Page 70 of Once Bitten, Twice Mine

Hours passed before the window slowly moved up and a delicate hand wrapped around the windowsill.

“I wondered how you got in and out of the house without anyone seeing you. How did you get up the house?”

Valeria pulled herself through the window as easily as walking through a doorway. A dark cloak was wrapped around her, and some hair had escaped from her updo, but her face was blank as Caroline searched her for blood splatter.

“I can climb walls.”

“Is that something all vampires can do?”

Valeria unclipped her cloak and hung it up in the armoire. “I’m not allowed to disclose vampire secrets to humans.”

“Oh.” She should have been gathering information to give to Dr. Murnau, but she only asked because she was curious about Valeria’s life, because it was hers. “Are there a lot of rules you have to follow?”

“That’s another question,” Valeria snapped before sighing. “There are rules all vampires must follow, but covens also have their own rules.”

“Is no information for humans a coven rule or a vampire rule?”

“Both. It’s the most important rule for being a vampire. Well, or the second most important. They may be tied.”

“And what is that other rule?”

“Always dispose of your kill.”

It was an uncomfortable reminder of the gulf between them. Valeria was a killer, and Caroline could never sanction that. Even though it didn’t feel like their differences were insurmountable when they were together.

“Is that where you were? Killing people?”

Valeria silently undressed with her back to Caroline. There was nothing sensual about her movements as she got ready for bed, and Caroline was struck by the domesticity of the moment.

“I am a vampire,” Valeria snarled, turning as she buttoned a flannel nightgown. “I haven’t been one for long, and I’m not very powerful, but I am a vampire. I will live for the rest of time, and I survive wholly off of blood, and humans are inconvenient cattle that breed too much and cause too many problems. The only problem with killing them too quickly is depleting your food supply, but I get here with you, and you’ve ruined everything.”

“What have I ruined?” Caroline asks, squeezing her hands in an attempt to calm her body since Valeria knows when her heart races.

“I am starving. It’s been days since I’ve had a real meal, and all I can smell is your blood, but I can’t have it. I went out tonight, and all I wanted to do was kill. Not just to eat, but because I wanted to feel a pulse stop beneath my hands. It’s all I wanted, but even after I found my prey, I couldn’t do it. Because I heard your voice in my head asking me if I needed to kill or if I could spare him.”

“And what did you do?”

“I spared him! I left him in his sad little house and found a wild boar to eat instead. Do you know how cumbersome it is to carry a dead boar through the woods? And then I was thinking about how you would probably tell me that someone could eat the meat and I can’t just bury it. I don’t have time to be butchering wild boars!”

“What did you do with the meat?”

“I left it for Cook,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I put it in the meat storage before I crawled back up here, and now you’re sitting on my bed looking at me like I’ve massacred an entire city.”

“Did you get a bricklayer to come fix my hearth without pay?”

“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms. “And I won’t apologize for it. Your hearth needs to be fixed, and I didn’t take even a single drop of his blood.”

Her jaw was set in a hard line as she scowled down at Caroline, who still sat on her bed. It took all of her power not to smile because it was rather cute to see Valeria flustered, and it pleased her that she hadn’t killed a person tonight. Or for several days.

“How did you do it? Because he is under the impression that he has been paid, and I know neither of us has the money.

Valeria’s eyes turned wary. “You won’t like it.”

“Please?”

Valeria stared at her for a long time, but Caroline showed her precisely how stubborn she was, and the other woman sighed before mumbling something in Italian, but she didn’t care because she was getting what she wanted.

“I compelled him.”