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“Fine,” I said. I blinked quickly, hoping she wouldn’t see my tears. “I can’t stop you. Just let Lucas go.”
“Bianca,” Lucas pleaded. I couldn’t turn to look at him.
Instead I remained focused on Charity, whose dark eyes widened with disappointment. It was like she wanted me to be happy about becoming a vampire. How could she expect me to feel any other way? How could she not know that I hated her?
“You want to force me to do this? That’ll make you feel strong, convince you that you took something away from Balthazar? Then do it.”
“She isn’t Balthazar’s girl,” Lucas said loudly. “She’s mine.”
That was the worst possible thing he could’ve said.
“Yours?” Charity clasped her hands together. A jelly cord with only a few beads left dangled from one wrist, the cheap, ruined reflection of the coral bracelet I wore. “Bianca is yours. That makes you hers.”
I got even closer to her, so she would stop looking at him. “Leave Lucas out of this.”
“How can I leave him out of it, when you belong to each other? What I do to you affects him. And—what I do to him affects you.”
She flicked her hand. Shepherd and another vampire grabbed Lucas and began dragging him backward. Lucas struggled, elbowing Shepherd so hard in the ribs that he doubled over, and for a moment Lucas pulled free. I saw his hand go to his waist, where he had for so many years worn a stake—a useless reflex, a remnant of the life he’d abandoned.
Shepherd recovered himself, and a third vampire joined in. Lucas fought against them with all his strength, but he was outnumbered.
“What are you doing?” I cried, struggling against the hands that held me fast. “Leave him alone!”
“You will determine his fate,” Charity promised. “Only you.”
“Balthazar always said vampires could never change, that it was the tragedy of what—of what we are.” It was bitter to again include myself with Charity, to admit that soon there would be no difference between us. “That’s the only reason he still cared about you, Charity. He thought you hadn’t changed, but you have. You’ve become a monster.”
Charity shook her head. “My poor brother never did understand. I haven’t changed. This is what I always was, even in life.” Her gaze was distant, focused on the past, on people no longer here. “But now I have the courage to act.”
“This one is strong,” Shepherd called as he continued struggling with Lucas. “Too strong.”
Charity’s face lit up in a giddy smile. “He has vampire strength? You’ve drunk his blood, Bianca. Was he sweet? He looks sweet. I wouldn’t mind a taste.”
“Don’t you bite him,” I said, and my voice shook now.
“Don’t.”
“If I bit him, and drank all his blood, and he died,” she singsonged, “Lucas would become a vampire. Would you drink willingly then? To join your lover?”
I slapped her. Her head jerked sharply to the side, and most of the vampires froze in their tracks, like they couldn’t believe anyone had dared strike Charity. She pressed her own delicate hand to her cheek, which was flushed red from my blow. Otherwise, she acted as though it had never happened. “You will ask me to join my tribe,” she said. “You will beg me.”
“Why would you think I would ever—” The words choked in my mouth as I realized why she thought that, what she was planning to do.
She whispered, “You’ll beg me for it, and you’ll open your throat to me. If you don’t, I’ll kill your boy.”
Lucas tried harder to free himself, but they had him fast, and another of the vampires was duct taping his wrists and then his ankles together. Then Shepherd threw Lucas over his shoulders, like he wasn’t even a person, just a bag or a thing.
“Climb the ladder,” Charity called, and Shepherd began ascending to the diving board, Lucas still in his grasp. She walked to the edge of the empty pool, and I followed, unable to understand what was going on. But when I looked in the pool, my stomach turned over. The pale-blue surface was horribly stained with blood, splash after splash of it, dark brown with age. Glimpsing the terror on my face, Charity whispered, “Sometimes, the ones that bore us, we give them a chance to get away. If they can survive the fall, we tell them, we’ll let them go. It’s so much fun to watch them on the diving board. They cry and they scream and they beg, but eventually they all decide to jump. They all fool themselves that they have a chance. Then they fall. So messy. All that wasted blood.”
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
“Sometimes it takes them hours to die. Days. One poor fool kept whining down there for nearly a week. How long do you think Lucas would suffer?” Charity’s dark eyes glinted with pleasure at the memory of others’ pain. “Beg.”
“It wouldn’t work anyway. I can’t become a vampire unless I take a life.”
“If I drink your blood—if I drain you far enough—you’ll become so desperate for blood that you’ll attack the first human you see. I promise to keep you away from your darling boy, though it wouldn’t make any difference to you, not in that state.”
I thought about how crazed I’d been for blood at times, especially during my captivity with Black Cross. Even then there had been times I’d been in danger of losing control with Lucas. I didn’t doubt that Charity was telling the truth.
