to wrap her mind around the notion that she had just had a conversation—a very one-sided and unpleasant conversation—with a creature she had always known for sure was make-believe.
“Yes.” He was leading her up the stairs now.
“And you’re one, too.”
“I’m one-quarter human, three-quarters vampire.”
“I don’t think that answers my question,” she said softly. “Are you one of them—or one of us?”
He met her eyes. “Both. And neither. I’m…different.”
“Because you can heal?”
“That’s only one of the ways in which I’m different. There are others.”
“Such as?” She was being pushy, demanding answers. That was unlike her. Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. And she was as angry with James as if…. as if she had a right to be.
He shot her a look, as if he, too, had noticed the change in her attitude. “Unlike our vampiric relatives, Brigit and I can tolerate a normal diet—we can eat steak and baked potatoes if we want to. We don’t need blood to survive, the way the undead do. We aren’t compelled to sleep by day as they are. They can’t resist it, you know. They fall asleep even if they try not to.” He looked her way as they moved slowly up the surprisingly sturdy staircase.
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“Sunlight doesn’t do us any harm, either, though it would incinerate a full-blooded vampire. This way.” He took her elbow lightly, turning at the top of the stairs to move along a wide hallway, with doors lining either side. There were light fixtures on the walls that appeared to be gas powered, or at least looked as if they had been once.
“So in what ways are you like them, then?” Lucy asked. “Aside from the fact that you believe yourself to be above the law and ordinary human ethics.”
He stopped walking and searched her face, but she refused to meet his eyes, staring instead at the center of his chest, as if willing his heart to explode under the force of her quiet anger.
“Don’t judge me, Lucy. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t judge you? You’ve brought me here against my will. You allowed that…that creature to threaten me, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you intend to keep me here until I do whatever it is you want me to do.” She lifted her eyes to his then, but only very briefly. She didn’t like looking into his eyes. They were the eyes of an angel. Out of place and so deceptive in the face of a man whose heart was that of a demon. “For all I know, you’ll murder me once you have no more use for me.” She faced forward, began walking again, as if she knew where they were going when in fact she had no clue.
He gripped her shoulders, stopping her abruptly and turning her to face him. “Can’t you fathom that we’re in a desperate situation here? Do you not get that desperate measures had to be taken? We didn’t have a choice—I didn’t have a choice—in this.”
“There’s always a choice, James.” She lowered her eyes. “God, I thought you were some kind of…guardian angel. My savior. I was such an idiot.” Tears burned her eyes.
He gaped for a moment, then tightened his grip on her shoulders, gently, but firmly, as if trying to squeeze his point into her awareness. “I need you to understand that you are in no danger here. No one is going to hurt you. And…and I am not a monster. I’m not even one of them.”
“It’s true, Professor.” Brigit’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs, drawing Lucy’s gaze her way. She was surprised to see anger—and perhaps hurt—in the female’s Arctic-blue eyes. “He hasn’t been one of us for a long, long time. He abandoned all of us years ago.”
“It wasn’t the life I wanted,” James said, and he suddenly sounded defensive.
Lucy felt like crawling into a crack in the woodwork. This discussion was personal and passionate, and none of her business.
“You can’t deny your own blood, J.W.” Brigit skewered him with those potent eyes of hers. “You can’t be other than what you are.” She jerked her head toward the hallway above her. “And it’s the door you just passed.”
He looked guilty, then nodded. “It’s been a while,” he admitted, but quietly. Lucy didn’t know if he was talking to her or to his sister, who had already turned away. She, Rhiannon and the other vampires she’d seen coming in through the front gate seemed