Page 102 of Red Masquerade

And then there was the view from the top of the manor, never-ending, like Vince was a king. This was his palace, and I was the lucky consort.

I sensed him stop a foot away from me. When I looked at him, he was gazing out on his lands, eyes squinting against the breeze which tousled his dark red waves. He was looking toward the city, unblinking.

The city we both hailed from. The city that harbored dreamers and criminals, silly little girls hoping for their Prince Charming and young men waiting to be struck by the realities of humanity.The city in which we’d met, the city we both ran from. It stood like a fixture of the earth, unmovable, a mass of iron and glass, twinkling with electric lights. And there it was, so small, reduced to a few tall buildings in the distance.

It transfixed him, until I realized his face had transformed nearly into a scowl, contempt for the contents of those skyscrapers clear on his face.

I did not blame him. I knew the life we came from, the struggle he’d endure growing up, a struggle I hadn’t had to experience myself. I knew how hard it was, how he’d hoped to make a living if only to help feed his family. No plans to leave, just to work, to print his papers and pamphlets, to just barely make it. To survive.

And here he was now, so completely altered.

Did he even think of his family?

I touched his arm, and he softened.

“I thought you might like it up here,” he said, gaze still trained on the distance.

“It’s quiet,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. If I spoke too loudly, it would feel like a shout.

“Too quiet.”

I leaned on the half-wall, hugging myself against the cold. That nagging feeling was back, a sourness in my stomach. I swallowed it down.

“I never really liked the silence this far out,” he murmured.

There were complications to returning to the city, living so close to everyone he’d known. Everyone who’d thought he was dead. And to have to make a name for yourself amidst that greedy crowd was difficult—I knew, because of my father—especially if you did not know the rules.

At least the manor was secluded enough, the nearest neighbor a little less than a mile away.

“I could not make myself return to the incessant noise of the city,” he finished. He thought on it for a moment, then his eyes slid toward me. “I couldn’t do it, not after I’d spent so long away.”

Six years away.

Six years of believing him dead.

He took a breath as though to prepare himself, then braced his palms against the wall, his smallest finger brushing against my hip. “I’m going to tell you more about me, about my Sire, but I don’t want—” A tick in the muscle of his cheek. “I don’t want you to think that, because I’ve come from someone so terrible, I will do the same things.”

I linked our fingers.

“He was the only one I knew for the longest time.” He paused a moment to let the words settle, to steel himself against the memories. “When I awoke, I saw only…him, or the poor unfortunates he brought to—to feed me. Villagers close enough to the battlefields, people that hadn’t fled. There wasn’t anywhere for them to go, so they were stuck like we were, hearing the guns all night. The screams. And if they disappeared…”

I found myself deathly still, scared even to breathe. I tried to imagine myself there, to put myself on the battlefield. In the trenches. But I couldn’t.

He continued, “My Sire wouldn’t kill them, so he’d come down into the cellar—yes, he kept me in a cellar—and throw them at my feet. Yell at me to take them or die.” He moved like the weight of his memories bowed his back, shifting on his feet.

“I didn’t have a choice. And they didn’t understand, of course, that we were monsters. I looked like another victim in my bloody soldier’s clothes, grime all over me, but they didn’t know, underneath the filth, I was healed, I was living—undead.

“And no matter how much I resisted that first year, no matter how much I tried to ignore the smell of—of their blood, to drown out the sound of their hearts with my own screams, I would still do it. My body would move on its own, drawn to their pumping blood, the smell of their fear. My teeth changed, and my hands grabbed them like I was some puppet, and I was forced to eat them. To watch myself drain them. It was a hunger that took over every part of me. And only after months of his feedings, of him pulling me away from empty corpses, before I was able to stop on my own. To tamp down the hunger just enough, so that I could hear a faint heartbeat after I stopped. Impossibly slow, like mine.”

My hand had crept toward my throat.

When he looked at me, his face was hard, some mask having replaced the softness of his skin. “I tell you this so that you know what I am.”

“I know what you are,” I breathed.

He shook his head. “You only think you know.”

Hesitantly, I put myself before him, blocking his sight of the grounds, of the city behind me. “Then tell me.”