"I pushed you too hard. I see it now, but at the time…"
Evie's eyes were locked on Walt's lips as they moved. Part of her listened intently as he spoke, but another part seemed to exist outside of herself. That part simply sat back and marveled at her situation. Was she really sitting across from him, separated only by a coffee table, as he leaned forward in her leather club chair, explaining his perspective on what had happened at New Carfax Abbey? Was she really sipping tea as she listened to him speak in his soft rasp?
Yes, she was. She was, and it was insane.
"…my want of you was so great, I allowed it to blind me."
She set her steaming tea aside. "Your want of me." She punctuated her echo of his words with a short, scornful laugh.
"Yes, Evelyn," he said, faint scolding in his tone, "my want." He fixed her with a hard stare. "I realize that for you and your contemporaries, such motivation is unremarkable. You're like toddlers, clamoring for a shiny new toy, only to drop it moments after procuring it, demanding the next thing, and the next. Modern desire has been dulled, by luxury and ease and instant gratification. You are simply ill-equipped to fathom the depth of my want. The… consuming nature of it."
Was he really here to indict the societal attitudes of the twenty-first century? To criticize the perceived flaws of her generation? She wasn't so certain a man famous for impaling his enemies on pikes and leaving them to die miserably then rot on the battlefield had much of a moral argument to make. And that wasn't even taking into account everything he'd done, everyone he'd murdered, in the intervening years, after he'd become… what he was.
And wait… did he just insinuate she was an ungrateful brat?
Evie scoffed. "You're lecturing me about luxury and ease, Lord De Ville?"
Walt shook his head, leaning back in the chair. His eyes swept over his surroundings as he appraised her apartment. "You haven't the faintest clue."
Her shoulders stiffened at the rebuke. "Educate me, then." The words were more challenge than encouragement. This should be good. Was the man who had lived more than six lifetimes of privilege seriously arguing that she was emotionally stunted because she was over-indulged? She tried to give off an air of careless superiority as she reached for her tea once again, sipping delicately and waiting.
His eyes narrowed a moment before he proceeded.
"When I commanded thirty thousand men in battle, when I ruled over a million souls who owed their absolute allegiance to me, when I swam in taxes and tribute, plunder and unimaginable wealth, I could not boast a single seat in any of my castles or fortresses even half as comfortable as this one." He gave the arms of the second-hand chair a single, gentle pat with his palms. "With an elite personal guard of one thousand loyal men, I was never so safe as you are now, sitting there on your settee, in the midst of this vast city. The food you so carelessly purchase and fail to consume, leaving it to molder in your refrigerator, is of higher quality than anything ever eaten by the majority of my countrymen before I left my homeland for England."
Evie's brows pinched in as she considered his words. She wondered if he might be right, if she might be spoiled by the relative comfort of her life, and if that might render her unable to experience longing or craving in quite the same way as Walt. He'd had many more years than her to contemplate desire, after all. Hundreds more. Was her understanding really so narrow?
No. The thought was ridiculous. He would not make her the villain in all this.
"So, I'm at fault for being born after the industrial revolution? Because I haven't had six centuries to cultivate my disdain of human behavior?" She set her teacup on the coffee table so she could cross her arms over her chest defensively.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. "You ascribe such ill intent to my words. I wonder if you aren't projecting."
"Well, I haven't led an army into battle or ruled over a defunct country, but I think I know an insult when I hear it."
"Can the truth be an insult?" The way he gave a slight shrug and seemed to implore her with his arresting blue eyes was charming to an irritating degree. "I assure you, this is merely observation, not judgment."
"You said I was a toddler."
"And so you are, my darling. When it comes to understanding your feelings, at least."
She scoffed, giving him a sour look. "No, no judgment there." The sarcasm fairly dripped from her tongue.
"Well, how would you describe it? Your behavior, your mental state, has the same changeable nature of a child who has barely learned to walk."
"Oh, this should be good. Go ahead, my lord, explain how my treatment of you is nothing more than a tantrum." He couldn't because it wasn't. All her reactions to him had been understandable, given the circumstances, her behaviors completely justified.
