Page 64 of Crown of Death
His eyes rise up to mine and it sets my skin on fire. “Because I created themall.”
The words steal my breath. They’re too big. “What does thatmean?”
Cyrus looks away, observing the vampires before him, the Born and the Royal. “I told you I am old. So old I have no idea how many millennia or centuries have passedanymore.”
Tingles work their way up my arms, down the back of my neck, along myspine.
“I was always a curious man,” Cyrus continues to explain. “A man who wanted to understand everything. To see what changes could be brought through science. And I knew I could never learn everything I desired in the short amount of days I would roam thisearth.”
I feel it. Time. Like a tangible thing Cyrus has invited as a special guest to this ball. It rolls in, overwhelmingme.
“I became obsessed with my own immortality,” he continues. “And so, I created the cure. With magic and science. I became what I amtoday.”
Magic.Science.
“You made yourself immortal?” Iquestion.
Cyrus nods. “I was strong. Keen. I felt infinite andunstoppable.”
His hand curls into a fist. His jaw tightens and he watches as his knuckles turn white. “But I was cursed for my ambitious desires. I was no longer human. But now…I craved what pulsed through their veins. And my predator instincts, that science I had used, it made it soeasy.”
The image of him sinking his fangs into that woman’s neck flashes before myeyes.
“I am the first vampire,” Cyrus says. “The genesis of a newspecies.”
It’s incredible, really. If what he says is the truth. And every nerve in me, so aware and keen and on overload, says that itis.
“My wife,” he says, and the words nearly choke in his throat. His eyes drop down, go hazy. “She was at my side this entire time, but when I ended the first human life by draining him of his blood, she was afraid ofme.”
This.Thisis the pain I see buried so deep in the man besideme.
“She wanted me to find a way to reverse it. But I couldn’t.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to. I wanted her to join me. So that we could be together.Forever.”
The agony is all over every inch of his stiff, barely controlledexpression.
“In the end, I did not give her the option,” he says. “I gave her the cure while she slept. And when she woke, she was as Iwas.”
It makes me sick. To think how his poor wife must have felt when sherealized.
“What I did not know,” he says roughly. There’s anger in his voice. Malice. “Was that she was pregnant before I turnedher.”
An actual gasp slips from mylips.
Cyrus’ hand curls around the arm of the throne. He squeezes. It bendsfurther.
“Months later, she gave birth to a son,” he says. His voice is filled with bitterness and hatred. “And he was human. Absolutely human. We were trilled. So loving, so enthralled with this beautiful child. He grew andmatured.”
The bitterness in his voice grows thicker. “But that child was born with his own mind. He saw us, his parents, understood what we were capable of. He begged me to turn him on his thirteenth birthday and my wife and Irefused.”
No.
No. I don’t like the turn this story is taking. Not one bit ofit.
“He tried to convince us that we could use our abilities for so much more. That we could control the world if we wished. I saw the darkness in our son, but I refused to accept that we could not train it out of him. That we couldn’t love him back from thedarkness.”
I feel it. Thatdarkness.
“Soon after he turned eighteen, he died,” Cyrus says. My heart cuts off, as abruptly as the change in the story. “A horrible, unforeseeable accident. I carried my son back to my wife. And even though we had struggled with him so much, even though we feared how his mind worked, we grievedhim.”