Page 64 of Saving the World and Other Bad Ideas (Grave Concerns 3)

The man on his knees bent forward, into almost a bow, his head to the floor, his words jumbled. “I wasn’t thinking. It was just instinct, nothing more.”

Kase gazed down impassively, as if the pleading meant nothing to him. “We vampires are bound by very few rules. Those that we do hold to are without grey area or exception. Do you deny that you turned a human? That you left that fledgling vampire to fend for themselves? That because of that, your fledgling killed humans and threatened the safety and secrecy of the entire coven?”

“It was harder than I realized,” the bowed man said. “I thought creating a vampire would be different, that it would be fun. He wouldn’t listen, was always complaining, demanded all my time.”

Kase’s eyes flashed, the only sign of anger he’d shown. “You made a choice—a bad choice—and the fledgling’s actions and death are on your head.”

The man babbled, but Kase showed no other reaction. He crouched, as if to comfort the vampire, but instead wrapped his hand around the man’s throat. He shifted, such aquick motion it had me stumbling backward. Kase dropped the man’s bloody throat to the ground as if it were trash, then stood.

The efficiency he showed in killing was terrifying.

I expected the scene to fade, but it didn’t. Kase left the body there, the sound of others on the periphery making me suspect he hadn’t been alone, that others had dealt with the body.

Once alone, Kase stared down at his hands, at the deep red that covered them, then froze.

He looked so much like his maker had after those horrendous screams…

The world shifted once more, and it was Kase on the ground again, just like it had started.

It looped, over and over—his torture, then his killing of that vampire. Time and time again, it showed the two scenes, and no matter how much I screamed, what I did, it never seemed to change. He was trapped there, between his own monster and his fear that he had become what he’d hated.

A sigh had me turning to find yet another version of Kase sitting in the driver seat of a car.

Everything else was so weird, I didn’t question it before opening the passenger door and sliding in.

Across the street was Gran’s shop, and through the window?

Me.

“It never changes,” he said.

I looked around as if he’d spoken to someone else. The other versions hadn’t noticed me, hadn’t heard me.

No one else was there, though.

“You aren’t your maker,” I told him when I decided he must have spoken to me.

“No—I’m worse. He did what he did out of pleasure. Heenjoyedinflicting pain, was driven by it.”

“How does that make him better?

“Because he didn’t know better. He was like an animal, reacting because it was all he knew. Me?” Kase shook his head. “I know better, but still I end lives. I do the same monstrous things he did, but pretend they aren’t as bad.”

“That’s not true,” I assured him.

He made a soft sound, one that said he didn’t believe me. Even as we sat there, the sounds from the loops continued somewhere behind me. Kase’s horrible screams, the babbling of the man, the sickening crunch as Kase tore his throat free.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him instead. This scene had to mean something if he saw it.

He nodded across the way, at the other me, who seemed so much sadder than I realized. Was that really how I’d looked before? “She’s mine.”

I ignored the flutter at the statement, because inthiscontext, it was less sweet and more extremely creepy. While I wasn’t sure when this was, staring at women through windows from dark cars wasn’t the sign of a well-adjusted person.

“Pretty sure she isn’t.”

He didn’t take his eyes from the other me, as if he couldn’t. “She is. I knew it the first time I saw her,feltit. I haven’t felt anything in so long.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just that you ate someone bad?”

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