Walt cocked his head, regarding her a moment before speaking. "You're hot, then so, so cold. You can't wait to spend time with me, then you can't get away from me fast enough. You demand my honesty, then reject me when I give it to you. You take me into your bed, then try to kill me. You love me, then you hate me."
Evie's mouth dropped open as she stared at him. She didn't think she'd ever been so livid. "Are you seriously saying you can't understand why?"
"I'm not blaming you, Evie. I am merely trying to help you understand what it is I feel for you, to grasp the degree of want of which you seem so skeptical. For you, it makes perfect sense that you could desire me so deeply and yet try to leave me, then, failing that, try to kill me…"
"Oh, so now you have a problem with killing? How many bodies have you piled up in all your long years?" She glared at him defiantly.
"Tens of thousands, but that's not the point."
Evie snorted. "So, what's your point?"
"That my love for you is not fickle, and that it does not depend upon your meeting any litany of expectations. It simply is."
"I don't have a litany of expectations. Wanting you to refrain from treating innocent people like cattle or pigs to slaughter is not unreasonable!"
"No. It's not."
"And you can't just… wait. What?"
Walt gazed at her through his lashes, his look as innocuous as an altar boy's. "Hmm?"
"Did you just… agree with me?"
"Yes, of course. I have no problem admitting when you're right. Do you prefer that I disagree for disagreement's sake alone?"
"No, but…" Evie paused, unsure of how to proceed. Her head swam with his words. "I just don't… I mean, how can you…" She huffed, then stared at him. "You're a vampire." She stopped again, the word hanging in the air between them. It had been a year, and she still felt unbalanced by the word, by the truth in it. That it could even be truth.
"Yes."
"You're dangerous. A murderer. A monster."
"Yes."
She breathed in deeply, exhaling through her nose in one long, steady push. "I don't understand."
"What is it that baffles you, my love?"
So much. So, so much.
"Are you saying that you'd… you'd try to change? That you even can?"
Walt's posture was relaxed as he sat back in his chair. His fingers, which had been steepled under his chin, now drummed softly against the leather of the armrests. Evie stared at the motion, mesmerized by the lazy rhythm of it. "Be more specific."
"If I ask you to, you won't kill any more innocent women. Innocent people."
"Is anyone truly innocent?" His lips spread into the slow smile that still made it hard for her to swallow, even a year later. Even after all she'd seen. All he'd done.
"Walt."
He sighed. "You have no idea what I'd sacrifice for your sake. What I'd do for you."
"There's only one thing I want."
Walt shrugged. "Then it's yours."
Evie bit her lip. She hadn't asked it in time to save the maids or Mrs. Swift. She hadn't known she could ask, or even that she should. But it seemed that Walter De Ville, the Son of the Dragon, was promising to end the slaughter. To defy his very nature and refrain from spilling innocent blood.
But that didn't erase what he'd already done. It didn't bring back Mrs. Swift, or the thousands of other Mrs. Swifts now reduced to bone and dust. Walt's entire existence was soaked in blood and stitched together by misery.
"It's not enough," she whispered, and the painful way her heart clenched at her own words shocked her. "It could never be enough. The past can't be undone."
But she wanted it to be, wanted his willingness to change to be the answer. For it to absolve him of his past.
He watched her for a moment, still leaning back in his chair, but his fingers ceased their leisurely tapping. When a stinging moisture gathered in her eyes and she blinked it away, Walt murmured something in a tongue she could not understand.
Evie gulped, trying to soothe the aching knot in her throat. Sniffing, she swiped at her nose self-consciously. "Sorry. I don't speak vampire."
"It's old Slavic. My first language." At her expectant look, Walter tilted his head. "I said, essentially, that you are a creature of your time."
"Aren't we all?" Her look was accusing.
"And yet, you war with yourself."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Evelyn," he chided.
She tore her eyes away from his, not liking the reproach she read in them. She rubbed her arms a little, as if she were chilled. "Alright, I'll admit it." Her brows pinched together, pained by her own thoughts as she was. "I feel… conflicted."
"That's only natural…"
"But I shouldn't!" she snapped, interrupting him, and turning her head to sear him with her gaze.
"If you didn't, it would only be because you were lying to yourself."
