Page 182 of Eternal Craving

“I intrigue you. My world offers mysteries that yours lacks, a freedom from the weight on your shoulders that’s so heavy, you find yourself daydreaming about alternatives.”

“You obviously have a death wish.”

I gave him a smile. “I find myself rather enamored with you. The feeling is of course mutual.”

“My men are outside waiting for my order.” Archer stared at me.

I picked up my bent spectacles. “Yet your thoughts say otherwise.”

I beamed at him, and he sighed in response, running his long fingers through his silvery-grey locks.

“What part did the Stone Masters play in the massacre?” I asked.

Archer’s expression changed.

“Your predecessors started the fire, didn’t they?” I asked. “They believed the fire would destroy disease-ridden London.”

“People were convinced that it was the cats and dogs in the city that were spreading the sickness. They slaughtered them immediately.” Archer’s voice was grim. “But it was rats carrying the virus. They’d wiped out their natural enemy. Disease became rampant.”

“Too young to be trusted with the entire truth?” I shook my head. “Not yet initiated into the old boys’ club?”

“The disease spread at an alarming rate, and yet your kind was unaffected.”

“That’s how they justified it?” I asked. “What is the age that a son is initiated into your order?”

Archer clinched his fists.

“Do you remember that first taste?”

Our gazes locked. There came a knock at the door, and then it opened.

“I’m all right.” Archer raised his hand insistently.

The door closed slowly.

He turned to me again. “What do you know?”

“That you’re planning on repeating history.”

“Who told you this?” His right eye twitched.

I remembered Felipe’s eyelid twitching like that. His expression had been still, like Archer’s, but his fear had shown in that reflex.

Archer reached inside his inner jacket pocket for the wooden stake he had hidden there.

“Now that’s impolite.” I raised an eyebrow.

Archer withdrew his empty hand and glanced at the door.

“You will not start this fire,” I said.

“London is overridden with rodents, and the disease continues to spread.”

“Again, you use this excuse to take more lives?”

“We will extinguish the disease.”

“Thousands of innocents will die.”