“You are correct, Olivia. We are vampires,” Gabriel said.
“Hmm . . .” She took a bite of the bread. “So that’s what he is. I always knew he wasn’t human, but . . .”
I already knew before I asked. “Who are you talking about?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know his name. A long time ago when I was just a kid, a stranger with glowing, silver eyes healed me after I fell out of a tree. Once or twice I thought I saw him again, like he was watching over me or something. The next year on the same date of when he’d healed me, he left me a charm bracelet with a kite charm on my nightstand. Every year after that, on the same date, he always left me a charm.”
Gabriel and I looked at the bracelet on her arm. It dangled with various charms. As I looked at the charms, I knew I was getting a glimpse of her life.
Elias had watched her enough to know what she liked. From where I was sitting, I could see an anchor, a mermaid, a volleyball, a music note, a lighthouse, a sunflower, a lion, a book, and a sushi roll.
“This might sound stupid, but I always thought he was my guardian angel. No one ever believed me about him when I was a child, so I kept my mouth shut. Is there any chance you might know him?”
Anger cascaded inside of Gabriel and me.
“Yes,” I said. “We know him.”
“What is his name?”
“Elias,” Gabriel said. The name tasted like poison in our mouths.
“Is he here?”
“No,” Gabriel answered quickly.
“I always wanted to see him again. . . . Wait, you said someone needed to die in order for you to be safe again. Is it him that needs to die?” Olivia asked. She pushed her food away and stared at us with apprehension in her eyes.
She had the right to know everything. I had brought her into this, and it was wrong of me to have done so. I wasn’t about to leave her in the dark.
“Olivia, we will tell you everything,” I said. “And regardless of how you feel about Elias at the end of our story, I’m telling you now, he will die. There may be light in him, but it’s buried so deeply within him that it can no longer be reached.”
Olivia grabbed Denny and clutched him to her chest, as if bracing herself.
“We’ll start at the very beginning,” I said. “Gabriel had a sister named Lucy. . . .”
Olivia’s face was as white as snow after we finished telling her everything. She shook her head, obviously in complete disbelief.
“There’s nothing you’re leaving out?” she asked. “You’re not lying about anything, are you? Because a lot of the patients at the hospital I treat are involved in domestic violence disputes or have been in car accidents, and there are always two sides to every story.”
“All of it is true,” I said. “We have no reason to lie.”
She looked at Gabriel with narrowed eyes. “And your PTSD is better because you are connected to him?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“But he attacked you. He kidnapped you. . . .”
“I know it’s difficult to understand, but Gabriel is not the person he used to be. I wouldn’t be with him had I not felt how sorry he was or if I didn’t know how much he loves me.”
Olivia shifted in her seat. “Stockholm Syndrome,” she muttered under her breath.
I grinned. During the months when Gabriel and I had been separated, I’d spent many sleepless nights researching Stockholm Syndrome. The results had been varied and inconclusive, and I’d stopped the obsessive research after Thomas had pointed out that my animals only loved me because I fed them.
“I want to go home. I don’t want any part of this,” Olivia said.
I went and sat down beside her, taking her water cup. “I’m sorry to involve you, but it’s too late now.”
“It’s not,” she said, still so calm because of my Control. “Just send me home. Control me to forget this.”
I ignored her pleas, taking the knife on the tray Gabriel had brought. The knife was not silver.
“I’m going to Control you to not feel any pain,” I said. “Give me your arm. This is not going to hurt you.”
I sliced her wrist, not deeply, but enough for a fair amount of blood to emerge. I squeezed the blood into the water cup, the red liquid tainting its purity.
I downed the contents in two quick gulps, hating her blood. It was not Gabriel’s blood, and it felt wrong to drink it.
Olivia looked like she was about to go into shock as I poured more water into the cup from the small pitcher on the tray. My fangs shot of out of my gums, and I winced at the burst of pain that always accompanied their appearance. I bit into my wrist and allowed my blow to flow into the cup.
Gabriel moaned in his throat, quietly enough that Olivia couldn’t hear. My blood belonged to him, and I was about to give it to someone else. Neither one of us was happy about what I was about to do.
Olivia was not afraid, but she was angry. “I’m not drinking that,” she snapped, her eyes sparking.
I slid the cup to her, my gaze boring into her skull. “Yes, you will.”
Powerless under my Control, she emptied the cup. She looked bewildered when she was finished. “It didn’t taste like anything.”
“That’s because you don’t love me,” I said. “Vampire blood is tasteless to a human if the human does not love them.”
Her eyes widened when the cut on her wrist sealed, leaving behind only a thin, pale scar.
“Whoa! If only we had this stuff at the hospital. . . .” She stared at her wrist until tears pooled inside her eyes. “I don’t want to be a vampire.”
My own eyes burned in response. “I know. I really hope it won’t
