Chapter 8

“How can I trust you? I won’t even know you. I don’t want to forget about you! I don’t want to forget about…all of this.”

She gestured first to herself, then him.

“All of this?” he asked, moving closer to her even though it was a bad idea all around. He couldn’t seem to help himself.

“All of…the way we feel about each other.”

“We don’t feel anything about each other except for lust. Lust we probably wouldn’t have felt in a normal situation.”

“Thanks for that too,” she said wryly.

“I’m serious.”

“This is so flattering.”

“What I mean is…you’re a woman of substance. You’re beautiful and delicious and attractive and desirable. I usually go for not so pretty and desperate. Women who are desperate for some attention and are willing to sleep with me just to get a little of that attention for a brief time. No strings. Nothing drawn out. You would want more than that. You deserve more than that.”

“I guess that’s a little better,” she said with a sigh. “But why limit yourself to such ephemeral relationships? Don’t you want somebody to love?”

He shook his head. “I’ve lived this long without it. It never hurt me. I like temporary relationships. They are less complicated.”

“So you cheat. You take the easy way out. All of us have to work hard at forming and keeping relationships while you cheat the system.”

He shrugged. “If that’s what you think. Maybe I do. Maybe I’m just not wired to feel that way.”

“No one who touches a woman like that can be as cold as you make yourself out to be.”

“Again, you’re mistaking lust for emotion. Try not to do that. It’ll be easier on you.”

“Easier for you, you mean.”

“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” he said with a shrug.

“You know you try to come off as this big unfeeling brute, but I don’t believe it for a second. You’re not fooling me.”

“Then you’re fooling yourself,” he said taking her arm in hand and giving her a little shake. “Stop romanticizing all of this. Keep it together. You need to focus on what’s important.”

“There’s nothing more important than respecting human emotion.”

“That’s a ridiculous statement,” he said with a frown. “There’s hundreds of things more important than that.”

“No. There isn’t. Human emotion is what drives everything we do. If we don’t respect that then we are functioning in a numb vacuum. It’s impossible to function that way.”

“It never hurt me,” he said sharply. “And you forget, I’m not human.”

He had her there and he could see that.

“So you’re saying vampires have no emotions?”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that we have far more control over our emotions than humans do. We have to. When you lose control you do things—stupid things. Things that give you away. We can’t afford that. So strict emotions and usually no relations with humans.”

That seemed to surprise her. “Why not?”

“You’re our food. It’s like making love to a steak for us.”

“What a load of horseshit. Steaks don’t have consciousness and humanity and feelings. And besides, you said you do it all the time.”

“Yeah, well I’m different.”

“How so?”

“I’m what you’d call a bad boy.”

“I can believe that. So why not be a bad boy all the way? Why not let me retain my memories?”

“I’m not that much of a bad boy. I’m not about to risk my life for you.”

She grew quiet. Then she said, “I don’t blame you. I’m not worth risking your life over. But maybe you can talk to this committee of yours. Maybe they could trust me—”

“As I said, you have nothing that they would want.”

“Stop saying that. It makes me feel useless.”

“It’s just the truth. It isn’t a reflection on who you are.”

“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Nah. I’m not that kind.”

She smiled at that. “You like to play like you don’t care, but I know that you do.”

“You hope that I do. That’s all.”

Now she frowned. “Say that’s true. You wouldn’t care about getting me out of this. You wouldn’t care about finding out why I was taken and neutralizing the threat.”

She had him there he thought with a frown. Why did he care? Why did it matter to him? She was only human. She wasn’t worth all this energy and worry.

Right?

“Don’t attach too much sentiment to my actions. It’s self-preservation. Somehow you are connected to me. I have to figure out why that is to neutralize the threat to myself. It has nothing to do with you. I only care about me.”

She stared hard into his eyes, dissecting his words and searching for emotion on his features. He made certain to portray the most blasé expression he was capable of. He saw his words hurt her—a lot. He immediately wanted to take them back, but it was better this way.

“So you’re basically using me for self-gratification,” she said.

That wasn’t quite right and he knew it. There was something very strong in his attraction to her. Something that kept making him forget where he was and the danger he was in, if even for a little while. But he couldn’t let her know that.

