Immortal Love Book #2. Evil

30. "Emotionless"

I thought maybe it was my mistake, maybe I was seeing something that wasn't there, but it was unlikely. If there was one thing I'd learned over the past year was to always trust my instincts because they were usually spot on. Dennis —or whoever was in front of me— took a few steps towards me and then stopped, right when he was around two feet away from me. I, for some reason, didn't feel safe with him in the room, like I did before. What was happening was obvious, but I still didn't want to accept it because I didn't know exactly what it meant. Dennis had his emotions off. He had stopped feeling, and that was what was off. His eyes looked like the same eyes that I fell in love with, but only hollow and almost unrecognizable. I took a deep breath and a smile appeared on his face.

"I like that." he said. I didn't know what he was referring to.

"What?" I asked. I wanted to know how different he was. He had told me that he would be like a completely different person after he stopped feeling, but I wanted to see for myself how different he would be.

"The reaction your body has when you see me." I frowned. I wasn't sure where he was getting at. "Your pulse goes through the roof, you start breathing faster, your hands sweat, your knees shake, your pupils dilate. It's all so..." he made a pause, maybe for dramatic effect or because he was genuinely unsure of what to say next. "delicious." he said, looking at my neck. He somehow got my heart to beat even faster than it already was. I wasn't excited to see him like I usually was. He scared me now.

"You're saying you like the fact that I fear you?" I asked. Dennis looked like he was hypnotized because he couldn't get his eyes off my neck. When he heard me speak, he looked into my eyes instead.

"I'm saying blood tastes better with more adrenaline." he said. Was he threatening to bite me? I looked into the big mirror. Darko didn't want me to die, right? "Stella." Dennis made me look at him again. "Nobody can help you." he said. Was he going to kill me? Dennis killing me after all that he had done to protect me had a sense of irony I wasn't in the mood to appreciate.

"Dennis." I said his name, and something seemed to change for just one second. I felt him for one second, but then he was gone again. If I tried to feel what he was feeling, I felt pure emptiness.

"It's me." he said with a soft smile. Was he suddenly trying to convince me that this stranger in front of me was the man I loved more than I thought was possible? I didn't think he'd be that stupid.

"No. It's not. You don't feel the same." I said, and his expression changed. He went from trying to look nice to looking like he wanted to kill me. I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea if I kept making him mad.

"Right, I keep forgetting that you're an Imperium." he said. I gasped and looked instinctively into the mirror. Darko had heard him and now he knew what I was. Darko was old, so he probably knew what the word Imperium meant. I was done. He was going to kill me. "Sorry, was I supposed to keep it a secret?" he pretended to have done if by accident. I looked at him with a look of anger and disappointment. I knew he would stop feeling, but I didn't know he would turn into a completely different person.

"I can't believe you did that." I said. He was, in fact, going to be the reason I died in here, and the reason humanity would go practically extinct.

"Don't worry darling, there's nobody there." he said, pointing at the mirror. I looked at it, like the mirror would give me some information. It didn't. "They gave me some time alone with you." he said. I was still scared, but now that my secret was still safe, I was a little less scared.

"What do you want?" I asked. I couldn't believe the hostility that was now in between us. I never thought I'd feel unsafe with Dennis around. Oh, how things had changed.