Page 42
Story: A Bargain So Bloody
“You told him to stop. And no one intervened.”
I recalled the way I’d looked at Slyne, desperate. The way she’d looked back, confident that things were exactly as they should be. “He was their leader.”
“And they’re dead for following him blindly,” Raphael replied.
They were. Bloody, bloody deaths. I’d seen him kill before. Nelson, the guards, Tom. But those had been quick, clean kills. What happened in the Monastery was a slaughter.
Would I be a traitor if I didn’t mourn their deaths?
“Is that why you took us an hour from Apante?”
“I thought it wise for us to not be around in case questions were asked,” Raphael agreed. “Not that anything they would do could truly threaten me, but in your condition…”
Weak.
“How did you hear me? I thought you were leaving for the marshes.”
“I decided to remain in the city for a little longer. Vampire’s prerogative.” There was a casualness to the words that rang false to my ear, but I was too weary to interrogate it. Raphael closed the lid of the salve and began to wrap my back once more.
“Why?”
Why did you save me? Why bother? Why are you angry on my behalf? I’m a human. I mean nothing to you.
I don’t mean anything to anyone. Not anymore.
“I suppose because I wanted to,” he said with utter nonchalance, the bed shifting as he rose and walked to the door.
A whim. That’s all my life was for him.
Any further questions were cut off as my stomach let out a loud groan. Raphael’s head tilted at the sound. I flushed. Of course I was hungry. I’d slept for three days. Familiar pangs pierced me. How quickly I’d forgotten the sensation after traveling with the vampire for a time.
“I’ll address that,” he said, leaving the room before I could respond.
In the distance, I heard a series of clangs, curses, and eventually footsteps when he returned maybe half an hour later, carrying a plate.
A vampire is actually serving me a meal. Maybe I really was dead.
He placed the plate in front of me.
I looked at it.
Then I looked up at him, in horror.
“All that effort to save me and you’re going to poison me?”
“Only cowards resort to poison,” Raphael groused.
“Then what do you call this?”
The plate held a horrific mix of foods—berries, meats, beans, and at least two bones—bound together by something that might have started as eggs but was now closer to charcoal.
“I call itfood. Now eat, Samara. Your body’s healing relies on you using that mouth to masticate, not argue.”
I gave the mound of “food” an experimental shove with a fork. “Don’t vampires start out as humans, or is that just a myth?”
Raphael sank into the chair next to me. For the first time, his gaze seemed deliberately pointed away from me. His cheeks were just a touch brighter than I was accustomed to seeing on the pale vampire. “You go six hundred years without cooking and show me how good you are.”
Six hundred years. But still… he’d done it. For me.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42 (Reading here)
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127