"So instead, I'm honest with myself and wishing your promise to be a better man exonerated your past." The disgust in her voice was nearly palpable.
"Why should you judge yourself so harshly for that?"
"Because," she spat, "it's like I'm saying I'm okay with torturing and murdering! It's like I'm saying my own happiness means more than the happiness of everyone you've ever killed! It's… it's like I'm dishonoring their memories."
"Memory," he chuckled, but the sound of it was bitter. "What is this fascination your generation has with lamenting the past? It's indulgent, and disingenuous. Surely a woman of your intellect understands that all your regret and guilt in no way benefits those long dead."
"Yes, it's so much better to callously ignore historic injustices," Evie retorted.
"You can acknowledge them without allowing them to cement you in place, denying yourself the ability to move past them and shape the future you want. Why be a hostage to unearned anguish?"
Her response was automatic. "I'm not cemented in place."
"Aren't you?"
"And anyway, it's better to be a hostage to unearned anguish than to plow ahead, blithely sowing despair and leaving destruction in my wake."
"Is it? In what way?"
"In that it's not evil!"
"So, it's the appearance of virtue that you value over your own happiness?"
"The 'appearance of virtue'? Do you know what you sound like?"
"A man interested in understanding the woman he loves?"
"An elitist asshole who lacks a moral compass!"
Walt's answering laugh was genuine. "Can't I be both?"
"I'm being serious."
His grin faded. "No, you're not." His voice was low and soft in a way that seemed to indicate he had no wish to inflame her further but knew it was likely to happen anyway. "If you were, you would've jumped at my offer."
"Your offer to stop murdering people so long as I'm willing to ignore how long you've spent murdering people, you mean?"
"My offer to spare the innocent in order to make you more comfortable admitting your feelings for me," he corrected. "Yes."
Evie stared at the tea which had grown tepid in its cup, focusing on the surface of the amber liquid as if doing so would somehow give her the courage to either push Walt away, cutting ties with him forever, or to reach for him, accepting him in all his flawed glory, binding herself to him for eternity. Walt's voice disrupted her contemplation.
"I have seen more death than you can possibly imagine."
"I think you were personally responsible for a good bit of it," she muttered, eyes still focused on the tea.
He shrugged. "I don't deny that, but what I mean is that you have been sheltered from the truth of just how precarious life is."
She jerked back, her eyes shooting to his. "I understand death, Walt. My father, my mother…"
"No, I know, my darling." His tone was gentle. "You've been touched by it. Even ravaged, in a way. You understand loss on a personal level, but death…" He sighed heavily. "Decades, no, centuries of progress have given you your modern medicine, surgical advances, food security, proper shelter. Even your warfare has been sanitized to a great extent."
"Your point being?"
He smiled at her, and even now, in her agitated state, she had to fight succumbing to his charm. "My point being that our views on life and death are drastically different..."
"Yeah, no shit."
"…owing to our unique experiences."
"So, if I'd had the good fortune to be born in the… fifteenth century?" She looked toward him for confirmation, which he gave her in the form of an amused look and a small nod. "Then I'd have less problem with murdering innocent servants for a few sips of their blood?"
"Well, that's a rather condescending way to put it. Honestly, with as much as you modern humans talk about self-determination and tolerance, I thought you'd be more understanding."
"You thought I'd understand the impulse to kill without remorse?"
"I thought you'd understand that I am as I am."
I am as I am.
Evie turned Walt's words over in her mind, considering them, and what he meant by them.
"If that's true, then how can you promise me that you'll change?"
"Because, draga mea, my love for you, my want of you, is part of who I am. What I am."
His admission was difficult for her to reconcile. How could this be the same man from the library at Carfax? The man who presented his offer to her as if she should fall to her knees in gratitude that he'd even lowered himself to make it, then fed on a blameless woman who was no more to him than a steer to a rancher or a deer to a hunter. A woman whose apron had been stitched with a number because she was too unimportant to bother remembering her name.
"You keep saying 'love', but I don't think you can even comprehend what that is," she whispered.
For the first time since she'd found him sitting in her apartment awaiting her, his expression looked truly angry.
"Do not question the sincerity of what I feel for you, Evelyn. My love is deeper and truer than you could possibly imagine."
