Page 85 of We Were Eternal Once

“But you will. When you are young, there is not much control.”

She has nothing to say to that.

“You will give up the sun. You will sleep in a grave. You will kill humans, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not.”

“I will be ageless. I will have time to see the world, the entire world.”

“You would trade your life for countless others’?” I ask, tilting my head.

“Do not act so sanctimonious, you have killed.”

“I chose this life with my eyes wide open,” I say, but I do not know if that is the truth. I do not remember fighting you. I remember only the sweet release of death, of singing, of an altar slick with our blood. I remember only joy, elation, a thirst finally sated.

“Then kill me,” Zora snaps. “This is what I want. I do not want to be a hunter, I do not want to wear chains to a cause I do not believe in. I want to be free of the curse of my bloodline. I want to be a vampyr. If I cannot, then it is best you kill me.”

I roll my eyes. “Kill you?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “I will find another vampyr. I know there are others in the city, I can feel it in my bones. It’s an ache, a knowing. I will hunt them down and have one of them make me.”

“They will kill you on sight,” I say.

“You told them about me?”

“I didn’t need to,” I say.

“Because you didn’t know,” she concludes after a pause. She tilts her head back to rest it against the wall, looking up to the limestone ceiling. “You needed me to confirm it. That’s what this is.”

I say nothing, because I hate the truth of it. I was so blind to the truth of Zora, picturing a vampyr companion at last. I chased what I thought she was, not her truth.

“Think on it,” she says. “Please. Keep all of that if you must,” she says, nodding to the book. “I’ve no need of it. I will never hunt a vampyr.”

“Yet you carry weapons to hunt one.”

“I did. I never used them.”

“The stake has blood on it.”

“I used it on a man who got too familiar with me in an alley,” she says.

And I believe her. I hate myself for it, but I believe her. I believe that she wants to be vampyr like me, I believe that she no longer wants to be a hunter. I know Zora, I know of the restlessness in her that mirrors mine. It is why I thought she’d make the perfect companion.

Will I be made the fool again?

“Tomorrow, in this room. I will be here if you decide to change me. If you are not here, I will assume you have left Paris, and I will never see you again.” She takes a step to the side, edging around me, heading for the exit to the tunnel.

“I do not think this is goodbye, Melinoë. I think I will see you again.”

I say nothing as she steps into the tunnel. She gives me one last look before turning to run down the tunnel.

I let her go.

The Change

Imade my decision.

Some time between leaving Zora last night and waking this evening, I’d come to my own conclusion. Zora had lied and withheld things from me. She was my sworn, natural enemy. She carried a book with secrets on how to slay my kind, though most of them were inaccurate. There was very little the hunters got right, perhaps that was why it took this many centuries before I stumbled upon one.

But she’d been a friend, a confidant, someone I thought I could share part of my eternity with. A companion, someone who understood. Not like you. Nothing like you.