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“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he says, and I can’t help but feel a little sick to my stomach. “Don’t forget that you don’t exist to him. He knows that there was a lover, that he erased that lover because he killed her, and because all her previous versions had died, but it’s like being told a story to him. He doesn’t remember it, so it doesn’t seem real. Like you were something that happened to somebody else. Someone else’s tragedy.”
Someone else’s tragedy. What a way to be thought of, to be reduced to.
I’m someone else’s tragedy.
He goes on, voice firmer now. “I have no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to kill you, Rose. Valtu never let go of that monster. When he lost Lucy, he lost his humanity, became a dark and depraved killing machine, but after time, he found himself again, after the grief had loosened its hold. This time though…he never fully went back. Never returned to base-level Valtu. He’s remained in this…other state.”
“But he’s not grieving. He can’t be if he doesn’t remember me.”
“He’s not grieving as far as he knows it,” he says. “That doesn’t mean he’s not holding onto pain deep inside his heart, deep inside his psyche. The subconscious confounds most scientists, let alone me. When you add magic to the equation, something that has never been studied except attempts by rogue vampire outlier scientists and doctors like myself, then things get even murkier. I believe trauma is embedded in a way that our working mind can’t easily access. In Valtu’s case, it’s locked in. How can you exorcise grief if you don’t acknowledge it?”
I swallow uneasily at the thought of Valtu locked in deep grief and feel a sharp pinch in my chest. “So he’s tormented.”
“He’s a lot of things,” Abe says quietly. “But most of all, he is still Valtu. One version of him, anyway. I guess you’d know all about different versions of yourself.”
The drive from Austria and over the German border to Mittenwald is fairly quick, even with early snow piled on the sides of the highway. We go along switchbacks and up through picturesque villages, passing under the shadows of the craggy mountains, mist hugging their flanks. Though the snow is bright even under the clouds, there is something ominous about it all. It’s not just that I’m about to see Valtu for the first time in two decades, for the first time as Rose, and for the first time as a vampire. It’s not even that there’s an element of real fear now where there wasn’t before. It’s that I can feel something else here in the Bavarian Alps, something shadowy, dark and sinister. Like something is watching and waiting for me. My intuition seems to ratchet up a notch, my pulse thrumming in my neck. It’s connected to Valtu and yet it’s not him at all.
It’s like all of this is about to be a very grave mistake, one I’ll come to regret for the rest of my life.
I am doing the right thing, right?
But I don’t dare voice my doubt to the doctor lest he turn the car around and drive me back to Austria.
Soon we’re parking in a lot behind a row of buildings that look like colorful gingerbread houses and Abe shuts off the car. He shoots me a grave look, twisting in his seat to face me.
“Listen,” he says softly. “I’m not going to bother warning you again. I can see you’re stubborn and that’s something that will never change, apparently. But I can tell you what to expect. I can give you advice. Naturally I’m not going to stick around here—”
“You’re not?!” I jolt.
“I’ll stay here tonight with you and Valtu, but then I have to head back to Oxford.”
“For what? Work? Can’t you postpone it?”
He gives me an apologetic look. “I do have important work back at the lab, yes. But more than that, it would be out of character for me to lurk around Mittenwald. If you want Valtu to believe you’re a…well, who you say you are, it’s normal for me to leave. I don’t always partake in Valtu’s parties, if you know what I mean. They can be rather distasteful.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Kink-shamer,” I mutter under my breath.
“And so,” he goes on, “I must go.”
“And if something happens to me?”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to handle yourself now,” he says. “You’re a vampire this time around. We’re practically indestructible. In fact, part of my current research is trying to figure out if I can harness that gene. Make it work to our advantage.”
“Like what? Someone chops off our head and we grow a new one?”
“Something like that,” he says. “Vampires have a lot of enemies, including other vampires. If some of us were more immortal than others, truly invincible…”
I make a face. “None of this is making me feel better.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m trying to get you to reconsider.” His gaze darts to outside the car, at the bundled-up tourists going past. “You still have a chance to change your mind. There’s still time.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I tell him evenly, but god, does my gut twist into knots.
He sighs, running a hand down his face. Then he reaches into the inner pocket of his coat and pulls out a business card, pure black with no writing on it.
“Look at this,” he says, flipping the card so that it’s right in front of my face, but there’s still nothing to see. I’m about to protest when he adds, “Hold out your hand, palm down.”
I do as he asks and he notices my hand shaking slightly, giving me a quick concerned glance before he drops the black card onto the back of my hand. I barely feel it land and then it starts to dissolve in front of my eyes, like it’s sinking into my pores. I gasp as there’s a tingling sensation and then the card is gone, as if it never existed.
