Chapter Twenty-Two | Life Choices

"I don't know what I find more disturbing, the fact that you're studying me or that you're essentially plotting suicide." Warren rebutted as he waved the notebook at her—the one he'd lifted from her room. He'd spent the last few days reading her research, and his frustration had been mounting. Initially, he'd planned to skim through her morbid journal before stealthily returning it. He'd gain the upper hand with inside knowledge and then, at his leisure and preferably casually, bring up her plans and dissuade her peacefully. Now that she had a collection of information about Vampires, he hoped her wild curiosity had been assuaged, but her intentions became apparent the more he read. Her annotations and commentary were particularly disturbing.

An argument had started over dinner. Who had started it? Warren couldn't remember, but she had pressed his buttons, and he'd quickly lost his temper. Karou was quick to defend herself and was as feisty and unyielding as ever. With his plan to peacefully discuss the issue gone with the wind, they'd been yelling back and forth over the kitchen island.

"You had no right to look through my things, Warren!" Karou cried, her hands becoming animated.

"I'm not defending myself on that charge, Karou. It was a disrespectful thing to do, but you're getting away from the real point."

"You're unbelievable!" She hissed, "What else did you expect me to do? You won't talk to me about it, so I'm not going to get any information out of you, am I?"

"Why are you so fascinated with this? It's morbid..."

"You're not even answering my questions. You're just asking more questions, so why should I bother to answer yours?" Karou shouted, "I want to belong somewhere. I want to feel strong for once. I want a chance to survive in what's left of the world once this damn war ends." She reasoned, praying he would show her some understanding.

He didn't. "It's suicide!" Warren snapped.

"It's not suicide—it's transformation!" Karou glared at him from over the kitchen island. She slammed her hands down as she made her point.

By now, his fangs had bared. "Into a monster! I had no choice but to become what I am, Karou, and I would rather have died. This isn't a life someone should choose. Immortality has been romanticised. It means you get to watch those you care about die. Watch every benchmark, social norm', law and tradition that molded you fade away until you're sense of self hangs by a thread. And trust me, you won't feel so strong when you become a slave to predatory instinct. It won't feel worth it when the corpses start to pile up and your humanity is stripped from you, and right and wrong are blurred beyond recognition. And I may see another few centuries,s but make no mistake, I've been dead inside for twenty years or more."

"You're not dead, Warren, even if you have chosen to live in this tomb by yourself." She gestured vaguely to the unit about them. "Has it occurred to you that not all sired Vampires feel like you about their life or live like you either? I've been reading about Coven's!"

"You have no idea what Coven life is like," Warren glowered. He found the fact that she thought she was making a valid point infuriating.

"Of course, they're dehumanised; they're not human—" Karou interjected, rolling her eyes in contempt.

"—Nesting Vampires form dehumanising habits. Obsessive, destructive, and psychotic behaviours start to feel normal. It's unhealthy. It's suffocating."

Now, more than anything else, she was exasperated that she couldn't get through to him, he just kept barking her down. "Why can't you just give me your unbiased opinion and let me make my own choice?"

"How could I possibly be unbiased?" He scoffed, and she sighed.

This time, when Karou spoke, her voice had lowered to a desperate whine. "Warren, please? You know why I want this..."

"It doesn't matter what I say, does it? You've already made up your mind. Hasn't anything I've shown you made any difference?" Warren challenged, equally as fraught and desperate.

"You mean the display you made of your leeching machines? There have always been slaughterhouses, Warren. What Mortals do to animals to survive is probably far less civilised than that. Besides, people have never done me any favours; no one ever saved me from my mom, so why should I care? All my life, I just bumbled along, kept my head down, got good grades, was a good girl despite getting everything other than a reward. I don't want to live like that anymore. I want to take my life into my own hands—to be in control for once." Karou spoke passionately, and Warren could admire that, but he still thought she was pursuing this path recklessly for the sake of adolescent rebellion.

