Page 35 of Unholy Gambit: Checkmate in Blood
“Northern Italy, and the rest of that portion of Europe, experienced what is known as the Little Ice Age starting around 1450. It lasted four hundred years, but was especially bad the first fifty. If this spider was truly closely related to the Brazilian Wandering Spider, an artifact of Pangea or whatever, it’d likely adapted to live in a colder climate, but an actual ice age pushed it too far too fast, and it couldn’t adapt.”
She’d need to change that in her notes when she returned home, and she skimmed that thought and came up with something else to ask. “What else can you do? You’re super strong, can see better than us, hear better than us. You can fly or levitate or whatever, and you can help me be lighter. Ruby says sex with you is better, so I guess you have some kind of special non-human abilities there, too?”
“Besides being able to last much longer than a human male, yes, we have a few other tricks. You already know I can go into your mind, and that I can put suggestions in people’s minds to make them do what I wish.”
“Did you want to be turned into a vampire?”
“I did.”
Well, that was refreshing.
The angsty, emo vampires in fiction grated against her last nerve, constantly whining about their lost humanity like they’d been saints to begin with.
She immediately regretted the mental monologue because he’d likely heard the whole damned mess. Heat crawled over her face, and then she realized he probably saw her discomfort, too, and she grabbed at the first thing she could think of to change the subject.
“What else should I ask?”
“The vampire who made me did so because I was so ruthless as a human. He wanted a coterie of ruthless vampires, and that’s what he created. I was not a good person when human, and this didn’t improve during the first centuries of life as a vampire.”
“What changed?”
He stayed focused on the road, the traffic. “One of the vampires I made went off the rails. I had to help contain him, and I heard what was said about him, as well as about me, his maker.”
He seemed to consider his wording a second. “I’ve never cared about what people thought of me, other than wanting them to fear me enough they didn’t dare come after me, but honor has always been important. I realized the reputation I’d cultivated to keep me alive wasn’t necessarily one of honor.”
They came to a red light, but he kept looking ahead. She had the idea he’d never spoken this aloud before, and eye contact might’ve been too much while he bared this part of his history. While he bared part of his soul to her.
“I reevaluated some of my choices,” he continued, “and oathed to a vampire with a reputation for being good. Not a pushover, but he didn’tenjoybeing evil, he only did terrible things out of necessity.”
The light changed, and the tension in the car ratcheted down a little, as if the task of driving helped him past his discomfort. “I joined the coterie with the understanding I’d be the Master’s Exsequor, his evildoer, but still, life under him was different. I had to take on his morals as my own, and that was difficult. They never made sense, but I followed them because I respected him.”
She wanted to thank him for opening up to him, but had the sense doing so would make him uncomfortable, so she merely asked, “And now?”
“I walked the city last night, getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and I found myself wondering what you would do under certain circumstances.”
“Like what?”
“My default used to be immediate death to anyone who threatened me, but now…” He glanced at her and back to the road. “If it isn’t a serious threat, I go into their heads. Last night, when members of a gang saw a white man in their territory and moved to surround me, I made them…”
She lifted her brows, but didn’t push him to go on.
“I made the three underlings attack the one over them and gang-rape him. He’d recently taken part in the same violent act, and some will say it’s wrong for me to play judge and jury, but it got their attention off meandwill probably fuck up the inner workings of that particular criminal enterprise.”
She sat back and looked at him, knowing he was watching her thoughts, so he saw her initial revulsion and then karmic satisfaction. She couldn’t bring herself to approve of his actions, and yet, she didn’t entirely disapprove.
It was brutal.Wrong. But it pleased a secret, dark part of her psyche.
And that bothered her enough, she might need to bring it up with Dr. Woods later, but for now, she told him, “With great power comes great responsibility. I can totally understand thedesire to do that, and I wasn’t in his head, didn’t see the event. Maybe I’d have wanted to do the same, if I had.”
“But?”
“Your actions didn’t help the girl who was gang-raped, but it might, possibly, have kept it from happening to others in the future?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I’d have done with that much power, that much information. If I could’ve found the girl, I’d have tried to help her.”
“Two of the girls are dead, the third allowed to keep her life if she left town. It was a punishment thing, meant to send a message to other girlfriends who don’texactlytoe the line.”
She sat back. “Yeah. Making them gang-rape him is sounding better and better.”
He found a parking spot close to the door, and a waitress met them just inside to tell them she’d take them to their table. Was that the text at the back of the car? Because he hadn’t known they were coming here until then, so how had he made arrangements in a strange city within minutes?
