His face was two inches from hers. Jez glared at him, refusing to give ground. "I'm not just siding with them," she hissed. "I am one of them. I'm a damned Daybreaker."
"You're a dead Daybreaker. I can't believe this. How am I supposed to protect you from the whole Night World?"
She stared at him. "What?"
He settled back, glaring, but not at her. He was looking around the van, avoiding her eyes. "You heard me. I don't care who your friends are, Jez. I don't even care that you came back to use me. I'm just glad you came back. We're soulmates, and nothing can change that." Then he shook his head furiously. "Even if you won't admit it."
"Morgead..." Suddenly the ache in Jez's chest was too much to stay inside. It was closing off her throat, making her eyes sting, trying to make her cry.
She had misjudged Morgead, too. She'd been so sure that he would hate her, that he could never forgive.
But of course, he didn't know the whole truth yet.
He probably thought that her being a Daybreaker was something she would grow out of. That it was just a matter of getting her to see the light and change sides again, and she would become the old Jez Redfern. He didn't realize that the old Jez Red-fern had been an illusion.
Tm sorry," she said abruptly, helplessly. "For all of this, Morgead-I'm sorry. It really wasn't fair to you for me to come back."
He looked irritated. "I told you; I'm glad you did. We can work things out-if you'll just stop being so stubborn. We'll get out of this-"
"Even if we do get out of it, nothing's going to change." She looked up at him. She wasn't frightened of what he might do anymore. The only thing she was frightened of was seeing disgust in his eyes-but she still had to tell him. "I can't be your soulmate, Morgead."
He hardly seemed to be listening to her. "Yes, you can. I told you, I don't care who your friends are.
Well keep you alive somehow. The only thing I don't understand is why you'd want to ally yourself with stupid humans, when you know they're going to lose."
Jez looked at him. Morgead, the vampire's vampire, whose only interest was in seeing the Night World conquer humanity completely. Who was what she had been a year ago, and what she could never be again. Who thought of her as an ally, a descendent of one of the first families of the lamia.
Who thought he loved who he thought she was.
Jez kept looking at him steadily, and when she spoke, it was very quietly. And it was the truth.
"Because I'm a human," she said.
Chapter 17
Morgead's entire body jerked once and then went absolutely still. As if he'd been turned to stone. The only thing alive about him was his eyes, which were staring at Jez with shock and burning disbelief.
Well, Jez told herself, with a grim humor that was almost like sobbing grief, I startled him, that's for sure.
I finally managed to stun Morgead speechless.
It was only then that she realized some part of her had hoped that he already knew this, too. That he would be able to brush it off with exasperation, the way he had the fact that she was a Daybreaker.
But that hope was shattered now. It had been a stupid hope anyway. Being a Daybreaker was something that could change, a matter of confused attitude.
Being vermin was permanent.
"But that's-that's not-" Morgead seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. His eyes were large with horror and denial. "That's not possible. You're a vampire."
"Only half," Jez said. She felt as if she were killing something-and she was. She was murdering any hope for what was between them.
Might as well stomp it good, she thought bitterly. She couldn't understand the wetness that was threatening to spill out of her eyes.
"The other half is human," she said shortly, almost viciously. "My mother was human. Claire is my cousin, and she's human. I've been living with my uncle Jim, my mother s brother, and his family. They're all human."
Morgead shut his eyes. A moment of astonishing weakness for him, Jez thought coldly.
His voice was still a whisper. "Vampires and humans can't have kids. You can't be half and half."
"Oh, yeah, I can. My father broke the laws of the Night World. He fell in love with a human, and they got married, and here I am. And then, when I was three or so, some other vampires came and tried to kill us all." In her mind Jez was seeing it again, the woman with red hair who looked like a medieval princess, begging for her child's life. The tall man trying to protect her. "They knew I was half human.
They kept yelling 'Kill the freak.' So that's what I am, you see." She turned eyes she knew were feverishly bright on him. "A freak."
He was shaking his head, gulping as if he were about to be sick. It made Jez hate him, and feel sorry for him at the same time. She scarcely noticed that hot tears were spilling down her cheeks.
"I'm vermin, Morgead. One of them. Prey. That's what I realized a year ago, when I left the gang. Up until then I had no idea, but that last night we hunted, I remembered the truth. And I knew that I had to go away and try to make up for all the things I'd done to humans."
He put a hand up to press against his eyes.
"I didn't just become a Daybreaker. I became a vampire hunter. I track down vampires who like to kill, who enjoy making humans suffer, and I stake them. You know why? Because they deserve to die."
He was looking at her again, but as if he could hardly stand to. "Jez-"
"It's weird. I don't know about our connection"- she smiled bitterly at him, to let him know she knew all that was over now-"but I felt bad lying to you. I'm almost glad to finally tell you the truth. I kind of wanted to tell you a year ago when it happened, but I knew you'd kill me, and that made me a little hesitant."