Forever Original | Alaric Saltzman

Chapter 70

Hilda stared at him blankly.

"What?" she said after a few seconds, now looking at him like he was stupid.

"You heard me," Kai replied with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

The Original crossed her arms. She wasn't considering it at all, but she wanted to see exactly where he was going with this. "Why would I give up my family to be a monster again?" she demanded. "The point was that I settled down. Became a better person."

Kai made a face. "Did you really become a better person? Really? What's gonna happen the day that your daughters learn the truth about the things you've done? When they're old enough to remember this day and they realize their mommy killed thirty vampires in seven minutes like it was a carnival game?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You speak of my daughters as if you intend for them to grow up."

"Well, if you come with me, they can grow up all they want," he said with a shrug.

"You wouldn't actually let them live."

"I would. That's how deals work."

"You're lying." She gripped the table to stabilize herself as she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. "You're going to urge me back into my psychotic ways then kill my daughters. Your answer is no."

He made a puppy face, grabbing her arm and beginning to siphon again. "Think nice and hard about that, Hilda," he prompted. "I'm offering you the life of your twinsies. Any mother would leap at that chance."

"I can't trust you, can I?" she sneered through gritted teeth. "I can hardly trust my own family not to hurt them. Surely you gathered from my memories that I don't very much get along with my brother Elijah. I wouldn't trust him with anything anymore."

Kai came to sit on the table in front of her. "I get it," he said as if they were merely friends ranting about a bad day to each other. "I mean, I thought I could trust my twin sister, then she got me sent to a prison world for eighteen years. Can you imagine that? You know what it's like to be daggered for centuries. But at least you're just taking a long nap and you can go into your memories. That's how you cope, isn't it? Imagine how it was for me. Eighteen years of being wide awake for the majority of the day, seeing the world empty except for me. I had nothing. No positive memories to rely on. You have at least a handful of good memories with each of your siblings. I had only one good memory with each of them, and they all happened when my brothers and sisters were still too little to understand that I was the family reject. Once they were told to stay away from me... there's nothing."

"I know you suffered," she mumbled, looking away. "I heard all about it. You have trust issues and so do I. I suffered too. I lost my freedom for decades at a time. I lost my brother Finn twice. I watched Kol die twice, too— that hurt more. Over a thousand years I've been betrayed, assaulted, mistreated, abused. My father was just as bad as yours, if not worse. I know what it's like. To be called a failure. To be hit over the head because of something we did wrong. He and my mother forced me to turn into this beast I am and it came with mental health problems I never expected. It's only recently that I've felt in control of my own body. You have to understand how terrible that is. Feeling out of place in your mind. Every innocent person becomes a potential victim and killing is the greatest thrill. Why? Because we make someone else feel a fraction of the pain that we do every day on repeat."

He leaned a bit forward, smirking slightly. "Now you're getting it," he said, thinking she was considering it now. "Why hold back? You could use a good killing spree."

"And if I don't want to be that person anymore? You've killed less than a hundred people in your life. I've killed perhaps two thousand, and the body counts of my brothers are almost as bad. I'm almost entirely certain I've killed the most people out of all of my siblings. They killed, but their victims came back to life as vampires. All those slain by me have remained dead. Because when I get my hands on someone and decide to attack them, I don't ever want them walking upright again."