fast? He’s not… he’s not him, right? No, he can’t be. He might have been hiding a different side to him, but he’s not that strong.
“Marcus, just leave. You go back to the car and I’ll let Finn go,” Miller says. “I don’t want to hurt him, but if you force me to…”
His voice echoes around the empty building, but I can see him at the far end.
“You can let him go now or I will tear your head from your body,” I growl as I slow to a walk.
Finn stops fighting and looks up at Miller. “I know… I know you didn’t want Perez killed. You and he were really good friends and you guys were close. You had no choice because you know what that man is like,” Finn says, voice steady and calm.
I open my mouth to remind Miller of what I can do, especially when he’s touching my Finn, but Finn looks over at me and shakes his head.
“Miller… he’s a sick man who is controlling. He has so much power. I don’t blame you for having to do what he asked. You had no choice! He’s too powerful. He would have killed you for not listening,” Finn says.
Miller’s face distorts into one filled with pain and devastation. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t… Adler killed him… but I know I could have tried to stop him. I… I just knew I didn’t have a choice. He wanted to leave a message to you guys. He wanted to drive you guys back. Just… fuck,” he whispers before pushing Finn toward me.
“Miller,” Finn says as he turns around but doesn’t rush to me. “You have to know who he is.”
“Of course I fucking know who he is!” Miller shouts, almost hysterical as he begins to pace. “I made him!”
“What?” I ask in disbelief. “You’re his maker?”
He stops to look at me. “Not… not like you’re thinking. This was hundreds of years ago, back when I was a human. My wife was ill… she was sickly most of her life and I was afraid she was going to die. I poured myself into research, into creating something that would allow eternal life. I was playing with things that a human should never play with and I created a monster. He was… he was a friend of mine, wounded horribly, so I tried fixing him. But when I tried saving him, I created a monster that had no feeling and no empathy that feasted on the blood of his victims. It was a mistake. I should never have tried it. I knew I was playing God and I am no god. And while he instantly healed, I noticed he was no longer the man I once knew. Then when I came home to find that he’d killed my wife… he killed the woman I’d done all of this in an attempt to save… I knew he had to die. He trusted me or maybe he no longer feared anything. So while he slept, I slit his throat and watched him bleed. But when his skin healed faster than he could bleed out, I was horrified.
“He threw me across the room and fled. I knew he was my monster, that it was my fault I’d created a man like him who was now terrorizing innocent people. But I also knew there was nothing I could do. I fear I began to lose my mind. Instead of letting this fixation dissipate, I let it consume me. And while I knew I couldn’t kill that monster myself, I was sure I could create more monsters to kill him. I thought that maybe the difference was his body going through the transformation that it went through when he was already an adult. So I began to experiment on pregnant women while working as a traveling doctor. It allowed me to move around so he couldn’t find me while I tried my experiment on people without others realizing what I was doing. As I got more confident in my work, I began to see changes—not in them but in what they carried inside them. I failed again and again but that monster haunted my every dream, and I knew I had to stop him before he killed me. That’s when I created what we call now true vampires. They were not as strong, not as ruthless, but they also weren’t emotionless. They had fears and could love. They were nothing