Page 104 of Prodigal Son

“What I am is not evil, I swear it. I’m just different from what you know.”

She scoffed. “Do you… Oh, God.” She swallowed and gripped her stomach. “Do you drink…blood?”

“Animal blood. Our order frowns on human consumption.”

She massaged her temples. “How did I get here?”

“Humans breed and survive by consuming animal flesh. What we do is not so savage when you actually consider the difference. An animal doesn’t have to die in order to sustain us. You only see it contrarily because your society neatly packages animal products in a market. The reality is, we’re the less savage species.”

His words seemed to calm her slightly, but then she lifted her gaze and narrowed her eyes. “Have you…d-drunk m-my blood?”

He looked away in shame. “I was dying. You shot me. It was the only way. I needed strength to get us out of the woods—”

“I’m going to be sick.” She pressed her face into her hands and paced. “You violated me.”

“I healed you.”

Her glare snapped to him. “How? Oh, my God, don’t say it—”

“We have a natural antiseptic in our saliva. The minerals in our glands promote rapid healing. That’s why you have no scars on your back. You didn’t fall, you were attacked in the woods.”

“Stop. Just stop.” She looked at him with ravaged eyes, her lashes wet with tears and her cheeks pink with hives and blotches of blood. “What happens now? I know you aren’t going to let me and my brother just walk out the door.”

His sister had Vito detained in the other room, but eventually a choice would be made and this madness would end. Voice strained, he told her, “We will heal your injuries and take your memories.”

A quiet sob escaped her. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“I cannot alter your thinking. You think in Portuguese.”

She shot him a withering look. “You’ve tried though.”

“This isn’t the first time you were exposed to our kind. Like I said, you were attacked, in the woods, by my uncle. I saved you, and you shot me with an arrow. It would have taken years to process such a trauma, and your exposure to our kind could have endangered those I love.”

“What about me? You said you loved me.”

Pressure built in his chest. He did love her. The thought of losing her again was an all-consuming agony he feared might finish him. He’d suffer a thousand more heart attacks and a million arrows rather than feel the anguish of hurting her. “I wish you no harm, Destiny.”

Her eyes moved as she tried to rationalize the situation. “If you can’t change my memories, how come I don’t remember anything from the attack you speak of?”

“Bishop King speaks your language. He removed the memories of what happened in the woods. He overlooked some impressions of the farm, and that’s how you found your way back. It was purely coincidence that you happened to drive to Lancaster the day after I took you home. Over time, those memories would have naturally faded, like a dream, and felt more like a fleeting sense of deja vu.”

“Will I ever have those memories back?”

He looked away in shame. “Do you want them back?”

“I’ll never know, will I?”

He betrayed her. That had never been his intention. “Destiny—”

“Just tell me what happens now, Cain. Will you call the bishop and have him take my memories again? Will he erase everything I saw today? All of my time here at the farm? My memories of you?”

“There’s no other way. This was never meant to be permanent.”

She snatched a book off his dresser and hurled it at him. “You knew this all along! In the barn when you told me to come back tonight, that was never going to happen!”

“I’m so sorry.” Her sorrow gutted him. “If there were a way…” He lowered his stare. “I wanted it to be true. I wanted to keep you.”

“God, I’m such an idiot. I honestly thought that we might…”

---