15
WITHOUT THINKING, I
MOVED TOWARD THE IV, KNOWING I had to get it out of his arm. Before
I could touch it, Kristoff’s men pulled me back. I fought, but one
was all it took to hold me in place.
Kristoff looked grim.
“Declan agreed to this.”
“He agreed to let you
poison him?” My throat hurt as panic raced through me.
“Yes. The most humane
way to deal with a dhampyr is to euthanize them. Declan is a danger
to everyone around him now, and there’s no going back. In return
for your safety, he agreed not to fight me on this. I could have
let my men kill him last night. It would have been faster, but much
more painful and there would have been no guarantees when it came
to you.”
I felt as if I was
going to be physically ill. My entire body went cold and still and
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Declan, is that
true?”
He turned his head
toward me. “There’s no other way, Jill.”
“There’s always
another way.”
His jaw tightened.
“No other way I’m willing to accept.”
He knew. What
Matthias told me about how to save a dhampyr was something Declan
already knew from his research.
“Declan, no. Please.”
I shook my head so hard it hurt my neck. “Don’t do
this.”
“It’s already
done.”
“You can’t leave me
again. Not like this.”
His expression grew
pained. “Kristoff said he’ll release you. He won’t hurt
you.”
“And you believed
him? You know who he is. You took him at his word?”
His eye closed before
he could say anything else. I heard someone let out a ragged sob
and realized it was me.
“He wanted to say
good-bye to you, Jillian,” Kristoff said softly. “It was the least
I could do for him.”
I shook my head.
“He’s not going to die.”
“The poison will only
take a couple more minutes to work.”
“No. No, it’s not
going to happen. Declan’s not going to
die. I can’t believe he’d agree to this, for what? Just thinking he
was saving me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“If you’d seen him
last night—there was no reasoning there. He was a raging beast who
wanted to destroy. His mind isn’t working as it should. This is the
only way to deal with a dhampyr like that.”
The vampire behind me
held me firm in his viselike grip. A glance at him showed that the
signs of hunger were readily visible on his strained face, but he
didn’t even attempt to bite me.
I felt like I wanted
to give up, but part of me knew I had to keep fighting. I was in
deep trouble, in the house of a vampire king who was putting his
dhampyr son down like a rabid dog. And the rabid dog had agreed to
it.
He didn’t think he
deserved to live. He didn’t want to hurt me.
This
hurt.
There was one thing I
believed in, apart from everything else. I’d just never realized
how strong my belief was. I wasn’t religious. I wasn’t spiritual. I
basically lived one day at a time, grateful for any day I didn’t
wallow in the depression I’d felt that made me take a razor blade
to my wrist five years ago.
I believed in one
thing, and that was life. If I was breathing then there was still
hope for everything to turn out okay. Death was forever and there
was no coming back from it. Life meant there was still a
chance.
I believed in life.
That was my religion.
Kristoff might want
me to believe that he was a nice guy—one who didn’t deserve the bad
rep Matthias had given him. It would be easier if I did believe
that. But he didn’t fool me. He was self-involved, power-hungry,
and willing to kill to get what he wanted, even if it meant he had
to slit the throat of a harmless sixty-year-old woman in her
kitchen. A smile and a kind word afterward didn’t mean shit to
me.
But I needed him
right now. More than anyone else.
“You want me to go
kill this enemy of yours,” I said. “This leader of the Amarantos
Society who wants to take you down.”
“That’s
right.”
“I’ll do it. And I’ll
succeed at it.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I saw it out of the corner of my eye even though I hadn’t taken my
attention away from Declan for a moment. “You really think you
can?”
“Yes, I do. But you
have to do something for me.”
“I’ll release your
nieces if you’re successful.”
“You’ll definitely do
that.” I swallowed. “But I want something else.”
He nodded at his
thug. “Let her go.”
Only a second later,
the vampire let go of me. He watched me warily as if expecting me
to launch myself at Declan’s IV again, but I stayed right where I
was.
“What do you want?”
Kristoff asked.
I licked my dry lips
and finally looked directly at him. “I want you to sire
Declan.”
Surprise slid behind
his gray gaze. “That’s impossible.”
My heart sank. “Why
is it impossible?”
“Dhampyrs are too
unpredictable and prone to turn more monstrous and violent if
they’re sired. It’s against vampire law to take that chance, both
for the safety of the dhampyr and for everyone else.”
“Who made that
law?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I did.”
“Then you can break
it.”
“My son hates
vampires, I’ve seen how much through my brother’s mind. He kills
them whenever possible. You’d have him made into something that he
despises? You’d take the chance this act will turn him into more of
a monster than he was to begin with?”
Declan had freaked
out at my decision to have Noah turned into a vampire to save his
life. If he found out I made the same decision for
him—
Kristoff approached
me and pressed his hand against my cheek. For a moment he looked so
much like Matthias I almost forgot who he really was.
“Jillian?”
Declan would choose
death over becoming a vampire without a second thought—in fact, it
looked like he already had. My overlapping thoughts and dark pain
inside of me at the rush of information became too much. I tried to
breathe, tried to figure this out.
He’d hate me for
doing this to him. If he’d been furious with what I’d decided with
Noah, it would pale in comparison to how he’d feel about it
happening to himself, especially if this backfired and he became
even more violent.
He’d be a vampire who
wanted to rip out my throat. And for the rest of his life or mine,
one taste of my blood would be able to kill him in
seconds.
“There’s not much
time left before he’s gone,” Kristoff said very seriously. “What do
you want me to do?”
I looked up at him
and a hot tear slid down my cheek. “Sire him.”