Stupid boy, you never learn. He leaned his forehead against the mirror. Had it been his father or the Soul Eater, the creature who’d evicted Jacob Seymour’s sanity, who’d said those words to him time and again? It had been Jacob, at first, after his dear Moll had walked into the sun and burned to ash, and again, one hundred years later, when lovely Francesca had plunged herself into the bathing tub full of holy water. But by the time Elsbeth’s blood had cooled and congealed on her marble skin, Jacob Seymour was long dead, and it had been the Soul Eater who’d come to Cyrus. And when Carrie had sunk the stake into his heart, he’d heard Jacob’s voice in his head, taunting him with those same words.

Cyrus opened the medicine cabinet. There he found shaving soap, a razor and scissors. Morons. He couldn’t help his utter contempt for his captors. They’d been too busy playing at torture with the Mouse and her holy friends to think of removing potential weapons from his cell. The vampires upstairs were either stupid or so out of touch with their humanity, they didn’t realize how easy it would be for him to slit his own wrists and end the waiting.

Or would it? Everything about him was so…mortal. Would he really be capable of taking his own life, when the very thought of it, even in the abstract, sent a shudder of revulsion through him? No. He would not go back to that ghost world. Not if he could help it.

He should kill her, he decided. He would prove to himself he had learned something. He would prove to himself he could still be the vampire his father had wanted at his side, and hopefully his father would feel the same.

Cyrus’s total dependence on the Mouse for his day-to-day activities would be a hurdle. It was easy enough to overcome. If he learned to live a mortal life, just for a while until his father found him, he could be done with her.

He availed himself of the priest’s toiletries, pleased at the thought of returning to his former state. With each stroke of the razor, he hardened his resolve. Though his servants had always taken care of running the modern appliances in the kitchen, he considered himself a smart man and was fairly confident in his ability to figure things out for himself. When he was finished grooming, he would simply go out and kill the Mouse. With his hands, if necessary; with a knife, better. Either way, she would be dead.

Before she can hurt me like the rest of them. See, Father, I have learned something, after all.

He could do it. She made him weak. Killing her would make him strong.