palm. “Ab-sorb…all knowledge from small box…in your bag.”
She nodded. “My address, campus address, probably my entire playlist.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly. “It never occurred to me.” And then she swallowed, cleared her throat. “If you’ve come to kill me, I have a dying wish, Great King. I wish that you would listen to my words before I die. For you have been grievously misinformed.”
“I seek not you death, Loo-see. But…I wish to hear these words.”
She nodded. “The book you found, the one you read on that small box you took from my bag…it was a book filled with as many lies as truths.”
“It say ‘The Truth.’”
“That was just what it was called. Anyone can call a book ‘The Truth.’ It’s a name. I could name my dog Inanna, but that wouldn’t make my dog a goddess, would it?” He was frowning at her, as if perplexed, and she knew she was speaking far too fast, so she tried to slow down. “The man who wrote those words hated your people. He spent his life trying to wipe the vampires from existence. But they are not the monsters he says they are.”
Utanapishtim lowered his head but kept his eyes on her. “I…create them. I…defy the Anunaki, and I have suffer…they wrath for five tousund years.”
“I know. I know, Utanapishtim, but—”
“Why the gods would punish me so…if vahmpeers was good? Was right?”
No point in telling him there were no such things as the Anunaki. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she believed that anymore herself. “I cannot know the minds of the gods, Utanapishtim. But I do know your people. I used to believe as you do, but now I know better. They’re good. And they’re yours. Your blood. Your offspring. Your children, Utanapishtim.”
“I…cannot disobey the gods. Not…again.” He shuddered as he spoke. “I will not be sended into the death that is alive no more. I want only…release.”
Then he lifted his eyes to hers. “I then join my children in afterlife. In Land of Dead. Is where they belong…. Is where I belong.”
His pain was palpable in his words. And it was terrifying to him, she knew, the thought of being returned to that state of living death. No wonder he was willing to wipe out his own rather than risk that happening.
She wished she could make him understand. “You don’t have to destroy them. I believe we can find away to free you from this curse, if you will just let me—”
“Enough!”
He barked the word, and she flinched, raising an arm to cover her face as if that would stop his deadly gaze.
He paused, and his eyes looked truly sad. “I come not for you, Loo-see. You…still hu-mun. I come for James.”
“He’s not here.”
“Will here be soon.”
“What makes you think—”
“Where else James go? Know you not, woman?
You are…his heart.”
She blinked against a sudden rush of hot moisture and averted her eyes. “You’re wrong.”
“No, he’s not.” James had silently entered from behind Utanapishtim and stood now by the back door, an ax in his hand. “He’s wrong about a lot of things, Lucy, but he’s dead on target about that.”
“James…”
She whispered his name on a choking sob, wanting to run to him but afraid to move. Did he mean it?
And did it matter, at a time like this?
“You killed innocents out there, Utanapishtim,”
James said softly. “The carnage outside is… It’s brutal.”
“It…ness-ary.” The king bowed his head slightly, one hand rising as if he was about to press it to his forehead, but he stopped himself in midmotion. “They try stop me.”
“You could have backed off, regrouped, waited for me in ambush somewhere,” James said. “Those actions would have been preferable to the annihilation of the innocent.”
“I…there was no time.”
“There’s all the time in the world. We’re immortal. You know that. But don’t you see, Utanapishtim?
You’re not thinking clearly.”
Utanapishtim’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing.
“You…question decision of you king?”
“You’re not my king, Utanapishtim. Never were.”
“Don’t antagonize him,” Lucy whispered. She was working her way around the room, trying to get to where James stood. She was edging along the wall, wanting nothing more than to be in his arms.
“Think you I not have pondered this, James of the Vahmpeers? I have thought on this. My decision has made.”
“You’ve thought on this with a sick mind, Utanapishtim! All those centuries, captive in that stone statue, it twisted your brain.—”
“Nothing twist mind of king. I am like Anunaki.”
“I know. I thought I was like a god, too, for a while. I let