Seven Minutes to Midnight

32

The time we spent was very pleasant indeed. Too pleasant. It was hours later when I finally recognized what had happened, as the fog over my mind lifted. I was lying in bed, tucked in for bed like a child, and Lane was sitting on the edge of the mattress with his bare back facing me.

"You promised," I said. I felt drunk and hurt and powerless, and I started to cry. When I realized I was crying (perhaps you don't know how much I hate crying, usually I lock myself in a room somewhere alone if I start, and refuse to come out if my eyes appear even remotely red), I only cried harder, but became angry as well. "Why do you do this to me? You know I hate it!"

He was silent. In the dark I imagined he was a statue, carved and perched there, weighing on my mattress. I struggled to sit up.

"If you think this is going to make me want to be a vampire, you are sorely mistaken," I said, my tears drying up even as I wiped the last ones away.

"That was not my intent," he murmured.

I stared at his back, faintly illuminated by the moonlight. All I wanted to do was touch him, to feel his skin under my palm. To comfort him. Was this thing I felt, beneath my current anger, was this love? Or was it simply Lane trying to influence me?

"Sometimes... the power gets away from me," he continued finally. "Such as when I'm with you. I wouldn't want to pressure you into... becoming what I've become. What I am... I'm a monster, Amy. You don't know the things I've done."

"Then tell me. Explain it to me. I can understand."

"If there was any other way to save you from him, Amy, any other way... I only want you to be safe, to live—if you could call what I do living—but not if that will make you unhappy."

I took this in. In the silence a wolf or dog howled. The muscles in Lane's back tensed up, then relaxed. "Are they really a danger to you?" I asked.

"Physically they are just as strong as me, and faster. These wolves are inexperienced, though. And most of them will not fight unless they are directly attacked, which is a weakness." He lifted his head a bit when he said, "They also do not possess any preternatural abilities. In fighting vampires, that is another weakness."

I took in this information, listening to the barking and whining outside the windows. I wondered how much they could hear, if their hearing was as powerful as that of real wolves.

"Do you think—" I started, then stopped.

"I am trying not to read your mind, but it's much more difficult in this close proximity," Lane said. "And no, I don't think those wolves out there could protect you from Samael. He would rip them limb from limb."

I tried not to be annoyed that he plucked that question out of my mind. I tried not to be frustrated that he had just wiped out any chance for me to survive as a human.

"Really, being a vampire is not so terrible," Lane said, finally turning around. He put one hand down over my lap and rested on it, facing me. "When I came along, you were quite enamored of vampires, were you not?"

"Yes, but... before you, it was a fantasy. A safe fantasy."

"And now?"

"Now it's life or death." I sighed.

"Really, being a vampire isn't exactly what you think it is." He paused. "What I've led you to believe."

My eyebrows raised. "Really."

With those blue eyes burning at me so intensely, it was hard to think, but what I thought was that Lane had betrayed me. Yet again.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "I was only playing along with your game."