“That’s about the size of it. So if anything else happens, at least you know the truth of it. At least it’s clear between us.”

She was silent before finally turning away.

“Tell me what this feeding entails,” she said.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Because we both know that poisoned or not, you’re going to have to feed from me eventually. I want to know what I’m in for.”

It was a hard truth. Just like all the other hard truths he was trying to get her to understand. He should be glad she was facing reality, but for some reason he wasn’t.

“We’re going to get out of here before that happens. We have to. I can’t feed off you without giving them what they want.”

“So you’d rather fall into this torpor you were talking about? You’d rather grow weak and go into a coma where they can just kill you? You’ll be no use to me then.”

“I’ll be no use to you if I drink from you,” he countered. “I’ll lose my moral compass. I’ll do what they want.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s like throwing a switch. One moment you’re good and moral and the next you’re bad and amoral.”

“I’m already amoral,” he said with half a grin.

“This isn’t funny.”

“No, it’s not funny. And to be honest, I don’t know how fast the conversion is. I don’t know how complete it is. The only way to know that is to go through it. But I do know this: once I’ve had a taste for it, it’ll be nearly impossible to resist doing it again. And again. And again. Then I’ll be lost.”

He clenched his hands into fists at the thought. The thought of losing control of himself really sucked. Really, really sucked. And having it happen in front of her—because of her—sucked big, hairy moose balls.

“I won’t let that happen,” she whispered. “Just like you won’t let me become addicted to heroin. I won’t let you be lost.”

“I can’t keep you from addiction. No more than you can keep me from it. Expose yourself to it long enough and addiction is a foregone conclusion. And believe me, he’s going to keep you poisoned long enough to force my hand. That means destroying your self-control. Soon you’ll want it bad. Bad enough to want to inject yourself. Anything to keep from coming down and getting sick. I’ve seen heroin withdrawal. It’s not pretty.”

“Is withdrawal the same for you? Not pretty?”

“I can’t imagine it’s fun. That’s provided I can even come back.”

“You can come back,” she said strongly. “I know you can. You’re strong enough. You’d be able to fight it.”

“That all depends on how often and how long I indulge in toxicity. It depends on how long they keep me locked up here with you. Because I’ll tell you this much, you won’t be able to survive me if they don’t give me another food source.”

“What does that mean?” she asked with alarm.

“That means if I take from you too often, it’ll eventually deplete all of the energy in your body until you don’t have enough to keep your body functioning. You’ll die.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “Well, let’s not do that.”

“I’ll let myself fall into torpor first. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Well, that’s comforting, I guess. But that leaves us with the same problem…how do we get out of here soon enough to keep any of that from happening? And how much longer can you hold out without feeding?”

“Depends. Depends on if they keep knocking me out with that gas. The more my body has to process that poison, the more energy I burn. Roth knows that. He wants to see me suffer. He wants to see me choose to cross over to his side. He wants to see me either kill you or kill myself.”

“Why? Why would he want me dead?” she interjected.

“I don’t know. I wish I knew what made you so special. He’s punishing you by putting you in here with me. I don’t know why. You’ve done something to piss him off.”

“I don’t even know who this Roth guy is! I…I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone named Roth. He doesn’t sound familiar and I’m pretty good with voices. Not flawless, mind you, but pretty good. And he has a distinctive accent. Foreign. I don’t know many foreign people.”

“He’s Italian. Or rather, his mother tongue is Italian. He grew up in Italy. He never shook the accent. He was with the Italian principality for almost all the years of his life until he came to work under the queen.”

“I don’t believe it. There’s actually a queen of the vampires,” Felice said, rolling her eyes.

“And many princes too.”

“No princesses? How chauvinistic of you.”

“We call our leaders princes whether they are male or female. The ratio of male princes to female princes is almost equal. It’s about power—whoever has it rules their world.”

“So a memory wipe would make me forget everything about you?” she asked, reaching out to grip his arm around his biceps. He flexed the muscle beneath her fingertips, his subconscious way of reminding her what a deadly species she was trapped with.

“Everything,” he affirmed.

