15
WITHOUT THINKING, I MOVED TOWARD THE IV, KNOWING I had to get it out of his arm. Before I could touch it, Kristoff’s men pulled me back. I fought, but one was all it took to hold me in place.
Kristoff looked grim. “Declan agreed to this.”
“He agreed to let you poison him?” My throat hurt as panic raced through me.
“Yes. The most humane way to deal with a dhampyr is to euthanize them. Declan is a danger to everyone around him now, and there’s no going back. In return for your safety, he agreed not to fight me on this. I could have let my men kill him last night. It would have been faster, but much more painful and there would have been no guarantees when it came to you.”
I felt as if I was going to be physically ill. My entire body went cold and still and I felt the blood drain from my face. “Declan, is that true?”
He turned his head toward me. “There’s no other way, Jill.”
“There’s always another way.”
His jaw tightened. “No other way I’m willing to accept.”
He knew. What Matthias told me about how to save a dhampyr was something Declan already knew from his research.
“Declan, no. Please.” I shook my head so hard it hurt my neck. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s already done.”
“You can’t leave me again. Not like this.”
His expression grew pained. “Kristoff said he’ll release you. He won’t hurt you.”
“And you believed him? You know who he is. You took him at his word?”
His eye closed before he could say anything else. I heard someone let out a ragged sob and realized it was me.
“He wanted to say good-bye to you, Jillian,” Kristoff said softly. “It was the least I could do for him.”
I shook my head. “He’s not going to die.”
“The poison will only take a couple more minutes to work.”
“No. No, it’s not going to happen. Declan’s not going to die. I can’t believe he’d agree to this, for what? Just thinking he was saving me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“If you’d seen him last night—there was no reasoning there. He was a raging beast who wanted to destroy. His mind isn’t working as it should. This is the only way to deal with a dhampyr like that.”
The vampire behind me held me firm in his viselike grip. A glance at him showed that the signs of hunger were readily visible on his strained face, but he didn’t even attempt to bite me.
I felt like I wanted to give up, but part of me knew I had to keep fighting. I was in deep trouble, in the house of a vampire king who was putting his dhampyr son down like a rabid dog. And the rabid dog had agreed to it.
He didn’t think he deserved to live. He didn’t want to hurt me.
This hurt.
There was one thing I believed in, apart from everything else. I’d just never realized how strong my belief was. I wasn’t religious. I wasn’t spiritual. I basically lived one day at a time, grateful for any day I didn’t wallow in the depression I’d felt that made me take a razor blade to my wrist five years ago.
I believed in one thing, and that was life. If I was breathing then there was still hope for everything to turn out okay. Death was forever and there was no coming back from it. Life meant there was still a chance.
I believed in life. That was my religion.
Kristoff might want me to believe that he was a nice guy—one who didn’t deserve the bad rep Matthias had given him. It would be easier if I did believe that. But he didn’t fool me. He was self-involved, power-hungry, and willing to kill to get what he wanted, even if it meant he had to slit the throat of a harmless sixty-year-old woman in her kitchen. A smile and a kind word afterward didn’t mean shit to me.
But I needed him right now. More than anyone else.
“You want me to go kill this enemy of yours,” I said. “This leader of the Amarantos Society who wants to take you down.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll do it. And I’ll succeed at it.”
He raised an eyebrow. I saw it out of the corner of my eye even though I hadn’t taken my attention away from Declan for a moment. “You really think you can?”
“Yes, I do. But you have to do something for me.”
“I’ll release your nieces if you’re successful.”
“You’ll definitely do that.” I swallowed. “But I want something else.”
He nodded at his thug. “Let her go.”
Only a second later, the vampire let go of me. He watched me warily as if expecting me to launch myself at Declan’s IV again, but I stayed right where I was.
“What do you want?” Kristoff asked.
I licked my dry lips and finally looked directly at him. “I want you to sire Declan.”
Surprise slid behind his gray gaze. “That’s impossible.”
My heart sank. “Why is it impossible?”
“Dhampyrs are too unpredictable and prone to turn more monstrous and violent if they’re sired. It’s against vampire law to take that chance, both for the safety of the dhampyr and for everyone else.”
“Who made that law?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I did.”
“Then you can break it.”
“My son hates vampires, I’ve seen how much through my brother’s mind. He kills them whenever possible. You’d have him made into something that he despises? You’d take the chance this act will turn him into more of a monster than he was to begin with?”
Declan had freaked out at my decision to have Noah turned into a vampire to save his life. If he found out I made the same decision for him—
Kristoff approached me and pressed his hand against my cheek. For a moment he looked so much like Matthias I almost forgot who he really was. “Jillian?”
Declan would choose death over becoming a vampire without a second thought—in fact, it looked like he already had. My overlapping thoughts and dark pain inside of me at the rush of information became too much. I tried to breathe, tried to figure this out.
He’d hate me for doing this to him. If he’d been furious with what I’d decided with Noah, it would pale in comparison to how he’d feel about it happening to himself, especially if this backfired and he became even more violent.
He’d be a vampire who wanted to rip out my throat. And for the rest of his life or mine, one taste of my blood would be able to kill him in seconds.
“There’s not much time left before he’s gone,” Kristoff said very seriously. “What do you want me to do?”
I looked up at him and a hot tear slid down my cheek. “Sire him.”