Page 38 of Even Vampires Bleed
“What? What is this about?” I ask.
“Just do it, please,” she pleads.
I want to yell at her that this sounds like a bad joke and that she should stop, but at the same time, she looks so forlorn that I can’t help but comply.
I quickly pass my fingers behind my ear without a thought and stop.
Wait.
What the fuck is that?
I pass my fingers again and they come in contact with a small bump that’s cold under them. It feels like metal, but why would I have metal behind my ear?
Nothing makes sense.
The girl—Angélique, I need to remind myself—seems to see the panic in my eyes because she moves closer to me with her hands in a gesture that can only mean supplication to listen to her, but I can’t.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
“Did you do this to me?” I ask her, but it sounds more like an accusation.
“What? No!” She seems outraged by the idea, and it calms me a bit, but then she talks again.
“I didn’t do that to you. But my father did it to you because of me.” She looks defeated, and this time, she doesn’t bother with hiding what she feels.
“Get out of my room,” I tell her.
I might be wrong, but I don’t feel like talking to her anymore.
If I’m like this because of her, I don’t want her to breathe the same air I breathe.
“Wait,” she pleads again, “just give me a minute to explain. Please.”
I exhale loudly. I don’t want to listen to what she has to say, but at the same time, I have absolutely no idea what happened to me.
I need answers.
“You have one minute, tops,” I say as I launch the countdown on my holo.
“Why isn’t Cassiopé here when we need someone to do a sprint speech?” She mutters to herself once again.
“Fifty seconds,” I tell her.
She takes a deep breath.
“I was raised to be an assassin. A few weeks ago, I was sent here to Notre Dame to marry Elhyor, the dragon who holds Notre Dame, and on my wedding night I was supposed to kill him.”
She fills me in with information about Notre Dame, Elhyor, and the bats.
“Long story short, I couldn’t kill him, but my father, who was the one who sent me in the first place, placed this microchip behind yourear and threatened to erase your memory if I couldn’t complete my mission.”
She seems torn when talking about it and I realize one thing. This girl loves the guy she was supposed to kill.
“We fought my father, destroyed the server who held the code to the microchip, destroyed the holo it was linked to, and I killed my father. We thought any way of activating the microchip was destroyed.”
“But you were obviously wrong,” I say.
