Chapter 120 - Dinner Conversation part 2

Lukas laughed when the telling was told. "I wish I could have seen his face when you told him it was I who had betrayed him," he said. He had finished dining and sat propped against the headboard of his bed, his stomach bulging. I could hear his intestines gurgling as digestive fluids liquified his meal.

"Have you no remorse for the deaths of your former companions?" I asked. It was not an accusation, simply curiosity. "No guilt for your complicity in their murders? Maurice was your father's friend. He helped you to escape from Hamburg, when you were arrested for your crimes."

Lukas sat forward, his dark hair falling across his brow. "Let me tell you about Maurice Fournier," he said, his amusement giving way to sudden fury. "He may have helped smuggle me from Germany, but he was no friend to me! When I was a boy, my father would order my sisters to fuck him. Sometimes Maurice would have me join him in the act. My father pimped us all out— my mother until she was so old and ugly no man wanted to put his dick in her-- and then his own children. Can you imagine what that is like, you monster? My father and his friends had no regard for us as human beings. They thought only of the warm orifices they could shove their disgusting cocks inside! And Maurice was no better than any of the others. He took me in when my papa died, but it was only because I was useful to him. I had been well-trained by Papa and his cohorts. I did whatever Maurice told me to do. Fuck. Kill. If I am monster, it is because of the horrors that my father and his filthy friends subjected me to when I was too young to defend myself. They made me what I am."

"So why repeat their evils? Why not strive to rise above your sordid past?" I asked.

"It is the only life I know," he said, leaning back. His eyes rolled toward the window, devoid of emotion, concealing the memories that squirmed in the lightless depths of his awareness. "I do not derive pleasure from anything else in this world," he said softly. "Rape, murder, they are the only things that move me. Perhaps I should kill myself, remove the corruption that is my soul from this world of death and decay, but I do not wish to die. Why should I? I did not ask for this life, and the guilt for the acts I have committed do not stain these hands alone. I am merely a product of my environment."

I felt pity for him suddenly.

"When I kill you, I will not make it unnecessarily painful," I promised him.

He glanced toward me and smiled.

"No," he said. "I want you to. It is the only way I will feel it when it happens."

I stared at him in mute shock, taken aback by his need to be abused, his desire to die in pain. Then I thought: perhaps he only plays another game with me. This exhibition of vulnerability may simply be a ploy, one designed to evoke pity in me.

"I think we are like the opposite poles of a magnetic field," I murmured. "Fated by our nature to be drawn together."

I observed his demeanor as only a vampire can: the workings of his facial muscles, the tiny involuntary movements of his limbs. Even his smell. My instincts told me that he was not being deceptive, but I could not trust my instincts when it came to this mortal monster. His mind was like an onion; each layer I peeled back revealed yet another layer, and another.

He returned my stare and smiled, his mirth failing to reach his eyes.

"I have to shit," he said.