Good girl? Ha! You're tenacious pain in my ass. Warren thought bitterly and shook his head. Proving him right, Karou narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest in determination. "There are other, less deadly ways to take control of your... destiny, Karou."

"Still, you don't get to tell me what to do. I'm grateful for you not getting rid of me, but I won't live under your thumb, Warren; that's not fair."

"Have you even thought about how you're going to feed yourself once you've made this 'transformation'? You can't feed from the people in this Compound, Karou. I won't—no, I can't let you. It's my responsibility to ensure their safety." Warren smoothed his hand over his chin; this whole scenario was a headache. "That's assuming someone Sire's you in the first place. Who have you convinced to do that?"

"The only Vampire I trust is very much against the idea, so maybe it'll just have to be someone who never turns down a tasty neck." Karou snarked.

The fact she trusted him made him bristle. She'd made it clear that she still had no concept of how dangerous he was, but what was worse was her insinuation. Warren's anger cooled to a simmer as his expression hardened into a knowing glare. "Richard Abbot?"

She nodded and confirmed his worst imaginings. He couldn't stop his lips from twitching away from his fangs; the thought of Karou under Richard's fangs turned his innards and eyes green. "How do you know Richard?"

"Through Juniper." Truly, she could've named up to thirty women. It was a wonder his porch light didn't glow red.

"She knows about your machinations, does she?"

"No. No one was meant to know. Not until afterwards."

"That's assuming you make it. If he Sire's you at all and doesn't drain you and leave you for dead. You don't magically get up and go about your life immediately afterwards. You think Richard is going to nurse you back to health? You're not as smart as I thought if you think you'll be anything more than a bedwarmer the moment you're over his threshold."

"Wait, have you only refused because you wouldn't want the bother of taking care of me?"

Warren might have stopped yelling, but the way his voice transformed into a low growl that rumbled from his chest when he said, "I would never lay a fang on you, Karou, much less Sire you; let me make that perfectly clear." was far more terrifying than his earlier outburst; it was wholly inhuman. "—And before you get any ideas that you could possibly make this change without me, don't forget that REDford sustains almost ninety per cent of the world's Vampiric population, and like those outside these walls, the Compound's Vampiric residents pay for its products."

"So, you're going to use my poverty against me, is that it? You'll happily spend your mountains of money on food that doesn't hinder my stupid intolerances, but you won't feed me with something you have in good supply if I choose to become like you?" Karou was back to raising her voice.

"Yes, I would much rather facilitate your diet if it meant keeping you alive!" Warren argued, only to be cut off by another of Karou's angry verbal eruptions.

"That's just petty! And that 'not laying a fang on me' threat is bullshit! Don't pretend you haven't thought about biting me! You've insinuated that you might plenty of times and that you've wanted to... Mr, I smell like fucking sunshine!"

"Now, who's using one's weaknesses against who? Just because I think about it doesn't mean I'm going to."

"I wish you would!" Karou blurted. The moment it had left her lips, she wished she hadn't said it; the look on Warren's face was that of defeat. Her readiness to make the admission just proved the depth of its truth, and it was cutting. She was willing to manipulate him and threaten something as sickening as letting the Compound's lowliest lecher not only touch but defile her body to get him to do what she wanted. He shuddered from within. How could he be the lesser of two evils when he'd had basal thoughts about her since she arrived?

The combustion behind his argument had run out, and a long, convalescent silence came. Warren simmered down with a great huff and a stagged sigh. A stool's feet crapped over the tile as he took a seat at the kitchen island. With his eyes closed tight to fight off the warm, wet heat that threatened to fall from them. He held his head in his hands. He felt lost and still desperately wanted Karou to change her mind. He wanted her to choose life. It was viscerally painful, knowing that she would readily give up her chance at a bitter-sweetly short full life for a longer half-life.

Seeing Warren like that stalemated Karou and made her feel guilty that they'd fought. She hadn't meant for her rebellious spirit to upset him so much. Caught up in his sullen emotion, Karou took her seat across from him again and lowered her tone. "Does it hurt?"

