Abruptly, Charlotte pulled her face away, trembling. Her heart reacted instinctively in her chest, hammering in his eardrums, and every so often, skipping a beat. “V-Valek,” she began, through her heavy breathing.
She closed her eyes slowly, trying to control her nervous sways. He could tell then he’d gone too far, and she wanted him to stop. Valek’s mouth fell open as regret swelled inside him. He should have listened more closely to that first voice of reason.
“I thought—” He hesitated. “I thought this was what you wanted.” Valek quickly removed his hand and rolled away from her. His breaths were substantial as well, but he was sure it was for a completely different reason. “Maybe…maybe you’re not quite so ready to change from being my innocent little Lottie after all. Maybe you are not as ready as you think you are.” Anger and guilt boiled up from his stomach and into his throat, rolling around with the pre-existing sadness in this nauseating twist of emotion. He balled his hands in his hair, his eyes pricking, washing red, as his gaze darted about the dusty floor. He could hear her thoughts going wild as well, though he wasn’t paying much attention to them. Or rather, he was afraid to. “Charlotte,” he began. “I do not know how to love you,”
He heard her mind fall completely to silence with his words. Her thoughts abruptly changed direction. It was as if he’d flicked a switch, and suddenly all that resonated from her was a confused sort of sadness. But her emotions seemed lighter.
“You do,” she said quietly.
Suddenly uncomfortable with her proximity, Valek got up from the bed. He wheeled around to meet her stare. “No, I don’t think you understand.” He grasped at the words, fighting to choose the ones that were right.
“Valek.” She uttered his name breathlessly, and with a sort of sadness he understood all too well.
Her mouth went slack, and he could hear in her mind how she longed for him to sit back down beside her on the bed, nervous with his sudden distance. But he refused, needing to maintain a clear head.
“It is not something I can very easily explain to you.” Frustrated, looking away from her, he ran his fingers through his hair.
“Try,” she pleaded.
He sighed. “Lottie, I can never give you what you want. I can’t ever
truly
be what you want me to be.” The admission was painful, but it was entirely true—the real reason why mortal and monster could never truly remain together—if every other fundamental reason was not enough. He struggled to look her in the eye again. He never thought about having this conversation before, because while she was growing up, he would have never guessed their relationship would grow to such complexity.
She grimaced at him. “You’re right. I don’t understand. What are you saying? You don’t feel the same way about me anymore?” She frowned, her confusion exposing itself clearly.
“It has nothing to do with my feelings, Lottie. It has everything to do with what I am.” The sensation of being suffocated made him tug at his ascot. “I cannot
physically
be what you want me to be. It is not that way for us. All of us. Our gratification is…different.”
Charlotte’s features contorted as she shook her head, clearly disbelieving. “But you kiss me.”
“I know, Lottie. I know. I’m not saying I lack the ability. I remember what it is like to be human. Of course I do. I know what you want.” Finally, he gave in, sitting next to her on the bed again. “But when I say I do not know how to love you, it is because the way I
do
know how is…different. I have different needs. Different satisfactions. Do you understand?”
Charlotte only continued to stare at him incredulously, and he buried his face in his hands. It was an admission he’d needed to get out. He never was the one to speak to her about this sort of thing. In Charlotte’s younger years, it had always been Aiden’s mother, Meredith, doing most of the handling of the human child. Those had been the years when their situation was newer and the self-restraint was all the more difficult.
Images from months past repeated before his eyes, like a scratched and broken record. They’d haunted him nightly since he’d first learned of Lottie’s complicated feelings for him. Ones he would have never anticipated. He sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he second-guessed every last move he’d made in regards to her. Reliving their many anguished, confusing conversations made his tongue swell in his mouth, and the words that came out were less than graceful. His mind had been so clouded recently, with his strategies to keep Charlotte safe from Aiden and more importantly, from herself. But Valek could not ignore this, which was another issue entirely. One that he knew was particularly important to her. Not when she was staring him in the face now, willing him to continue.
