Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(31)

How could he want to run away now, from so little?

“Well,” she said, “you can go if you want, I guess, but I can’t.”

“Won’t,” he corrected primly. “You can leave whenever you like. Amelie has said so, and as far as I am aware, she never countermanded that.”

“She said I could go alone. As in she insists that Michael, Eve, and Shane stay here. I’m not leaving them behind, especially not if you think it’s going to get dangerous. What kind of friend—what kind of girlfriend—would I be if I did that?”

“One with a sense of self-preservation,” he said, and gave her an off-kilter, fond smile. “And that would be so unlike you. You’re always caring about the strays and outcasts among us, myself included. You really are a very odd girl, you know; so little sense of what is good for you. Perhaps that’s what I find fascinating about you. Vampires, you know, have such an iron-strong sense of self-preservation; we are the ultimate narcissists, I suppose, in that we see nothing wrong with others dying to save us. But you—you are our strange mirror opposite.”

“Coming from you, I don’t know how to take that, and on the subject of strange and not at all appropriate, could you please stop dropping into my bedroom in the middle of the night?”

“Oh, did I?” He looked around vaguely. “I suppose I did. Sorry. Well. If you won’t leave this place, arm yourself heavily for as long as you stay,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere alone. And make alternate plans to flee when that becomes necessary.”

“Myrnin—you’re scaring me,” Claire said, and reached out. “Please, tell me what’s going on!”

He took her hand and raised it to his mouth in an old-fashioned gesture that made her skin tingle, especially when she felt the cool brush of his lips against her skin. His eyes were very dark in the dim light of her study lamp, and she didn’t think he’d ever looked more…human. Crazy, maybe, but so very human.

“I hope I am scaring you,” he said. “When things seem calmest, that is the time you should fear the most; it’s when you have the most to lose. It’s not your enemies who are likeliest to hurt you. It is, always, those you trust. And you have trusted Amelie too far.”

He hadn’t let go of her hand, and she was starting to feel flushed and awkward about it. “I’ve trusted you, too,” she said. And he gave her a sad, slightly manic smile.

“Yes, and that too is a mistake,” he said. “As you’ve known from the first moment you met me, I am not reliable.”

“I think you are,” Claire said softly. “I really do. Myrnin—please. Please don’t go away. You—you matter. To me.”

There was just a flicker of warmth, something, and for a moment she thought…But then Myrnin’s face shut down, and he let go of her hand. Where his fingers had touched hers, her skin felt ice-cold.

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s dreadfully unfair to say things like that when this is likely the last time we will speak, and we both know you don’t mean what you say. It’s pure selfishness that you want to keep me here.” His tone had a harder edge than she was used to hearing from him, and his expression was deathly still.

She felt an unexpected surge of anger. “Didn’t you just accuse me of not being selfish enough?”

“Don’t play at word games with me. I was a master of it before your country even existed.”

“You can’t just go! Where will you—”

“Blacke,” he said, cutting her off. “For a start. Morley and I do not get along well, but he and the quite-frightening librarian woman have built a rough approximation of a town where vampires are welcome. It will do until I gather resources to settle elsewhere more congenial. You’d do better to think of yourself. Without me to help protect you, you are likely to end up dead, Claire. I should regret that. You’ve been the least useless apprentice I’ve ever had.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say? I’m the least useless?”

It burst out of him in a furious, low-voice rush. “Yes, of course that’s all I’m going to say, because there’s no point in it, no point at all in telling you that I’m lonely, that it’s been so long since I could discuss books and theories and science and metaphor and alchemy and philosophy, and that is a desperately lonely thing, Claire. Even for someone who has killed to stay alive, there’s a point where life—where existence—just seems…worthless, without some deeper connection. Do you understand?”

She was afraid to, really, but she gulped down a deep breath, and said, “You’re saying that you care for me.”

Myrnin froze, staring at her. He really was amazing, she thought; when he had that light in his eyes, it was possible to see past the crazy behavior and clothing chaos and recognize him as just…beautiful. The longing in his face was breathtaking.

But he said, in a low voice, “Not as you would understand it. What I admire in you is…intellectual. Spiritual.”

She actually laughed a little. “You love me for my mind.”

He sighed. “Yes. In a sense.”

“Then stay.”

“And watch you torn apart between Amelie, Oliver, and this town? Helpless to stop it?” He shook his head. “Better I go.”