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“Cool air is for the weak,” he grumbled.
“Spoken like a true—” she lowered her voice “—vampire. But for us humans, well, I’m sure you remember feeling hot in the summer.” Vampires could feel heat, of course, but they were usually more worried about sunlight, which drained their energy. Left outside long enough, it could kill them.
“I was far too busy being a vampire slave to be concerned with such things.”
“Vampire slave?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
This was news. “But how? When?”
“My human parents sold me to my master when I was very young. He wanted me for luring unsuspecting merchants or women looking for work in his home. I would pretend to be his houseboy and greet them. Sometimes I would entertain them while I waited for my master to wake.”
“Entertain?”
“Sing, juggle, recite poems he had me learn. As I grew bigger, he hired a caregiver—whom he eventually drank—to teach me to read. Then he hired a personal chef to teach me to cook, whom he drank. Then he hired a piano teacher, tailor, and gardener. Drank them all. I was the most educated, well-dressed child in all the world. And then one day, he drank me.”
MF winced. What a sad, sad story. “What happened to him?”
“After he turned me? I killed him.”
MF blinked. “Jesus. That sounds rough.”
“He had it coming. Though, if I had been smarter, I would have waited. I’d been taught everything except for how to be a vampire. He held that back, believing it would prevent the exact scenario that ended him.”
“He thought if you needed him, you’d never turn against him,” MF concluded.
“Exactly.”
“Fucking asshole.”
“Indeed. I often wondered if he spared me as an act of cruelty.”
“How so?” MF asked.
“He brought those people into his home to care for me. The moment I cared back, he took them away, and each time he allowed me to live, my guilt grew. I think he enjoyed it.” Maxton smiled. “The day I killed him was the greatest joy I’d ever known, though that too came with a price; no one to guide me in the ways of the vampire.”
MF was beginning to put the puzzle pieces together. Maxton had spent his entire human life hating his vampire master. Then he was left to his own devices as a new vampire and never learned control, so he ended up hating himself just as much.
“If it’s any consolation,” she said, “not all makers are like that, from what I’ve heard. Some are kind. Some are compassionate and wise.”
“But most are bloodthirsty monsters. At the end of the day, vampires are what they are: evil.”
“I wasn’t evil. I mean, yeah, it was rough that first week after I was abandoned, but I think,” she whispered the next part, “when I killed recklessly, it was more about acting out. I’d just lost my entire family. But after a few weeks, I realized that being angry and violent wasn’t going to bring back my parents. It certainly wasn’t honoring their memory.”
“And you believe that becoming a murdering abomination again will honor them?”
“I don’t think you have to be an abomination if you’re a vampire. It’s a choice. Just like being a good or bad human. Or demon. Just look at Gorg and Bon. Have you ever seen more loving creatures? All they want to do is cuddle and be happy. They don’t let their species or origin of hellfire dictate who they are. And even if they are occasionally murderous, who’s to say that killing is entirely wrong? Even the Bible believes in justice. Eye for an eye?”
He narrowed his eyes; he wasn’t buying it.
“Okay. I see it like this: God made tigers, scorpions, rattlesnakes, crocodiles, and giant creepy spiders. Their jobs are to kill and maintain balance in nature. So why can’t I believe that your kind wasn’t made for the same reason? You have a part to play, and it’s not evil unless you make it that way.”
“This is all fine and good, except for one flaw in your argument, MF. If being a giant creepy spider makes you feel miserable because you are giant and creepy, and those qualities fly in the face of everything you hold sacred, then it becomes an act of suffering. Of pain. Of relentless damnation, and there isn’t adamnedthing you can do to change it.”
Whoa. I think I hit a nerve.“I thought you said you hated being a vampire because you were bored?”
“And I was truthful.”
