Page 94 of A Touch of Crimson
He gestured for her to have a seat. As she did with Adrian, she felt an inexplicable pull to the suave vampire leader. She didn’t trust it—didn’t trust him. Vampires lured victims with seduction and a lulling sense of false security.
Lindsay moved to the wet bar instead and pulled the corkscrew out of the drawer. As far as weapons went, it was laughable. But beggars couldn’t be choosy.
“There’s no need to defend yourself against me, tzel,” he murmured, taking a seat at the small dining table as if he had no concerns in the world.
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, hating to hear Adrian’s term of endearment for her on another man’s lips.
“Why not? It’s your name.”
Swallowing hard, she fought another wave of dizziness and intense déjà vu, so familiar now after the last few weeks but no less disconcerting. “My name is Lindsay Gibson. My father’s name is—was—Eddie Gibson.”
“Those things are true…in regard to your mortal body.” His amber eyes watched her with undeniable intensity. “But you carry the soul of my daughter Shadoe inside you.”
Lindsay felt the blood drain from her face.
“Did you think it was just a pet name Adrian had for you?” Syre’s slightly raspy voice was mesmerizing. “An endearment perhaps?”
His direct hit struck her hard.
“Ah, I see that you did.” His smile was smugly knowing. “I bet he took one look at you and there was no getting away from him. He focused on you with an all-consuming intensity, didn’t he? He pursued you swiftly and with a determination you couldn’t deny. He treated you like the most precious thing in the world. And when a seraph like Adrian puts his mind to something, he never fails.”
Leaning heavily into the countertop, she set one hand over her roiling stomach and tried to regulate her breathing.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Lindsay. I’m sure he was sincerely attracted to the packaging. But the woman he covets is inside you—my daughter—and he’s been keeping us apart since the dawn of time.”
“That’s not possible,” she whispered through dry lips. “I’m not possessed by someone else’s spirit.”
His chin lifted. “So, how do you explain your speed? How do you explain the first question you asked when you walked into this room—‘What are you?’, not ‘Who are you?’ You felt the power in me with senses beyond the few afforded to your mortal body.”
She stared at him, her right leg twitching and shaking with her growing disquiet.
“You’re wondering how it’s possible,” he said, still in that low, captivating tone. “You see, Shadoe was fatally wounded. You were a huntress even then. Adrian loved you so much that he couldn’t bear to lose you. I’d already discovered that I could share immortality with others, and he brought you to me on the brink of death, begging me to save you.”
Lindsay didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the drops hitting her chest.
“I didn’t hesitate,” he went on. “I began the process of Changing you.”
“Into a vampire?” She was sickened by the thought.
He gave a soft, humorless laugh. “Adrian’s reaction was the same. He thought I could heal you without Changing you. You were too far gone for his blood to do the trick, but he’d heard that the Change took individuals to the very precipice of death, and he thought I could pull you back from it. Which I could, but as a vampire. When he realized what you would become, he finished you himself with a blade through the heart.”
She flinched, imagining what that would have cost Adrian—to kill the woman he loved in order to save her. But she understood it, too. Like her, every blow he’d been dealt in his life had come from a vampire. Of course, he would rather lose his love than have her become a soulless, bloodsucking creature.
“But it was already too late. You were a naphil, one of the nephalim—a child born to a mortal and an angel. Your soul was stronger than a mere human’s. It had the strength of an angel’s, but without the weakness of wings. I’d given you just enough of my blood to immortalize that inhuman part of you before Adrian killed your body. So you’ve returned again and again, always in a different vessel but still my daughter.”
And still the woman Adrian loved. A woman who wasn’t her.
Her spine straightened. “A pretty s-story, but I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie?”
“To turn me against Adrian.”
He made a soft tsking noise. “On the contrary, I can give him back to you. Fully, completely. I know you want that. I can see how much you love him.”
“What are you saying?”
Pushing to his feet, he stepped closer. “I can finish the Change, Lindsay. I can give you immortality and reawaken the soul in you whom Adrian loves. I can take away the mortality that makes you forbidden to him. Everything can be what it should have been.”
