Page 60 of The Doctor and the Devil
“If you take me back, they will kill me,” I pleaded. “And they will not let you go, Laszlo. You will take me to them, and they will kill you, anyway, and Marguerite. They will kill my friends. And they will kill Rafael.”
My voice broke on his name.
“I have to try,” he choked out. “I must try for Marguerite. She has been through so much. I cannot leave her there with them.”
“You are damned either way,” I said. “But if we work together, there might be a way to save us all.”
“How?”
I sighed, hating myself for advocating the death of anyone, no matter how evil. “We could take them downtogether.”
He stepped toward me. “What do you mean?”
I backed up. “You and Rafael are more powerful than all the Order put together. The two of you could go through those men like a hot knife through butter.”
Laszlo huffed a laugh. “Surely you saw the vile things their witchcraft does to vampires. With the Judas silver in their hands, we’re weaker than human. Besides, killing them would only prove the humans right about us. The Order would be martyrs, and we would be the monsters everyone already suspects we are. There would be no doubt in anyone’s minds.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t ready to give up. Pain throbbed in my ankle, and I wouldn’t be able to outrun him. I had to try to reason with him.
“So we tell them the truth about the Order. How they’ve lied and stolen and controlled all along. Make everyone believe they’re the power-hungry manipulators that they truly are.”
He slowed, considering. From the tree above us, an owl hooted softly. We both tilted our heads toward the sound. I desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t an ill omen—that they were watching over us, offering hope.Hope.
“Please, Laszlo,” I begged, playing every card in my hand. “I’ve spent the last twenty years hating Rafael for abandoning me and serving penance for his mistakes. Now that he’s come back into my life, I’m not ready to have it all end before we can set things right. Frankly, I’m not even ready to forgive him. I love him, but I just…need more time. We all need more time.”
Turning his gaze from the owl to the fallen tree at his side, he scrubbed his hands across his face, and he sat down hard.
“It was never supposed to happen,” he said, his voice drifting absently on a gentle wind.
I waited, still palming the quicksilver and wooden stake in case he decided our parlay was at an end.
After a beat, I asked, “What wasn’t supposed to happen?”
His dark eyes—so much like Rafael’s, yet weary and sad—lifted to mine.
“Marguerite was pregnant when we fled Wallachia,” he said.
The news hit me like the shock of cold from winter’s first frost.
“But—that’s impossible. Humans and vampires cannot reproduce,” I argued.
“Yes, that’s what we’ve believed all along. My ancestors and now the modern vampire…it simply does not happen. And yet, Marguerite grew with my child while we made our home in Dunkirk.”
Logic compelled me to ask the impertinent question.
“You’re certain it was yours?”
A dark, rasping chuckle issued from his chest.
“I wasn’t at first, but when the pregnancy began to show signs of the curse, it became evident. I had not planned on eloping, but when she told me about the babe, everything in my life became clear. I would not allow my child to live in this world of darkness. I would not allow my father to corrupt the only good thing in my life. So I did the only thing I could think to do—I packed up as much as I could without drawing notice, and we ran.”
I watched Laszlo as he spoke, the weariness plain on his face and in the set of his shoulders. He ran his fingers through a patch of damp grass at his feet, and I tried not to stare at his long, lethal claws trailing through the dew.
“We traveled around for a while, trying to hide from the men my father sent after us, but eventually I had to kill them. We couldn’t keep running. We went north as far as we could, but she was so weak then. We stopped at Dunkirk to shelter and rest for a while—she was so ill. I had to turn her then, you see. She would not have survived the birth of the child if it was, in fact, a blood drinker.”
I considered going to sit on the log next to him but thought better of it. Instead, I crouched where I was, ready to jump up at the slightest twitch of his movement. The owl above us had fallen silent, as if sensing the heaviness of our conversation.
“Marguerite’s condition during the turning left her weak, and even when she completed the transformation, she was weaker than most vampires. But she survived—that was all that mattered to me. And the babe in her belly continued to grow, unharmed by her change of state. When my daughter was born, nothing in the world had prepared me for how much I would love—could love—another being. I’d loved my parents, but feared them, and I’d loved Rafael, but we had grown apart after our childhood. Marguerite was the first person who made me believe I was more than a monster or some ancestral obligation. And then she gave me the one thing that I’d never felt worthy of having—a love so pure, I would have done anything to keep it. To protect it.”
