"Enchanté, Tori." He kissed her on both cheeks in the French custom and Victoria felt as if her knees were melting.
She hesitated, still wary, but didn't move until Christian took her hand and led her toward the back of the house where there was a large, comfortable den. As they sat down, a tiny Asian man appeared, carrying a tray of food along with a bottle of red wine, which he placed on the coffee table. He left as silently as he had come in.
Victoria hadn't realized how ravenous she was and she inhaled the simple meal. She noticed that Christian didn't eat. He only sipped a bit of the wine while she ate, and when she looked inquiringly at him, he assured her that he had eaten earlier. When she was full, she sat back into the cushions and curled her feet beneath her.
"Tori," Christian began, his voice husky, "I have tried to escape this thing between us, to push you out of my mind, but I can't. The truth is that you haunt my dreams and my every waking moment."
"Is that so bad?" she said, echoing his words at the bar.
"Yes." He sighed. "I brought you here to talk to you, Tori. You should stay away from me. It's for your own good. What you saw before inside my mind was real—I am bound by a covenant to stay away from you."
"I don't understand. I thought—"
"In my world, for us to be together has terrible consequences. There are laws in place that forbid it."
"What laws? What world?"
"The laws of my world." He stared at her, understanding her confusion; she didn't know what he was. "And it's not fair to you because you don't know ... what ..." He looked away as if the words were choking him.
"What?" she said. "Christian, please just tell me."
"What I am," he finished. "It's better if you see. I won't block you Tori, but please promise me one thing."
"Anything," she said, as he raised a palm for her to listen.
"Promise me that you will give me a chance to explain." Victoria stared at him, startled by what sounded like fear in his voice.
"Okay?" he said. She nodded. His smile was strained as he clasped her hands.
Victoria cleared her mind and took a deep breath, her clammy fingers grasping his tightly. She reached forward tentatively and entered his mind, his walls gone. What she found was, Christian, his sensitivity, his sharp intelligence, his bare uncluttered feelings for her. She wanted to bask in them, bask in the feelings she now understood as mirroring her own.
Keep going, please. You must know it all, he thought to her. You must see me.
She forced herself go further, glimpsing his childhood, his adolescence and his older years. And further still, so many images in the older years that she became confused, something was off about the timing and the way he looked so consistent in all of the images. She went deeper still, following the shadows down, down, down, until she found herself on the edge of a cloying darkness—the thing she'd sensed briefly at the bar.
Victoria felt Christian's hands squeeze reassuringly against hers and she pushed against it. Without warning, it shifted into something heavy that enveloped her, her skin crawling as if hundreds of roaches covered every inch of her body. A red-eyed face formed in the darkness. The monster grinned, its distended fangs bloodied and gleaming, and a salty, metallic tanginess coated her tongue. She tasted blood.
Angie's words echoed like thunder in her mind—not human, not human, not human. With wild strength Victoria withdrew, wrenching her hand out of Christian's now slackened grip. His expression was unfathomable.
"You're a—" she gasped, incoherent, scooting her body to the far end of the sofa. She tasted the phantom blood again and swallowed the hot bile in her throat along with the words that wouldn't come. Angie was wrong—he'd been human once, just not anymore.
Christian stared at her, his fists clenched in his lap. There was no way he could explain or condone what he was. From her reaction, he was prepared for the worst. It seemed like eons had passed until she finally spoke, her gaze burning into his.
"You're not human." It was not a question.
"No."
"You're a vampire."
"Yes."
Victoria closed her eyes, her breathing harsh in the deafening silence, her heartbeat erratic. Christian was a vampire. A vampire! As in a dead thing that needed to drink blood to stay alive. It seemed like an absurdity—the physical beauty of him and the ugly truth of what he was. The knowledge was staggering.
Still, like her, he wielded a terrible power and was capable of committing many horrible things, but that didn't make him a terrible person. The words Brigid had written flooded her mind ... liaisons between witches and vampires, the Undead, were forbidden. How much had he risked to show her what he was? Humbled by his trust, Victoria moved closer and touched his cool face with her palm.