Page 61 of Thrall
“Laurentius,” Lucy said. It wasn’t like him to dance around the point. “What are you saying?”
Laurentius pinched the bridge of his nose, and paused a second longer. It was comforting to know that even centuries-old vampires couldn’t help but delay the inevitable.
“Hiro is the only vampire I have ever made,” he said. “I intended for that to be true forever. But immortal life is interminably long. I’ve already broken most of the promises I’ve ever made to myself. What’s one more?”
Ah, Jillian would have said, in a moment like this.The penny dropped. It certainly felt as if something dropped. Lucy barely heard her next words over the ringing in her own ears.
“You’re offering to turn me into a vampire,” she said.
“Don’t say it out loud. I’m already running the risk of rethinking it.” Laurentius scrubbed violently at his brow. “Fucking Hiro. Had me playing messenger at every turn, probably knowing from the start that I’d give in. He’d turn you in a second, by the way. He’d be delighted to. But my blood is older. It would snuff out any of Ivan’s influence on you. And whatever my other failings, I would not be any risk to your free will. I’m far too busy to command any baby vampires.”
All Lucy could do was stare. On some level, Laurentius’s words weren’t quite gelling. And on another level, she heard them more clearly than she’d heard anything in days.
“Well?” he said. “I’m offering you a way out, here. Are you going to say anything?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Lucy said, completely honestly. “Or, um…I’m not really sure I understand. Why would you offer me this? You never really wanted to help me. You made that completely clear.”
Annoyance creased Laurentius’s face. It almost made Lucy laugh. Out of all the questions she could have asked him, was he not expecting her to ask why? But his scowl faded. And as he sank back into the chair, he looked thoughtful.
“If Hiro were here, offering to be your sire,” Laurentius said, “he would have painted you a beautiful picture. Eternal time, finally yours to use as you choose. It’s the picture I have endeavored to keep intact for him across these years. But he was a poet, in life. He used to write about how human life was beautiful because it ends. Even in this second life, with everything he wants—his art, his cadre of beautiful blood donors, me—I know he wonders if this unending life is still beautiful. The long nights weigh on him more than they used to.
“As for me…I’m making you this offer with the understanding that life grows colorless, after a time. This existence can be drudgery. Treading carefully to hide your tracks, or relying on the generosity of humans who cater to you for a chance at a colorless long life of their own. Your community will be tiresome old men like me, or murderous little brats like Ivan, and you will have no choice but to share a polite meal with them from time to time, because you are one of a shrinking few. And no matter how tedious the company, it will be necessary. It will become such a rare thing for you, to be understood.
“But,” he said. “I was a servant to a patrician when I was alive. I didn’t have the build for physical labor. So my master kept me in the house. He let his sons throw stones at me by day to see how fast I could run. By night, I sang for his guests on bleeding feet. My sire was a traveler. A stranger. He didn’t offer to turn me out of altruism. He recognized the rage in me. Wanted to see what I would do with it once I had power. But whatever his motives, he gave me a life within my control.”
His eyes unfocused. Settled on a fixed point in the distance, far away in time. “I don’t regret accepting that life,” he said. “I don’t think you would, either. That’s why.”
He didn’t rush her to speak. She didn’t think she would have been able to, in that moment. She felt everything she would have expected to feel at the idea—the horror, the anger, the revulsion. She’d only ever lightly sketched her life beyond college. A house, if she could ever afford one. A smart and funny wife. A job she didn’t really care about, some travel, a quiet death in old age. She hadn’t even figured out what she wanted to major in yet. To go with Laurentius would be to write all of that off.
But horror and anger and revulsion were not the only things within her. There was something else. Something that did not have a name so much as a temperature. It was a red-hot spark in the pit of her stomach. Not the kind that hurt. The kind that lit her up.
Her grandfather had died when the cancer had metastasized to his brain. He’d been hallucinating for days by the time he passed. Her grandmother had gone much quicker, though it hadn’t felt that way to anyone in the room. Her lungs were full of fluid. She had drowned on dry land.
And her father? The reason Jillian saw muggers and murderers and speeding cars around Lucy’s every corner? It wasn’t foul play, or a freak accident. It had been a pulmonary embolism. Jillian had studiously turned all that grief and fear outward, toward the world, but it had been his body that betrayed all of them. One clot, moving in the wrong direction, and he was gone.
Lucy knew better than most: There was no such thing as a quiet death.
Laurentius was still watching her, with as much patience as she’d ever seen from him. And even if he wasn’t as perceptive as Hiro, hewasin her mind. Surely he could feel some of what she was feeling.
“I…” Lucy swallowed. Her throat was bone dry. “I need to think about it.” She needed air. She needed to lie down. She needed to sleep, though that seemed less and less likely.
“You may,” he said. “Though I don’t think I need to remind you that you don’t have much time left to think.”
Lucy nodded. And for a second, that spark surged again. The lure of so much time.
But for the time being, she snuffed it out.
It was nearly impossible to get anything past Mila. But somehow, Lucy managed it. She’d left the library quiet, distracted, and more than a little woozy. But she had more than enough reasons to be all those things, so she’d more or less managed to play it off.
Though with Mila, one could never completely play anything off for long. So it was a relief to see her off to class and to excuse herself, once again, to Athena’s studio. She needed to think about something other than Laurentius’s offer for an hour or two. It was time to turn to a question that was nearly as difficult: what to say to Athena.
She supposed it wasn’tthatdifficult, in the end.Sorry for growling at you, it just kind of happened. But now that she was on her way, the apology felt particularly insincere. She was, after all, considering something that would scare Athena far more than a growl.
Her stomach roiled as she walked. She didn’t think Athena was afraid of her now, but when she thought about it, what reason did Athena havenotto be afraid? Lucy was starting to regret asking Mila to do the convincing for their visit to the library. Laurentius and Hiro had warned her that first day that their involvement might sow mistrust. Lucy had always thought that Mila would be the one she needed to worry about.
But that had never been true, had it? No matter how kind Athena was, no matter how genuine her desire to help, there had only ever been one safe person for her, and it was Mila. Lucy and Natalie were already interlopers. Lucy was already a threat. Athena didn’t have room in her calculations for another.
Lucy swiped into the radio station and fervently wished she could text Natalie. But she’d gone back to her dorm when the sun rose, and she hadn’t answered Lucy’s check-in text from that morning, so she was likely getting some real rest. Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if Natalie had done the smart thing and cut them all off.
