James opens the door before I knock. One look at my face and he pulls me inside, his hands steady on my shoulders even as I shake apart.
"Alan," I manage. "The police—multiple bodies—"
"Breathe."
"I can't breathe. I don't need to breathe." The words come out jagged, breaking. "I killed them, James. Not just Vincent. Others. I was drunk on power and I didn't stop and now Alan could be arrested for what I did."
He guides me to the couch, sits beside me, doesn't try to minimize it or tell me it'll be fine. Just listens as everything spills out—the conversation with Alan, his terror, the lies I told, the guilt crushing down until I can't think past it.
"I did this to save him," I whisper. "And I might have destroyed him anyway."
The weight of it is too much. The guilt, the fear, the sick certainty that I'm not a predator embracing her nature but a monster who lost control. Something breaks inside my chest, and before I can stop it, tears blur my vision.
I lift my hand to wipe them away and freeze.
Red. The tears are red.
Blood streaks my fingers, cold and wrong, and horror slams through me so visceral I can't move. I'm crying blood. Like something from a nightmare. Like proof of exactly what I've become.
"Oh God—" My voice cracks. "What's wrong with me?"
James catches my wrist gently, turning it so he can see the crimson on my skin. His expression doesn't show disgust or fear. Just understanding.
"We cry blood," he says quietly.
Another drop slides down my cheek, and I feel it—cold and thick and fundamentally wrong. I try to wipe it away, but my hands shake too badly.
James leans in. His tongue traces the path of the blood tear from my jaw to my cheekbone, slow and deliberate, and the sensation stops my spiraling thoughts completely.
Heat floods through me. Not panic. Not horror. The visceral understanding that he's tasting my grief, consuming my pain, accepting the worst parts of what I am without flinching.
His gray-blue eyes meet mine, pupils dilated with hunger that has nothing to do with sustenance. "You're not wrong, Theresa. You're just new."
The words crack something open. I surge forward and kiss him desperately, tasting my own blood on his tongue, needing to feel something other than guilt. His hands come up to cradle my face, and for a moment we're just hunger and need and the dark comfort of being understood.
Then he pulls back.
"Wait." His voice is rough, strained. "You're spiraling. I won't—not like this."
"I need—"
"No." He rests his forehead against mine. "Not when you're using me to run from what you're feeling."
The rejection stings, but underneath it I hear the care. He's not refusing me. He's refusing to let me hide from myself.
I pull back, wiping at my face with shaking hands. More blood smears my skin. "How do you live with it? The guilt?"
"Poorly." A bitter smile crosses his face. "For a very long time, poorly."
"Tell me." The request comes out raw. "Tell me how you became this."
He's quiet for a long moment, and I think he might refuse. Then he exhales—unnecessary breath, human habit—and begins.
"London. 1825. Cholera was tearing through the city like God's own punishment." His voice goes distant, remembering. "My wife. My children. All of them sick. Dying. And me—healthy, helpless, watching them fade."
I listen without interrupting.
"A vampire found me. Offered a choice—turn and live, or die with them. Margaret begged me to live. Said someone needed to remember them." His hands clench. "By the time I woke from the transformation three days later, they were already gone. I was too late. Too new. Too ignorant of what I could have done."
The grief in his voice is ancient but still sharp. Still bleeding.
"I couldn't save them," he continues. "Couldn't turn them—they were too sick, wouldn't have survived the transformation. Couldn't even die with them. I just... survived. For two hundred years, I survived. And every day I carry the weight of that choice."
"You think you should have died with them," I say quietly.
"I think I chose survival over love. And I've never forgiven myself for it." He looks at me then, and his eyes hold centuries of loneliness. "So yes, Theresa. I understand guilt. I understand what it means to live with choices you can't undo."
The confession settles between us like a bridge. We're both carrying bodies. Both drowning in what we've done.
"Do you regret it?" I ask. "Turning?"
"Every day." He pauses. "And never. Because if I'd died with them, everything they were would be gone. At least this way, someone remembers Margaret's laugh. How my son couldn't pronounce his R's. How my daughter collected stones from the river." His voice cracks slightly. "Someone carries them forward."
"That's not guilt," I realize. "That's love."
"It's both." He reaches out, traces the dried blood on my cheek. "Most heavy things are."
We sit in silence for a while. Then he speaks again, softer.
"My only real regret—the one I can't resolve—is my father." He stares at his hands. "He was hard on me. Pushed me. Expected perfection. I spent my human life resenting him for it. And then I died before I could tell him I understood. That the harshness came from love. That I forgave him."
The words hit something deep in my chest. My own parents—the resentment, the anger, the poison I've carried for years.
"You never got that conversation," I say.
"No." The grief in his voice is old but unhealed. "I'd give anything for one more hour. Just to tell him I loved him. That I understood. That I'm sorry for wasting so much time being angry."
The confession cracks open something I've been avoiding. I have that opportunity. My parents are still alive. Still reachable. And I'm sitting here drowning in guilt about Alan while carrying decades of rage about them.
What if I burned in the sun tomorrow? What if Alan got arrested and I had to run? Would I regret the anger I never released? The forgiveness I never offered?
"I need to see my parents," I hear myself say.
James looks at me, understanding dawning. "Theresa—"
"Not for them. For me." The certainty grows with each word. "I need to let go of this anger before the guilt about Alan destroys me completely. I need to forgive them. Not because they deserve it, but because I deserve peace."
He studies my face, then nods slowly. "I'll go with you."
"You don't have to—"
"I know." He takes my hand. "But whatever they say, whatever poison they pour—remember you're not theirs anymore. You're not the daughter they tried to shape. You're yours."
The words settle into my chest like armor. Like permission to walk into that confrontation and walk out whole. To release the weight of old wounds so I have room to carry the new ones.