He would remember her, however. He would remember everything about her. The way she smelled. The way she felt. The way her hair clouded around her head in a dark, stormy billow of color. The clear dark blue of her sharp, intelligent eyes. The way she was strong and fragile all at the same time.

His poetic thoughts surprised him. Halo wasn’t the romantic sort so it didn’t make much sense to him that he would be applying such thoughts to her now. He reached out, unable to curb the impulse, and drew a strand of her hair through his fingertips. Running the length of it from root to tip. He turned his hand then and cupped her face against his palm. Again a romantic sort of gesture.

“I don’t want to forget you,” she whispered. “You’re an asshole most of the time, but I don’t want to forget you. I don’t want to forget about this portion of my life. It’s not right! You have no right to do that to me.”

“I have no choice. It’s the law.”

“You mean it’s vampire law. I don’t follow vampire law! I don’t give a damn about vampire law!”

“But I do,” he said firmly.

“I won’t let you do it.”

“Resisting will only make it harder on you. But let’s not worry about it now. We have more immediate concerns.”

“Immediate concerns,” she scoffed. “Is that what you call it?” She slapped his hand away in a fit of pique and turned her back on him. “This is all your fault. All of it. I don’t know what I’m doing here! I shouldn’t even be in this mess. I don’t want to know about vampires and captivity and all of that but now that I do, I’m not going to let it go. So you can forget about all your hypno mojo. It’s not happening. This is all your fault,” she repeated.

“It is not all my fault,” he snapped at her. “You’re here for a reason, just as I am. Millions of women in the world and they pick you. Why? You’re keeping something from me. You know something you shouldn’t or someone you shouldn’t.”

“I already told you! The only person I know who has it out for me is my ex. Otherwise I’m just a nobody.”

“You’re not a nobody,” he volleyed back at her. “You’re a lot of things and a nobody is not one of them. Someone as dynamic and attractive as you? Someone as smart as you? With that sharp attitude? You probably piss people off left and right.”

“Me? What about you! You’re the self-professed ass between us!”

“We already know how much of this is my fault. I’m not denying it at all.”

She pouted, crossing her arms over her breasts. He noticed she tried to cover up whenever she felt vulnerable. It made him feel like an ass yelling at her, accusing her of something without having hard facts to back it up.

“Look, just go over there and let me think,” he said, pointing to the chairs.

“Why? Afraid your head’s going to explode trying to form a thought? I’m sure your brain isn’t used to the process, but surely it’s not dangerous.”

It was a mean remark but it made him laugh. She was downright nasty when she got her back up. He rather liked that about her.

“Insult me all you like, it’s not going to change things.”

She looked immediately chagrined. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” she said softly as she looked away from him.

“Sure you did. And I don’t blame you. I’m not what you’d call a great philosophical thinker.”

“Still, it wasn’t right of me to—”

“To point it out? Thanks for the sentiment, but I know where my strengths lie. Now go sit. Calm down a bit. Try to see things in a better light. And think of what’s happened in your life recently that would make them choose you. I have to know what it is if I am going to protect you in the future from assholes like Roth. If vampires are out to get you, if you’re going to be constantly exposed to them, all the hypno in the world isn’t going to help you forget. And I’m not going to let you go out into the world not knowing you’re in danger. First I’ll remove all of that danger…if I can. I’ll protect you, I promise.”

“Forgive me if I’m not comforted by any of that,” Felice said bitterly as she moved to the chairs and sat down with a flounce. He tried to ignore her pique, but he couldn’t entirely. If it was him, he would be just as resistant. In fact, he would raise holy hell before he’d let it happen. Her desire to fight for knowledge she feared said a lot about her strength. Maybe…maybe the committee would allow her to keep her memories about the vampire nation. Maybe there was something she could offer them. If he could spin it just right…

Halo frowned. Why should any of this matter to him? She was nobody to him. He would forget about her as soon as he parted ways with her.

Except for her smell.

The feel of her hair.

The lushness of her body.

Fuck.

Halo crossed the room putting distance between them. As much distance as was possible. He didn’t want her close. He didn’t want her under his skin.

But he was afraid it was far too late for that already.