could have held it in her hand — a bloody dagger. And Valek was Caesar.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Charlotte opened her eyes again, expecting to find the room as she had left it — Evangeline studying by the fire with books open all around — she saw instead she had, in actuality, slept the whole day away. Evangeline was gone. Instead, Valek stood in her place. He was staring at the small, circular ball of light burning overhead. Just standing there, staring in complete captivation. Charlotte wondered what it must have been like; not to see something he had yearned to see again for such a long time. Something so glorious taken from him. Something, given the choice, he probably wouldn’t have ever given up.
“Breathtaking,” he mused.
Charlotte lifted her head up off of Edwin’s. She had been using him as a pillow. She rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. “Sarah left it there for you to see.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Almost as good as the real thing.” He reached one finger delicately to the ball of light, but upon touching it, the thing shattered into a million crystal pieces, softly fading away to the real cobwebs of the room. “Almost.”
Charlotte pushed up on one side. “Where is everyone?”
“Sarah and Evangeline went out hunting,” he explained. “You were screaming again,” he said sadly.
“I don’t remember my dream.”
“Why must you when it is your reality?”
She changed the subject. “What are they hunting for?”
“For anything that will keep us pacified for the night. Rats. Ravens. Dogs.”
Charlotte shuddered. “They are…all downstairs.” By
Valek shoved his hands in his pocket and looked at the floor. “Crowbarred, you might say.” His fangs flashed once in a dark smirk.
Charlotte’s stomach lurched. “What?” She leapt off the couch and ran out of the study.
When she got down the hallway, she saw Valek was already there, leaning against the wall by the trap door. Sure enough, a long, iron crowbar had padlocked the entry from the coven’s basement to the upper floors of the house. She could hear the murmurs of the coven from beneath the hollow under the floorboards.
Valek pushed off the wall and glided over to stand in front of her. “They have become addicted to the taste of warm, human blood now, after not having any for so long. It has made most of them mad this morning.”
Something unseen slammed against the wood just in front of Valek’s feet and howled otherworldly. Charlotte jumped and clung to Valek’s shirt.
“The iron is enchanted,” Valek assured. “Somehow, Sarah knew this would happen. They won’t be able to get through.”
“Will they be okay?”
“Once they drink something, I think they’ll be fine enough not to want to kill you.” He chuckled, though something dark resonated behind it.
Charlotte gulped as the trap door continued to bump and rattle. The awful screeching would not let up either.
“Come back to the study. Standing this close seems rather inhumane.” He pulled Charlotte by the arm in the direction she came.
“Why aren’t you affected like them?”
“I am. But what I want from you isn’t the same as what they want from you. And you are right next to me, so I suppose I’ve already gotten what I wanted.” He flashed a bigger fanged grin at her as he drew her back into the study. He sat in Sarah’s armchair. Charlotte climbed into his lap. “I apologize about earlier.”
“So how did he do it?” she asked again. She was never going to ease up.
He sighed. “It’s a process. I let him drink from me. I was walking home from the hospital one evening in December. It was snowing so hard a man could barely see the street in front of him. I remember how freezing it was. I found Francis then. In the night, he looked like a homeless man in the gutters of the city. But when I drew closer, I saw the truth of him. I recognized the pale skin — mostly the fangs.”
“You weren’t afraid?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open. “But how could you have known what he was if you were mortal?”
“Because back then, there were no such laws as there are now. Monsters ran rampant in mortal cities. Granted, humans didn’t believe we existed then either. But there were a select, very superstitious few, like my father, who did. When I was a boy, he used to put me to bed every night on stories and legends. I cannot fully explain it, but I just knew.”
“What happened then?”
“I approached him. I was very careful. He spoke French to me, but I barely understood a word. You must know he did not carry the gallant image he does now. His black eyes were sunken and hazy. His skin wasn’t pearly, but rather pallid, like an onion. For whatever reason, he had not fed in a very long time. I knew he was starving.
“I sat down next to him on the curb, and rolled up my coat sleeve. I remembered how he looked at me, unsure. But I nodded at him. ‘It is all right,’ I said. ‘Do it.’
“He bit down on my wrist. It felt like shards of glass, ice in my veins, pulling the blood out of me. A few seconds went by, but they felt like hours. I was getting weaker and weaker as I cried out in pain in the street. I tried to fight him off, but it was too late. He had taken too much for me. I was nearly dead.
“Francis panicked. I blacked out after that, but remember waking up in an apartment somewhere. There was a fireplace. I was warm. I was still mortal, but I was so close to death. He was there, hovering over me, speaking in English then. I understood pieces of it. He was asking me a question, giving me a choice. ‘I’m sorry,’ I remember him saying to me most of all. He repeated it over and over.”
“He was giving you a choice to die or be like him,” Charlotte concluded.
His eyes flickered to her face once. “Yes. I was not ready to die. I answered ‘yes’ to whatever he was asking me. Then I remember him slicing open his own neck and having me drink from him. He clutched my head to him as though he were a nursing child.”
Charlotte swallowed. Valek stayed lost in his memories.
“But the process wasn’t complete until I drank from a human. I would be in limbo until I committed the ultimate act.”
“Your wife?”
“No.” Valek’s gaze dropped to the floor. “No, I couldn’t bear it. Of course I wanted her to be with me. I only revisited our apartment, unbeknownst to her. I watched over her. She was in mourning. She thought I was dead. There was no way I could face her as I was. I preferred she thought I was with God, than with Lucifer.”
“You aren’t, Valek.” Charlotte touched his cool cheek. “You are more good than anyone else I know.”
He glanced at her again, a pained smile coloring his features. “Everyone you know is damned just as I am, Lottie. It is the truth. I have come to terms with it.”
Charlotte frowned and rested her head on his collar. “How did she die, Valek?” This woman had existed a little under a century ago, but Charlotte empathized with her more than she had with anyone before.
“She died later that same winter. Pneumonia. I probably could have helped her.” He absentmindedly brought his hand to his chin, eyes swelling a bit. “But it was just easier for me to watch her go. She had no one. Her heart was broken, as mine was. Somehow, it seemed better to just let her go.”
Charlotte clung tightly to him in an effort to remind him she was still there. Valek stroked up and down her arm and kissed the top of her head.
“I am confident her angel sent you to me. The way I found you, all alone in the city. It was similar to the way I found Francis and in turn, my new life. It seemed as though she left you there for me.”
