Wait.
She froze with the burrito poised an inch from her mouth. “Is that a roundabout way of saying you killed everyone you fed from?”
Because she didn’t know how often he or other vampires had to feed, but it probably wasn’t an infrequent occurrence. And if some poor soul had died for Not-Chad’s every meal, deargods. She couldn’t even imagine how many people he’d killed over the years.
Maybe eliminating witnesses had been necessary for his species’ survival. But even that reasoning didn’t make the reality of repeated consequence-free murder any less horrifying.
Stomach churning, she set down her food. Goose bumps prickled along her arms and legs, and not simply because Not-Chad kept his house chillier than most humans preferred.
He glanced down at her forearms, and his brows drew together.
“No,” he said hastily. “Vampires can confuse the memories of those they feed from. There was no need to kill them.”
She slumped a little in relief. “So you scrambled the brains of your prey, then?”
“That’s an unnecessarily dramatic way to describe a finite period of limited confusion.”
“Hmmm.” She thought it over. “What if you messed up and there were other witnesses?”
He drew himself stiffly upright, evidently insulted once more. Were all Supernaturals such touchy little divas, or was that only a Not-Chad thing?
“I didn’tmess up,” he pronounced firmly.
Of course. “But surely other vampires did, at least on occasion. What would happen then?”
Lips pressed together, he met her gaze steadily.
“I see.” Ah yes. Back to consequence-free murder. “Better to guarantee a human’s death than risk your own life.”
“Of course.” A flick of his wrist dismissed her implied criticism. “I told you, human: Don’t die to save someone else. Not vampires, not humans, not anyone. Every single one of us would gladly sacrifice you to save ourselves.”
Her personal history proved otherwise, but she didn’t owe him that story. She didn’t owe it to anyone. She kept it safe in her heart, a tangled bundle of love and grief, wrapped tight and buried deep.
He evidently confused her disagreement for offense. “Don’t take it personally. Vampires wouldn’t bother saving our own kind either. We’re essentially feral cats.”
“If trapped in an apartment with someone, you’d eat their face off when they died?”
“What?” His nose wrinkled as he glared at her. “No.”
Touchy, touchy, touchy.
He paused. “Well, some vampires I’ve encountered might possibly…”
Yeah. Just as she thought.Dead Roommate: It’s What’s for Dinner.
“Anyway.” He sort of shook himself. “I meant that we don’t, as the saying goes, play well with others. In fact, violence tends to erupt when too many of us live in close proximity. Maybe because at one time, crowding would have meant not enough to eat for everyone without our presence becoming obvious.”
“Feral cats often form cooperative colonies.” The cheese in her burrito had solidified and turned waxy, but she chewed it thoughtfully as she considered the animal kingdom. “You’re more like betta fish plopped into the same aquarium.”
He scowled again. “Fish? You think we’re likefish?”
“Very pretty fish,” she said soothingly. “With frilly fins and lovely colors.”
His mouth worked, but he couldn’t seem to find the appropriate words in response. In the end, he simply continued glowering at her.
Since he didn’t appreciate her similes, she returned to an earlier topic. “Why don’t common humans like me know about the sunlight thing? Or the brain scrambling? Vampires and all the other Supernaturals and Enhanced humans have been out in the public eye for twenty years. Shouldn’t we understand you better by now?”
He muttered something that sounded likeNot all Supernaturals.
