surprise. She was not expecting the vampire to touch her. Luckily, it was over her coat, and she did not find herself careening through his memories. “I do hope you choose to forgive him. I hope you can come to love him for who he is. But I have come to put little value on such things as hope.” He paused. “Dracula will come for you soon. I should leave you be.”
“It has been nice to speak to you, Walter.”
“And you, Miss Parker.” He lifted his pocket watch, flicked it open, then shut it once more. “I also have business to attend. I have been placed in charge of hunting down those who were too foolish to flee. The ceasefire is over.”
She cringed and hung her head. It was not a surprise. It stung, regardless.
He turned to walk away. “Ah. You should know that Alfonzo Van Helsing is now our prisoner. His torment has already begun. You will come to witness his downfall. And if you still love our Master when he breathes his last…perhaps I will learn to hope again.”
And with that, he was gone.
What hope could be had in a world of such darkness?
The idea of paying such creatures any mercy at all should turn her stomach. They did not deserve such things. That was the crux of her dilemma at its heart. It was not whether she loved Vlad enough to forgive him.
It was the possibility that some souls no longer deserved mercy.
22
Eddie was covered in muck. It was a putrid combination of blood, dirt, and debris. Some of the blood was his—most of it wasn’t. That was a win, he supposed.
The sun had set. He wasn’t anywhere near Copley. A whole day passed since he and Al had split up. He had gotten hung up helping people, then stream after stream of bastard monsters kept coming out of nowhere to try to kill him.
He kept trying to tell the monsters he had somewhere to be and somebody to save, but, shockingly, they didn’t listen. He had killed seventy-two monsters, thirty-nine ghouls, eight lesser vampires, and three vampires who had really given him a run for his money. “And a partridge in a pear tree,” Eddie sang to himself sarcastically.
This was getting old. The joke had worn thin. He wanted to go home.
“Hello, handsome.”
Eddie stopped with a sigh and pulled out his guns. “What? What now?” He turned to look at the woman who had spoken. She had long, chestnut hair pulled back into curls in an intentionally sloppy bun at the back of her head. Christ, she was probably the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her lips were painted deep red.
But her eyes were an unnatural green.
He raised his guns and pointed them at her.
“Is that how you greet a lady?” She raised her hands in a show of harmlessness.
“You ain’t no lady, vampire.” Eddie narrowed his eyes. “And don’t give me any of that ‘boo-hoo, I’m an unarmed woman’ bullshit.”
The woman grinned wide and lowered her hands. “My name is Elizabeth. I am an elder vampire. I am nothing like the creatures you have fought so far. I have served at the left hand of Master Dracula for more than three hundred years. I will be your death, tasty boy. Come, embrace me, and I will make your exit from this world one of bliss and ecstasy.”
“Going to have to pass. Thanks for the offer.” Seemed he was going to get that pear tree for his list in the form of an elder vampire. Or he’d die. One way or another. He clicked back the hammers of his guns and opened fire.
Alfonzo flinched, jarred from his unconscious state by someone shaking him roughly. His head bounced off the stone floor, doing little to help clear the sensation that he was lost in a turbulent sea. “Wake up, scum.”
He didn’t know the voice. He didn’t know that it much mattered. The room was dark, lit only by a few paltry candles scattered about. The room smelled of rot and death. It might have been him. It was hard to say.
Everything was numb. He could have been missing limbs, and he would not have known. Like the morning after a drunken binge, he was left with only the pounding ache in his head and the regret over what he had done. Even if he could only vaguely remember it.
Images of Bella flashed before him. Of her naked body beneath him, parting for him, begging for him.