He could hardly believe it himself. “Calm you.”
“Calm me? What, before you kill me?” She pushed to her feet, and Nikolai stood as well. The air was charged with her anger. “Because that’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? Killing me.”
He didn’t know what to say. That was how it started, certainly, but things had changed.
“Let me tell you about my day, and you tell me if I’m okay,” she said.
He moved to sit on the toilet lid and give her free reign to rant. Perhaps, like Aleksandra, letting it out would make her feel better.
She held up a finger. “First, my asshole boss berates me for not being productive enough, which is total bullshit, but tells me he’ll look the other way if I go out for drinks with him.” She switched the finger she held up to her middle one, making a crude gesture. “Right. Drinks my ass. My ass is what he wants. Not a chance.” She straightened her forefinger again, leaving two fingers up. “Second. I have a hideous blood sugar attack and stop to buy a candy bar, but get killed by some freak instead. You’d think that would be the happy ever after ending, but no. I get revived by…” She gestured to him. “Whatever you are, taken to the hospital, interrogated by cops, assaulted by a crazy lady, transported to my house to be murdered, then moved here to be murdered instead, all the while being insulted and degraded.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh yeah. I’m just great. Any other questions?”
There was so much power inside this tiny human. He wondered what she would be like if allowed to come into her immortal powers. He stifled a smile. She would be a force to be reckoned with, for certain. But his orders were clear. He must destroy her, which hardly seemed just since she had no involvement with his father’s murder whatsoever. Fydor’s intel could not have been that faulty. Why had he lied to him?
While she caught her breath, Nikolai watched the blue and silver threads of their souls dance along the cord. What a cruel trick of fate that they were bonded. If only there were a way to release himself from her and release her from her execution. He must find a way.
She dropped to her knees at his feet. “Please. Please let me go. I’m not what you think I am. I’m just a human trying to make a living and get by.”
He wished he could set her free, but severing the cord would mean death for them both. “No. And you are not human. Not entirely. You see under the Veil. I think you will become something else with the right trigger.”
She slumped back onto her heels. “Like what?”
He pulled a dagger out of his boot, and she scooted as far away as the cord would allow. He pricked his thumb with the tip, and her eyes grew large, and then her pupils dilated to the point where they filled her irises completely. She never took her eyes off of the drop of blood balanced on the pad of his thumb as he rose and approached her. He wiped it on her lower lip and stepped back. She resisted at first, but eventually, darted her tongue across it. He pulled her to her feet to look at her herself in the mirror. “Like that.”
Elena gasped at her reflection. Her eyes were red. Only for a moment, but still red—just like the guy who’d shot her in the convenience store. Shit. The bathroom walls closed in a bit. Surely this wasn’t happening.
Wait. Nikolai said her dad had been a vampire. His eyes were never red. Maybe it was the freakish death angel blood that did it. Maybe it would make any human’s eyes red.
“It’s a trick,” she said. “It’s your wacked-out blood that did that, not my physical composition.”
“No.” He almost looked sad. “No trick. Biology and genetics. Your father was a vampire. So are you.”
“Dad’s eyes were brown.”
“He wore lenses in your world. They were blood red at court.”
“At court?”
“Your dad was a powerful man. He was the ambassador and ruler of the vampire nation until its collapse. He lived dual lives because he had a human to protect.”
“My mom.”
“Yes. A foolish move on his part. And in the end, he couldn’t protect her anyway. Like you, she was frail and weak. Her humanity was his undoing.”
Nothing about her mother had been her father’s undoing. They adored each other. “He loved her. Some things are worth dying for.”
“Many things are worth dying for. Love is not among them. Love is a fabrication of humans to glamorize and rationalize desire.”
“You’re wrong.”