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“I don’t want to die,” I mutter so quietly that I’m not sure they hear me. That’s not fair at all. A kept woman? I’m supposed to be kept and coddled until the day I die naturally from being old?
That sounds terrible, but I can already tell from the looks on their faces that they aren’t interested in negotiating this. They aren’t interested in talking with me about this anymore. Nope. Right now, they’re ready to move on.
Fine.
I speak a little more clearly.
“But if you’re going to kill the Eagleton citizens, then I want to watch.”
They exchange looks. What else were they going to do? Lock me in the room? No thanks. This isn’t going to be a Beauty-and-the-Beast sort of situation where I’m just locked away, trapped and unable to escape. I may not remember much about my childhood before moving to Eagleton, but Edna was an avid reader, and she loved to tell me tales.
She told me stories of princesses locked in towers and women who fought monsters, and one thing was always certain: timid girls never won.
It was always the brave girls, the ones who, as Benjamin put it, were a little bit stupid, that survived.
I don’t mind being slightly dumb if it means I get what I want.
“I can handle it.”
“It’s not what you expect,” Eli says.
“I’m a little bored with your comments about my expectations,” I tell him. “Especially when you haven’t bothered to ask me what my expectations are. Besides, if you’re going to keep me around for the next fifty years or so, I’d like to know what I’m getting into.”
Finally, Benjamin reaches out and grabs my wrist.
“For dragon’s sake,” he says. “Let’s fucking go.”
Chapter 6
BY THE TIME WE GET outside, the Eagleton residents have been unloaded from the carts they were stored in, but they’re all still tied up. I see plenty of faces I recognize and a few I don’t really know or remember. One thing is for certain, though: they all look strangely calm. I stand with my three men, and I look at what’s happening.
“Why aren’t they fighting?” I ask Benjamin.
“They’re under a sort of glamour,” he tells me.
“That’s the mind-control thing?”
“Basically. Blood tastes better, sweeter, when it isn’t scared.”
“Is that true?”
I would have thought the opposite was the truth. I would have guessed that vampire food tastes best when it’s afraid.
Benjamin looks at me calmly, rationally, and finally tells me.
“Blood tastes sour when the victim is afraid.”
“These aren’t victims,” I whisper. “They know what they did. They were wrong. Horrible. Evil. They aren’t the victims here.”
He looks at me sharply.
“I won’t turn you,” he says. “If you’re trying to suck up to me to get me to turn you, you should know that I won’t.”
“I’m not sucking up. They don’t deserve to live. I didn’t...”
How can I express this to him? I had no idea that there were hunters in my town. I literally did not know. It’s a horrible feeling to know that people I loved and considered to me my friends are nothing more than liars.
“I didn’t know what they were doing,” I finally say.
