He wanted to dip into her thoughts, to know how she was processing it all, but he gave her the privacy she deserved. She needed to come to her own conclusions without his interference. The headlights formed a tunnel through the dark trees flanking the road and they drove in silence for a while.
“Is this blood condition, this Sangre Dulce, hereditary?” Her voice was barely audible above the road noise.
“We’re not sure, but we suspect it is.”
He sensed the tears well up in her eyes before they spilled down her cheeks. And when she turned away from him, a part of him withered. He desperately wanted to comfort her, to pull the car off the road and drag her in his arms, to tell her how much he cared about her and that he would never hurt her. But he and other vampires were the cause of all her grief. The only comfort he could offer her, until he did a memory wipe, was verbal and he didn’t know where to begin.
“Mackenzie, I’m so sorry.”
“My father,” she choked. “My uncle, my great-grandmother, my cousin—countless relatives tracing back centuries. All of them gone without a trace. And you…your people were responsible.”
Her shoulders rounded with sobs and with each gasp a piece of his heart chipped off. Mile markers on the side of the road ticked by as her face stayed pressed against her knees, long hair cascading everywhere. Nothing he could say or do could remove the agony he felt rolling off her body. Several times, he reached over to touch her, to offer some sort of comfort, but each time he caught himself and pulled his hand back. His touch would be the last thing she’d want.
Then, almost imperceptibly, she began rocking. He could feel her agony as if it were his own. Without really meaning to do so, he laid his hand on her back and began rubbing gentle circles with the palm of his hand, wishing he could absorb her sadness and take it on himself.
Abruptly she sat up and her tear-soaked gaze raked over his face. Was she examining him as a monster? When she reached over, he half-expected her to lash out at him, to take out a lifetime of suffering, but instead she rested her hand lightly on the forearm of his coat.
“It’s all so unbelievable, and yet…”
She slid her palm over the top of his hand, intertwined her fingers with his, and his heart jumped into his throat. Could she possibly be accepting the reality of all this? The tiny ray of hope he’d felt earlier sprang back to life again.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Thank you for saving me from them and for telling me the truth.”
She was thanking him?
“Can you tell me about your group? The Agency? Is this the secret government agency you talked about? The one you’d have to kill me over if you told me about it?” Her eyes were red and swollen, but she smiled at him through her tears. She had never looked more beautiful.
“I joined the ranks of the Agency as a Guardian over a century ago and now oversee our team here in Seattle. My father, as an Elder on our high Council, spearheaded the efforts to fight the Darkblood Alliance by allocating funds for the Agency’s creation. Back then it was called the Society of Guardians, but today we simply refer to it as the Agency. Guess it sounds more modern. We’ve got a presence in many parts of the world and we work to keep humans safe…when we can.”
She chewed on a nail for a moment. “And these Darkbloods want to live like your ancestors did?”
“Yes. There have always been fundamentalist vampires, those who shunned the new ways. In the middle of the last millennium, when my ancestors consumed only human blood, much of Europe’s population was stricken by the Great Plague, or Blood Fever, as we refer to it. Not only did it kill millions of people and eradicate our food source, but vampires who fed from a human with Blood Fever died, as well. Although some humans recover after contracting the Fever, vampires never do.
“After generations of seeing our population dwindle even more rapidly than the human population, our ancestors discovered we didn’t need to rely solely on human blood for sustenance, that we could simply absorb much of our energy needs through skin-to-skin contact rather than blood consumption. Just like the human