Page 29 of Love Bites
"He's not my best friend," Talon said. "But he's been a good companion."
"I can accept that. What's the big fascination with Halloween, though?" I asked, my eyes trailing over a figurine of a black cat with yellow eyes that looked almost vintage.
"It amuses me," Talon said. "Few things do nowadays." He walked over to the kitchen area of the studio. "Would you like something to drink? I'm afraid I can only offer you water, though."
"No, I'm fine. What I'd really like are some answers."
"I understand." Talon poured me a glass of water anyway and set it down on the coffee table before sitting himself. "You might want the water after what you're about to learn."
I eyed the glass skeptically before returning my attention to Talon. "What am I about to learn?"
"This is going to go faster if I show you. Pay attention to my teeth." Talon opened his mouth and pointed at his upper row of teeth. Suddenly, two of them grew into fangs.
For some reason, this didn't surprise me at all. Of course he could grow fangs. I'd known this before.
My head hurt.
"You don't seem shocked," Talon observed.
"You're a vampire." I rubbed my forehead. Was this part of the memories I'd lost? Was that why I could so easily accept that vampires existed? That I was sitting next to one right now? "I guess my old man has been right all along."
"He secured your house, didn't he?" Talon rubbed his chin. "And yet he hid this from you." He pointed at my arm. "Did your old man carry a mark like that too?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I've never seen any weird marks on him, but honestly, it's not like I was looking." I glanced at my upper arm, even though it was clothed and I couldn't see my birth mark. "I've always had this. What's wrong with it? Dad told me to hide it too," I admitted, feeling the need to defend my old man at least a little bit. It was my own fault that I hadn't listened to his advice.
"What's wrong with it is that you might as well be wearing a bull's eye on your arm." Gently, Talon rolled my sleeve up again, his fingers brushing the skin on my arm as he did so. "This is not a random mark, it's an ancient rune."
"A rune? But I was born with it." At least, I was pretty sure that I had been.
"I admit that I don't know all the details of what this rune signifies, but I've seen this shape and similar ones before."
"It's just a birth mark," I insisted.
"I might have thought so if you weren't clearly different from other humans, but I've had my suspicions about you before. This is simply part of that."
"I'm not different from other humans." I took a sip of the water Talon had poured for me. The liquid did nothing to quiet the millions of questions shooting through my brain, but it gave me something else to focus on for at least a second.
"Yes, you are different," Talon said in a tone of voice that wasn’t unsympathetic, but firm.
"How am I different?" I demanded. "How can you say that? You don't know me."
"I know enough."
"Yeah, because you didn't have your memories stolen! You can't keep lording that over me. Just tell me what happened."
"At this point, I suppose I may as well. You came to the club last month, where you attracted the attention of a werewolf. I drove him off, but you discovered that I was a vampire, so I had to erase the incident from your memories."
I swallowed, processing those words. He wasn't lying—at least, I was pretty sure that he wasn't. But I still got the feeling that he wasn't telling the whole truth, like he was leaving some important details unspoken. None of what he'd just told me explained why I felt so drawn to him, why I got the feeling that Iknewhim. "That's not all that happened, is it?"
"You resisted the first time I tried to take your memories of me," Talon supplied. "Which is one of the ways you're different from other humans." His gaze fell on my arm again. "I visited you at your family's home another night and you allowed me to take your memory when I explained that I would have to kill you otherwise. You also asked me to erase a memory that had nothing to do with me. Something traumatizing from your childhood."
At least that explained why I couldn't remember my parents. "I think you erased a little too much."
"I warned you that it wasn't an exact science. I took everything that was causing you pain."
The memory of my parents had caused me pain? Because they were gone?
Had I really asked for that?
