The Vampiric Housewife (34 page)

    
Ethan gave a small smile. “Elaina. She’s the housekeeper. They miraculously reappear cleaned and pressed in about two hours.”

    
She nodded taking a couple more steps into the room, her eyes browsing his bookshelves. Lots of classics carefully cataloged by author and year. There was also poetry ranging from Donne to Frost to Dickinson. Anthologies of history: American, Irish, Italian, Egyptian, and more. Then there was a section dedicated to vampires: Byron, Stoker, Rice, Meyers.

    
“You can borrow one if you’d like. Humans have some pretty interesting ideas on us.”

    
“You’re quite the reader.”

    
“You have to spend eternity doing something.”

    
There were also clay sculptures on the shelves, miniatures of classics like
The Discus
Thrower
,
The Thinker
,
Venus de Milo
and more. She assumed these were his work as well. He had mastered the human body.

    
“You’re quite the artist too.”

    
He shrugged. “You can only read for so long.”

    
“Amelia’s an artist. She’s quite good, I think. I never really had much talent for drawing.” She sat on the edge of his bed. “I always wanted to be an actress.”

    
“Still can. Look at Alessandro.”

    
She laughed lightly, but it wasn’t a light laugh, it was the verge of hysteria. “He said we could live here.”

    
“That sounds like Alessandro.”

    
“So me and my children just move in here? Then what? I fulfill my girlhood dream? On what stage? What do my children do? Who educates them? It feels like I’m going from one manufactured world to another.” She didn’t know why, but she felt tears bubbling beneath her exterior.

    
He moved from the desk chair and sat next to her on the bed. “No. You have choices here. If you don’t want to live here, don’t. Once we neutralize Venjamin, the world is yours. Alessandro and Jonathan will give you the tools and skills to survive.”

    
“Once we neutralize Venjamin. You make it sound so easy.”

    
“We both know it’s not going to be.”

    
She shut her eyes and breathed in deep. “I just met Alessandro and Jonathan last night and I know more about them than I know about you.” She felt as if she was tiptoeing on dangerous ground. She didn’t know if it was because she was sitting in a man’s room, a man who was not her husband, wearing nothing more than a robe, or if it was Ethan himself that was the danger. Either way, she knew she wanted to continue on. She wanted to know this man. And she didn’t care if it was right or wrong, safe or dangerous.

    
He shifted and put some space between them. “There’s nothing to tell.”

    
“How old are you?”

    
“Ninety-two. Not counting my human years.”

    
“Do you drink human blood?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“Why do they call you Thanatos?”

    
“I’m guessing you already know,” he said, a hardness entering his voice.

    
“He was the Greek god of death.”

    
“You like to read too.”

    
“Venjamin gave us a good education in Sangre Valley. At least on some subjects. Why do they call you Thanatos?” she reiterated.

    
“Because I’m a vampire.”

    
She stared at him with her large, intense violet eyes. With those eyes on him, he knew he would have to answer her.

    
“Vampires have different relationships with humans. Jonathan, for instance, buys into the symbiotic relationship. Gabriella is his human. She willingly lets him feed off of her and he does not take her life. They both benefit from the relationship.”

    
“What in the world does she get out of it?”

    
He smiled, a little nastily perhaps. “For a human, if we drink their blood slowly, it’s like an orgasm.”

    
She blushed despite herself. “So are they a couple?”

    
“He feeds only off of her. She lets no other vampire feed off of her. Beyond that, I don’t know. It’s their business. Most symbiotic relationships are romantic. Other vampires prefer to sneak bites of unsuspecting humans. This is Alessandro’s taste. He picks up a girl—or a guy—in his club, seduces them, and takes a taste. They’re drunk or high and generally don’t notice or at least don’t remember. Others drink donated blood. Others will only kill corrupted people, criminals, killers. Some like them young and beautiful. Some like only the innocents. Some just like the hunt or the fight.”

    
“And you?”

    
“None of the above. I drink only from the already dying,” and he nodded up at his wall of artwork. She carefully looked up to examine the pictures. Many of the human figures were homeless men and women passed out against buildings or huddled around a bonfire, paper-bagged bottles in hand. There were skeletal hookers on street corners and junkies passed out in abandon buildings with needles still in their arms. All wretched souls in pain. “That’s why they call me Thanatos.”

    
She nodded, her eyes still on the wall’s artwork. She noticed one woman’s form repeated, her sketches often finished. She was petite and young with dark almond eyes, long black hair, a laughing smile. Her body danced without inhibition, laughed with tears, slept like an angel, lied naked unabashed, twirled in flowing skirts like a gypsy, the same woman again and again. Valerie knew better than to ask who she was. She turned her eyes back to Ethan who was watching her almost daring her to ask.