She attempted to pull his hands away from his face, her little grip putting forth an awesome effort. As she trembled against his persistence, it gave her weakness away.
“Valek, you
do
know how to love me.” She tugged yet again, and so he gave in, and allowed her to move into his lap. She cupped his face in both her hands. She kissed him along his jaw and once just below his earlobe, until eventually, her lips found his mouth. She kissed him harder, desperately trying to prove her words to him. Her hands twined around in his hair as his claws wrapped around her wrists. He moved his arms around her middle, holding her, pressing her against him, never wanting their embrace to stop. He was obsessed with the very way she was made, attached to her forever. Her delicate scent, like a whole gathering of tea roses, encompassed him.
“Valek,” she murmured.
He continued to kiss her, small sounds emanating from him until he pulled away from her, grasping both sides of her face in his hands. She kept her eyes closed.
“I love you,” he whispered.
The corners of her pretty mouth turned up when he said this and she finally opened her eyes to look at him. Valek could hear all of the confused thoughts racing through her mind: what they used to be to each other—what they were to each other now. All the questions she still had for him.
This
was the Lottie he remembered. Frantic and confused, though always sweet. He glanced once at the woman who had been lying motionless on the floor all the while.
“I think we’d better get her up. Her clothes are still wet from the snow. She is going to catch a chill,” Charlotte said in the smallest of voices. “We should let her go.”
Valek replayed the verbal promise he’d made to her months ago over again in his head. He would make things right. But being intimate with Charlotte that night, in either his way or hers, was not going to solve anything, except his own selfish need for some sort of false redemption. Staying transfixed upon the other mortal on the floor, he saw the woman’s hand begin to with the promise of awakening. A thought surfaced in his mind, quickly reminding him of his elaborate plan.
He pulled his Lottie off him and rose from the bed, finally making his decision. Eyeing the dark space, thinking carefully, he kept himself turned away from her, as if facing her might permit her to somehow read into
his
thoughts. “Stay here,” Valek instructed quietly. He gathered the other mortal woman up in his arms and walked out of the room, leaving Charlotte in the middle of the bed, staring after him.
Valek descended quickly to the first floor, his arms filled with the unmoving body of the mortal woman. Her heartbeat was still strong in her arteries, and it took everything he had just to concentrate. Glancing down briefly, he could see her eyelids shudder. She was trying to wake herself up.
As he rounded the corner with the woman, he nearly collided with a rather shocked-looking Sarah. He stopped dead as the little Witch’s gaze shifted from Valek’s face to the woman, Valek’s claws around her body, and finally back to Valek.
“What in Lilith’s creation do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips.
“Move aside,” Valek demanded, forming his lips into a tight line to hide the nervousness he felt for his own, disgusting scheme.
“Not until you tell me what you plan on doing with that poor girl. I’m sure we’ve all given her a good heart attack already! Just let this one go!”
With Sarah’s shrill voice, Valek noticed the woman’s eyes slit open just a hair. He was running out of time.
“I am
not
killing her, Sarah! Now, please! This is for Charlotte’s sake. I’m doing this to save her.” Valek’s pleas were more like solid, stone orders. That was how he meant for them to sound.
Sarah flinched at his authority, her face falling at the mention of Charlotte’s name. “How can I help?”
“I need your spells. Truffles, rolls, teas, I don’t care. I just need your magic.” His orders turned to panicked desperation. “But don’t make the spells so strong. I need them weak for this to work fast.”
Sarah nodded her silent
yes
and disappeared into the kitchen. Valek continued into his office at the end of the hall with the woman. Kicking open the door, Valek rushed the woman inside and slammed the door shut behind him.
If he was going to follow through with this crazy tactic—which was all too morally wrong, and he knew it—he needed to do it quickly. Glancing toward the mocking sound of the wall clock’s ticks, he was sure time was not on his side. Restraining a terrified human who was awake would not be quite as easy as working on one who was already blacked out. How would Charlotte react if she knew what his plan was? He winced, and shoved his reservations aside. Quickly, he laid her body out along the sterile, white gurney and worked fast to restrain her. It worked to his advantage that he’d maintained all of his medical equipment, despite the fact he no longer had any patients. He could hear her thoughts beginning to stir, so he moved, fastening her wrists and ankles to the table by the leather fixtures.
