Angelina

Chapter 17

     “Tell me about yourself. How you were created?” Angie asked as I drove her home. She barely touched her desserts and had them boxed to go.

     “That was over two centuries ago, besides Lex tells it better. When this is all over you can ask him.”

     “Was it painful?”

     “Yes”

     “Do you have any regrets?”

     “Sometimes”

     “Why don’t you feed on humans anymore?”

     “Because I want to keep whatever little humanity I have left inside of me.”

     “You feel desire, you feel anger, and what else do you feel?”

     “Almost everything you feel, mostly magnified and with it the ability to control these emotions.”

     “Even love?”

     “Especially love”

     “You loved Sophia?”

     “I use to think so.”

     “And now?”

     “And now I know I did not. I wanted her. She was very beautiful but only on the surface.”

     “How did she die?”

     That question threw me off. I almost did not answer her but I did not want to keep things from her. She would not like the answer but I had to tell her.

     “Sophia isn’t dead.”

     Her eyes flew to my profile. “What do you mean she isn’t dead?”

     “She has become like us.”

     “Did you turn her?”

     “No”

     She waited for me to continue but I wanted this conversation to end.

     “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

     “I would rather not, Angelina.”

     “Rogue, I need to know.”

     This was a painful memory to revive. I closed my eyes briefly and it seemed like only yesterday.

     “I use to have a brother name, Reith. We were inseparable. Sometimes we shared Sophia. It was different then, acceptable. She was mine and if I chose to share her I could, Sophia did not mind much. Over time, she grew to like it.

     “Reith wanted a woman like her; he compared them all to Sophia. No one ever succeeded her or even came close. I was careless in my youth, in love. I thought nothing of his obsession. He wanted to claim her and she refused. Then he offered the one thing I would never give to her, immortality.

     “She saw it as a way to spend eternity with me and he saw it as a way to spend eternity with her. She did not accept his offer at first; Sophia had hoped that I would change my mind and become her creator. She accused me of not loving her as she loved me, of being unfaithful. I wasn’t.

     “We fought, she tempted me with blood crave. I stayed away from her for some time, Reith begged me to go back because she threatened to hurt herself, ‘she is not the same without you’ he said. I went back and she promised to be good. Of course, that only lasted a short while and it was back to tempestuous Sophia.