Love.

Evie's eyes closed at the thought, her own treacherous confession replaying in her head.

How could she have said that to him? How could she have even thought it?

How could she feel it?

She'd risen to her feet after her indefensible admission, backing away from Walt. He hadn't made a move to stop her, hadn't said anything to her. He'd merely watched as she'd begun her agitated pacing once again, moving in aimless circles around her apartment, his expression one of pity mixed with a maddening indulgence.

She would've preferred naked triumph or gleeful cruelty. Either would've been a better fit for the monster she'd declared him to be.

Evie paced even still, fingers curled into her palms. She barely registered the bite of her nails into her flesh as she drifted from the living room to the kitchen and back again. She imagined that unlike Walt's sympathetic expression, her own was a mixture of panic and denial, but she tried not to dwell on what she must look like to him as she worked to maintain her composure. To keep herself from crumbling to the floor.

To keep herself from collapsing under the weight of the emotion Walt had forced her to acknowledge she felt.

Love.

Could she really be that fucked up?

Evie didn't have to look at Walt to know he was still studying her. She could feel his icy blue eyes on her, drinking her in, cataloging her expressions, her every breath. She wondered if he could hear the thudding heartbeats which ached within the depths of her chest. Breathing deep in a weak attempt to dull that pain, she turned her back to Walt, unclenching one fist so she could rub her hand over her breastbone.

The motion did nothing to lessen the pain in her chest, but the feel of her heart pounding against her palm reminded her that she was alive.

Would she remain so if the Lord of New Carfax Abbey had his way?

Admittedly, Evie didn't understand a lot about vampirism, and what she'd found during her months of study in Columbia's library had amounted to little more than superstition and folk tales. So much of what she'd read had been proven false before she'd even cracked the first book. The evidence provided by her own experience made most assertions about sunlight, crucifixes, and cold, pale skin laughable. She also suspected the insistence that creatures such as Walt required an invitation to enter a home was more rooted in a very human reluctance to admit vulnerability than in reality.

She understood very well that men preferred to console themselves with comfortable lies rather than accept hard truths. Especially when those truths meant surrendering to utter hopelessness or recognizing their own weakness.

And hadn't Walt been seated comfortably in her club chair when she'd returned from the gallery tonight? Unless she was suffering from a bout of amnesia, she hadn't granted him entry. No, he'd simply waltzed in and made himself at home.

The preponderance of the lore Evie had studied suggested Walt was somehow dead, or undead, whatever that was supposed to mean. But since the preponderance of lore had also turned out to be complete nonsense, and her own observations indicated he was very much alive, she was left grasping at straws as she tried to understand his nature. And without knowing that, how could she know what danger he posed to her?

Besides the danger of him ripping her throat open and drinking her blood as she lay dying, of course.

But then again, any man so inclined could represent that exact danger, to her, or any woman; the danger of stealing her life with his bare hands. She couldn't pretend that such a threat was unique to Walter De Ville. It was shared among all men of violence and nebulous morality.

Evie stopped pacing, shoulders sagging and head tilting back as her eyes fluttered closed. "Jesus Christ," she sighed, the soft, disgusted utterance spoken to the ceiling. Was she really trying to excuse him as being no more menacing than any other man she might chance to encounter?

Goddamn it, Evie, you watched him toast those elitist fucks with a goblet full of an innocent woman's blood, she growled inwardly at herself. Don't you dare try to minimize his ruthlessness.

It wasn't her resolve to remember Walt's sins through the proper lens that had Evie snapping her eyes open and spinning around, but the slow prickling she felt creeping up the backs of her arms and neck. Walt had risen, silently, and moved to stand behind her, looking bemused and disarmingly benign, with his hands in his pockets and his eyebrows raised ever so slightly. His sudden proximity made her gasp and step back in surprise.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, trying to sound assertive and imposing. She imagined the way her breath barely wheezed up her throat as she spoke, causing her words to be delivered in a sort of breathless hiss, undermined her attempt with stunning completeness.

Walt tilted his head to the side, his eyes flicking between her mouth and throat. "Trying to decide if a kiss would soothe you or scare you." His tone was careful and low as he spoke, the words lapping against her like languid waves rolling to greet the lakeshore.

She could stand on the edge of that lake, sunlight caressing her face and shoulders, and let those waves cover her feet and tickle her ankles endlessly. There was joy in that, and a contentment she longed for. There was belonging. There was safety…

No.

Walter De Ville was not, could never be, safe.

"It would infuriate me," she retorted, and she tried very much to mean it.

"Undoubtedly," he chuckled, "but who would be the cause of your ire? Me, for kissing you? Or yourself, for craving it?"

"You think I crave your kiss? Are you really that arrogant?"

"Are you really so petulant that you'd deny it?"

