Ashes (Book 2 The Kindred Series) (28 page)

Desperation seized hold of him. He
could not be the one that drove her behind that wall of
hopelessness and despair again as she simply waited to die.
“Annabelle was the oldest of seven children, a good girl who helped
her mother take care of her younger siblings. I met her at a barn
dance in Iowa.

“She was young, beautiful, and so very
innocent and sweet.” Cassie shuddered, her head bowed as she
squeezed her eyes shut. Devon clenched his teeth, his hands fisted
at his sides as he realized that he had just described Cassie. He
rushed heedlessly on, knowing that his next words might drive her
even further away, but he had to get them out.

“And I wanted to destroy all of
that.”

Her head shot up, her eyebrows drew
tightly together as she frowned at him. “I don’t
understand.”

No, there was no way that she could
understand what he had once been. He did not want her to, not
completely anyway. “I was a different person back then Cassie. I
wasn’t even a person. I was a monster. I lived to kill, to destroy.
I lived for the thrill of the hunt and the game.”

“Game?”

He sighed. “Yes, it was all a game to
me, and Annabelle was perfect for it. She had no idea about the
cruelty of the world, no idea of the pain that lurked within the
shadows. Annabelle was sweet and she was in love with Liam, a boy
just like her. And I wanted nothing more than to ruin that love. I
wanted her for myself, simply because I could not have her. At
first I tried to seduce her, tried to lure her away like I could
with any other woman. She refused my advances, which only increased
my interest, my intensity for her.

“I convinced myself that I was in love
with her. That I would never be happy without her. I became
obsessed with her, and the challenge that she represented. I was
used to getting whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it, and I was
going to have her.”

Cassie stared out the window; the tips
of her lashes were silvery in the moonlight. Her delicate jaw was
set firmly, her nostrils flared slightly. Though she remained
unmoving, he could feel the sorrow she radiated. “So what did you
do?” she asked quietly.

“I spent a month trying to lure her
away from Liam, but she was having none of it. Her mind and heart
were filled with dreams of their future, their children, and their
happiness. I hated him for it, and I was going to demolish it. No
matter what it took.” She looked back at him, her eyes questioning
but distant. “When it became apparent that she would have none of
me, I took her by force.”

Cassie’s eyes widened, her breath
inhaled sharply as she took a swift step away. The back of her knee
connected with the bed, her leg buckled slightly, but she managed
to stay on her feet. “Not like that Cassie,” he rushed on,
realizing how the words had sounded. “I changed her. I thought if
she became one of us she would want nothing more to do with Liam,
that she would want me. I thought it would be wonderful to shatter
her innocence, to turn her into a monster, to introduce her to the
evil that suffused the earth.

“It was to be my greatest
accomplishment.”

“I see,” Cassie said dully. “And once
she became a monster you grew tired of her?”

Devon ignored the twinge of pain in his
heart. He deserved her contempt, he hated it, but he deserved it.
He had been an awful thing back then. He had been one of the
cruelest, coldest vampires to walk the earth. He had relished in
the kill, savored in every one of his victims, and enjoyed the
dying light in their eyes. Though he had tried to make up for his
almost six hundred years of murder and mayhem, he knew that he
could never atone for the blood that stained his soul. A soul that
only Cassie had managed to ease the pain of.

“No. Annabelle never became a
monster.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered,
confusion swirling through her eyes.

“I didn’t either,” he admitted. “I
thought that once we were changed, that was it, we were all
monsters. I thought that the demon took over; I thought that we had
no choice but to destroy life, to toy with humans before killing
them. I never knew how wrong I was. Yes, Annabelle awoke with the
same intense hunger that all new vampires awake with, but she
didn’t go for humans.

“Somehow, she managed to keep enough
reason through her transition, and enough restraint, to control her
hunger. Something that even I, at my advanced age, had never done.
I just took and killed, and took some more. But that night
Annabelle did not kill, at least not humans anyway. I found her in
a field of cows, half the herd had been slaughtered before her
hunger was finally satisfied. Animals are enough to keep us going,
and strong, but it takes more of their blood to fully sate
us.”

Cassie nodded as she licked her lips
nervously. Her hands were clenching her arms so tightly that she
was leaving bruises upon her fair skin. A fact he was certain that
she was unaware of. Though he wanted to go to her, to stop her from
hurting herself, he remained where he was. She would flee from him
now. He knew that.

“I was mortified, and so unbelievably
stunned to find her there among those cows, crying.”

Cassie glanced at him, an eyebrow
lifted sharply in surprise. “Why was she crying?” she asked
softly.

Devon closed his eyes. The image of
Annabelle, sitting in that field, surrounded by dead cattle with
tears running down her blood streaked face was seared permanently
into his brain. Annabelle’s delicate shoulders had shook; her hair
had been caked with dirt and blood. He had been so conflicted, and
so confused as to what she was doing. He had not been able to
understand why she would choose such pitiful fare when there were
so many humans out there to enjoy. He had especially wanted her to
go for Liam, thinking how wonderful it would be to watch her
destroy the person she thought she loved so much. It would have
been the crowning achievement in his destruction of everything good
in the world.

“She was crying because she had killed
the cows,” he choked out, his voice hoarse as the tidal wave of
memories threatened to consume him. He tried not to think about the
person he had been back then, what he had done. Especially, what he
had done to Annabelle. What he had wanted to be his crowning
achievement had ended up becoming his ultimate downfall. At least
his downfall from the world of drudgery and murder.

“I didn’t know how to react to that. I
mean, who would cry over dead cows? And why was she feeding from
damn cows when there were thousands of humans to destroy? I simply
stood there, watching her, listening to her lament about the fact
that she had killed them, and that the farmer would not have enough
milk and meat for his children now.

