Chapter 218: To Know And To Risk
My question was followed by silence.
Lily looked straight at Taylor, as if I didn’t even exist, and Taylor just casually poured milk into his tea, stirring it silently.
It was after he’d tasted it and was satisfied with it that he finally looked at me.
"Are you sure you want to know? Ignorance is bliss, have you not heard?"
He didn’t need an answer from me; it was rhetorical.
"So, what will you do with the knowledge you gain? And what do you want us to do to you after?"
Another rhetorical question.
"You see, I wonder if you know of ants? An ant from another colony is torn apart if it stumbles upon another colony, unless it has their scent. Wolves also do the same. A wolf may permit another wolf into its den. A deer that stumbles into it does not receive the same courtesy."
My heart thumped.
A threat?
"Nature is full of circles, but I suppose we’re not part of your natural order. What I mean, Christopher, is that those who do not belong to a group are removed."
He sipped a little, and that was when I saw the color of his tea. It was red like blood.
"The human word you use to describe my kind is vampires."
Vampires!
Guessing and speculation are entirely different from confirming the truth, and finding out what they truly were caused my body to tremble.
He smirked at me, and I’d never seen a person look more menacing than that.
"That reaction is reassuring."
He glanced at his cup. "It’s not blood, if you’re wondering." Then he pointed to my cup. You can drink it, you won’t be poisoned.
"You’ve heard of how angels and demons are different. How angels are heavenly beings created to serve The Alpha and Omega, but because of greed and jealousy, some of them were cast down, and the fallen angels became demons."
I nodded stiffly.
"Humans were created by a loving God, and he blessed them with so much. Humans were perfect. You call us fallen humans, but the term is inaccurate."
He swirled the red liquid in his cup.
"Demons were once angels. We were never human."
My stomach sank.
"What are you?" I asked again.
"A mistake."
He smiled.
"Or an attempt at improvement, depending on who tells the story."
"God created humanity. Another sought to surpass His work. There was a lesser god, and I don’t know how he came into being, but he decided to create as well, and to make his creation even more perfect.
He was jealous of how perfect God created humans, so he concluded that he had to make his creation even more perfect."
"He gave us strength. He gave us beauty. He gave us lives so long that mortality became a distant memory."
His smile faded slightly.
"And he gave us his envy, inherited from our creator."
"Envy?" I asked.
"Our creator envied human perfection, and in the same way, we are envious of you. This is what makes some of us seek your blood. Humans believe we drink blood because we must. Most of us do not, but envy has a way of becoming hunger."
He glanced at me.
"And hunger, if indulged long enough, becomes necessity."
He emptied his cup.
"Now, to fully answer your question, we are not vampires. It’s your definition of us, and none of my kind want to be called that way."
I found myself feeling bolder and bolder. "What...do you call yourselves?"
"It depends on who you ask. We found many ways of calling ourselves. Some say Anibue, Veiru, Eidolon (Εἴδωλον), or Urami (恨み). I could go on with the list."
He tapped the table. "Personally, I prefer Kivuli."
"What does it mean?"
"Shadow. It’s a sentimental name, but no matter what, we’re just a second creation."
"Christopher," he said in a louder, more intimidating tone. "To know is to risk, and you chose to do this to yourself."
I trembled in my seat. The fear that had slightly faded grew exponentially again as I watched him draw closer to me. He reached out for my cheek.
Pah!
It was a similar sound, just like when I first met Lily, but this time, she was slapping a hand away from my face.
"Stop scaring him! You brought him here yourself, so you know he’d eventually find out."
He raised an eyebrow.
"He knows too much, so I need to dispose of him."
My blood ran cold.
Taylor vanishedand the chair beside me exploded backwards.
Before I could even blink, Lily also disappeared.
A loud bang exploded in my face.
"Don’t you dare!"
Lily’s voice was filled with so much rage that it frightened me, but I was yet to understand how she appeared in front of me, crouched on the table like a feral cat.
Taylor stood calmly, his hand gripped by Lily.
"I’m not going to remove him. He hasn’t given me a good enough reason, so calm down," he smirked, but apart from letting go of his hand, Lily didn’t move.
Seeing her defend me in such a manner left an odd taste in my mouth, but that wasn’t my biggest concern.
The information I just received was too much to process in a few minutes. And I also understood Taylor’s reason for wanting to kill me. In a way, he was just protecting his daughter.
"I brought you here, so I’ll give you a choice, and you must follow it, or die."
He locked eyes with me, and I couldn’t look away, even if I wanted to.
"Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Living here is your only choice. I can allow you to go if I can trust you."
He turned around and left after that.
It was truly ironic when he asked me to trust him on day one, yet he won’t trust me enough to let me live freely.
I didn’t understand why he wanted me to live. I still hadn’t found any benefit he’d gain from having a human ’pet’.
Lily got off the table only after he was truly out of sight.
"I told you not to trust him," she said coldly without even looking at me.
"Are you—"
"I’m going to sleep, it’s late."
A lie.
For someone who claimed to love the night, the night was just beginning, so how could she say she needed to sleep?
I now knew too much, and this was risky.