He was doing it again, calling her a brat.

Evie huffed. "You make it easy to despise you."

The way he smirked at her when she said that should've been enough for her to step into him and slap his face, but she was too fascinated by the way his narrowed gaze seemed to pierce right into the very heart of her to even consider such a response.

"Perhaps I do, draga mea," he said, "but in spite of that, you can't quite bring yourself to do it, can you?"

It wasn't really a question, and so she didn't attempt to give him an answer. As though he took her silence for agreement, he moved to her, pulling his hands from his pockets, and using them to frame her face. He stared down at her a moment, then slowly, slowly, slowly, he lowered his lips to hers, moving with the patience of a predator stalking his prey.

And like prey, she stood frozen, pulse thrumming at a speed which caused her head to swim and her breath to hitch.

Walt kissed her softly at first, his mouth barely brushing hers, and when he pressed his lips more firmly against her own, the stiffness bled from her. Evie felt the way she imagined a patient must when a nurse administers an injection of morphine—a loose warmth traveled from her neck to her toes, her head filling with cotton and light. When Walt used his tongue to tease her mouth open, there was an alarmed pricking in the back of her scalp, like that sudden awareness of having forgotten something important, but not having the faintest clue what it is. The unease was washed away completely by the feel of his long fingers sliding around the back of her neck as he nibbled gently at her bottom lip.

He pulled back, gazing down at the way her eyes flickered open only halfway as he did, then whispered, "Soothe, it seems."

And maybe he was right. But the kiss had scared her, too. Or at least it did when Evie forced herself to think of the implications. Not of the kiss itself, but of her response to it. It was too easy to fall into Walt's embrace, under his spell. It was too easy to feel all the love and lust and tenderness, but none of the risk.

None of the revulsion she should.

But maybe that want of him, that craving he'd accused her of having, was just an echo of an earlier sentiment. She'd thought that before, that the emptiness she felt when she'd thought him dead, was built on a weak reflection of the feelings she'd had before she'd known him for who he was. For what he was. Was that still true? Now that he was here, solid flesh she could touch and hold and kiss, were her feelings just ghosts of the lie she'd lived for a mere blink in time?

Or was there more to it?

There had been times in the past when Evie's arms felt almost bruised by Walt's absence, as if her inability to embrace him elicited a crying ache in her bones. But he was here now, real and alive, and though her mind careened and spun, her bones nearly sighed in relief.

The feeling was so intense, so undeniable, so physical, it made it too easy to forget what he was, and what he wished to make her into.

But what was that, exactly?

She supposed that was as good a distraction as any. Discussing the realities of Walt's… condition… appealed to her far more than facing the fact that she was somehow in love with a man (was he a man, really?) who was capable of indescribably monstrous things.

Evie pulled free of Walt's grip, and he let her, watching her stalk toward the multi-paned windows which lined one wall of the living area. She placed her palms flat on a sill, bracing herself against it, casting her eyes upward toward the strip of sky she could see between buildings. She stared at the place where the stars should be, their presence masked by the ceaseless glow of the city lights.

"Are you alive?" she asked quietly.

He gave a wry laugh. "How do you define life?"

"Does your heart still beat?"

"Yes. Have you never felt it?"

Had she? She couldn't recall.

"How… how did this…" She turned, finding him still standing in the middle of her living room, facing her. "How did you…"

"Become what I am?"

Evie swallowed, then nodded. "Were you… made? The way you tried to make me?" The question was hesitant, and hoarse.

"I was made, yes, but not in the way I will make you."

Not in the way I will make you.

The certainty in his tone, the inevitability, caused her to shiver, though she did her best to mask the response.

"Then… how?"

Walt sighed. "Does it matter? Will it make any difference to you?"

"I…" Evie shrugged, and it was a small, uncertain gesture. "I don't know. Maybe." She folded her arms over her chest. "If this was done to you, against your will, or if… if you chose it, somehow…" She stopped for a moment, her gaze coming to rest on his eyes. She tried to guess what was behind them, but Walt remained as unreadable as the sky she'd been staring at only a few moments before. "There's a difference. I think that might mean something." Who would choose to become a monster? That was the choice she couldn't make. Despite the power, the wealth, the freedom from sickness… Even after watching her mother die, even after all the grief and despair and pain, she couldn't choose to armor herself against it with the misery of others. And she couldn't love a man who had.

"I did choose this…" he said.

Shit.

Evie waited for her disappointment to drain away the feelings she had for Walt.

It didn't.

Love. It was there. All the reluctance and regret, all the morality in the world didn't kill it.

Shit.

"…but I didn't understand what it would mean at the time I chose it," he continued.

That drew her up short.

"What do you mean?"