“She confounded me, but I found myself
utterly fascinated by her. I had seen many many things in my long
life, but I had never seen a vampire cry over their kill. And I
sure as hell hadn’t ever seen a vampire show regret for their
actions. We didn’t know what regret was, or at least that’s what I
had believed.

“When she calmed down enough to
actually speak, she looked up at me, not with accusation and
hatred, but with a wealth of sadness and compassion. I had done
this to her, and she was sad for me!” Devon began to pace
restlessly again; his skin crawled with the memories assaulting
him. He hated the person he had been, hated the things that he had
done. Annabelle had been the worst thing he had ever done, but
without her, he wouldn’t be the person he was now. Without
Annabelle he would still be a monster, preying on the innocent, and
he wouldn’t have Cassie.

If he still did have her.

“I sat down beside her, unable to move,
the realization of what she was now was earth shattering to me. For
although I had inflicted her with the demon, her goodness had been
so pure, so true, that she was able to fight against the monster.
Even when she had been out of her head with her need for blood, she
still had enough control of herself not to murder, not to kill. I
had never met anyone like her, never met anyone with such a pure
heart. Until you.”

Cassie’s gaze blazed into his, tears
wavered in her eyes. She blinked them back, as a mask of hardness
settled over her refined features. “I hated myself for what I had
done to her. And I suddenly began to rethink my entire existence. I
had never been a good man when I was alive. I had been rich,
spoiled. I had taken what I wanted even then. As a vampire, I was
the epitome of a monster, and I had reveled in it. Until that
moment.

“We sat silently in that field, her
grieving the loss of her life, me grieving everything that I had
done. Grieving for all of the souls that I had extinguished, and
there were so very many of them. More than I ever want to think
about again. I’ve been trying to do right since that night, but I
can never truly wash the blood from my hands, from my
soul.”

He grew silent, pacing over to the
window. The moon was beginning to set; the night was quiet except
for a small fox creeping across Chris’s front lawn. “What became of
her?” Cassie asked softly.

“She taught me how to control my
hunger, showed me that there was goodness in the world, a fact that
I had never wanted to believe. It was easier to justify my actions
if I believed that everyone was just as evil as I was, whether they
were human or vampire. I began to feed on animals, determined to
try and change who I was. I had always loved a challenge, and this
was the biggest one I had ever accepted.”

“And did she grow to love
you?”

He laughed shortly, turning away from
the window. “No, Annabelle never loved me in that way, it was
always Liam. And as I began to change, I realized that I did not
love her. I never had. I was incapable of love at that point in my
life. All I was capable of was cruelty. If I had loved her, I never
would have done that to her. The more I got to know her, the more I
realized this. What she felt for Liam was love. It was real, and it
was true.”

A single tear slid down Cassie’s face,
her voice was filled with pain as the mask wavered. “And she lost
him.”

Devon managed a wry smile as he shook
his head, running his hand through his hair again. “No, I did do
one good thing back then. I convinced her to go to him, to approach
him slowly so as not to scare him. He had never thought that she
had just abandoned him and her family; he had always thought her
dead. It took a couple years of coaxing, but eventually she went to
him. I think, in the end, she went to him because of the pain that
Liam was in over losing her. He had never moved on, never found
someone else. Liam was only a hollow shell of the man that he had
once been.

“And when she went to him, when she
told him, he did not run screaming from her in horror. He did not
shun her or turn her away. He accepted her.” Cassie’s tears rolled
freely down her face now, Devon was certain she didn’t even realize
she was crying. “He turned for her.”

Her head bowed, her hair fell forward
in a golden shield. “That was when I truly realized what love was,
and that I did not have to be a monster. I had been feeding from
animals the whole time, but it was then that I realized that
although I was no longer human, I did not have to give into the
darker side of my existence. I had made the wrong choices when I
was changed, but now I could do something to try and make up for
it, and that was what I vowed to do.

“I stayed with them for a few more
years, until I gained better control of myself. For unlike
Annabelle and Liam, I knew the pleasure of human blood, and I knew
the rush of power that came with it. It was harder for me, but when
I felt confident enough to go on my own, I did so. They needed
their time together, and I needed to start trying to make amends
for my sins. I will continue to do so for as long as I
exist.”

Her heart was in her eyes as she stared
at him. “I didn’t know love until I met you Cassie. Annabelle
showed me the rightness of the world, but you brought me back to
life. You showed me what it was to put someone ahead of myself. To
be willing to die for someone. You showed me what it was to truly
love.”

A soft sob escaped her, her tears fell
more rapidly, but she didn’t move. Did not come to him. No matter
how much he wanted her forgiveness, her understanding, she was
still not ready to give it. No matter how hard it had been to tell
her about Annabelle, he knew there were even worse atrocities in
his past.

“And Elizabeth and Isla?”

Fighting the urge to groan, Devon’s
hands fisted as he resumed pacing once more. Her questions were
wandering closer to areas he did not want to tell her about. She
was getting dangerously close to Robert, the worst secret that he
harbored, and one he didn’t want her to have any knowledge of.
Ever.

“Elizabeth is the woman that changed
me.”

At Cassie’s sharp inhalation, he
returned to the window, keeping his back to her. How did he tell
her about the monster he had been, even before he had become a
vampire, and still look at her? He couldn’t.

CHAPTER
19

Cassie stared at Devon’s rigid back,
fighting the urge to go to him. Her hands itched to touch him,
longed to ease the pain and self loathing that he radiated. But if
she went to him now he would stop talking, and there would be no
other chance for her to learn about him.