Bo nodded. “There was someone I had to take care of.”
“Because this person was a vampire.”
Bo nodded again.
“And you think you’re a vampire.”
Again, a nod.
“Alright, so you say you are, in fact, a vampire. Let’s just go with that for a minute. If I’m not mistaken, vampires are dead. Yet you told me not five minutes ago that you’re dying. How do you explain that?”
“Well, first of all vampires aren’t technically dead right from the start. We can ‘die’,” he said, using air quotes. “But we can only die the same way once. The venom, it mutates our cells, our DNA, causing us to regenerate very quickly. When we do, we’re sort of immune to whatever harmed or killed us. We can no longer be killed that way, not again.”
“So these people that you killed, you think they’ll…come back?”
“Oh, no. They’re very much dead.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, shaking my head. “Then how did you kill Trent Long? I’m confused. ”
“The only way you can actually, truly kill a vampire. I destroyed his heart.”
“Well, if that’s the case then what do you mean when you say you’re dying?”
Bo returned his attention to the heart in his hand. He leaned back against the desk and held it up to the moonlight pouring through the window, peering through the thick bubbles of heart-shaped glass. He didn’t speak until he lowered it.
“I know I’m dying because I’m killing myself.”
My heart lurched in my chest. I wasn’t expecting that.
“What? Why?”
“The very last blood that pours from a vampire’s heart contains memories of his life, his knowledge, his experiences. But it’s toxic. Very toxic. These men that I hunt, one of them will lead me to the person behind my father’s murder, but to learn that, I have to drain them before I kill them.”
Out of all that, out of all the questions that his explanation generated, the only thing I could think of was that he was killing himself. For a moment, I was drawn into his world of make believe.
“So you’re killing yourself to learn who killed your father?”
“Yes.”
“Your life is worth so little to you that you’d just throw it away for revenge?” That hurt more than I was ready to acknowledge.
Bo looked up at me, his eyes meeting mine in the low light of the room. As they did the first time I saw him, they burned into me, searing me all the way to my soul.
“I had nothing to live for until I met you.”
Despite what he was telling me, despite the fact that he was crazy or sick or deranged or something, my heart swelled inside my chest. It was as if he held my heart in his hand rather than the glass paperweight. It was no longer mine to control. And it felt just as fragile.
That’s when it hit me. What if he’s telling the truth? The way he looked in the basement, he barely looked human at all. What if vampires really are real?
“But you said the only way to kill a vampire is to destroy his heart.”
“Correct.”
“So you should be fine then, right? I mean, you should…come back,” I said, searching for the right phrase.
“The poison attacks the organs, Ridley. Including the heart.” His expression was grave, hopeless.
“Is that why you looked the way you did earlier?”
Bo nodded, dropping his head in either shame or embarrassment. I wasn’t sure which. “It’s worse for a day or two after I drink the…the poison.”
“Well, can’t you just stop?” Finally, I felt brave enough to step toward him. “Can’t you just let it go, let them go, before it’s too late? Can’t you just… live?”
Bo shook his head sadly, lowering his gaze once more to the heart he held in his hand.
“It’s not that easy.”
“Why? Why can’t it be exactly that easy?”
“I’ve taken in too much of their blood. I can tell that it’s killing me. The human blood that I drink, from the blood bank, is barely keeping me alive now and I don’t know how much longer that will last,” he confessed. “I’m having to drink more and more, but still this form wears down that much more quickly.”
“This form? What do you mean?”
“We—vampires—regenerate so quickly, our cells multiply and divide so fast, that they have a translucent appearance once we’ve metabolized our food. Kind of like we’re in a constant state of flux, like we’re growing too fast for light or human eyes to track,” he explained. “But the blood that I drink is used up fighting off the effects of the poison most of the time, so I can’t maintain a human appearance for as long as others.”
A sinking feeling began in the pit of my stomach and seeped into my arms and legs, making them feel like lead, like dead weight. “What do you look like when it wears off, when the poison’s gone and the blood’s gone?” Even after the question was out, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Bo’s lips curled up into a bitter, mirthless twist. “Invisible. I look like nothing.”
I knew that answer alone would spawn hundreds of questions, but right now my focus was on his demise and just how imminent it was.
“So, what will happen when you,” I paused, swallowing the enormous lump in my throat. “When you die?”
Bo looked out the window. “I don’t know. The only information I’ve been able to find out about it is that draining a vampire will kill you, poison you. That’s it.” He shrugged. “Nothing else ever mattered until now. The only thing I cared about was finding out who killed my father.”
“How long do you have until…”
“I don’t know that either, but I’d say not very long.”
I felt the sting of tears and, though I blinked them back, there was no stopping the drops of heartbreak as they welled in my eyes.
The words to the song that was now playing, Wild Horses, stabbed at my heart.