Luther glanced briefly at Devon, his grey eyes weary as they met Cassie’s once more. “Not all of the time Cassie, only when it’s prudent.”
“Prudent?” she snorted. “Is that what all of our ancestors did, turn tail and run whenever things got hard?”
“Well no, of course not. But there aren’t enough Hunter’s left that we can risk your lives. We must keep you safe, the line must continue on.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Melissa threw up her hand, taking an angry step forward as her onyx eyes blazed with fury. “So what you’re saying is that we must be kept alive in order to continue the line? It has nothing to do with us? We’re just needed for breeding!? What freaking century is this!?”
Luther colored slightly, his glasses slid down his nose as he shook his head fiercely. “No, of course not! But you must understand how important it is that the line continues. How important it is that you are kept alive to kill other vampires. For there are others, it’s not just Julian. And although you cannot kill them all, you can get a lot. There are few left that are as powerful as Devon and Julian.”
He glanced at Devon who nodded sharply in agreement. Devon’s gaze was still weary and disgruntled as he watched Cassie intently. She shot him a dark look, aggravated that he had given Luther and her grandmother the leverage they needed to remove the three of them from town. “And what if you can’t stop him?”
Devon quirked an eyebrow; a flicker of amusement crossed his amazing features. “I can.”
She didn’t appreciate his cocky, arrogant demeanor. A fact she let him know with a fierce look that caused his amusement to fade. “How do you know that for sure?”
Devon’s eyes wandered over the room, doubt flickered across his features. He turned back to her, a steely resolve settling over his features. “I made Julian what he is, I can defeat him.”
The silence that followed his confession was profound. A pin dropping would have resounded through the room. Cassie was the first to recover. “What do you mean made Julian what he is?” she asked sharply.
His eyes were hard, distant as he swung toward her. He had already shut himself off in preparation for her turning against him. “Julian and I were once good friends, I helped to mold him into the vampire he is. He is nearly six hundred years old, we spent almost three hundred of those years traveling the world together, wreaking havoc wherever we went. I am the one that taught him the joy of the hunt, the torture, the mental anguish.” He paused for a moment, a muscle twitched in his cheek. “The pleasure that could be found in drawing out the kill.”
Cassie’s legs went to rubber; she sat limply on the couch. It had been too long of a night. Clasping her hands before her, she bent her head, uncertain how to deal with the turbulent emotions tumbling through her. What kind of a monster had Devon been? What had he done to people? She shuddered, trying hard not to fall apart as her hands tightened.
“I see,” Luther, the first to recover after the shocking revelation, whispered the words.
Cassie lifted her head slowly, trying hard to breathe through the constriction clenching at her chest. “Why?” Cassie mumbled.
His eyes were rock hard as he met her gaze. “Because I could. What I am now is not what I was then. I cannot take it back. I cannot change my past, no matter how much I may want to.”
She stared at him for a moment longer, her mind tripping over his words as she tried hard to assimilate everything he was telling her. There were many things that he could not change, she was beginning to realize. So many things. Cassie took a deep breath, trying hard to keep control of her wildly swinging emotions.
“Alright, fine, you were once great friends: you think you can defeat him…”
“I know I can.”
Chris shot Devon an angry look, aggravated at being cut off. “But we are still not leaving.”
“Chris…”
“No Luther, we made the decision to stay, and we are sticking by it. Devon himself said that he could not be everywhere at once. He will need our help. If even one person dies because we left, then we would be responsible for that death. That is something that I cannot live with, and I’m sure that Cassie and Melissa can’t either. And I sure as hell hope that you can’t.”
Luther gaped at him for a moment, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “No, of course not!” he declared angrily.
“I don’t want you here.” Devon’s hands fisted as he stared hard at Cassie. “He’ll come for you the most.”
Her eyebrows shot up, her mouth parted in surprise as confusion and fear surged up. “Why?”
Sighing wearily, he ran a hand through his already disheveled black hair. “He’s smelled your blood; he’s already been denied what he wanted, when he wanted it. Plus, he knows that you are mine. He’ll want to destroy that.”
Though she thought she should be offended by the “you are mine statement”, she was oddly thrilled by it. If any other boy had ever said that to her, she would have laughed in their face and walked away. But with Devon, she was his, completely, utterly, and for as long as she could have him. And as much as she was his, she hoped that he knew that he was also hers. Their bond could not be severed; it ran deeper than the Mariana Trench. She had never thought that something like this could exist. But it did, and it was permanent, right, and so very true and real.
“Why?” She felt like a parrot, but it seemed to be the only word she could get out.
“Because Julian wants to destroy anything good and right in the world, he hates it all. And he hates the fact that I have turned against my nature. He wants me to be the way that I once was.”
Cassie shuddered. “Like him?” Melissa asked quietly.
Devon hesitated briefly. “Worse,” he said flatly.
A thick silence descended upon the room. Though the answer was blunt, Cassie sensed the regret, sorrow, and pain behind the word. “Why did you change?” she asked softly.
“That’s a long story.”
Cassie wasn’t so sure if it was a long story, or if he simply didn’t want to talk about it. Either way, she wasn’t going to push him. She already had enough information to digest without having more heaped onto her. “Well that’s all fine and good, but we’re not leaving,” Cassie said firmly. Devon’s eyes were hard and fierce, anger flashed through them as he turned toward her, a muscle twitched in his jaw. “You won’t change my mind, or theirs, so don’t argue with us.”