“And then what?”
“Then you get to serve your purpose.”
“Bait.” Her tone was flat.
I didn’t bother answering.
She dropped her arms as her frown deepened. “Are you going to put me on a hook and ask me to wriggle out on the line?”
A similar image sprung to mind, but in my version, she was wearing no clothes as she writhed about with a wanton expression.
“Oh good, glad you think that is a such stellar idea,” Vivien scoffed. I wasn’t sure what facial expression I made, but I cleared it away.
“What’s the big deal, anyway?” she asked. “Is it because vampires are soulless demons? Evil monsters of the night? Because I don’t feel particularly evil or murdery.” She uncrossed her arms before scrunching her shoulders up and then rolling them back. Was she restless?
I certainly had a few ideas how to work off that extra energy.
Don’t be absurd. You will not touch the sekhor…again.
“Your existence is not permitted,” I said.
“Yeah, but whhhhy,” she whined, stretching her arms along the counter and resting her chin on them. She resembled a petulant, bored, yet adorable child.
Ridiculous. Sekhors were not adorable. They threatened all of humanity and more.
“Immortality is dangerous. Humans seek longevity, but they do not understand the repercussions of living for centuries.”
She sat up, her brow furrowing. “What does that mean?”
I debated not telling her, but I calculated my odds of her leaving the subject alone and came up quite one-sided with the figures.
“Immortality, for a human, corrupts absolutely. Once they get power and near-invulnerability, they eventually turn into violent, power-hungry tyrants.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, though uncertainty lingered in her eye.
“Do you know when last vampires roamed the earth?” I asked, knowing she of course did not.
“My guess would be around the time that old dude wrote Dracula. What, did he run into one?” She gave an unladylike snort.
“Thousands of years ago.”
She stilled. Though she tried to hide her surprise, I saw it register a moment before she buried it.
I dropped my arms, focusing on the cabinet over her head. “I faced the oldest vampire in a great war. She was convinced sekhors were the superior race. She set out to enslave all humanity and turned vast numbers into her own kind. The battle to kill her and the hoard she had created was bloody and continued on for years before we finally destroyed them.”
My eyes landed back on Vivien. She didn’t interrupt, only bit the inside of her cheek. She might actually be listening.
I went on. “The vampire started out as a regular human woman, like yourself, but eventually she felt the call of power and pursued it to the extreme. So you see, the longer you live, the more invulnerable you feel. You’ll strive for more, no longer satisfied with a mundane existence. Like her, you’ll become bored and hedge behaviors you once claimed you would never cross. You’ll come to see mortal humans as less-than—food, pawns, disposable. Then over time you’ll play bigger and bigger until you end up like her. Sekhor hubris erases any trace of humanity, leaving only destruction in their wake. It was decided, that to preserve the natural, sacred cycle of life, they could not be allowed to exist.”
“Who decides?”
I’d said too much. I cursed my indiscretion. Instead of answering, I let the question hang between us in stony silence.
“That would never be me.” Her words were barely above a whisper. Her eyes had rounded and turned serious.
“Do you know what it means to be a vampire?” I asked, taking two steps forward. I let the sneer of disgust manifest on my lips. “In the way a grave robber would dig up a body, an unnatural, twisted force has raised your corpse. Now you are a walking plague, able to infect and damn countless souls to your same base existence.”
Her eyes glazed as she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, as if trying to deny some truth she’d known all along. Suddenly, she seemed alone, standing in front of a tidal wave that was about to crash into her and send her into oblivion.
