2. Emmanuel

CHAPTER TWO

EMMANUEL

It was impossible.

Mother couldn’t die .

Years on years on years had ticked by, achingly slow, and she’d never so much as shown a wrinkle. Almost two hundred, I thought. I’d been born in eighteen thirty-two, and while Mother had never allowed me to speak to the gardener or his employees, I had caught sight of the cheques Mother had written to them, and the dates?—

Good god, so much time had passed, and my world had only gotten smaller and smaller.

It’d started when I’d gotten sick—tuberculosis—and the dark, quiet room they’d shut me in. The warning that my sinful nature had weakened my body. Then came the leeches, then—then my mother had come to me with pale skin and red eyes, and she’d sat at my bedside and touched my face with her cool fingers and promised to make it all better.

She’d bitten me, cut her wrist over my cracked lips, and I’d woken up like this.

Hungry .

But I hadn’t died. I hadn’t needed prayers or doctors to use my lungs again.

And still, my world had only gotten smaller. No sunlight, no escape. There was a heavy compulsion on me, whenever Mother said to do anything. I couldn’t go outside, couldn’t look at the gardener, couldn’t?—

Couldn’t live. I wanted to think it was because I’d already died, but it was more than that. It was Mother—she wanted to keep me safe, closed away from—from myself. I wasn’t to be trusted. It wasn’t my fault, that my eyes drifted, that I wanted something other than what I was meant to.

That was the devil whispering in my ear, and she only meant to keep me safe from him. Safe and shut away and so, so alone.

Still, she brought the girls—the prettiest ones she could find, with delicate features and high voices that cried out at the first brush of a fang. I was so hungry , so I killed them. But it didn’t make the sin disappear, didn’t make the devil go away.

And now, she was dead, and I didn’t feel the devil rush in to take her place. Instead, everything was light and clear.

Everything but the smoke billowing up the chimney, thick with the scent of meat and ash.

Vampires burned quickly. What was fire, if not the diluted heat of the sun? In mere minutes, she’d be gone.

I watched her burn away at the intruder’s side, my neck stiff, ears pricked for the sound of his movement. Perhaps he’d go for me, tie up loose ends, but his heart was hammering in his chest. He was frozen in terror, weighing his options, no doubt. And I wouldn’t let him get the better of me.

Not now that . . .

Holy hell, I was free—free to do anything I liked. I could drain the whole world dry, and who would stop me? Perhaps my appetite wasn’t that large, but I could try.

I could?—

“—mean to. She was right there, and she wouldn’t let me help her. I swear, it was an accident. I’m just—I needed—my sister’s in trouble. You have to understand?—”

He must’ve been talking for a while, but it was like the cotton had just fallen out of my ears and I could hear for the first time.

My gaze landed once more on the intruder, and my breath caught when he spun my way. Without thinking, I lashed out, my palm stinging with the crack of a slap as I hit him.

“Don’t look,” I hissed between my clenched teeth.

Don’t look, Emmanuel.

The sharp sting of my skin when my mother pulled me aside, away from the temptation crawling through the streets. The men I admired.

You’re not to look at them.

The sin will eat you from the inside out.

But how would I know? I hadn’t seen myself since—since before.

“Wait—” I turned from the fire and raised my hand, dragging my fingers across his cheek. It was rough with stubble, slightly pink from the slap. I could feel his pulse thrumming beneath his skin. So fucking warm. And the way his scent bloomed when his heart started to race was just amazing.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. Please, do look.”

His jaw clenched, tight beneath the heel of my palm. He swallowed before raising his eyes to meet mine.

My breath hitched, my exhale shook.

Someone, a stranger, was looking at me. Seeing me. It’d been so long since I’d felt this solid, this real.

“What do you see?” I whispered.

The man scowled. “What?”

A spark of annoyance flashed through me, but I wanted something. Even if I wasn’t entirely sure what that was, I’d spent too long wheedling and trying to please someone who’d despised me to lash out at him again. Only honeyed sweetness would get me what I craved. “What do I look like ?”

He leaned back, scowling, stretching his neck to get a better look at me. I didn’t like that. The further away he got, the less I felt his warmth. “Well, you’ve got light blond hair, red ass eyes, freaky big teeth. You’re paler than a fucking cave fish.”

“Oh...” None of that was particularly good—just, freaky and pale. My chest ached. What had I expected? The sin would eat me from the inside out, she’d said. And I’d never been right to start. Not manly enough, not?—

“I like your nose,” the stranger blurted out.

I refocused on him, not daring to blink as I stared up at his face. “My nose?”

He nodded. “Very straight. Basically perfect. It’s a nice nose.”

“You think I have a nice nose?” I grinned. It was such a little thing, not romantic, but I would take what I could get.

I was not a rotten husk of a thing. I had a nice nose. Straight. Perfect .

“Uh, yeah.”

He had a nice nose as well. A bit crooked, with a bump like it’d been broken and healed. He was rough looking, all hard lines and masculine features. I wanted to taste his blood, how it’d burst across my tongue as his heart hammered in his chest like a frightened rabbit, almost too fast. “What’s your name?”

“K-Knox?”

“What else do you like about me, Knox?” I stepped closer, bumping against him until our chests touched. When I bent my knee and pressed it forward, it slipped between his legs and he stumbled back.

God, she was really gone. Not there to berate me for my hunger or tell me to get away from him, her voice a compulsion that drove me back even when I struggled against it.

I’d half expected to hear her unholy screeching from beyond. Sin, sin, sin , she’d cry.

But she was gone, and if my hunger was a sin or if it wasn’t, she was no longer in control of it.

“You’re so pretty,” he stammered, catching himself on a side table. “Handsome, I mean. I just—listen, my sister’s waiting for me, and I—I have to go.”

He shifted to the side, and I leaned over to stop right in front of him, blocking his escape. “I’ll be alone,” I said, frowning. “You can’t go.”

“I have to—” His eyes darted toward the open safe, the money, the door beyond it.

“I said,” I hissed, reaching out to grip his throat, “you can’t go.”

No, he was mine now. I could keep him.

There was no one in this world who could stop me.