Page 62 of Slayer Mom
“It’s impossible for me to have children. Lock is an impossibility. While he was part of you, I couldn’t hear your thoughts. But it didn’t matter.”
I quickly swallowed. It was so hard to really get into an argument when someone was feeding you. “How does that not matter? Are you saying that you’ve been having all kinds of affairs with vampire women because it doesn’t matter?”
He cut a bite of meatloaf. “Of course not. It didn’t matter because I only wanted you and that wouldn’t change, no matter what. If you needed the warmthand humanity of an actual human from time to time, that was understandable.”
I took the bite and then chewed quickly so that I could say, “It’s ridiculous. You were such an excellent father to them both, even though you thought I’d actually found other men to have babies with? I didn’t even want babies to start out, just you.”
“Which is the only reason why I agreed. You only wanted the moment, the experience, me without any kind of future plan, but then all that changed when you got pregnant. You went a little bit crazy.” He held another bite to my lips.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I did not.” I took the bite.
“You did too. Maybe I should say that you tried to go sane and failed beautifully.”
I wrinkled my nose at him as I chewed. “That’s just like a man. I’m the one who went insane when I was married to a vampire who was messing with my mind. And you didn’t kiss me back, but you’re so attached to me. You’re the one who’s insane.”
He dropped the plate and caught my face, holding me close, unmoving, so close that I could see the shifting fractals in his dark eyes. “It takes energy to change my form. The zombie queen is coming. That means I’ll need to reserve everything I have for the occasion.”
I swallowed hard. “Let go of me. I didn’t ask you to change your form.”
“If I release you, you might kiss me again, and I have fangs.”
“So?” I glared at him, Hazen, the Grand Master, whoever he was.
“You don’t want my fangs to touch you.”
“That didn’t stop you during that incredibly romantic dance.”
“I was injecting a numbing paralyzing agent so that I could find the germ.”
“So if you kiss me back, I’ll be paralyzed and numb?”
“Being human takes a lot of energy, effort, blood sacrifice.”
I had an image of a field of slaughtered virgins. “Blood sacrifice?”
He smiled slightly and brushed his cool nose against mine. “My blood. I have spent so much of my blood on being human. I am actually quite weak. It’s an excellent time for the Zombie Queen to attack. Joe has been lobbying for years to get me back into the world where I belong and quit playing human.”
“Is that why he kidnapped me, to get you back in the world where you belong?”
“Probably. If I put my fangs on you, I won’t ever want to stop. I spent more and more time away from you because I’m running low on humanity. My fangs on you, you allowing me to touch you with my monster, it would be a step into the darkness that you don’t want to take.”
I swallowed hard and stared into those endlessly swirling eyes. It was like looking into the dark night pricked with distant stars. “You’re terrifying. That’s why I want to kiss you, so I can find the Hazen I know, but he doesn’t exist, does he?”
He stared at me for a long time before he slowly released me and took a step back. “You said that we should take marriage counseling. You said that you would try. I’m not the human you knew and loved, but I am someone, and I love you.”
It was all too much, too incomprehensible. “I’m tired.”
“But you said that you’d try.”
“Yes. I’ll try. We can go on dates and you can explain to me what’s in the darkness between constellations.Whatever else you are or did, you helped me raise Wat and Lock, and you did your best to keep us safe. I’m sorry that you had to use so much of your blood to be human.”
“Don’t be. The first blood was yours.”
“Mine?”
“I was searching for your Tom.” He curled his lips like Tom was a vile murderer, or a nose picker. “But I couldn’t find him. He was always out of sight, and you were there instead. The way you played with knives, the way you moved, it wasn’t normal, so I took your blood and tried to use it in the potion that I was going to use his blood on, and it made me a mess. Weak, near-sighted, without much sense of smell, but with a heart that could feel the tiniest twinges of affection and sentiment. You gave me your love before you ever knew me.”
“You took my blood? How?”