Walt breathed in and out, reaching one hand around to rub the back of his neck. The gesture was so entirely human, Evie's brows pinched in as she watched him.

What should she make of this monster and his gentle kisses and sighs and affable body language? How much was natural and how much was practiced? What was genuine and what was merely costume meant to deceive the mortal world?

"I mean, when I lay bleeding in the mud, death crowding my vision at the edges, I cried out to God."

"Just as dying men have done since the beginning of time," she murmured.

Walt shook his head. "No, not just as others have done. Those men cried out in desperation. They begged for succor, for mercy and relief. For favor. Some begged for their lives, others for forgiveness so they might enter the kingdom of Heaven."

Evie stared off, trying to envision Walter's life at the moment he'd faced death, when he wasn't Walter De Ville at all, but Vladislaus Draculea. "But not you?"

"No."

She found she was drifting toward him and stopped herself by gripping the back of the chair he'd been sitting in earlier. "So, what did you beg for?" Had he asked for this existence? This blood hunger and strength and unnatural long life?

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" Her expression declared her skepticism.

"I didn't cry out in desperation, but in rage. I had no intention of entreating God for anything, only to blaspheme. To call every curse out to Heaven I could think of, and to lay them all at His feet. I wasn't frightened by death, only angered."

That was a sentiment Evie could understand very well. Hadn't she cursed death and cancer and everything in between as her mother lay gasping in a hospital bed during those last days? Hadn't she been so pissed off that she could barely think straight? She'd had to grit her teeth to keep from screaming at everyone around her.

"You were dying, and you were angry with God for allowing it."

"I was angry at the betrayal!" Walt's voice was sharp as he spoke, his hands curling into fists at his sides. It was as though even now, centuries later, the memory still incensed him. Evie had the notion that if they'd been seated across from one another at her table, Walt would have banged his fist against the top, causing the dishes on it to rattle. "To raise me so high only to let me fall so far, to watch me wallow in blood and mud, surrounded by enemies…"

"People die, Walt. It's not fair, but that's how it is. Good people. Bad people. We all die."

His mouth reshaped itself into a smirk, but some of the anger remained behind his eyes, causing them to glitter darkly as he looked at her. "But we don't, Evie. I don't." He strode over to her, taking her by her hands and guiding her around the furniture until they were seated next to one another on her sofa. "And you," he half-whispered, still holding her hands in his, his knees angled so they nearly touched hers. "You won't, either."

She was still struggling to unravel the how, even though Walt had given her a glimpse into the why of his existence. His earnest vow to stop death from ever claiming her was a step too far for her in that moment and so she brushed it aside.

"You cursed God, and so he cursed you?" she guessed. Even as she said the words, she rebelled against the idea behind them.

Evie's religious beliefs had always been something of a muddle, a mix of the acceptance of the wisdom in parables but a rejection of their preternatural inspiration. An old white man with a beard and robes setting the rules for the world had never felt authentic to her, but when her father died, the idea that everything would just stop for him, that he would become nothing, had also felt wrong. As a grown up, she might've looked back at her genuine belief that her father watched over her and her mother after his death as a common coping mechanism. But then her mother too had died, and there was no way she could accept that someone so good, so consequential, would simply wink out of existence and be gone forever.

If she had accepted it, she imagined she would be as angry as Walt, angry enough to curse a god to whom she'd never given much thought.

And so it was that Evie believed in an afterlife, a plane of existence separate from her own, even if she doubted the existence of its creator.

But here was Walt, claiming it had been God himself who had transformed him from Vladislaus into someone else entirely. Something else.

Could that even be possible? Could a creature with such profane appetites, a creature who had spent more than half a millennia delighting in the most egregious sins, have been shaped by the most sacred of hands?

Was Walter De Ville, the Son of the Dragon, of a perversely divine origin?

"I cursed God, thinking He might strike me dead for my hubris, but not caring." Walt looked at Evie, his mouth set into a hard line at the recollection, but then it curled up, just a bit at the edges, into something that was almost a smile. "Instead, He cursed me in return."

"I've never really believed…" Evie cleared her throat. "I mean, I didn't grow up religious or… anything."

"Whereas I was steeped in the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy from earliest childhood. Devout and…"

"Devout?" she snorted, one eyebrow raised. "A man whose name the history books all follow with 'the impaler' was a devout Christian?"

Walt waved his hand dismissively. "Perhaps you've heard of the Crusades?" His tone was as close to condescending as it had been all evening. "I am certainly not the only warrior from history who also built churches and prayed. Besides, I bought my indulgences with gold, which the archbishop and the patriarch were only too happy to accept."

"Okay, well, I'm not sure if I should be comforted or disgusted that not much has changed over the centuries when it comes to hypocrisy in religion."

"No worries, darling, it's been hundreds of years since I've bothered to seek absolution for my transgressions."

