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He doesn’t look amused. “Why did you call upon me, Lenore?”
“I told you. I want…I need to be able to control the beast side of Solon. Like you did.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeat. “You know why. You saw what happened to me. If it wasn’t for you, I would have died.”
“Then you need to stay away from him.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
He raises his chin. “And why would I know that? Is it because you love him? Because you think I care about that? Love? Love only gets in the way.”
I swallow hard. “You loved my mother. Alice.”
“I did,” he says carefully. “But it wasn’t enough. She was a vampire. She had her husband. Vampires and witches are never meant to mix.”
“Because you end up with something like me.”
He gives me a dry smile. “Yes. Like you. You were a happy accident, but not everyone would profit as you have.”
I snort. I don’t know what the hell I’ve profited from so far.
“You see,” he goes on, “love isn’t enough in our world. There’s just too much at stake, and most of us are creatures of the dark and the night. Love isn’t meant for us.”
I mull that over for a moment. “So you can’t help me? Or you won’t?”
“Only darkness can drive out darkness,” he says. “Absolon was born of the dark. You cannot change him with your light.”
“You’re severely twisting MLK’s words there,” I tell him.
“People have gotten things wrong for centuries,” Jeremias says, walking around the circle, the flames licking his skin but never doing any damage. “So much focus on God and religion and being good, and look where that’s gotten this world. Just like love, the foolish obsession with being good and pure and moral has gotten in the way for so many of us. There is only one side that helps fuel who we are, who we are meant to be. You won’t become anything special, or great, by chasing the light.”
I wish I could read his face, but when it’s always changing, it’s next to impossible.
“Come forward, my child,” he says, stopping in the middle of the circle and beckoning me with a bony finger. “Let the flames bless your skin.”
I hesitate. My parents told me I walked through flames unharmed when I was a child, one of the reasons they took me with them instead of leaving me to perish. Because I couldn’t perish. But I don’t really have memory of that, and despite being able to throw flames with my hands and destroy the Dark Order like I did, purposefully walking through fire goes against every human instinct that I have.
“Don’t you want control?” he asks. “Don’t you want to be able to harness your abilities, to access them whenever you want? The flames will ignite what lies beneath, what you’ve been too afraid to see. Come forward, for this is what you asked for.”
“I’ll be able to help Solon?” I ask.
He nods.
And that’s all I needed to hear.
I take in a deep breath and walk through the flames.
All I feel is their warmth, like I’m being licked by heat. It’s almost sensual. But there is no pain and my skin doesn’t burn.
But there is something happening deep inside.
A darkness building in that well.
There’s a sense of immense power, but the kind that comes with a price. I don’t know how I know that, but I sense it, like the power is buried at the darkest depth, hidden in a locked box, and to open it would mean I would lose something big. Myself, my dignity, my morality. Everything that makes me who I am and everything I strive to be.
“Don’t push it away,” Jeremias says, searching my face closely. “That’s exactly what the flames are trying to unlock. It’s all there for the taking, if only you invite it in.”
The way he says it makes me think we’re not talking about abstract darkness or power here, but rather a being.
The Dark One.
Yes, a raspy metallic voice whispers from inside me, a voice that makes my blood run ice cold, my limbs suddenly heavy with dread. Yes.
The voice didn’t come from Jeremias.
I shake it away. I push all thoughts of it out of my head, make a promise to never even think about that name again. I know now what’s in that box, and that I won’t ever be opening it.
Jeremias sighs with disappointment but doesn’t comment.
“Tell me,” I say to him, curious, “since you seem to be so obsessed with the dark, were you ever good? You were born a witch, right?”
He raises his brows. “Personal questions now? Well then. Yes, I was born a witch.”
“Where?”
“Northern England.”
“When?”
“About fifty years after Skarde turned into a vampire. Fourteen ten.”
I stare at him in awe, my jaw dropping. What the fuck? 1410? “How are you still alive? Are you immortal?”
