She got up from the floor. I followed.
“Is that what we were just doing? Rutting like animals? I thought it was something more than that. I thought it might be more enjoyable if you had your fangs buried in my neck. I’m not looking for some fucking thrill. If that were the case, I would have stayed with Devon and let him rape me, using me over and over again until I didn’t know the difference between surrender and love. Does that sound familiar, Veronica?”
I couldn’t believe she thought I was some groupie just wanting to have my blood drawn like it was some big thing. I suggested it only because I wanted to make her happy. She clutched her head and screamed in frustration. She turned and came to slap me, her fingers turned into talons. Veronica stopped inches from my face. I didn’t flinch as she came at me.
“Go ahead, Veronica. Become just what Devon wants you to be, a killer without a conscience, a thing unable to feel love or pain. Go ahead. I won’t blame you or haunt you as the memory of your sister does. If you do, remember one thing. I’m not like Devon. I never put any demands on you. All I wanted to do was to help. And if you kill me, you’ll kill the only semblance of salvation you have within yourself. So go ahead.” I turned my neck so her talons could have a clean shot. I waited. Nothing happened.
Instead, I found myself in her embrace. Her fingers returned to normal as she stroked my flesh as if she truly cherished me, or like I was an object she had not seen in many years.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. I’d never hurt you intentionally. You know that.”
“I know.”
I held her and in that instant she was not the vampire I knew, strong and proud, she was the frightened girl who had been seduced by a fiend so many years ago. She was the girl who had been thwarted out of a loving marriage by a monster and had given up her life in blood and pain. In that moment, she and I would never be separated, no matter what happened to me. If I died tomorrow she would be at my side. She would protect me, always. It would be she and I until I drew my last breath.
Her hand came up and held the other side of my neck, pushing it to the side, so she could have a better angle. I held my breath and waited for the pain, but it wasn’t bad. She took great care in making sure her entrance was swift and painless. I drew in my breath through my teeth and then I felt her suckling, heard the sucking sounds as she drew in my life. My hands traveled down to her nether region and began to work her once again as she bled me. Each of us began to move in time, our breath quickening along with one another. At the moment of her release, I was lightheaded and growing slightly cold, but it was then as she withdrew from me that we came in each other’s arms.
My name is Veronica
.
The smell of blood drew me into consciousness. Shock hit me when I opened my eyes. The once stark white sheet that used to cover the couch was now stained red. The smell of familiar blood wafted into my nose. I’d tasted it before. It was Brenna’s. Droplets of it had dribbled on the floor as if a child had run rampant with a bucket of paint. My jaw hardened. My teeth sharpened all at once, leaving me with a furrow of fangs. The edges shredded my gums, and blood welled up inside my mouth. Unconsciously, I licked my lips as the thick liquid slid down my throat.
My fingernails hardened into black talons until they were six inches long, the full extent of their length. I got up slowly from my resting place listening, for any sound of Brenna, but I was met with utter silence. Nothing breathed inside the house, except the ghosts, which lingered within my mind, but even those past whispers were silent now. I scanned the room with all my senses for any sign of Brenna but found none. I looked down at the dribbles. I touched the tip of my tongue. I tasted Brenna and caught a whiff of her fear mixed in with the crimson liquid.
An image flashed in my mind as the blood hit my system, and I experienced things from Brenna’s perspective. Something grabbed me around the throat so I couldn’t scream. I looked up into Devon’s deep eyes, my will paralyzed as he clamped down on my throat. His grin was wicked as he picked me up and brought me to his lips. Twin surges of fire erupted in my neck. I flailed against him, kicking him. He continued to drain me, and as I struggled against him his talons raked across my arms and he snarled, digging further into my throat, taking in my life. I was cold and blackness descended.
I caught Brenna’s fleeting thoughts of me, but there was nothing she could do to wake me, even though I was feet away, because I was wrapped in the sleep of death.
I growled low in my throat, allowing my vocal cords to constrict so I became more beast than human. I blamed myself for not protecting her, not even with my strength could I save her. Edmund had been right. Devon knew where I was, and now he had the one I cherished more than my own life. My form shifted, able to support me on all fours as I ran through the house. I was neither wolf nor large hunting cat. I was something in between, something that only could be compared to a hellhound. I ran into the kitchen, following the trail of blood. It stopped at the edge of the counter. I flicked my now forked tongue out, catching a drop. Devon had only been here within minutes of me waking, probably just stirring from his own death trance a half an hour or so before mine.
