Kieran didn’t point out the irony in the idea that she had to kill others for her own safety. “I told you my brothers and I used to study vampires. We had a club. We called it Liga Vanatorilor de Vampiri. League of the Vampire Hunters. I realize how cheesy that sounds now, but it was cool when we were younger.”
Elisabeth snorted.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. I believe you were foolish enough to think you could learn anything from what movies or books tell you about us.” Elisabeth finally turned around. Her eyes seemed ablaze with emotion, irises flared. “I didn’t even know what I was getting into when I agreed to this, and most of my family were blood drinkers. I was only twenty, I’d just met my husband, and I—”
Kieran worried she was headed into a sentimental place where she’d be hard to reach. “What year was that?”
“Eighteen ninety-three.”
His blood chilled. There was no hesitation in her answer. No guile that he detected. Only truth. “That was a long time ago. So you must remember the Civil War?”
She gave a short laugh. “I was born in seventy-three. The war ended in sixty-five. My father remembers it.”
Elisabeth spoke of the years from the nineteenth century, the same way they spoke of modern times. He didn’t know why that struck him as so odd. “You were married?”
“Not for long.”
“He did... is he...”
“He did not take the gift from the Master. What he did take was his life, when he was confronted with what we are. A not so uncommon affliction in those who dare love one of us.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t need your pity. It was a very long time ago. I don’t even recognize this as the same world where that happened.”
Kelley would know if she was telling the truth. His memory was like a steel cage, and he’d never filed his own knowledge away, like the Kieran and Dillon had. He’d never stopped believing.
“Why this place? This isn’t where you take your victims, is it?”
Elisabeth’s eyes widened, surprised at the question. “I’ve never taken anyone here.”
“But you’ve been here before.”
“Many times.”
“Why?”
“With my grandfather,” she said, without elaboration.
Kieran tugged at his bindings. They weren’t very elegantly tied. He could probably free himself, but then what? If she didn’t get him, the unforgiving miles and miles of swamp greeting him outside would. He didn’t know where he was, but there was only one boat, and they were an hour from the road they’d driven in on.
“Your grandfather?” he repeated, hoping to keep her talking.
“We came here to hunt the Rougarou.”
Kieran couldn’t stop himself before he burst out laughing. “The Rougarou. Really.”
But Elisabeth wasn’t laughing. “I envy you. I wish I had never seen him. I could think, like you, that he’s only a childhood boogeyman, designed to scare children into submission. But I have seen him. And he is real.”
Kieran’s laughter faded. She had to be having him on, though he didn’t detect that in her at all, only a calmness threatened by deep and long-lasting fears.
“Okay, well, isn’t this Rougarou season? When he’s supposed to come out of the swamp and eat babies or something?”
“It is.”
“And you still chose this place?”
“There was nowhere else,” Elisabeth said, sighing. “If I took you to any of our family properties, you’d not be around to ask me these facile questions.”
This was interesting. She’d come here to kill him, but yet was afraid to take him to any of her fellow vampires for fear they would kill him.
Maybe she was more conflicted than he thought.
“My mother is Chelsea Sullivan. My father is Mason Landry. Chelsea, she’s kind of a failed Sullivan, for not becoming a lawyer like her brothers, and, you know, for marrying a pub owner and all that. When she had us, the triplets, she swore she’d never get pregnant again because, with her luck, she’d end up with seven or eight, and so she didn’t have more kids. It’s just the three of us, and though we’re triplets and all, we couldn’t be more different. Kelley is kinda stuck in his own thoughts, and Dillon, well, if he even has thoughts—”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the Sullivans, especially if you’ve been in New Orleans all these years. Hell, maybe we’ve even represented your family in something. All the big families come to us. The Denaults, the Bensons, the Deschanels. But the Deschanels are technically family. We didn’t know that until a year or so