Wicked Love - Michelle Dare Page 0,318

student and kidnap the boyfriend, only to have to then decide whether to kill him after all or do what was necessary to keep him alive.

She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill anyone. For a century and a half, Elisabeth de Blanchefort had done everything in her power to find better ways. Bayou animals were not as satisfying, but they were enough, sometimes. When they weren’t, she’d read the police reports from the local paper and find the very worst of society. Even that didn’t sit well with her, because a life was a life. Over time, she learned to go longer without blood, and she was proud of this. Her resolve was stronger than any other de Blanchefort, even if the word they would’ve used to describe this was weakness. It had been over a hundred years since she’d been so artless with a kill as she had been that night.

Stepping over swamp detritus and cypress knees, her mind wandered back to the days Victor brought her here.

He’d started taking her on his Rougarou hunts before she’d been given the Master’s gift. She often wondered why he chose her, a third grandchild, and a girl to boot. Her oldest brother, Benjamin, had been the heir, and there was even a spare in Geoffrey, but Victor chose Elisabeth. Every August, they’d spend two weeks in the ramshackle cabin, mostly in silence, reflecting on every sound outside in case it was the one they’d come for.

It never was, except that one time. But as Elisabeth aged from a girl to a young woman, she began to suspect that it wasn’t why they came. Or at least, not why he came with her.

Elisabeth, he said, when she was about sixteen. You’ve said nothing to your mother and father about accepting your gift. All your siblings have either been to the Master’s Tree, or look forward to doing so once they have come into their full adult form. But not you.

I don’t know if I will, Papa.

What troubles you, mon cher? What have you not told your mother and father?

Elisabeth was afraid to answer. Not afraid of her grandfather. Never him. But of what he might think of her, if she chose honesty.

But Victor de Blanchefort was a reader of minds, and though all de Blancheforts were taught from a young age to block such intrusions, he always seemed to know when she was lying.

I’m afraid to kill, Papa. No, not afraid. That’s not right. I’m not afraid to kill. I’m afraid of... of what killing will do to me.

Is that all?

Elisabeth was so taken back by his answer all she could say was, is that not everything?

You fear a loss of your humanity. But you will no longer be human. Dhampir live by their own rules, and they are essential, but they are not the rules of man. We are not bound by the ethics and morals of a mortal race once we take the gift, and so our souls, for whatever they are, are free from such judgment.

But... all I know is my humanity. I was raised on it. It is part of me, if not all of me, and I cannot simply forget it once I am something else.

Mon cher, you will never forget it. You will wish you had never had it. You will revile it, spit upon it, be glad it’s gone! You will be washed anew, in the blood of the Master, for a life bigger than your mortal mind can ever imagine! I have loved not once but many times. I have lived almost two lifetimes and I will live two thousand more. He’d touched her cheek. His fingers were cold. Your first kill will give you pause. Your second will give you power.

But he was wrong. Her second made her feel worse, and her third caused her to go into hiding for a full year. When at last they found her, shaking and whispering in French, a language she’d not spoken since girlhood, they forced her to drink until she was well again. No one let her out of their sight for several more years, and only then when she convincingly lied and said she was well past her disgust of killing.

Not Victor. Victor had known she was lying, just as he’d known all those years before that she needed special convincing that none of the others did.

Perhaps we should once again hunt the Rougarou, mon cher. Return to our most