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Gabriel muttered, “For someone who spent so much time on her deathbed, she was terrified of death. The idea of becoming old and not having the choice of being confined and ill was horrible to her. She thought by becoming a vampire, she would finally be free from illness, stronger, able to get out from under the control of her grandmother, whom she began resenting long before. I refused, told her she was mistaken. I even used my burgeoning powers to wipe all thoughts or memories she had pertaining to my being a vampire. But her obsession ran deeper than my reach. Within a few weeks, she was back again and more determined. She was everywhere. I switched hotels endlessly to dodge her. She excelled at knowing my schedule before I did. Everywhere I went, there was a note from her, cajoling, wheedling, promising me her undying devotion, endless love, and companionship.”
“That sounds vaguely familiar,” I said dryly.
He sighed. “Finally, she found the hotel where I was staying. I came home one morning to find her on my bed.”
“Slut.”
“Fully clothed with both wrists slashed,” he added.
“Ew.”
“She was on the brink of death. She had just enough breath to whisper, ‘Help me, please.’ I knew it was wrong—”
“But, being unable to pass up a damsel in distress—which is a bit of a pattern with you, by the way—you intervened,” I said, cupping his chin in my hands.
“Yes. I felt it was my fault she had done this. I hadn’t been forceful enough in dissuading her. I could have done more. There was no blood left to take from her, but I gave her my own. Afterward, I felt used, angry, helpless. I’d panicked and turned someone who was going to be an undead terror. I was ashamed of what I’d done. I knew what sort of evil she would be capable of, and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to destroy her, to keep her from rising and walking the earth.
“I slept—on the floor of the hotel room—and when I rose that night, I took her to the home of a friend, a fellow vampire. A woman, Violette, who was three hundred forty years old at the time and less likely to be manipulated by Jeanine. I hoped that when she arose, Violette would prove to be a mentor, a stabilizing influence. By that time, I’d booked passage to China.”
“Dramatic,” I noted.
“Necessary,” Gabriel countered. “Jeanine is a prime example of a vampire who changed not at all after she was turned. She’s just as neurotic and self-absorbed now as she was then. She’s the only hypochondriac vampire I’ve ever met. She travels with a humidifier, for God’s sake. She’s so convinced that every place she goes will be her ‘final resting place’ that she carries all of her possessions with her in a moving van.”
I snickered, but he continued, “And when vampirism didn’t change the way she looked at herself, the way she felt, she blamed me. She believes she’s a lesser vampire. She said that I didn’t turn her properly. She believes she’s still weak and sickly, so, obviously, she didn’t get enough of my blood. She wants me to try to turn her again .”
“Is that even possible?” I asked.
“Once your transformation is complete, that’s the way you’ll remain for the rest of your existence. The point is that I did turn Jeanine completely. I gave her more than enough of my blood. She refuses to believe me. I’ve tried to talk some sense into her, to teach her restraint, but when she doesn’t get what she wants, her tantrums turn out to be massacres. She became convinced that the only ‘cure’ for her condition was the blood of those who had lived in high altitudes, so she drained every nun in a convent in Tibet. She’s butchered hospitals’ worth of doctors because they can’t find any way to help her.”
“She’s spent almost one hundred years trying to track me down, doing what she can to isolate me, ruin my friendships, my relationships with women. She’ll become dormant for a few years, while she ‘recuperates’ at a mineral spring or a monastery or some other supposedly curative location. And then she’ll get restless and start up again. When it became clear that she was beyond my help, my focus became keeping her away from the people, the places I cared about. That’s the reason I’ve spent so much time bouncing between the Hollow and, well, the rest of the world for the last century. She says I owe her, that I made her, and now I’m responsible for what she’s become. And she’s right. She’s my creation. The blood of every person she’s ever killed is on my hands.”
Gabriel pressed his face against my shoulder, cringing as if he expected me to start screaming and hitting him. I waited a beat before saying, “So, really, I’m not the craziest girl you’ve ever dated. That’s a relief.”
“Your grasp of the weight of this situation is amazing,” he retorted.
I shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“So … you’re not angry?” he asked.
“Of course, I’m angry!” I exclaimed. “I’m freaking furious with you right now. If I was up to full strength, I would kick your ass from here to Sunday. I can’t believe that this is what you kept from me all these months. I thought you cheated on me! You let me suffer and mope and go months without seeing you because of some issue with a bratty childe? You and your stupid overactive conscience! From now on, you are going to gauge the severity of your actions by answering the question, ‘Would Dick think this was a good idea?’ and if the answer is no, that’s when you know you’ve done something really, really wrong. Either way, just tell me about it so we avoid these dramatics. If you had told me about this months ago, I would have helped you track her down and lock her in some vampire nut ward.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to know what I’d let happen, that I wasn’t even trying to stop her anymore, just outrun her. I shouldn’t have lied to you. And it kills me that I hurt you in a misguided attempt to protect you, especially when it seems that isn’t doing any good. All I can say is that I panicked. I was ashamed. I was trying so hard to cover my tracks that I lost sight of what was important—you.”
“Why were you ashamed?” I asked.
He lifted my chin, meeting my eyes. “I was a coward. If this had happened to you, you would have stopped her. You would have gone after her with both barrels and talked her into submission. And when you left me in that hotel room, I was torn between wanting to drop to my knees, tell you everything, and beg your forgiveness and wanting you to leave, to get away so you would be far from Jeanine and her madness. I thought I’d feel better once you were home, but I was decimated. I sat in that hotel room for a week, unsure of what to do, where to go, how to feel, all the while hoping you would come back but knowing that you shouldn’t.”
“Technically, decimated means ‘the reduction of a military force by one-tenth,’” I pointed out.
“Mmm, I love it when you do that.” He sighed, pressing his face into my hair. “I haven’t had anyone to correct me or fill my head with useless trivia for months.”
“You poor soul,” I muttered, smiling despite myself. “Besides, I wouldn’t say you’re a coward. You pushed a tree on top of a guy for me.” I laced my arms around his waist and pulled him against me. “So, you were wrong.”
“I was absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, one-hundred-percent wrong,” he agreed, accenting each word with a soft kiss on my throat.
“Which would mean …”
“That you were absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, one-hundred-percent right,” he said, again with the kissing.