“This is awful,” he muttered to himself. “You truly are a monster, Valek. You’ve reached a new low, do you know that?” He finished the last buckle at her left ankle just as Sarah appeared in the doorway, carrying the silver tray, piled high with pastries, candies, and a kettle of tea. Valek appraised the discerning glare that pulled both of her eyebrows down at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“What are you
doing
?” She blanched, nearly dropping the tray.
Valek moved to the Witch’s side immediately, taking the items from her just in case his intuition was right.
Sarah rushed to the mortal’s side, putting a gentle hand on the woman’s cheek. “You better explain yourself right now! How is torturing an innocent person going to help Charlotte?”
Valek began to pace, biting his index claw while his other arm was folded behind his back, his claws in a fist. He needed to do this in an extremely concentrated fashion. A scientific experiment. Perhaps there was a way to speed up the process so it wouldn’t take a series of months, as in Charlotte’s case. “Do not tell Charlotte of this, I beseech you.” He continued to think. The process came together quickly in his mind, each step falling into place. But he needed to keep this little experimentation inside these four walls. Charlotte didn’t mind that he needed to feed in order to survive, but he knew how much she hated it when Vampires ‘played’ with their food. She had been the butt of that joke all too many a time. Valek stopped pacing and met Sarah’s judgmental look as she watched him expectantly, her arms folded across her chest. “This is Charlotte.” He indicated the woman with both of his hands.
Sarah frowned, one eyebrow raised.
Valek moved to the woman’s side. “For the purposes of my research, this is Charlotte. I need to study the addiction process in another human being, so I can figure out the best way to cure Charlotte, or ultimately, find out was the conclusion is. Understand?”
“So what are you going to do? Vivisect the poor thing?”
Valek looked back to the woman, narrowing his eyes at her. “Probably. Close. I am not sure. I haven’t brought this plan to its culmination yet. I’ll make her sick. I’ll run some tests. See if she responds well to anything.”
Valek grasped hold of the back of the woman’s neck, and plunged his fangs deep into her jugular, the hot, sticky ambrosia seeping out around his lips. His dead pulse jolted to life out of reaction to his arousal as he drank. Beneath him, he heard the woman wail. She was awake and had begun the attempt to fight him, only to find that she was miserably restrained.
“Valek!” He heard Sarah shriek over the mortal’s fluttering pulsations and gargles.
Truly a test to his will, Valek yanked himself away from the woman, splashes of blood following on his chin and shirt. The mortal’s screams were wet and gargled; tears streamed down her face. Valek winced at the horrible, tortured sight. To him, in this moment,
that
was Charlotte. That was what he had done to her. The only human he’d ever drunk from, and did not bother to kill in the end. The muscles in his throat tightened as he swallowed his own, bloody tears.
He sighed. It seemed it was already too late to keep this a secret. “Give her a truffle and get Charlotte away from the door.” Hearing her gasp, he spun in time to catch a glimpse of the girl darting just behind the threshold. She’d gotten there in time to witness the bite, but she hadn’t gotten there in time to hear his plan, thankfully. “You know better than that, Lottie,” he murmured, his back turned to the entrance of his office, though knowing she could hear.
Quickly, Sarah dashed toward her. Without looking, he heard the Witch rush the girl away with a very quick and vague explanation. Then she closed and locked the door. The other mortal woman stared at him. Her eyes, large and watery, held the look of death within them. Her mouth was shut tight. She was damning him in her mind. Sending him straight to Hell for what he had already done, and undoubtedly, for what he was about to do to her.
“It’s no use, darling,” he began softly, answering her thoughts and stroking her hair affectionately. “I’m already in Hell.”
Her response was a thick wad of spit that landed directly between his eyes.