Blood and Kisses - By Karin Shah Page 0,71

she knew what he’d found there.

“I entered the tent and found my beloved wife naked in Akos’ arms. There was no struggle. My supposedly virginal wife rode him, her pleasure all too clear.” He’d told most of the story in a flat, emotionless monotone, but he stumbled over these words, his voice taking on a rough intensity that rang with remembered pain. “I drew my sword. Akos threw her off and fled through a slit in the back of the tent.

“I lunged after him. She drew a dagger from beneath the pallet and leaped at me. Seconds later, I pierced her with my sword. She fell to the ground writhing, blood flowing from her dying form. I left her there in a pool of blood.”

Thalia flinched at the image the unvarnished statement evoked, but Gideon continued on without pause.

“I found a horse and took off after Akos, my mind a haze of fury.

“I caught up with him at his clan’s campsite. He ordered his men to attack, and I hacked my way through them as if they were cordwood.

“I looked down as the last of his men fell from my sword to find that I had slaughtered twenty men, including a young boy of perhaps thirteen.

“And in my rage, I had killed Akos without even knowing it, or so I believed.”

Gideon could never forget that moment. He’d stood, his clothes drenched with blood, in the midst of the gory carnage he had created, and felt nothing.

“I heard a sound behind me, and spun just in time to see the pike that impaled me, and the person who wielded it. Inanna.

“Everything went dark. When I awakened, she was leaning over me, her mouth red with my blood. She told me she’d made me a vampire like herself.” He turned toward Thalia, but couldn’t look her in the eye, and turned back to the dressing table.

He bent over the table, his hands gripping the smooth maple surface for support before going on. “I’d heard tales of such creatures, but had dismissed them as the superstitious babbling of ignorants. She claimed that she’d loved me when we’d married, but soon after I left, Akos had approached her. He’d wooed her with poems and love songs.” Gideon snorted. “While I’d chased his army, he’d been at my own home. She said I’d driven her into Akos’ arms, that I loved Kurut more than I loved her.

“I will always remember the final words she said to me that night. ‘You will be condemned to walk eternally in the night, to feast on the life blood of others, to watch everyone you love crumble to dust, and everything you have built be swallowed by the sands.’”

He closed his eyes, reliving the moment. “I should have faced the dawn then, but I was too much of a coward. I still am.” He shook his head.

“I couldn’t go home. I roamed the Middle East, working as a mercenary. If my employers wondered why they never saw me during the day, they never voiced it.

“In the beginning, I thought Inanna a fool, her revenge an empty joke. I reveled in my new powers. I was faster, stronger, my senses a thousand times keener. I barely noticed the passing of the years.

“Then, one day I woke up and realized fifty years had passed. I returned to Kurut to find Inanna’s curse had come true. My family was long dead, and the desert had reclaimed Elilu. It was only then that I understood all I had lost, and not what I had become, but what I had always been. A monster.”

Gideon swiveled to confront Thalia. Now she knew everything. He examined the delicate lines of her face. The feeble light that leaked from the gap in the curtains silvered the curves of her cheeks, her forehead, the tip of her nose. Gods, she was beautiful. And unlike his late wife, as lovely inside as out. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. A spasm of sorrow seized his heart. He longed to go to her, to comfort her, but he couldn’t.

His rejection may hurt her, but it was for the best. She deserved someone whose hands were clean, someone who had no inner demon. Despite his vows of love to Inanna, he had killed her. The fact that she hadn’t died didn’t change the reality that he’d run her through. He was already responsible for the death of one woman he’d loved. He wouldn’t be responsible for another.

And even if he managed