Page 95 of The Midnight Order
“I was born.”
Three words that have my heart in overdrive spill from his lips, and I don’t know what to say next.
So, I say the only logical thing I think will keep the conversation between us rolling. “So was I.”
“No fucking shit. That’s how humans are made.”
“But I’m not human.”
I catch his eye roll from where I’m standing, even though he hasn’t looked away from the front of my house.
“Yeah? And what are you?”
“A vampire.”
He turns back toward me, his bright red eyes growing softer by the minute as my admission slams through his brain.
“Say that again,” he whispers.
I nearly miss his words as a bird above screeches through the woods.
“I was born, and I’m a vampire.”
He steps into me, and I fight to stay steady.
I don’t want to back away from him after the day we’ve had, after all the emotions we’ve both been through.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve met someone like me?” Emotion chokes his voice, and it wavers.
It’s likely the most emotion a man like him has shown in years.
“How long?” I ask, intrigued.
I forget myself and my previous fear and step closer, my chest pressing against his as I remain captivated by his overwhelming presence. I wait with bated breath for his reply.
“It feels like eons.”
“What year were you born?” I whisper as he leans closer, as if my being like him, even if my gene is inactive, draws him nearer, and holds him captive somehow.
“The year 1047.”
“That would make you…” I gasp as I can’t even math his age out in my brain.
“Nine hundred and seventy-seven.”
I can’t help but realize his age is likely a factor in how unhinged he seems at times.
I can’t even imagine having lived that long.
“You have to be as old,” he says, and I pull from my whirling thoughts.
“How do you figure?”
“Because the last reference I’ve ever found of a recorded vampiric birth was in the year 1502. If you’re born as you say, or I assume, like Corvin thinks you were, then your birth eitherwasn’t recorded and your true name was lost to time, or you were the last vampiric baby born to a vampire mother.”
I breathe out a shaky exhale. “Do you recall the child’s last name on the record?”
“I remember everything. It’s the burden I carried when I lay on the slab in that cave daily, being bled dry and fed to overabundance. All I had were my memories. I lived a thousand lives within them, reliving them over and over.”
