Мишель Роуэн - Bitten & Smitten

“Stupid boy,” Roger Quinn said. “There is no cure.”

My mouth dropped open as I heard his words fall on the air. “There is no cure?” He had to be kidding. He just had to be playing a game with us. Any moment people were going to spring out from behind the couch and tell us where the hidden cameras were. It was a joke. It just had to be. Then why wasn’t anyone laughing?

I looked at the doctor. He shrugged slightly at me. “I’m sorry, my dear, but he speaks the truth. There is no cure for vampirism. Never has been, never will be.”

“But… but why did you lie to us?”

“A means to an end, I suppose. It was a rumor originally started by the hunters, a ruse to draw out some of your kind. Clues had been scattered, here and there. Mostly as an experiment. My name was leaked due to my background as a scientist and my friendship with Roger. It’s what I do to help fight the evil in any way I can.”

I tried to frown, but my face felt frozen. “How many times do I have to tell people that I’m not evil?”

“It’s in a vampire’s very nature to be evil. I don’t blame you any more than I could blame a lion for stalking her daily meal.”

“You used us,” Quinn said, his voice still soft. “To find out Thierry’s location. That’s all this was about.”

“The opportunity presented itself. That particular result wasn’t planned, it was just a happy coincidence.”

“But he killed my mother.” Quinn glanced at his father.

Roger smiled a thin, unpleasant smile. “How you remind me of her right now. She protested her innocence right until the end as well.”

“What are you talking about?”

Roger sighed and shook his head. “I never told you the truth about your mother. And now, now I feel as though I’m living those horrible days all over again.”

“Her murder—”

“Her punishment,” Roger corrected. “It would have been better if you’d been led to believe from the beginning that de Bennicoeur slaughtered her. But, instead, I told you nothing. I assumed you’d try to find out more on your own and was disappointed when your curiosity didn’t lead you any further than it did.”

“Father, what are you talking about?”

“Your mother was a whore.” Roger spat the words, his anger as palpable today as it must have been twenty-five years ago. “An adulterous whore who cavorted with vampires.”

“What?” Quinn’s eyes were wide.

“When I found out, I confronted her—demanded the truth. She didn’t deny it for a moment. She said she was in love with one of them.” He laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “ ‘Love,’ as if a vampire could know the meaning of such a word. At the time I was still in love with her, and ready to forgive her indiscretions, but she’d already been turned, the marks still visible on her pale white neck. She was planning on leaving me, leaving you, boy, without a word of explanation that very night.”

I could feel my heart beating loudly and violently in my chest. I wasn’t liking this tale one little bit, and I can’t imagine that Quinn was, either. He stared at a spot on the wall just to the side of his father’s head. His hands were clenched into tight fists, but he made no sound that might stop the truth from being told finally.

“Your mother,” Roger continued, “was a whore vampire, her black heart filled with the joy of deserting those she promised before God to love and obey till death do us part.”

“You were the one who killed her.” It was my voice that said those words. I didn’t mean to; they just came out all by themselves. Roger looked at me directly for the first time.

“I did only what had to be done. And knew that from that day forward, it was my sacred duty to rid the earth of scum like her.”

It wasn’t Thierry. He didn’t kill Quinn’s mother. This news should have made me happy or, at the very least, relieved, but I was numb. I waited for Quinn’s reaction. What was he going to do? He’d just learned after two and a half decades that his father murdered his mother for being the exact thing he was now.

“You didn’t seem to be having much of a problem with Veronique the other night,” I said.

But then, I already knew why. She was the traitor. Roger Quinn liked vamps as long as they provided him with the means to kill other vamps.

A strange smile twisted across his wrinkled face. “Veronique is a special case. A rare rose in a garden of snakes. But I wouldn’t hesitate to tear her heart from her lovely chest if she provoked me.”

He glared at me, his narrow gaze doing its hardest to intimidate me. It was working. I looked away first.

“Well, this is rather uncomfortable, isn’t it?” Dr. Kalisan said after a moment. “Perhaps I should put on a pot of coffee and we can move this discussion to the kitchen?”

“Unfortunately, my friend”—Roger reached into the jacket pocket opposite to the one with the cell phone and pulled out a long, sharp wooden stake—“there’s no time for that.”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Just what do you think you’re going to do with that, Father?”

“What I have to,” he said simply. “Do not think that for one moment I shall take any pleasure from your death. I had great hopes for you. Great hopes. But they are not to be anymore.”

“Yeah, quite the disappointment I’ve been to you, haven’t I?” The anger and bitterness in Quinn was so strong it was like a thick, dark aura surrounding him. “Trained me to hunt and kill all of these years, and look what happened to me.”

“Yes.” Roger tested the sharpness of the stake with the tip of his finger. Looked pretty damn sharp to me. “It is unfortunate, but a risk with the life of a hunter. At least to the weaker ones.”

“You never gave me any credit for all the work I did.”

Quinn’s voice was getting stronger, fueled by the truth he just heard. “What I thought was right. You raised me to believe that vampires are evil and need to be killed, as if they’re no better than insects.”

“They aren’t, son. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Roger took a decisive step toward Quinn with the menace of the practiced hunter he was.

“No!” Quinn’s arm moved almost faster than I could see, and in the one motion he snatched the stake right out of his father’s hand.

“I’m not evil. Sarah’s not evil. I’ve spent all these years murdering vampires in the name of good. And all of that time, I never knew I was one of the bad guys. Snuffing out innocent lives because of your personal vendetta. You lied to me. Lied to me. You killed my mother. It was you, all of this time.”

“Yes, it was me. Doing what had to be done. Protecting my only son from the hurtful truth. I feel no guilt over your mother’s death. She deserved it. She deserved worse than that, but unfortunately she died much too quickly for me to inflict the quality of pain I had planned.”

“I hate you.” Quinn’s voice was uneven and pitchy now, just short of hysteria. “I think I’ve always hated you.”

Roger leaned over to his side and pulled a long blade from his boot. “Silver,” he said and moved it so it reflected the light in the room. “Works just as well as wood on monsters like you.”

He rushed Quinn before I could move or even scream. Quinn tried to hold him off, keep the knife away from his throat, his chest. The wooden stake, Quinn’s only weapon, was knocked to the floor. His fist flew out, catching Roger’s chin. I saw a streak of red as the blade caught Quinn across his cheek. Then I heard the gunshot. And the body slumped heavily to the floor. Quinn stepped back from his father’s body. He was shaking. I was shaking. I looked over toward the kitchen. Dr. Kalisan held a smoking gun in his hand and shook his head sadly.