Page 70 of The Royal Street Witch
“You say you love him, but I wonder if you really know him.”
“I fucking know him.” It simmers out of me, my jaw hardly moving, my eyes rimmed with tears I dare not let fall. I don’t know why it slices me so, maybe because I’ve never let anyone know me the way Bastian does, and I want to be that person for him.
A cord of tension builds between us as I breathe heavily, trying to remain calm. There’s something to be said about two creatures that are powerful. Neither of us has the upper hand, we both have supernatural forces on our side, we don’t trust each other, and we are aware that this could turn nasty.
“I know him better than you ever will. I’ve known him longer and I loved him so much that I chose to save him from himself, from his own demons, when I chose to turn him.”
My back slumps against the chair as I think back to when I interviewed Bastian. How he told me Nicola turned him at a bar. How he didn’t want to talk about it, how unexciting he made it sound.
“He said Nicola turned him…why would he tell me that?”
His fingers tap on the table; he swivels on the bar stool. “Why does he do half the shit he does?” He looks off in bewilderment and then runs his hand down his chin. “Bastian had his demons and I ached to be his mercy.”
Bumps rise across my arms; I understand an ache for mercy as well.
“What demons?”
His eyes go dark and wet and he wipes down his perfectly groomed mustache with his thumb and index finger.
“Did he tell you how we met?” Cassius looks at me like he’s challenging me, and I’m glad I know the answer.
“In a bar,” I say and flick my thumb with my middle finger.
“That’s where, I’m asking if he told youhowwe met.”
I shrug because he didn’t want to talk about the details and now I feel foolish. Suddenly hot, I pull the towel from my head, my hair falling sticky wet around me.
“When I met Bastian, he had literally just been thrown on top of a taxicab.”
“On top?”
“The bouncer had enough of his mouth and picked him up as he screamed profanities and threw him on a cab parked on the street.”
“Quite a meeting.”
“Quite. But it wasn’t anything new to Bastian. You see, he was a drunk. A drunk on the verge of dying when I met him, and a drunk until the moment I turned him.”
I blink, hoping my surprise doesn’t betray me.
“He said it was Nicola.”
“He lied.”
The wine tastes bitter as I swallow, and I set the glass on the table and meet Cassius’s gaze. “Why would he lie?”
“To protect me. To protect my selfishness and to salvage me of the eternal guilt I feel. It’s the lie he’s told everyone, so don’t take it personally. Turning a vampire is the most selfish thing one can do. And so now you know that we are indeed blood brothers and the connection he feels to me is not just an emotional one. My blood pumps through his veins for all eternity.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Well…he was charismatic. He was everything I wasn’t. Fun, funny, full of life, and he laughed. He laughed all the time, and I wanted a piece of that. I craved it. And he was only twenty-six but he was dying. So I replaced the addiction to alcohol with an addiction to blood. His existence as a vampire has both saved and broken me.”
I’m silent, yet my eyes must encourage him to carry on.
“We became friends first. I wanted to taste freedom and I thought I could learn it from him. It was weeks of friendship before I turned him. But you must understand, his skin was yellowing, I could smell the death on him. The loss of his brother was killing him through the drink, and so I became his brother in blood…and now I want to leave him. I stay in this wretched existence for him. And once again, I’ve let his carelessness almost end him.”
“Did he want it? Did he ask for it?”
Cassius pulls on his ear lobe in contemplation and then delivers a sharp, “No. He didn’t know what I was or what he was becoming until hebecame. And there it is.”
