The Relic (Cradle of Darkness #2) - Addison Cain Page 0,52
Who eats, and eats, and kills. Who devours everything in his path all while searching for you.”
The only thing I had anchoring me to this world, the one thing that had pulled me from the crypt, I knew was too good to be true and too ugly to be anything but beautiful in my eyes. “I’m not his wife or his soul. I can barely keep up with his chaos. I wasn’t his sister or his queen in a past life. I was a waitress desperate to stay in the sun, who was afraid he would realize I needed him, that he did not need me, and that he will never really love me, considering what I am.”
Gesturing toward the path, he led me away from the head and past the scattering undead, saying, “Who are you to say what you are and what you are not?”
Excuse me? I was myself talking to a pretend demigod. Acknowledging that should have split me in half, but Darius had already done the rending. “I am me!”
That. That made Jesus smile. “A girl who dreamed of a window so she might sleep safely in the sun. A kind heart who wanted nothing more than to find a home.”
“Your father can read my thoughts, you’re doing the same. That does not mean you know me.” Why were all these men so insufferable? Why was he leading me through a throng of hissing vampires who scurried away as if they might be burned by the very sunlight we discussed?
“I can’t read your thoughts. What I know is because Vladislov has written to me of you. The detail in his letters… he is deeply in love. A phenomenon I never imagined I might witness, though he had told me stories of his lost wife.”
My heart had been broken so many times. I had trusted adults. I had fought to please employers. I had wandered and begged God to lead me to someone, anyone who might take away what made me wrong. And where had God led me? To an alley where Malcom had ripped my fangs from my skull. But he had not been able to remove my cravings.
Where had God been in that? Where had God been while Darius had done things I could not recall? Lip shaking in a way I hated, eyes prickling, I dared to ask, “And all my prayers?”
Where my arm was tucked into his, he patted me gently. “God heard them.”
No, he had not. And nor had this man. “But I prayed in your name. I prayed to your holy mother.”
“And that was foolish. Where in the scant, centuries-old catalogued recordings of my teachings did I ever say that prayers should be made to me or to my mother? Would that not be idolatry?”
I had been raised on scripture. The words had been beaten into my back. “The New Testament—”
“Is a blend of megalomaniacs seeking worship and false prophets using my teachings to gain notoriety. Have you witnessed the vagaries of Twitter? It’s the same phenomenon yet more pathetic. Weak souls driven to share their every vapid thought. Their sick fragility seeking validation. Cults flourish. So much filth is spread with the intent to do harm and gain a high in the process. No different than the men and women shouting as I bore my cross. You’ve seen it in your own life, felt the hurled stones hit your body. Everyone has their cross to bear. You have a tomb and a hole in your memories.”
“And a daughter who despised the sight of me. And a son you are trying to distract me from. Men think we don’t know what you’re doing. Women know. So stop wasting my time and tell me what Vlad had written of this boy in his letters.” How much angrier should I be?
We turned at a cherry tree, following a path made misty from the damp lingering in the air. No undead approached. Instead, they still scattered as if there were a clear circle about us they were unable to traverse.
“Why aren’t they hurting us?” A valid question, considering I could smell their intent on the breeze. Another valid question was why Vladislov had not come. Making me doubt him all the more. If he loved me, he would have come for me.
“Because I am not afraid of them,” Jesus said, as if that explained everything.
The small pebbles lining the path under my feet squished when I dug in my heels. “I didn’t mean to