Warren looked over the counter at her from under his brows, questioning.

"Biting, I mean." Karou clarified.

Although he wasn't raging mad anymore, he had a splitting headache, and the hollowing sadness in his chest made breathing such an effort. But, he was willing to talk, if only for another chance at changing her mind; he hoped a gentler approach might prove successful. "I was never bitten as a Mortal, but I imagine it's painful."

"Does it not hurt when you're a Vampire, then? If you weren't bitten before, I figure all the scars on your neck came about afterwards?"

"Are we really talking about this?" Warren sighed and dropped his hands from either side of his head to fold them onto the counter instead. The look on Karou's face had softened. If he was honest, he was a sucker for how she nibbled at her lower lip and tipped her head to the side with such innocent intrigue. "It doesn't necessarily hurt in the traditional sense. And yes, all my scars came about after, mostly my Fledgling years when I nested with several others, including Ellis. Only she bites me these days..."

"What does it feel like to you, then? Y'know, there isn't first-hand information like this available in books. Maybe... something you tell me might make me change my mind?" Karou lent further over the counter, feebly trying to get Warren to open up and answer all of her nitty-gritty questions. "And why do you only let Ellis bite you?"

"Oh boy, we really are talking about this, huh?" Warren combed one hand back through his hair. "I'm still a bit uncomfortable knowing you have notes about me in this book." He tapped his index finger off its cover. "My eyes, scars, fangs, body heat, heartbeat… What else about me have you been examining?"

"Uh—" A blush rushed into Karou's cheeks, as bright as a pink sunset and just as hot. Her mouth hung slightly agape as she glanced at her notebook, wondering how much of it he'd read.

"Well?" Warren pushed.

"You've seen my scar, so what's the big deal?" Karou looked down into her lap and started picking at her nails out of anxiousness.

"Both times I saw it, you chose to show me. You dropped your towel on the couch and took your shirt off when you were in my bed."

"That was perfectly innocent! Besides, it's not like you were looking at me like that. I had sunburn, and my back hurt."

"Wasn't I?" Warren's stare was hard and soul-swallowing when she dared to look up from her lap to meet his gaze, a little shocked by what he was insinuating.

"That's a low blow, Warren." She figured he had to be poking fun at her appearance in some way. "I won't do it again, okay? I get that it's ugly to look at."

"I got over it pretty quickly," Warren admitted truthfully and dryly while he watched her wilt in front of him. He always managed to bring her down so quickly, and he hated himself for it. You're a callous bastard; deflating her esteem so you can manipulate her is beyond despicable. You're no better than her mother... "Ahem, besides, you haven't seen all of my scars."

"You mean the one on your leg?"

"All my clothes cover that." Warren flinched, unnerved. How far did her studies of him go? He'd been berating himself for his deplorable manipulation of her, but perhaps she had the upper hand. Effortlessly, she had him floundering. "For you to have seen it, I would've had to have been naked because it's high on my thigh. Karou, did you lie about looking away when you saw Ellis and me together?"

"I promise I looked away! I haven't actually seen it. I just know it's there from when I had to get blood from your safe. You were holding your hand on it over your pyjamas."

Warren visibly relaxed, relieved that his dignity was still intact. "It's a flaw of my Siring and, frankly, the bane of my existence."

"How come it still hurts? You're Siring was ages ago."

"It hurts when I don't keep myself fed. Most of the time, the damaged tissue continuously regenerates into healthy tissue, but it regresses when I'm thirsty. It's opened back up once or thrice." His nose wrinkled at the thought of the ugly wound.

"At least if you feed yourself right, it doesn't bother you." Karou forced a smile. "Warren, if … hypothetically, I do get someone to Sire me… Would you hate me?"

"I won't hate you. But I don't think I'll ever understand your reasons."

"And what about... blood?"

"It'll be up to your Sire to feed you, but if you choose someone careless, I couldn't watch you starve.