Night Huntress 06 - Eternal Kiss of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

this much if you just intended to kill me. And if you’re not going to kill me, then you must not be the insatiable murderers legend paints you to be, so I don’t need to warn humanity about you. Yes, you killed those people who were torturing you; but that’s justifiable homicide in any court, so there’s no need for me to tell anyone anything.”
     
    Kira’s voice had risen in her agitation, and her pulse accelerated again. Mencheres said nothing, knowing she was trying to reconcile the facts out loud more than anything else. It was always frightening for humans when they realized their belief in the superiority of their race was false. When they realized how vulnerable they truly were to the other species that shared the dark with them.
     
    “Besides,” she said at last, expelling the word on a ragged sigh. “No matter how many people I’d tell, who would believe me? I’d never believed any of the clients who used to talk about weird, impossible things, and I heard more than a few of those stories as a private investigator…”
     
    Kira’s eyes widened even as she stopped talking in midsentence. Mencheres couldn’t hear the thoughts form in her mind, but from her expression, she was realizing some of the stories she’d summarily dismissed might have been true. Then she looked around the darkened yard as if seeing it with new eyes, her breath hitching.
     
    Mencheres watched with pity, knowing it was the moment Kira truly accepted that all of this was real. The small part of her that still hoped there was another explanation had finally given up. He’d observed this same mental surrender in humans before, too many times to count, and though Kira might believe she could return to a normal life with this information, Mencheres knew she couldn’t.
     
    “You do not want this knowledge,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “It will destroy your life. You will see every shadow in a different way, and every strange sound will make you wonder—is that a person, or a monster? Humans who are not part of a vampire’s or ghoul’s line do not do well with this information. Time has proven that repeatedly.”
     
    What he didn’t tell Kira was that time also proved that such humans usually ended up dead. Eventually, those mortals tried to make someone believe them about the supernatural world, and an unclaimed human spreading tales about the undead was a threat to both species. Both vampires and ghouls did claim a certain number of humans as property, but those humans were specially chosen, then removed from their own world. They lived with their undead protectors in full knowledge that if they spilled the secret about either species to mainstream society, they would be eliminated.
     
    Such knowledge wouldn’t reassure Kira, however, so Mencheres kept it to himself. He really didn’t want her climbing out of any more windows in the future.
     
    “You’ll let me go unharmed?” she asked at last, seeming to come to a decision.
     
    “As soon as I remove these memories from your mind,” Mencheres promised.
     
    She gave him a measuring look. “I’ll need to call my boss, make some excuse about missing work. I can’t afford to get fired.”
     
    “I’ll see to it that your employment situation is taken care of.” But Mencheres wasn’t about to let her call her employer even under his watchful eye. Kira worked for a private investigator; the line could be traced, or she could use code words indicating danger that Mencheres might not recognize. He would like to hope that Kira wouldn’t do such a thing in light of her new capitulation, but he was too jaded to trust in hope.
     
    “I need to call my sister.” Her voice hardened in a way that it hadn’t when Kira spoke of her job. “She’s not well. I can’t let her worry my disappearing without telling her something.”
     
    Mencheres inclined his head. “I will make arrangements for you to speak with her tomorrow.”
     
    Kira took in a long