Page 84 of We Were Eternal Once

“After a few years without finding a single one, I knew they did not exist. That my parents lied, wanted an excuse to send me away since I was not their ideal daughter. It was just as I had that realization that I saw you. I saw your eyes and…something happened in my chest. It was a buzzing, like some part of my intuition was warning me. Something deep inside me knew what you were, and that’s when I realized my parents were not liars.

“So yes, at first I thought I could overpower you. I just needed the right opportunity, when you were unawares and I could drive a stake into your…” She trails off, looking away. “I thought I could kill you.”

I grind my teeth, my fingers clenched at my side into fists. But I do not interrupt her, because I need to know everything she knows. I must know if she knows about you, if she told her family what she found in Paris. I need to know what danger we are in.

“But as I spent time with you…I…” She swallows, looks up at the ceiling. Her face is pained, but it is another act. Just like her act of our friendship. Just like every other lie she’s told me.

“I realized my parents were wrong, that book is wrong. You are not evil, at least not in the way they claim. I watched you feed and let humans go, still alive. You do not kill them, do you? They are still alive. And I watched them for weeks after you fed, they are none the wiser. Then I began to question what else they had wrong.

“And as I got to know you, I…considered you a friend.” She laughs bitterly and shakes her head. “I enjoyed our time together. In my village my family are pariahs, outcasts. They have trouble getting work outside of hunting because of it. My only friends as a child were my siblings, and even then we were not particularly close. I thought them delusional, they didn’t like my indifference.

“I thought I could tell you one day. I tried to, in my own way. I tried to talk about my family, to show that I was not like them. That I hadn’t spoken to them in quite some time, that I hadn’t told them of you. And I thought, maybe…” She shakes her head again.

“You hadn’t told them of me?” I ask incredulously. I turn to a page near the end, to the cramped writing in the margin that mirrored the writing of the last name on the inside of the cover. “Red eyes that glow. Persuasion? Makes people do things they don’t want to,” I read off.

“I took those notes the first day I met you!” she protests. “I haven’t written those words anywhere else!”

“I’m supposed to believe you? That you are not lying to me now, as you have for months?”

“And you were not lying to me?” Zora protests.

“You expected me to tell you I was a vampyr?” I ask.

“You expected me to tell you I was a kresnik?” she retorts.

I cross my arms over my chest.

“I never lied,” she says, softer now. Defeated. “Everything I told you was true. That my family is part of a dying trade, that I was sent here because I am an outcast, that I no longer believe they know the whole truth. I want to tell them they are wrong, or at least misled. Do you see? I am the first of my kind to investigate, to sort through what I was told and question it! If I can tell what remains of my family about you—but not your name, or where you are, or that you exist…just the truth of you. If I can do that, maybe the hunting can stop.”

Her chest rises and falls rapidly, her wide eyes searching mine for understanding.

“I do kill humans,” I tell her, baring my teeth. “Often. As do the rest of us.”

“So there are more of you?”

I clamp my mouth shut so hard my teeth nearly crack.

“I don’t mean it that way! I just, I want to know. I was going to…saints.” She rubs the space between her eyes, digging into the bridge of her nose with such force I worry she’ll break it.

“You were going to hunt us all down? Bring our ashes home so your family will accept you?”

“No! No. Doing that to get back in my parents’ good graces…it would be worthless. I don’t want to go back to that village. I don’t want to spend my whole life chasing demons that don’t exist. I want to explore the world, I want to see it all. I want…” She trails off, her gaze flickering to me, wanting understanding.

I will not give it to her. I need her to say it.

Despite her lies, despite the anger that simmers in my chest…I want to believe her. Dangerous hope that I shouldn’t entertain. I should kill her now, this is the only confession I will get. This is the affirmation I needed, that she was not in contact with her family.

If it is a lie…well. I will dispose of her body in a way that makes it seem like a theft gone wrong. Her family will have no reason to think a vampyr killed her.

“I want to become like you. I want to be a vampyr. I want to travel the world, I want to see what is out there. I want to never die, to never be sick, to never know illness. I befriended you to hunt you, but after a short time you became my friend and I wanted more. I want more. I want you to turn me.”

The words settle in the air. They are words I’ve wanted to hear, but didn’t know how to approach. It is the secret hope I’d harbored, that Zora would be a companion. Not in the way you and I are, but something else. An equal.

“I understand what I’m asking,” she continues, her voice low. “I understand more than the average human does.”

“But you do not. You claim I don’t kill—I do.”

“I don’t have to.”