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"It's the crest of the Children of Dionysus," he answered. "It's a vampire cult—one that makes the things burning alive in that building look like fairy tale creatures. The cult is highly exclusive, and its rites require the blood sacrifice of an infant, among other things."
I stared at him in disbelief. "Her?" I said, my voice strained. "That can't be right. She's just a fledgling."
“Afledgling?” He gave a dry, acrid laugh. "I've been taking infusions of vampire blood since I was fifteen. You think I can't smell the difference between an older vampire and a fledgling? She's been one for a few years at the very least. Granted, it's pretty impressive for someone so young to end up in the cult, but I guess she was just ambitious."
I was still struggling to process what he was saying. "Then why was she with those other vampires?" I asked. "You’re telling me this secret cult went down that easily?"
"That wasn't the cult," he said pointedly. "She was probably a recruiter. They go around visiting different covens, looking for particularly brutal vampires to groom. I'm sure the evening's entertainment was handpicked by her."
Nausea whirled in my gut, not because I was squeamish anymore, but because of how easily I had been fooled.
Castor took a step closer, and I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but certainly not for him to put his hand behind my head, his eyes boring intently into mine even though they had softened somewhat.
"As long as this side of you is weak, the beast is always going to win," he said in a low, intimate tone. "You think it's the sickest people who become the worst monsters, but it rarely works that way. It's people who can’t accept the darkness that lives inside us all, so they run from it. They compartmentalize it and pack it away, and try to pretend like it doesn't exist, but that only gives it the chance to fester—to become more powerful, more twisted. The more you push something away, the stronger it becomes, and eventually, if you let it, the darkness will swallow the rest of you whole."
All I could do was stare at him, shocked by the sudden shift in his demeanor. "So, what, I have to be cold and unfeeling, or I'll go mad?"
"You have to become a hunter," he countered. "If you truly want to avenge your family and find the wolf who turned you, you have to be in control. If you truly want to atone, this is how."
His words weakened what was left of my resolve, and in its place, there was nothing. I just felt empty and weak. Pathetic. Nothing had really changed after all.
"How?" I finally asked. His touch was the only thing keeping me grounded, his presence my only tether to a world that made sense.
"Trust me," he answered, the words a silken song on his lips. "If I tell you to do something, there's a reason. Don't question it."
My throat was too tight to speak, so I nodded. That seemed to satisfy him. Since I couldn't trust my own moral compass, his will seemed like a natural substitute. He was something to cling to, and I was drowning in an ocean of guilt and uncertainty.
So I held onto him like my life depended on it, knowing all the while that my soul did.
ChapterSeventeen
CASTOR
Three Months Later
Three months had elapsed since I had taken out the vampire nest, and nearly every night since, Eddie had gone out on the hunt at my side. Since that initial conflict, he hadn't shown even the slightest hint of disobedience, and yet, it was still fresh within my mind.
He couldn't be trusted. That much was clear and had been from the beginning, but my reasons for mistrusting him had shifted somewhere along the way. I had gone from being convinced that his beastly nature would get us both killed to being convinced that his human nature would do the same.
This was, of course, the folly of thinking one could turn the average civilian into a hunter after a simple brush with tragedy, and I would know that better than anyone. I had been a boy of only fourteen when Father Marius took me in along with my sister—a naive child with no prior knowledge of the evils that were waiting as soon as chance happened to peel back the thin layer of civility separating the mundane world from ours.
I had never had any delusions about the disadvantage I was at as an outsider. I had fought tirelessly to overcome the weakness of my sheltered and normal upbringing, and for the most part, I had done that. I had become as fierce as any bloodline hunter. Even more so because my calling was born not of tradition or genetics, but rather a deep, abiding hatred of the beasts that had stolen my innocence.
Eddie was different. He, too, was at a disadvantage, despite being one of the very things he purported to want to hunt. Now that the vampire blood had had months to work its strange magic, he had managed to close the gaps in skill and strength between him and the other recruits in an admittedly impressive amount of time.
To any outside observer, he had the makings of a skilled hunter. Perhaps even one that was more seasoned than the other recruits of similar skill and experience. Underneath, however, he was still a fool, and I knew better than to think the fact that he now killed at my command and without question had changed that. He had simply learned to compartmentalize it, because that was clearly what his mind's natural response to trauma was.
That was not something that could simply be overcome with enough transfusions, and it was probably just as naive for me to think it could be overcome with enough experience, but what choice did I really have?"
That night, the hunt had been particularly brutal, and since Eddie wasn't chattering away as usual as we combed the streets for more prey, I assumed it had taken its toll on him. He acted like such a fool so much of the time that when he was like this, melancholic and sober, it was difficult to believe he was the same person.
Sometimes I wondered which version of him was real, or if the true him was some amalgamation of the two. My seemingly impossible task was to bring the two warring halves together, which was easier said than done.
Eddie looked up and stopped abruptly as if he had heard something I hadn't. He probably had. As reluctant as I was to admit it, and despite my initial trepidations, he was taking better to the blood than I did. It was a fact Father Marius wouldn't stop gloating about during my weekly reports to him. If I didn't manage to properly control Eddie, he was either going to become every bit the threat I feared, or the asset Father Marius hoped for.
One or the other.
"What is it?" I asked.
