Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“How did you feel?” I asked. “Witches hate vampires. And you knew you were a witch.”
“I did. And I had heard of the beasts of the night, but I’d never seen or met one,” she replied. “To me, the only beast were the ones in the day. The humans and witches who hurt us. So, I wasn’t scared. In fact, I was angry at him. I yelled at him for saving only me. Why couldn’t he save all of them? They’d be punished once they realized I was gone.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. What would happen to the others when the sun came up and not all of them were accounted for?
“Sigbjørn asked me if I wished to liberate the whole camp. I said yes, and he asked me, ‘What then? End the war? And what then? How many new wars would start because of it? Wars against vampires. Mortals can slaughter their own, so what stops them from doing the same to vampires? Even if we were to win that war? No one would have the freedom they once had. Humans would never be at peace. Witches would be more agitated or join in the fight against us. Fate spared you, Atarah. But that doesn’t mean you have the power to spare the world. Your old family is gone. You may join this one or go back into the world from whence you came.’”
Harsh. It was wise. But it was harsh, especially for someone who had just been whisked out of an extermination camp.
“I collapsed out of stress and guilt and anger,” she said. “I just wanted to go back to how we were before the world went mad, to my father’s shoe shop and the night we were going to escape and not tell a soul. For the next few days or weeks, I slept under the bed in Arsiein’s room. I was still mortal since I hadn’t made my choice. Three times a day, he’d bring me the most lavash meals and leave it at the foot of the bed, not coming any closer. I’d wait for a few minutes before taking only the bread and drinking the bowl of milk. He’d even bring a big bath of water for me to clean up in, with fresh hot water every morning. He never said anything, never asked for anything. It made me feel rude, so one day, I said thank you. It went on and on like that until we began to talk fully. And he told me it was unfair, but maybe I could provide justice or live to see when justice would be done. The thought of it made me so happy. So, I chose to be reborn at nineteen to get a little bit of justice.”
And now we were back to how this whole conversation had started. “Nadia Kübler, she’s the one imprisoned?”
She nodded a wicked grin that looked so sinister on her face. “She’d changed her name, remarried a few times even. But I found her in Argentina in 1955. You should have seen her face when she saw me standing across the street. She tried to make her husband walk faster as if that would help her. I killed him on that street and took her away. I sank her in the earth and gave her the same gruel we had been fed once a day. She begged and screamed and begged more. Her head twisted to the side, left and right, trying to get out. Eventually, though, she stopped fighting. She stopped eating. She’d just beg for death. It was then I let her go. I didn’t want to bother with her anymore…with that pain. The anger vanished, or rather, I wanted it to vanish. I wanted to stop being angry, especially with Arsiein. He always understood, and he was always watching over me even when I was hunting Nazis. He never said anything, simply asked me if I was ready to go home or if I was thirsty.”
“You never drank from the ones you hunted?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I was scared of their final thoughts or what they would show me.”
“What did you do after you released her?”
“I dropped her in front of a Polish prison with a note listing all her crimes. She was mortal, and, therefore, mortal laws applied to her. I had gotten my rage out, but I wasn’t the only one she had destroyed, so I wished for the rest of them who made it to find closure—the end!” she said with a bit more pep and cheerfulness that did not at all fit the story. She seemed to get what my face was trying to say. “Yes, it is regrettable. But there is a moral to my story!”
“Don’t help fucking Nazis, and definitely don’t be a Nazi?”