Chapter Thirty-Four: Monster

Helaine

“I’ll handle it,” he whispered in my ear, as he slid out of me, stuffing his still-hard cock back into his jeans. “Let me do the talking.”

My stomach felt like it had tied itself in knots, remembering the last time those words came out of his mouth.

Of course, that wasn’t fair of me.

He was in a vulnerable place that night. He’d just been shown evidence that after all these years of nothingness and hunger, he was getting his soul back. I couldn’t begrudge his need for answers.

Not when we were currently sticking our necks out to hunt down my dad for any information he had about me.

Evan could never have imagined that summoning Lilith would have caused the trouble it did. As far as Evan knew before I took that photo of him, I was perfectly human.

And it wasn’t as though living in ignorance would have changed the terrible truth that I was literal the spawn of satan.

At least I found out while there still might be time to do something about it.

The way he strode toward the absolutely horror-stricken hotel employee with complete confidence told me I could trust that whatever Evan was planning, it was going to work this time.

We weren’t dealing with an upper-class demon, just a person, and Evan was so much more than the average man.

“Don’t—Don’t come near me,” the employee stammered, but he froze when Evan waved a hand in front of his face, looming over him like a vulture over carrion.

Evan’s eyes glowed red, and a shiver ran down my spine as I watched the employee’s eyes almost seem to lose their light. They drifted, as though the man simply wasn’t there.

He didn’t scare me often, but the way he acted now was so starkly different from the person I knew him to be.

With me, he was gentle. He was careful with his wording, and took great care to make sure that I understood the things he was saying to me.

In hindsight, he was probably so careful when he thought I was an ordinary human because he didn’t want to compel me like this, not even on accident.

He didn’t need to. I was putty in his experienced hands.

Now, I was seeing a whole different side of him—one that dominated minds and turned people to his will whether they liked it or not.

Well and truly, Evan DuRosier was a monster . . . but then, so was I.

But, as my eyes wandered to the still-bleeding corpses beginning to cool on the hotel floor, I couldn’t help but recognize the fact that Evan and I hadn’t asked for this.

We hadn’t hurt anyone up to this point.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Evan had hurt a lot of people—he admitted it himself, but that was in the past, and there was no reason for the slayers to come for us here.

And especially no reason to come for me. No one but us and my father knew what I was.

If anyone was to blame for the clawing darkness stirring awake within me, it was them. 

My eyes narrowed on the slayer whose throat was still indented by the rope I strangled him with, dug raw by his own desperate scratching, and I grimaced at his ugly bulged eyes and death-slackened jaw.

He made me do this. Killing that man woke up whatever this thing was inside of me. 

If we hadn’t been attacked, I’d still feel like me. Uncertain, to be sure, but I wouldn’t be straddling the precipice between humanity and a lack thereof.

But there was a more bitter question that lingered at the base of my skull like a stubborn headache.

Where did my father fit into all this? Or should I even call him that?

If I was the anti-christ and my true father was Lucifer in Hell, then how did I end up with Frank Fairgrieve of all people?

Why were all my early memories of a man who couldn’t look at me without seeing sin?

I should’ve stuck around to listen to that woman who claimed to know my mother. If anyone would know how I came to be, it would be the woman who bore me . . . but then, did I even want to see her?

My whole life, I’ve wondered about my mother. My dad—Frank—always told me that she abandoned us when I was a baby, but the more I learned about my world, about the festering rot writhing beneath the surface, the more I had to wonder . . . 

Did he take me from her?

The image of my father as a young man snatching me from the cradle when I was nothing more than a screaming, terrified babe chilled me to the bone.

I couldn’t help but picture my mother hunched over an empty crib, howling with agony at the loss of her child. If he even left her alive.

But who was I even picturing? I was only a baby. I didn’t have a single idea what she looked like.

Did she look like me?

Did I even want to know?

If she had a role in bringing the anti-christ into this world, if she had any say in it, then there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would want me to fulfill my dark destiny.

Something I was hell bent against allowing to happen.

My chest felt tight, and a different kind of darkness swirled behind my eyes. If we didn’t leave here soon, I was going to pass out.

“You never saw us here—my lover and I checked out before you ever came down this hall,” Evan told the hotel employee, his voice eerily calm and pleasant as he smiled at the man with empty eyes. “In fact, you saw a man with a sawed off shotgun blow a hole in that man’s chest before he ran away. You think it could be gang violence, a mob shakedown gone wrong . . . ”

The man only nodded, that dazed look in his eyes never changing.

If this was what a vampire—not even a particularly old one—was able to pull off, what kind of evil was I as the anti-christ capable of?

A shudder ran down my spine.

“Come on,” Evan whispered to me, sounding like himself again as he took my hand. “We should go before anyone else sees.”

“Won’t there be security cameras?” My eyes darted around all the usual places, but if there were cameras in The Rose Gardens, they were well hidden.

“It’s a sex hotel, one that prides itself on its discretion,” he assured me, leading me out into the cool night air. “Honestly, the owners will believe this was a mob hit way sooner than they’d believe a vampire did it.”

Taking a deep breath, I filled my lungs with fresh air, letting out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation.

A vampire did it.

I’d become so close to Evan that his vampirism didn’t even seem all that odd to me anymore, but to most of the world he didn’t exist. How could I judge them when less than two months ago, I thought the same?

He opened the passenger door of the el camino I’d been so enamored with, but his brow furrowed with concern when I didn’t immediately climb in, too lost in my own head to realize what was going on.

“Helaine, are you alright?” He moved away from the car, cradling my face in his hand.

I leaned in to his touch, not caring that the hand that held me so lovingly had ripped a man’s still-beating heart from his chest only moments ago.

“No, no I don’t think I am,” I confessed, my voice airy with the threat of tears as I hugged my arms tight around myself. “I can feel the darkness growing inside of me.”

“Hey, hey look at me.” He tilted my face up so I had to look into his eyes. “It’ll be okay. You don’t have to give into it if you don’t want to.”

“The problem is that I—I think I do,” I cried, my trembling hands desperately clinging to his vest. “It felt good when I killed that guy, too good. What if Lilith was right, and I’m becoming the monster I was born to be?”