"And I'm just supposed to take your word for it?"
"You may take my actions if you like. Gifts…"
"Gifts?" Evie's bewilderment was etched in her expression.
Walt inclined his head slightly in her direction. "Just there, darling. In your hair."
Without thinking, she reached back, fingers tracing over the gold and diamond stars that held her French twist in place. "The hair pins are from you?" Of course they were. She should've realized it from the beginning.
He continued listing his laudable actions. "The influence I've used on your behalf. The people I've spared. That barista? The one who thinks he has a chance with you? The restraint I've shown for your sake…"
"Restraint!" she blurted, unable to contain it. "What restraint? You've been in my apartment, in my bed, countless times!"
"I can recount them, each and every one. Would you like me to?
"I thought those were dreams, but you were here, actually here! Uninvited!"
"I only ever did what you wanted, Evie, never more. Only what you allowed. That's restraint."
She was nearly beside herself at his characterization. How could she consent to what she didn't know was real? How could he congratulate himself for his self-discipline when he'd slipped into her home, into her bed, and let her think it was all a dream? Even believing these were dreams, her dreams, had shaped her regard for him, softening her anger and fear. It had created in her a sort of remorse for her role in his supposed demise and left her with a yearning for what she thought she could not have.
Evie sprang up, nearly shaking with her rage. "You've been fucking with my head, this whole time!" She felt cold all over, and she wished she'd changed out of her gallery dress into comfortable sweats or her oversized cardigan. She folded her arms over her chest and began to pace, footfalls soft on the Persian rug her mother had given her as a housewarming gift when she'd moved in.
Which of her feelings were real and which were manufactured? What belonged solely to her and what was little more than the manipulation of a centuries-old vampire? How could she ever know?
Walt watched her pacing in silence for a few moments, then sighed. "Evie, no."
She ignored him. "I've struggled with guilt over killing you, and you just let me. And when I'd dream of you, then wake up to realize you were gone, I'd be hit with such grief, like a wall collapsing on me and pinning me down so that it was hard to move. To breathe, even. For a year, I couldn't breathe." Evie's voice choked a little at that last, and she stopped her pacing and swallowed. Once she'd gathered herself, she walked over to where Walt sat, and dropped down, kneeling before him as he had kneeled before her earlier.
She reached up with both hands, taking his face in them, and he let her. Evie stared into Walt's eyes, searching for the truth in them. "Why such cruelty?" she finally whispered.
Walt wrapped his fingers around each of her wrists, turning first to place a lingering kiss on her one palm, then the other. "Please believe me, it wasn't cruelty, it was patience."
"And what were you waiting for, Walt?"
He leaned down, still holding her wrists, and pressed his lips against her forehead. "You, my darling. Always you," he murmured into her skin. "Stop trying to argue yourself out of the truth."
"The truth? What truth?"
"The truth of what I feel for you, and what you feel for me."
"I don't know what I feel for you."
He used a finger to tip her chin up so that he could claim her gaze. "You do. You have only to admit it."
"I… I know that I'm angry with you."
Walt's nod was encouraging. "Yes. And why is that?"
"Because you tried to force me into a life I could never abide."
"No. That's not it. You purged that anger already, when you cut off my arm and shoved me into the flames. Why are you really angry, Evie?"
"Because you're a butcher, an executioner!"
"I am, but that isn't why you're angry."
"It is!" she insisted.
"No, it isn't. Why should it matter to you what I am? What I've done?"
"Because I can't…" She faltered, squeezing her eyes shut.
"You can't what?" Walt prodded gently.
"I can't be with you!" Evie seethed, pulling her lips back and baring her teeth in a snarl as she glared at him. "If this is what you are, I can't be with you!"
Walt cocked his head to the side, reaching out to softly tuck a stray curl behind her ear. The gesture was as gentle as a mother caressing the face of her newborn babe. "Why would you want to be with me?" he asked, the rumbling roughness of his voice seizing her throat, her heart.
"Because," she whispered, "I… love you."
Slowly, Walt reclined back in the chair, his fingers dropping away from her cheek. He drank in her troubled expression. "I know," he soothed, his voice quiet and his eyes certain. "And now, so do you."
