“How come you didn’t know?”
“I knew of the nightmares, of course, but not of how violent I’d turn. I always sleep alone.”
Realization hit her. “None of those women ever stayed here with you?”
Amaury shook his head. “I never felt the need to actually sleep with a woman. And when I say “sleep,” I don’t mean sex. I haven’t slept with a woman in my arms since I was human.”
“Oh.” Her whole anger about the many women he’d had sex with dissipated. Suddenly she felt too shy to ask him why he never spent the night with a woman in his bed. Or maybe it wasn’t shyness. Maybe she merely didn’t want to read too much into it. She didn’t want to get her hopes up that something special was growing between them.
She raised her hand to stroke his cheek. “Tell me about the nightmare.”
“I’m not sure this is something you’d want to know about me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s something I did in my past, something evil.”
Given that he was a vampire, she didn’t think there was anything that could really shock her. “We all have demons in our past. Maybe it’s time you talked about yours.”
“You sound like my shrink.”
His revelation surprised her. “You have a shrink?”
“I did, but he couldn’t really help me.”
“Then what have you got to lose by telling me?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Nothing, I guess. One day, you’d have to find out about it anyway. Why not now?” Amaury pressed a kiss on her forehead. “Promise me something.”
Nina gave him a puzzled look.
“Promise me that whatever you might think of me after this, you won’t run away. I’m still here to protect you—even from myself if need be.”
“I won’t run.”
He nodded and swallowed hard before he looked straight at her.
“I committed a terrible crime. I killed my infant son.”
For a moment there was utter silence in the room. Amaury didn’t breathe.
“Oh, my God.” Her throat was too dry to say anything else. The revelation sank deep into her.
Nina felt him pull away, but she tightened her grip on his arm. She knew instinctively that rejection was the last thing he could handle right now. “How did it happen?”
“It was my first night as a vampire. I had no idea what the change would do to me. The craving for blood, the terrible thirst—I didn’t know how to fight it. Jean-Philippe was only three years old. He trusted me.” Amaury’s voice broke.
Nina hugged him tightly, stroking her hand over his broad back. He was a father—he’d had a wife, a child. She would have never guessed. Suddenly she saw him with different eyes. He’d cared for somebody before. He’d loved somebody once. “You didn’t want to do it. The vampire who turned you is to blame.”
Amaury pulled away from her. “No. I’m to blame. Maybe I didn’t ask to be changed, but I provoked it.”
“Provoked it, how?”
“I thought I would be helping my family. I couldn’t provide for them, but then a man made me an offer. I took it, thinking I could make things better for them and for me. He made it sound so easy. He would pay me for allowing him to feed off me, but he didn’t keep to the arrangement and turned me instead. I didn’t know about the thirst, how it would control me. When I got home that first night after my change, Jean-Philippe was right there at the door, greeting me. I was ravenous, famished.”
Amaury ran his hands through his hair, a haunted look in his eyes. “I fell into bloodlust. Nina, I sucked him dry. My own son. I’m a monster.”
Nina wanted to give him comfort, but he held her back as if he didn’t feel he deserved compassion.
“When my wife saw what had happened, she cursed me. And then she flung herself off the church tower. She killed herself because she couldn’t bear the loss of our son. She had every right to hate me. I hated myself.” He paused. “She was the one who gave me this so-called gift.”
“Gift?”
“The fact that I can sense other’s emotions. She cursed me. Even though she wasn’t a witch. There was a belief back then that if you wished for something with all your heart and then killed yourself, your wish would turn into a curse. That’s what happened. She cursed me, just like she cursed me never to love again. Now you know.”
“Never to love again?”
Amaury nodded and swallowed hard. “Do you know why I live in the shabbiest part of town? Because I don’t deserve any better. At least among the less fortunate people in this city I feel at home. I sense their pain, their anger. There isn’t much love in the Tenderloin. I don’t get reminded often of what I can’t feel. It makes it easier.”