Dawn Walker - Chapter 245: Questions and Answers

Chapter 245: 245: Questions and Answers

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The words hung in the room like a blade that had already fallen.

“I am… a vampire. I became strong by drinking blood.”

For a moment Lily did not move.

She simply stood there, looking at him with wide eyes while the shape of the truth finished settling inside her. The room stayed quiet around them, the curtains holding the daylight in softened folds, the table between them still carrying the untouched pieces of an ordinary afternoon that had quietly stopped being ordinary several confessions ago.

Sekhmet watched her face with the rigid stillness of someone bracing for impact. He had imagined this moment too many times in the space of a few breaths.

Shock first.

Then fear.

Then the small but fatal distance people made when something crossed from troubling into unnatural.

He knew what a vampire was in the stories ordinary people carried around in their bones. A predator. A blood drinker. A thing that could wear a human shape and still not be human in the ways that mattered when night grew too quiet. The word did not arrive clean. It brought every ugly old rumor with it. Teeth in the dark. Blood gone cold. Smiles that hid hunger. Bodies emptied. Love turned into feeding and feeding turned into chains.

He had spoken the truth anyway. Now he waited to see what it would cost him.

Lily inhaled slowly. Not sharply. Not like someone recoiling.

Slowly.

Her fingers tightened once at her sides, then loosened again. And when she finally spoke, the first thing out of her mouth was not fear.

It was, “I knew it.”

Sekhmet blinked.

The answer hit him so strangely that for a second it did not even register properly.

“What?”

Lily gave a breath that was almost a laugh, though she still looked shaken. “Not exactly. Not with all the details. But inside…” She put a hand lightly against her own chest. “Inside, I think I knew where this was pointing.”

Sekhmet stared at her.

Her eyes remained on him. Shock lived in them, yes. No honest person could have heard that sentence and remained entirely calm. But the shock was not disgust. It was the shock of having a terrible suspicion confirmed and then having to rearrange one’s heart around the fact that the person standing before you was still himself while also no longer fitting into ordinary categories.

“You are not scared?” he asked.

Lily frowned immediately.

“Of you?”

Sekhmet did not answer.

That silence was answered enough.

Her face softened at once.

“Oh, you idiot,” she said quietly.

The words should have annoyed him. Instead they cut through the tight knot in his chest so fast it almost hurt.

Lily took another step closer. “You really thought I was going to run.”

His mouth moved slightly. “I thought there was a chance.”

“There is always a chance I will throw a shoe at you if you are being foolish,” she said. “That is different.”

Sekhmet stared at her for one second longer.

Then a strange, lightless laugh almost escaped him.

Almost.

Lily saw that and pressed gently forward.

“I am shocked,” she admitted. “I am very shocked. You are a vampire. That is not small information. But I am not looking at a stranger right now.” Her gaze moved carefully over his face, as if proving the point to both of them. “I am looking at you.”

Something inside him loosened.

Not completely.

But enough that his shoulders dropped by a fraction.

Lily noticed that too, and because she was Lily, she did not waste the opening.

“All right,” she said, drawing in a breath and shifting fully into curiosity. “Now I have questions. A lot of questions.”

Sekhmet almost smiled. “I expected that.”

“You should.” She pointed at him. “You do not get to say something like that and then stand there with dramatic eyes as though conversation is over.”

“It was a dramatic sentence.”

“It was an infuriating sentence.”

That one did get the faintest hint of a smile from him.

Lily immediately pounced on the sign of life.

“Good. Stay like that. Now answer me properly.”

Sekhmet leaned one hip lightly against the table. He still felt raw from the confession, but the rawness had changed shape now. Less like terror. More like exposure after a wound had finally been cleaned.

Lily folded her arms, then unfolded them again when she realized that posture made her look like Elena. She looked vaguely offended by the comparison and settled for planting both hands on the table instead.

“Start at the beginning,” she said. “When did this happen?”

Sekhmet let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Not all at once.”

“That is not a beginning.”

“It is the true answer.”

Lily sighed. “Fine. Then give me the first part of the true answer.”

He looked down briefly at his hands, then back up. “It started after I woke up inside an orc cave.” He told her everything. But left the abyss class artifact and system part.

Lily’s brows drew together. “So you drank the blood of an ancient God.”

“Yes.”

“And did it simply decide one day that you were going to become terrifying?”

Sekhmet almost laughed. “More or less.”

“That is very rude of it.”

“It must be fate.”

Lily absorbed that, then asked, “When you say vampire, do you mean fully? Completely? Like the old stories?”

His expression shifted. “Some stories are exaggerations.”

“That is not the same as no.”

“No,” he admitted.

Her eyes narrowed with sharp interest. “Do you burn in sunlight?”

“No.”

“Silver?”

“I have not tested it and would prefer not to if possible. It’s mostly fake.”

She considered that. “Can you turn into mist?”

“No. Not yet. Maybe when I am stronger.”

“A bat?”

“No.”

Bat Bat would be insufferable forever if that one were true, he thought.

Lily’s eyes flickered slightly as though the same thought had crossed her mind. “Good. We already have one bat and she is politically exhausting.”

That pulled a real, small laugh from him at last.