"Particularly for transgressions you have every intention of committing again." Her look was full of censure. "And really, Walt, I'm not sure if bragging about reveling in your misdeeds is really any better than bribing the church for forgiveness."

Walt scoffed, then leaned back, jaw working. "Honestly, Evie, you're not being fair."

"I'm not being fair?" she laughed with bitter amusement. "How am I being unfair to you, Lord De Ville?"

"I feel as though anything I say invites your criticism. You don't like that I followed the tenets of my religion, but you judge me for later rejecting them. You don't like that I fed on innocents, but you aren't satisfied with my pledge to refrain in the future. You don't seem to like who I was, but you disdain what I've become. What exactly is it that you would have of me? Please tell me. I'm genuinely baffled."

She was surprised how much his rebuff stung her. Her spine stiffened. "What makes you think I want anything from you?" she snapped.

"Oh, darling," he chuckled, leaning toward her, and gripping her chin in one hand. His laughter died and he pinned her in place with a hard stare before murmuring, "You want everything from me, you're just too frightened to admit it, even to yourself."

Evie's bubbling frustration boiled over at his words. She was angry at him for recognizing what she felt, and for voicing it, when the very idea of it mortified her.

How dare he say things out loud she couldn't bring herself to admit, even in her own private thoughts?

Her lip curled and she seethed, "I hate you!"

"We both know that's not true," he said in his low, graveled tone. "Here, let me show you."

Before she could object, his nose was pressed against the shell of her ear as his teeth lightly pinched the lobe. Evie barely had time to register the goosebumps prickling her skin before Walt's lips found the angle of her jaw, her neck, and the notch at the base of her throat. At the feel of his broad palms traveling up her sides, she gasped, and then his mouth was on hers, kissing her with a ferociousness that recalled their time at New Carfax, when they'd slept together after a fight. When he tore his mouth from hers only to press hot kisses against her bare shoulder, she couldn't help but groan.

"Oh." Her eyes were closed.

She felt him sigh into her flesh, and then his grip on her gentled and fell away. Still, she could feel his fingers pressed into her ribs where he'd just been holding her, even as he put some distance between them, rising from his seat and moving to the other side of the coffee table.

"Walt…"

"Evelyn, it's late."

She gave a short laugh. "Since when does that matter to you?"

"It doesn't. But you're tired. You've had a long night, and you have a lot to think about already. I'm not sure that it's productive for us to continue just now and…"

"Productive?" Evie was incredulous.

"There's more to say," he told her.

"So, say it, Walt!"

He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes heavenward, hands slipping back into his pockets. After a moment, he turned his gaze to her. "Evie, I would gladly talk to you all night and into the morning if I thought you would hear me. Or, if you grew weary of talk, I'd hold you through the sunrise, and the sunset after that, if that was what you wanted."

"But?"

He huffed a small breath in and out. "But I can feel the resistance you're putting up, not because you want to, but because of some misguided sense of obligation you have to oppose me."

"That's not what this is, Walt."

"Oh? Then tell me, my love. What is it?"

It was Evie's turn to blow out a breath. She leaned forward, hands steepled at her knees, and her gaze landed on the surface of the coffee table and softened. She thought a moment, trying to conjure up the words to express everything that swirled in her head just then.

"Being with you," she began slowly, then chewed her lip as though envisioning just that scenario, "wouldn't be like being with anyone I've ever known."

"Most assuredly," he agreed, and there was a wicked edge to his tone as he did. It caused Evie to clear her throat and shift in her seat. Her head lifted until her eyes found his.

"What I mean is, there's so much more to consider. There's so much more that's impacted. It wouldn't be, like, just discovering what we have in common, or working out scheduling conflicts so we could spend time together. It would literally be changing who I am…"

"No, darling," he shook his head, "you will always be you."

"I… I don't see how that's possible."

Walt sighed. "Evelyn, I know you don't trust me yet, and I know this is a lot to take in, but when you reflect on it, I know you'll come to see the truth."

"And what is the truth, Walt?"

He crouched down until he was at eye level with her, locking his gaze on her face across the coffee table. "That this," he began, motioning his hand back and forth between them, "is. And will be."

She gaped at him and watched him stand.

"I know it's in your nature to fight it, Evie, and I accept that about you. And as much as I detest your absence in my life, I'm willing to give you the time you need to come to terms with it."

She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. "With what?"

"With the fact that you are mine."

"I'm no one's, Walt," she insisted, standing up to face him. The way his mouth spread slowly into that indulgent grin of his clutched at her heart.

"There's that fight," he said fondly. "Struggle if you must, my love, and when you're done, I'll be here. After all, I have all the time in the world."

And with that, he turned and walked away, pausing only briefly at her door to wish her a good night.