He folds his hands in front of him, his eyes dipping to my lips as he picks his story back up.
“Wars started when the Van Helsings decided to cull the flocks of their own accord. You wouldn’t think a small amount of people could make such an impact on such a monstrous number of monsters. You’d be wrong,” he says, smirking. “Certain bloodlines are forbidden to use for turnings. It’s a law now that the wars have ended.”
“Why certain blood lines?” I ask between bites.
“Certain humans can’t eat peanuts. Certain ones can’t eat tomatoes. Same is true for certain ones who can’t be turned without suffering infectious consequences.”
He puts his spoon on the table, and starts drawing an imaginary circle with it.
“Bad blood equals a lot of deaths with vampire turnings. Bloodthirst is a nasty infection. While some learn to cope with the thirst without slaughtering hundreds of people every couple of months, most don’t. And often times they end up turning all those people they’ve drained because they’re so infectious. Boom.” The vampire pauses to give me jazz hands. “Hundreds of new vampires from one single vampire within a matter of months. See the problem?”
I nod slowly as the soup loses its appeal.
“With werewolves, it’s less dire, but still crucial. A bad-blood wolf gets enraged at the smallest frustration and can turn at any time. They also lose themselves completely to the wolf when in fur. They could easily infect an entire roomful of mortals if they turn in public.”
I nod like I understand, and he continues moving the spoon in a circle like he’s showing me the small impact just one bad-blood monster can have. It makes me wonder if I’m a bad-blood monster of some sort, even though I don’t infect people.
“Succubae and incubuses are different—”
“Damien’s creations,” I surmise.
“Morpheous family creations,” he corrects, winking at me. “There’s more than just Damien. The Morpheous family tree is even larger than the Van Helsings’ tree.”
I nod like that makes perfect sense.
“Bad-bloods for them either kill everyone they bed—unlike Damien, who only kills when he takes his pleasure—or they turn everyone they bed. Regardless, a lot of bodies draw a lot of attention. While we can’t die, all of our omegas and betas can, and all of the humans could decide we’re too much of a threat. They can’t fear us. Fear incites panic. Panic incites war. By the end of those wars, it would leave us to start from scratch all over again. It’s not easy to build our empires.”
“Why build empires of monsters if this all started as a curse? And Damien said he had to sacrifice things for immortality, so how is this all a curse?”
“Fair question,” he says with a shrug. “Sometimes you want things no matter the cost. Then you learn the cost and it’s too late to change your mind. Or maybe you’re just truly willing to pay the final price because you’ve already sacrificed so much. As far as the empires go, it’s a necessary evil. Once we disturbed the natural order of things, we created chaos. Wolves, vampires, and all the other monsters are now a part of the natural order the world needs. Some of the worst monsters have made the largest medical advancements for mankind. Not to mention the disease control.”
“Disease control?” I ask, really confused.
He just grins. “Pandemics once spread across every continent, leaving thousands dead in its wake in far less populated areas than the world has today. It’s nature’s way of…culling the herd, so to speak. Keeping population in check. Even with medical advancements, should those diseases return, it could mean eventual global extinction. Now, only the continents we can’t find hospitality in suffer those waves of deadly diseases. You see, we upset the natural balance, and nature considers us a disease. It expects us to cull the crop, but we try to do it without deadly infection so that our purpose doesn’t expire.”
“And no one would do that a hundred years ago,” I determine.
“No one would do it to the degree it needed to be done,” he counters, smiling darkly. “No one but the one who no longer thinks of himself as a human gypsy with just a curse. I know I’m a monster, Violet. I learned to like it, while most of the alphas still struggle to make peace with our dark and daunting past, even all these many centuries later.”
I down both glasses of champagne, deciding I’ve learned enough.
He seems to think so too, because he stands and offers me his hand. I accept it warily, and he bristles. “Your hands are cold, even to my touch,” he murmurs, quickly pulling both my hands between his and rubbing them. “Is the heat not high enough?”
“It is. My hands get cold when I get…scared. Which I’ve been all night.”
He grins as he pulls me to him again, and we’re dancing before I can object. Or rather, he’s dancing. I’m just stumbling along next to him.
He finally sighs and shakes his head, though I can tell he’s amused. “You aren’t even trying.”
“Because it’s even worse when I try,” I tell him as I stare down at his feet that I keep stepping on.
“You can say you hate dancing.”
“Actually, I love it. I’m just terrible at it and prefer to do it in private or in a place where absolutely no one knows me. Never in the town I live in amongst a lot of monsters.”
He continues letting me bumble my way around the fancy dance floor, and I glance longingly at the rave entrance where I could hide amongst the throngs of bodies.
“I’m going to assume you’ve given my idea some thought, considering how you handled last night’s situation,” he states, moving me around.
We’re the only ones even on this side anymore.
“Why did everyone leave?” I ask instead of answering, since it probably does look to him—the slightly delusional, terrifying vampire—like I’m trying to have four boyfriends.
I don’t want to tell him I struggle keeping one man’s interest, let alone four. He’s crazy, but I’m very reasonable and sane.
Mostly.
Kind of.
Sort of.
Not really…
Hell, I honestly forgot what he expected from me until I was in between him and Emit.
“When Vance put me underground, I was supposed to be unconscious for the hundred-year sentence. It should have been as quick and painless as falling asleep and waking up.”
“But that’s not what happened,” I state, knowing this since I met him outside that box.
“When I was a young gypsy lad, I used to fall asleep in peaceful meadows to get away from my very high-expectations family. Sometimes, when I was just between awake and asleep, I could astral project myself around. The thing is, everyone could see me when I did it. And it was terribly hard to do. I only managed to do it a handful of times. I couldn’t do it at all after turning immortal.”
I pause, remembering what he said about me seeing his projection when no one could.
“It works differently as a vampire, but I was only able to do it because I was so far underground and had nothing better to do but strain for that moment in between. Then I realized no one could see me.”
“So you watched them to learn their weaknesses and dole out your revenge after you returned,” I say quietly, a small tremble going up my spine.
He stares over my head for a second, nodding slowly, before I resume stepping on his feet and trying to dance alongside him.
“Initially, yes.”
I stare up at him, hoping he elaborates.
He doesn’t look down as his jaw grinds. “When I woke up in that coffin, had no way of telling time, and spent what I assume was years clawing at the insides of that damn thing to get out, I certainly started plotting revenge.”
The lump in my throat returns.
“Then I bloody watched them. They had no clue I’d woken. They worried what I’d do when I returned, and worried how they’d handle it, because they sure as hell didn’t really want to leave me underground, though they did bring it up to each other through letters numerous times. It’s when they were alone and I saw the wreckage my punishment had caused them that I realized…there’s still hope.”