Page 22 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

Then I look up, expecting brickwork.

And instead, dear god, it’s him.

It’s my immortal enemy. I’m at the feet of my immortal enemy, while half blind from devil-dog blood and completely thrown by all of whatever this is. And to top it off: said immortal enemy is clearly at least five thousand percent more deranged than he typically is.

For some inexplicable reason he’s no longer wearing a shirt. He’s completely nude from the waist up, in a way I simply am not prepared for. The last time I saw him this naked it was because all his skin had burned off. And yet somehow even that did not feel as naked as this.

He’s all glossy, somehow.

Like he’s been dipped in oil.

And everything is heaving, as if he’s just done a lot of heavy lifting, or maybe run up a big hill. Even though neither of those two things should make him heave at all. He’s a vampire. He doesn’t breathe. Before right now, I wasn’t even sure if he was capable of an emotion.

But he definitely seems to be experiencing at least some of one, currently.

His face is almost crumpled. Stiffly, like his features aren’t used to it—and yet it’s there, all the same. I can even almost identify what his features are trying to say around the metal blindfold I attached to him. This is very agonizing to me, I think. Or maybe, This is very traumatizing. Which makes some kind of sense, if he understands on some level that I am the one who trapped his eyeballs, turned his brain to soup, and made him lose his shirt.

But it doesn’t really help with the other thing I process.

That is an axe in his hand. I don’t know where he would get such a thing or why he would use it, but it’s definitely one hundred percent there. This thing is enormous. The blade is circular and the size of a manhole cover, with a hefty handle to match. And even more impossible: there’s no way to doubt that this is what beheaded that devil dog.

I can see ichor gleaming in streaks across the metal.

A thick thread of it leaves the sharp edge and spirals to the ground as I lie there, breath unaccountably held, eyes way too wide. Make yourself look fierce and ready to fight, I instruct myself. Or really, the memory of Maisy instructs me, because she was the fighter out of all the women whose lives I’ve lived. But it’s really hard to do that when his next move is even stranger than whatever this was.

He drops to one knee.

Right in front of me, close enough that his forearm brushes my shoulder as he folds it over his own thigh. I can see all the cords standing out on it, the hair there far darker than the hair on his head, the heavy bone at his wrist. How big his hand is—almost larger than my head.

Though I have no idea why I’m focusing on that.

There are like five thousand more important things going on.

He says something in a tone I have never heard him use before. There’s no sardonicism in it, no dry, dead quality to the words. They almost come out sort of breathless, hushed, likes he’s telling me something he actually means. And sure, it’s still not understandable at all to me.

But this time I know why.

It’s not just garbled nonsense.

He’s talking in another language.

Something that sounds almost like the Swedish I’ve heard him speak before—but weirder. Thicker, and more unsettling somehow. It runs a freezing finger over my spine; I genuinely consider fleeing. In fact, I whip out the umbrella strapped to my back to do just that. It’s already primed to fly. It wouldn’t take a thing.

I honestly don’t know why I stop short.

I want to say it’s because I remember my responsibilities here—but I’m really not sure it is. If it were I would probably be stuffing him into a big net right around now, and instead I just stay where I am, sprawled back on my elbows, staring up at him. And after a moment, I process what it is I’m struck by.

Not the metal blindfold itself, really.

But the fact that it’s still over his eyes.

He hasn’t removed it—as if he’s forgotten how. I can even see where he’s tried to lever it off with simple brute strength, and completely failed. There are scrape marks all over the steely surface and the screws that hold it in place. One of them has even started to come free, just a little.

But clearly the effort was extensive enough that he found the rest futile.

Then he just came and did whatever this was anyway. He saved your life without being able to see, my mind tries to tell me. And it’s absurd enough that I immediately want to reject it. A couple of hundred years of instinct definitely try to tell me I should. This is just a trick, I insist to myself.

Though if it is one, he’s still not springing it.