Page 75 of Love Bites
I got a bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I remembered myself cowering in a hiding place under the floor of the living room of the house where I'd lived with my parents. Something bad had happened here.
The memory I'd asked Talon to erase. The thing that was responsible for my panic attacks.
I wanted to close my eyes from it, but of course, that was impossible. It was all coming back to me now. This was the night that I'd lost my parents. This was where I'd first heard the screams that had echoed in my head and forced me to my knees the other night. The memory I'd never been able to process.
My insides turned to knots as I was forced to relive it once more in full detail. I heard my parents' voices, the voices of my attackers, and through the panic that started to build in the back of my mind, I finally understood what had happened. Why my parents had been hiding, why they'd mademehide, and who had attacked them. Vampires. Of fucking course it had been vampires.
If I'd had full control of my body, I might have thrown up, but within the memory I couldn't move. I could only sit and listen as my parents were murdered.
Even after that, I couldn't move for a long time. I wasn't sure how many minutes my younger self sat there in the dark, too afraid to come out of his hiding place even after all the sounds from the house above had ceased. I was pretty sure that even before Talon had erased my memories of this night, I hadn't remembered this part. At least not consciously. I'd been in shock. I had no idea how I ever got out of that house, how I ended up at the police station.
After what felt like hours, my body moved and I climbed out of my hiding place. The house above me was dark and empty. My parents' bodies had never been found; that much I remembered. I walked from the living room to the kitchen and back again with no real aim in mind. When I entered the living room again though, there was someone there, standing before me in the dark.
I had never seen this man before.
At least, child-me hadn't.
I came back to the real world with a gasp. Immediately, my eyes sought the vampire next to me. "What the hell, Talon?" I demanded.
Had he really been there the night my parents were murdered? No, he couldn't have been. Hecouldn't!
But that had been him in my memory. Sure it had been dark, but I'd gotten used to seeing Talon in the dark. I knewexactlywhat he looked like in the dark.
Talon drew away from me. "I'm sorry."
"Please tell me you didn't..." I couldn't even get myself to end that sentence. I needed him to tell me that he had nothing to do with my parents' deaths, but what if he did? I wasn't ready to hear him tell me that hehadbeen involved.
I jumped from the bed, moving so quickly that a dizzy spell hit me. In an instance, Talon was by my side to steady me.
"You were there that night..." I said, kind of wanting to push him away but also not.
"I was. I wasn't there the moment your parents were killed, though. I was there to... clean up."
"Clean up?" I repeated his words because they sounded so ridiculous I didn't know what else to do.
Talon offered me the bottled blood again. "I know you're upset, but please, take this. You're going pale, love."
"Blood loss is not why I'm going pale right now!" I snapped, but grabbed the bottle from him anyway because him trying to get me to drink was not an argument I wanted to have right now.
"I truly am sorry for what happened that night."
"What the hell does clean up mean?"
"I was supposed to make sure no one could trace the disappearance of your parents back to us. It was what I did back then."
"Manipulating memories?"
"Mostly, yes."
"What else? No wait, I don't even want to know." I held my hand up before Talon could speak. I was being silly, wasn't I? I'd always known that he was a vampire and that he did some unsavory things. Why was it suddenly an issue?
Talon had said I might hate him after this. I didn't hate him, but I definitely needed some time to process. Talon hadn't killed my parents, but some other vampire like him had and itcouldhave been him. "The first time you saw my birthmark, you said you'd seen it before. That's because you've killed people like me before. People like my parents. That's what that meant, isn't it?"
Talon didn't have anything to say in response to that.
My hands balled into fists. I wanted to shake Talon. I wanted to shove him and make him respond.
At the same time, though, his silence was answer enough. Because I already knew what his job was, what it had been all this time. He’d never made a secret of what he did when he went out at night.
