Take Courage, My Heart

Chapter Thirty-Five

"Tell me something," I prompted about an hour of silence later, when the sun was up, and a new day had officially started. We had a few hours still to go, the meeting point was slightly too close for comfort, but we couldn't be sure if he knew where the cabin we had been staying at was. Perhaps he had been keeping tabs on my name and had seen the cabin getting written to me. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Regardless, we weren't worried about it. If he wanted to go after my family now he had to go through Leander.

"What do you want to hear?"

"Something happy..."

"I don't think I have ever mentioned how Ezra and I met. That's a fun little story," he hummed thoughtfully, the ghost of a smile on his face.

And no, as far as I could remember he hadn't. I knew how Ezra had become a vampire. I had even met his creator. But the story of how he and Leander had joined forces was not one I knew.

"Even back then, there were very few things I wouldn't do to destroy nests. Working with others wasn't foreign to me, but I have to say I didn't prefer it. I had found the ugly way that not knowing who you worked with could be deadly. Working with others wasn't something I sought out. I have always been on the move, and have always had a greater goal.

One day, passing through Texas, of all places, I came across a tiny nest. It was made of only one elder, and he was about as old as I was back then. Technology has certainly made nest hunting easier, having wider access to missing people's reports and trails that dwellers leave behind. Back then, I was just wandering around places with high vampire populations looking for anything and anyone who posed a danger to society."

"I can't even imagine how wild all the technological advances have been for you. Was it hard to adjust?" I intercepted, focusing on his story, and keeping him from finishing it too fast.

He thought about my question for a moment, trying to find the right words for it, and then at last hummed with a hesitant shake of his head.

"Not as hard as you'd imagine. If you are open to change, it doesn't feel as hostile as it might appear."

I bit my tongue and squeezed my hands together where they rested on my lap. This change was hostile. This change was one neither of us was open to, but both of us were forced to accept. I had to do this for my brothers.

"So, you found a nest!" I exclaimed a few moments later, snapping out of it.

"So, I found a nest. Tiny nest. And you know, I am doing my thing, killing the elder and as many dwellers as I could manage. In all, I think it was about five vampires. And when I am done, I lean in, in order to help the human they had been feeding off of, and I just– I get shot," he said, amusement clear in his tone at the recollection. A weird thing to get amused by, but alas.

"The human shot you?" I asked, angling my body towards him while picking at my lower lip with my teeth.

"No. Evidently, Ezra had been watching and after I killed the vampires he thought I was going to kill the human as well. You know, sometimes with nests we have to. Sometimes they are too far gone or –now that vampires are public– sometimes they want to become one by offering themselves up for nests. Not everyone who wants to become a vampire is bad, but most of them get so tangled up in nests they end up becoming dwellers themselves as that is all they know of vampirism."

I could imagine wanting to become a vampire. It had its perks and immortality was certainly appealing, but at the same time, selling yourself to a bunch of crazed bloodsuckers to achieve was rather sad and lonely to me. Asking Vincent to bite me, that day I had woken up in his nest, had been a decision that I made under duress. It had been either him or one of the other twenty-seven vampires that had caught my scent. Getting dragged into the nest had also not been a decision I had made either. But having lived in it; having been a plaything for Vincent as well as the rest of the elders, even for the mere two months that I had, was something I still had nightmares about. Walking willingly and freely into that mansion. Asking any of them to drink my blood in exchange for becoming a vampire– that was a thought that made me sick to my stomach.