as much ground as they could in the hopes they would not miss anything. They bumped along the ruts for a minute before she responded again. “What about supernaturals? None of those worked, either?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I developed feelings for a beautiful vampire once and thought she might be the one for me, but then I found her with another nephilim. She said immortals had no reason to limit themselves to only one sexual partner. Back then, I was young and idealistic, so that rather ruined me to try again.”
“I got the impression you were with that angel for a while before you were caught,” Melena said, keeping her eyes on the road.
Bartol should have known this was the real question she wished to ask. “A few months, yes.”
“How did you seduce her? That couldn’t have been easy.”
“I didn’t seduce her.”
Melena hit the brakes on her Jeep. They came to a grinding halt, turning up dust on the road. “Holy shit, you’re telling the truth. Then what happened?”
He didn’t know why he was telling her since he’d kept the details to himself for all these decades. In the beginning, he’d allowed people to believe the lie because it bolstered his reputation. After he was caught and sent to Purgatory, it seemed a moot point. The archangels were unlikely to care about his side of the story.
“She seduced me.”
