“Why shouldn’t I be ok with it? Dante and I aren’t together.”
“Well, from what you’ve been telling me, it sounds like…”
“It doesn’t matter what it sounds like,” Michelle replied, patting Alex’s hand. “Only what it is. There are no lies between us, we tell each other everything. Our bond is stronger than love. I’ve grown aware of my job as his human; he is my responsibility. We don’t own each other as a boyfriend/girlfriend thing, but I am his girl, and he is my boy. The one thing I would never do is let another vamp feed on me. And he has never fed on another human as long as I have been with him. That’s what I mean when I say we belong to each other.”
“He really means a lot to you, doesn’t he?” Alex said.
“After Julian, I was suicidal. Dante’s kindness saved my life. He paid for me to finish school and with his help I got great grades. He encouraged me to go to uni, study in anything I wanted. He paid for it all. I went from having nothing to everything, all thanks to the heart of one guy, and that heart doesn’t even beat.” Michelle sighed.
“So what would you do if you found a special human?”
“Dante comes first,” Michelle offered simply with a shrug. “I wouldn’t cheat on the guy, but I will always be Dante’s girl.”
“So that means…”
“Feeding. No screwing,” she said with two shakes of her finger.
“So Dante would be ok with that?” Alex asked, although she thought she pretty much knew the answer.
“When the possibility was brought up, he even said that’s where our ties should end but I flatly refused. He didn’t mean to, but it’s the only time he ever upset me. That was a major argument.”
“Was that your only fight?”
“Yes. Wait, no, it wasn’t,” Michelle said, eyes wide, suddenly remembering. “There was once where Dante lost his temper at me, which was something to see.”
“He didn’t hit you, did he?”
“Never, but he did almost destroy the house.”
“Jesus… What happened?”
Michelle sighed and smiled at Alex. “I have never talked this much in my life. Ok, sit back and listen.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dante’s Peak
“I had only recently woken up. The night before was Dante’s feeding night, so I was still really lightheaded. Talk about iron deficiency!” Michelle rolled her eyes and laughed. “I was flicking through some random book I’d picked up in his library when suddenly the main doors snapped back and three people barged in. Then I realised it was actually two men carrying a third. It was Dante. I remember screaming and it felt like my heart just froze. Dante wasn’t moving. The two other vamps placed him on the main lounge and I saw his face was all cut up, and his nails and fangs were extended.”
“What happened?” asked Alex.
“Fight with an elder. To the death. Still don’t know how he did it” Michelle’s eyes looked off into the distance, but Alex could see them glisten with a light sheen of unshed tears.
“I shouted at them to get out of the house, and at first they refused to listen, claiming Dante would never give a human power of domain. But when I insisted that he’d done exactly that, and ordered them out, they were forced to leave, under vampiric law. The house basically ejected them out through the front doors, slamming behind them. Weird thing, that. But very effective.” She wiggled an eyebrow at Alex.
“Wow. I didn’t realize there was so much power there,” breathed Alex.
Michelle nodded, yet reluctant to go on. But then she swallowed, building up her nerve and began again. For some reason, Alex thought the reason Michelle was having trouble telling the story was not because of the memory, as much as who she was telling it to. “After that, all my bravado just seeped out. I looked at him lying there and just burst into tears. I shouted and pleaded and tried to jostle him as gently as I could. He roused a little, coughed up some blood, and fell back again. I felt so helpless.”
“I don’t get it. Why didn’t he just heal?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Vampires do all their healing during the day. It’s like the slate gets wiped clean from the night before. In saying that, they are really hard to kill, especially the older ones, but not impossible. Bleeding to death is a common cause. If you can keep an injured vampire full, for want of a better word until daybreak, they will wake up looking as if nothing happened. You need to get them blood for their wounds to close.”
“And lots of it, if they don’t heal,” Alex said, more so to herself.
“I couldn’t possibly help him,” Michelle continued. “He was dying and needed more blood than I had in me. I tried to lift him to my neck, but I was way too weak. So I offered him my wrist and he just shook his head. Finally he says to me, ‘I just had to see you again.’ And then he slumped down and stopped moving. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and went back, cut open my wrist and let the blood drain into his mouth.”
“Oh…god!” said Alex, feeling shocked and a little sickened. “Why?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“I told you, I’d do anything for him. From there things got very hazy. I must’ve blacked out. I woke up in bed. Every part of me ached. I looked down and had a fresh bandage around my wrist. Suddenly, I remembered what had happened and tried to get up and run to find Dante, but I was so dizzy, I just fell back. I was going nowhere. I woke up awhile
