Page 16 of Unnatural Fate
“What’s the verdict this time?” Walter asked when he returned. He’d been invested in my saga almost as long as it had gone on.
“I threw him out.” It was close enough to the truth.
He raised a brow and leaned in to sniff me. “Color me surprised.”
I shrugged. “I’m tired of the back and forth.”
“Do you think he’ll ever be in a place to understand?”
I wet my lips and looked at the lights draped above the bar, twinkling in the low light. “I think he understands better than I do.” Walter’s expression turned skeptical, so I continued. “It took me a long time to find the information. Their kind guards it closely, but I was able to trace them back to the oldest cities on this continent. I found records as far back as the Aztecs. Their kind spanned a larger area and coexisted and traded with them.” I’d read so many forgotten scripts and ruins in languages long dead looking for answers. “I don’t know if they remember their history well enough to know to hide it, as your kind mostly wiped them out in those parts of the world during the early wars.”
“Vampires keep history better than the wolves. They’ve suffered too many losses to remember, and maybe it’s better that way. They hate us enough as it is.” He wasn’t wrong.
“I traveled extensively, to many places our kind wouldn’t dare show their face. Many places I’m surprised I wasn’t staked for stepping foot on.”
Walter laughed. “Brass balls on you.”
“When I want something, nothing stops me.”
“I know.” He bent and retrieved a bottle of Jack.
I stiffened and waved him off.
“You need to get laid.” Walter laughed and left the bottle sitting there, taunting me.
I put a hand over my eyes and rubbed my temples. “I did, and it wasn’t worth the heartache.”
“There are other warm and cold bodies that would jump at a chance, Vin.”
I waved him off. “I told you. It’s not the same. There will be nothing as satisfying ever again.”
“So you’ve said. Most of us aren’t blessed or cursed with a life bond…” He didn’t have to finish for me to garner his point. Those vampires who found themselves with bonds tended to be so obsessed with one another that no one else mattered for at least a century. Then they settled enough to be in public again. It was obscene.
We both knew I’d never have such a thing with Dominic.
“What did you find in all your research? Or did you set me up to leave me hanging?”
I pointed at the bottle of Jack. “I was going to tell you, and then you decided to taunt me.”
“You came into my bar reeking of dog.”
“Touché.” I grabbed the bottle and poured myself a drink. If I was going to smell like him, I might as well drink like him.
“And?”
“They come back as the humans do. The wolves used to bind souls by the blood to their tribe with lots of lost magic, at least in the texts I found. I’ve no idea if his pack does the same.”
“So there is a chance he’ll be reborn?”
“Yes.” I refilled my glass, deciding tonight would be the night I’d finally turn so much of my blood into alcohol, I wouldn’t be able to stumble home and finally take Walter up on the room in the back. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not ruling it out, but I’m also not willing to bank on it.”
“But how long?” Walter hit on the pertinent question.
Souls were as tangible as anything else in the universe. I knew that much to be true since souls were the electric connections in our brains.IfI believed that much, there had to be ways to control that energy like any other, but the process wasn't exactly provable.
And if anything made sense, the universe decided where the souls went.
I shrugged. There was no way to know.