    
“Why the dying?”

    
“They taste better.”

    
“Don’t joke.”

    
“I’m not.”

    
She stared at him not believing him.

    
“Do you condemn me too? Like you do your husband? All because I drink from humans.”

    
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I don’t know what I even am. Last night I had it explained to me better than ever before, and it only confused me. I killed a human to save Charlie’s life. A man who stopped to help me. I have no right to condemn anyone.”

    
Sensing no judgment from her, only her own guilt, he finally looked away from her, ashamed.

    
“How did you become a vampire?” she asked.

    
“You want my maker story?”

    
“Yes.”

    
It had been a long time since he had told this story to anyone. It still passed painfully from his lips, but he found himself wanting to tell her. He would have to start with the story of his human life first. How hard it was to believe that he had been human at one time. “My parents were immigrants from Ireland. They settled in Detroit, Michigan. At that time not a lot of people wanted to hire the Irish. My dad did odd jobs, drank a lot. He was a happy drunk most of the time, only abusive when money was really tight. He loved my mum madly, but had women on the side. My mum was a quiet woman, unaffectionate to both her husband and her children. She had given up on life a long time ago. In Ireland she had dreamed of being a singer. America had pummeled that dream. We kids loved for her to sing us to sleep but it was a rare treat. She cleaned rich people’s houses all day and had little energy left over for us. I had an older brother Trevor who was my best friend. He was a risk taker, big talker, liked the drink and the women. Ended up in prison for gambling, distributing alcohol, and petty theft. My two younger sisters, Nancy and Ellen, were hard workers but were tired of working hard. I couldn’t blame them. They married the first two men to come along. Nancy with a low life gambler, Ellen with a doctor. Then there was Johnny and Kelly. I didn’t know them, not really. They were just kids when I left.

    
“Me and Trevor wanted excitement, adventure, and fast easy money. Trevor knew a guy who could get us into a moonshine smuggling scheme from Canada. This was during Prohibition. As long as we remained small time, the gangs left us alone. And as long as we paid our bribes, the police left us alone too. It was nice having money for the first time in our lives. Trevor got too greedy though. He stopped greasing the right hands and was arrested. Once he was behind bars, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life or myself. Spent a lot of time at the speakeasies that I had once delivered to. Drowned myself in liquor.

    
“One night this mysterious girl materialized mesmerizing all the men in the room. Out of all them, she asked me to dance. I had never seen anyone like her before. She was foreign. Even though she was immensely pale, she looked Latina. Small, barely five feet, every movement was a dance. She had these huge, dark almond eyes and long black hair that she always wore loose. She asked me why I was so sad. When I told her she laughed at me, told me I was silly, and that she could make me happy. I believed her. She would only meet me in the bars and never during the day. She refused to tell me what she did for work or anything about her family. All day I would sit on edge counting the seconds until the sun set and I could see her again. I ached for her as if I was going through a drug withdrawal. I called her my Snow White because she was so pale. She hated it. I was madly in love with her. Then one night she asked me if I’d spend eternity with her. I told her that I loved her and that I would marry her that very second if that’s what she wanted. She smiled mischievously at me and told me that she had something better in mind. That’s when she bit me.” He paused for a moment. “After the initial shock, it wasn’t so bad. I really would get to spend forever with the one I loved.”

    
“What was her name?” Valerie asked softly.

    
He looked up at her as if he had just woken up from a dream. “Malia.”

    
“Where is she now?”

    
“Dead.” His voice went cold and hard, detached.

    
“I’m sorry.”

    
“Vampire hunters cornered us one night. It was my fault. I was too happy. My guard wasn’t up like it should have been. I hadn’t realized that we had been followed. They knew what they were doing. No holy water or Christian prayers. I watched them stake her.”

    
“Ethan, I’m so sorry.”

    
“We only had thirty, forty years together. Malia believed that we had souls and that one day when we died for real—she never did believe in immortality—we would be reborn in new bodies and find each other again.”

    
“That’s one theory that I do like.”

    
“It’s a delusion,” he said standing up.

    
“Is that how you got your scars?”

    
“No.”

    
She could tell that that was a story she was not going to get tonight.

    
“Can I ask you something now?” he asked.

    
“Okay.”

    
“What happens when we get Charlie back?”

    
She stared up at this massive man with his hard blue eyes and heartbreaking story and knew he really wasn’t asking about her husband. He was asking about them—Ethan and Valerie. “He’s the father of my children. He will always be part of my life. And after everything Alessandro and Jonathan explained . . . I can’t hate him like I did. He was a victim just like the rest of us. But we never had what you and Malia did. I’m done pretending.”