Page 110 of High Stakes and Soulmates
My throat feels tight. I don’t even know how to give him that promise. “Let’s just… worry about what’s ahead of us.”
“No! You fucking promise me or I’m not going with you.” Arturo’s voice is sharp and determined.
“Are you going to promise me the same thing?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Yes? You’ll be dragged back to that monster. You’ll be there until the day you die. You’ll never be free of him.”
“I don’t know what I’ll be, but I’ll be nothing if you don’t promise me that you’ll live a good life. I don’t know what tonight will bring, but I know that I need you to keep living. I love you so fucking much.”
“I promise,” I whisper. “I promise.”
“Don’t break that promise, you hear me? You can’t fucking break it. I’m positive there’s someone out there better than I am,” he teases.
I say nothing, since I’m positive whatever I might say wouldn’t be the truth. So instead, I just nod because it feels like the only thing I can do.
“Let me see your other hand.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, you can’t even move it.”
“It’s fine.”
“And your leg?”
“It’s fine as well.”
“It’s bleeding. Why didn’t you bandage it better? Why can’t you take care of the thing I love most?”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Arturo kisses my shoulder and squeezes me tightly. “No. I’m sorry.”
“What is that man?”
“He’s a vampire.”
“Vampires aren’t real. They’re folklore. They’re tales told to spook little kids.”
“I wish that was true. I wish it more than anything,” he says. “He can’t walk in the daylight, but at night he’s unbelievably fast. You saw how fast he heals. I believe the only way to kill them is to stake them in the heart or remove their head. I never told you that because I never wanted you to try. You are very talented, Ezio, but against a man like him… it takes so much more than talent. Aim Valley toward the lake. There’s a small boat that will take us part of the way. It should cut the distance we have to travel in half. The man who agreed to help us said it was all set up. It’ll give Valley a break, too, if she’ll get on it. It’s not much of a boat—will she panic?”
“No, she’ll be good,” I assure him. I rub Valley’s neck, hoping that to be true.
He nods.
Before the sun hits the highest point in the sky, we reach the dock and he hurries me over to the boat he’d been told to go to. The man takes one look at my horse and shakes his head. “If she panics, she’ll flip the boat.”
“She won’t panic,” I promise.
Arturo rushes forward. “Is there a saddlery on the other side?”
“Into the town some distance,” another guy responds.
“Then we have no choice but to take her,” I say as I dig into my purse and pull out money. “We have to take her; we have to keep moving. We can’t waste time buying a new horse and we can’t waste time fighting this.”
“You’re going to waste a lot of fucking time when she flips the boat. She might be used to big boats and ships, but these ones move and bob with the smallest shift.”
