Between the Marshal & the Vampire(19)

"How so, Marshal?"

"Now you can deceive and prey on all the women you want, and no one can stop you."

"I don't prey on anyone, Marshal."

"Alright. Then we'll call it what it is: rape."

Mariel cringed, but Vellum shook his head at her, telling her not to interfere.

"I have never assaulted a woman nor will I ever," he told Clay. "Anyone I choose to feed from, be it a woman—or a man—submits willingly. I'd wager the majority would gladly volunteer again were they given the opportunity to do so."

"Because you use the thrall on them," Clay shot back. "You take away their will. That's assault."

"I don't remove will. I provide incentive. There is a difference."

"That's a load of horse shit."

"Except that it's true," Mariel spoke up firmly.

Clay stabbed a hand through his hair. "Mariel, you don't understand what he's doing to you. He's tricking you—"

"He's had opportunities to kill me, Clay, and he's only treated me…well." She flushed, but refused to back down. "Without him, we'd both be dead, killed by Beaufort's men."

"We'll be dead eventually, once he's through using us," he retorted.

"Wouldn't it be to my benefit to deposit you safely at Everton Fort where you will tell others of my magnanimous treatment and potentially change the opinion that men have of vampires?"

"Why would you care what we think of you?" Clay smiled mirthlessly. "You have nothing to fear from us. You can slaughter us wholesale."

"Would you kill your last cow just because you could?" Vellum asked simply. "Or would you recognize the value in keeping it alive? Not that I think of you as cattle. I would never partake of pleasure with cattle."

The comment deepened Mariel's flush, as did Vellum's meaningful and desire-laced glance at her.

"Why do you do it?" Clay's tone was resigned. "Why seduce when you only need the blood? Is it to humiliate? To prove you can do anything to us?"

"No," Vellum said sharply. His anger was the first real emotion that Mariel had sensed from him. "Such pettiness is beneath me."

Clay leaned toward him, as if sensing blood. "Then why do it?"

"Because loneliness is not solely the domain of men and women."

Never in her lifetime would Mariel have expected to hear a vampire admit to being lonely. The confession flew in the face of what little she knew about them, which was that they were creatures with cold, alien hearts. But what was it that Vellum had said when he'd first introduced himself to her?

I prefer the term vampire. Nightwalker sounds so very lonely, don't you think?

It could be an act to trick them into feeling sympathy for him. Possibly. But Mariel's gut suggested there was at least a grain of truth in Vellum's confession. Some essence of humanity still lurked within the vampire and it yearned for companionship.

Mariel tried to imagine what such an existence would be like, forced to sleep through the hours when humans were most active, wandering the night on your own, feeding from the only humans not tucked safely away in their beds, which meant drunks, the downtrodden, and prostitutes.

Yes, she could see how it would be lonely. For all that Vellum needed their presence alongside him simply to survive, she suspected that a part of him was glad for the company.

"Don't talk to me of loneliness when it was your kind that slaughtered a decent, kind woman," Clay said in a tone of voice that raised a chill on Mariel's skin.

"Slaughtered?" Vellum frowned and his consternation appeared genuine, as though he couldn't fathom such a thing. "Vampires don't make a habit of killing, and we're not inclined to drink from a human in a manner that would raise the ire of men. We're very aware of the delicate line we must walk when moving amongst you."

"What happened to her isn't going to happen to any other woman in Mountain Sky Territory while I can stop it," Clay declared, his voice deep and committed the way men's are when they've decided on a course they would follow come hell or high water. Mariel doubted that the Marshal rarely, if ever, made empty threats or promises.

"Whoever killed your friend was an ill vampire," Vellum insisted with annoyance in his voice that suggested that had the vampire been within reach, he would have personally throttled it. "There are some who don't take the change well, who become…mentally unstable. They give my kind a reputation that can only hurt us, so you can understand why I'd despise them as much as you do."

Clay grunted.

"Marshal…Clay, I apologize on behalf of the vampire who took your friend's life. That shouldn't have happened." Vellum studied the neck of his horse for several moments, his pale fingers combing restlessly through its thick mane. "I know something of your helplessness and frustration. When I was turned into this it was done against my will."

Mariel's hand flew to her throat, where Vellum had bit her. He shook his head, though he didn't turn to look at her.

"A turning requires several steps, including the ingestion of the vampire's blood. It takes intent and determination, and when a human is unwilling it is…messy." He grimaced. "It's not supposed to happen. Turning humans against their desires only makes them enemies, so we try to avoid that at all cost. But it was too late for me. My family—my two brothers and my father—hunted down the vampire who had turned me, seeking retribution. The vampire killed them all. My name is now a curse in the town where I was born. It may as well have been my fangs that tore my family apart."