“Police said it was a mugging, but everyone knew it was a hate crime. Someone had beaten and killed him because they’d found out he was gay.” Jesse sounded far too matter-of-fact, and Ian wondered how much it cost him to keep all those emotions inside, because no way did he believe Jesse felt nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” Ian soothed. He pulled their joined hand to his mouth and placed a soft kiss on Jesse’s knuckles.
“It was a long time ago,” Jesse whispered. “Over sixty years.”
“Doesn’t mean it can’t still hurt.” Ian wanted to let him know it was okay to be upset. There was no expiry date on grief. “You must’ve been devastated.”
“I was.” His voice caught. “I found out about it by reading the newspaper. Couldn’t grieve like I wanted to because to most of the outside world we were just friends—best friends—but nothing more than that.” Ian gave his fingers another squeeze. “Then Peter found me—lost and alone and wanting to die.”
Ian’s lip curled up as he got a glimpse at the bigger picture.
Fucking Peter.
“He caught me in the same dark alley where they’d found Callum’s body. Offered me a new life. One where I’d be strong and fast, and no one would ever be able to hurt me. I was used to hiding what I was, so that part of it didn’t bother me. I just wanted out of my life, and his solution seemed like the perfect escape.” He ran a hand over his eyes, shielding his expression from Ian, and Ian suddenly wondered if vampires could cry, because he’d bet everything that Jesse would if he could.
“Did you know what he was offering? That you’d have to die first?” Ian hated to imagine how low Jesse must have felt to choose that as an option.
“I think part of me knew—we had our fair share of suspicious deaths and rumours to go with them—but a much bigger part of me just didn’t care. I had no family to fall back on. Callum had been my whole world, and he was gone. I wanted to be gone too.”
“So Peter drained you, then turned you into a vampire.”
“Yes.”
Ian started putting all the pieces together. “Then you fell in love with him?”
Jesse wrinkled his nose. “Not exactly. I wasn’t in a place where I could love again, but we were close. I leaned on him heavily that first year, and he looked after me.”
And I bet he revelled in every fucking minute of it.
Ian tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke. “So essentially, Peter found you when you were hurt and vulnerable, offered you a way out, then proceeded to fuck you and keep you reliant on him and no one else.” Ian’s words sounded harsh to his own ears, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d taken advantage of a heartbroken Jesse and used his grief as a way to get close to him.
“Yes.” Jesse’s laugh was bitter. “Though I couldn’t see it then. I felt indebted to him, like I belonged to him, and him to me. I didn’t realise at the time that it was because he’d changed me, because it was his blood I’d drank. He wasn’t like he is now. Not at first, anyway.”
“No? What was he like?” Ian remained unconvinced that Peter had an altruistic bone in his body.
“The Peter I knew back then was kind, generous, funny. He helped put me back together again.”
“So what went wrong?” Because something had.
Jesse turned to meet his gaze, his grief replaced by a kind of resigned anger. “He became the Peter he is now. I suspect he was always that way, I just didn’t want to see it, and he was obviously on his best behaviour. As I came to accept my new life, I gained confidence, came to rely on Peter less, and he hated that loss of control. I wanted to hunt on my own—tired of trying to persuade him not to feed on anyone who took his fancy—and he assumed that meant I was looking for another lover. He was wrong, of course. Our relationship was becoming strained, and I’d entertained thoughts of how best to get out of it with our friendship intact, but finding someone new was the last thing on my mind.”
Ian waited, dying to know what happened next, curiosity getting the better of him. “And?” he nudged when Jesse seemed to have stalled.
“I was out hunting, looking for someone who might deserve what I had to offer, and I came across three men cornering someone in a deserted side street. They were yelling obscenities at him, telling him what they were going to do to him, and it reminded me so much of what Callum must’ve gone through that before I knew what I was doing, the three men were dead. The person they’d been harassing was a young guy, maybe eighteen, nineteen. Striking features—high cheekbones, full mouth. I lingered long enough to make sure he was all right, then urged him to flee home while I fed on the others. I didn’t know Peter had followed me, wasn’t as aware of my surroundings as I should’ve been, and those few seconds with the boy were enough to spark Peter’s jealousy.”
“What happened?” Ian asked softly, feeling a little guilty now for making Jesse relive it all.
“Peter was waiting for me when I got back to the coven. He had the guy there too. Said he’d seen me with him, knew I wanted him but knew that I didn’t like to kill the seemingly innocent. So he said he’d do it for me.”
“He killed him?”
Jesse nodded. “Snapped his neck right in front of me, then offered him to me to feed on.”
“Motherfucker.”
“Yes, he was. That night shattered all my illusions about him, burnt through all the excuses I’d been making for his behaviour. He was a jealous wanker with too much power, and that young man had paid the price for me burying my head in the sand.”
“What did you do? Did you report him?”
