Page 50 of Dark Cravings

"Look at that. You actually listened," Castor said in his usual bone dry tone.

I was too relieved to see him to even care that he was being a sarcastic asshole. What else was new?

"You're going to let me go, right?" the vampire asked hopefully, looking like she was trying to shrink away and make herself as small as possible. "I did everything you asked. I brought you here. You promised."

Castor remained expressionless. "I didn’t promise you anything," he said, staring her down, unblinking. "You sold them out all on your own."

She opened her mouth, but only a strangled sound came out.

"Father de Leon, she was just turned," I began in spite of myself. "Would it really be so bad if we let her go? There are worse things out there, and you said it yourself, not all vampires kill people to—"

He silenced me with a look, and I swallowed hard. It wasn't that I had never seen him this pissed, but it was rare.

The vampire was visibly shaking. I felt sick to my stomach, but I already knew what he was about to do.

"Kill her," Castor said, proving I should never assume I knew what he was thinking. That was a deadly game.

"What?" I choked.

"No!" the vampire sobbed. "Please. Please, don't."

She was looking right at me, her red eyes bloodshot and brimming with tears.

"You heard me," said Castor. "I just took out an entire coven. You can’t handle one little vampire?"

"It's not that!" I hissed, even though he knew that well enough. "I just…"

"You what?" he challenged. "You believe whatever sob story she told you while I was gone, when you saw with your own eyes that she was about to rip apart a mother and her child?"

My throat grew tight as he spoke. So it was a test. He had wanted to see how gullible I was, and I had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. It just didn't change the way I felt. I knew she was saying whatever she needed to say to survive, but I also knew I would've done the same thing in her position. If that made me a sucker, so be it.

"I can't," I finally said through my teeth.

His gaze hardened, disappointment etched on his beautiful features, turning them hard and unforgiving. I hated letting him down more than just about anything, but I couldn't do this. Not even for him.

I had already taken so many lives. Innocent lives. But I had been a monster then, and I needed to believe that if I'd been in possession of myself, things would've gone differently. If I killed this vampire, it felt like I would be giving in to the darkness. I would be forced to admit that I really was the monster, and the monster was me. There was no separation between the two.

Castor continued to stare me down for an uncomfortably long amount of time, and the vampire suddenly took off running.

Before I could even think to move, Castor was on her, grabbing her from behind and drawing his blade across her throat. I watched, stunned, as her body hit the ground face-first. She was still alive, albeit bleeding profusely. He hadn’t decapitated her, and I wasn't even sure vampires could bleed out. Before I had the chance to find out, Castor raised his blade and plunged it directly into her heart from behind, twisting it. Her body convulsed with a strangled sound before she went still.

I took a step back. The world felt like it was shifting and wobbling around me.

Castor yanked the katana out of her back and came over to me, the blade still dripping onto the ground as he walked. The look in his eyes was so cold, it felt like it had frozen my soul solid, and I wouldn't have been at all surprised if he decided to wash his hands of me then and there. I wouldn’t even have been surprised if he had plunged the sword into my heart next.

Instead, he came to a stop a few feet away and shook the blood off his blade with a single flick of his wrist before sheathing it at his side. "You're a disappointment," he said, echoing the words his expression was already screaming. "You're the one who asked for this. You're the one who wanted to be a hunter."

I grimaced. "I know that, but—"

"Did you think it would be easy?" he interrupted. "Did you think it would be fun?"

"Of course not!" I hissed. "But I didn't think I'd be killing more innocent people."

"There is nothing innocent about that thing," he said, pointing at the vampire's corpse. "Did you notice the ring on her finger?"

I hesitated, forcing myself to look down. I had been avoiding looking at the body. As appetizing as I found flesh and blood in my wolf form, as a human, I was still ridiculously squeamish. I looked down at her lifeless hand pressed against the concrete next to her head, a pool of her blood already forming in the street. She wore a golden ring with some kind of strange seal on it. I didn't recognize it.

"What about it?" I asked. "What is that symbol?"