On the counter was an object. Momentarily I reverted back to a standing position and saw a knife dripping with blood stabbed through a tarot card. I gave the knife a yank, but it wouldn’t budge. I tugged again and the blade broke. The other half stayed embedded in the wooden countertop. I looked down at the thing it had pinned. It was a tarot card from Edmund’s deck, which I had shuffled a week before. Through the blood I saw the image underneath. It was not just any card. It was the Death Card.
I growled again at the thought of Devon touching Brenna. I looked at the card once again and knew where he had taken her. I didn’t know how he had achieved it, but the one place I thought she would be safe from him had become her crypt when it had once been her haven. I tossed the remnants of the knife aside and ran out of the house, not bothering to open the door. Rather, I crashed through it. I didn’t feel the two-inch oak splinters that embedded in my skin, nor did I care that the four-inch thick wooden door would have to be replaced. I raced up Beacon Street, past all of the college dorms and Boston Garden, and then across Charles Street, uncaring of the honking horns, or of the metal contraption I hit. I later learned I’d dented the side of a garbage truck. None of these things could stop me as I made my way toward Winter Street, toward Brenna. I shook off the daze the impact had given me and moved quicker than I cared to think about, growling at unwary humans as they crossed my path. I splashed through the Frog Pond in the middle of the Boston Common and came to Park Street Station.
I stopped at the edge of Tremont Street as I heard the screams of those passengers just coming or going down from the subway. Baring my teeth at them, I knew they’d never seen the likes of me except in their nightmares. I caught the scents of all of them: one had just had sex, one was close to death, and another young redhead had her period. All of their perfumes mixed in my nose, but I didn’t care.
I looked both ways, noticing there was no traffic, and leapt across the road in one fluid movement. Landing on the brick lined street, I kept on going, running though the already broken glass doors and toward the elevator. Then I stopped.
Devon would be expecting me to come through the main door and maybe he had set a trap. No, I couldn’t go that way, as it might endanger Brenna even more. I regained some of my composure and calmed a little. My anger still boiled under my skin, and my muscles rippled as I changed form. Taking my human appearance, I kept the talons and sharpened maw. I backed out of the hallway and pushed open the broken front door, the tinkling sound of glass reminding me of church bells as it hit the brick sidewalk. I walked backward out of the building and surveyed the surroundings. There was an alley, but it was not on this side of the building. I raced back up Winter Street onto Tremont Street when I saw a small alley hidden next to a church. This was how I could get in. I saw the fire escape leading up the side of the building.
My claws sank into the bricks and I hurdled over the gate, allowing my wings to shape, as I was airborne. Then I flapped up along the building until I was at the fire escape of the Boston Tearoom. I landed as softly as I could, pulling my energy around me so Devon would not sense my arrival. I placed my hand on the door and pushed. Wood splintered on the other side as I broke the bar that kept it sealed.
Shit. He must have heard me. My surprise is ruined, but it doesn’t matter. I have to get to her in time
.
I rammed into the door. It opened and I tumbled down the stairs, landing hard on my ass.
I got up slowly, catching the faint scent of sage. I tasted the remnants of it on my tongue as the ashes lingered in the air. This place had been cleansed recently to keep evil things out. I snickered. Little good it did. My ears perked up when I heard a faint moaning, a slight beating. I recognized the sound of that drum. It was Brenna and she was still alive, but barely. I didn’t have much time.
I moved down a narrow hallway and found Brenna and Devon in the main room where I had my reading done the week before. There, in a pool of blood, was Brenna. Devon leaned over her, still in human form. He sucked at her neck greedily, trying to lap at the little blood left in her body. I knew there wasn’t much left. The pallor of her skin reflected the candles, which burned next to a small shrine to the Virgin Mary in the corner of the room.
“Get off of her,” I growled, my vocal cords shifting to normal once again.
It took Devon a moment before he acknowledged me. He stole one last sip and then looked up at me. His eyes were black, burning red in the middle. There was no humanity left in him. He held Brenna close while wiping her blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I knew you’d come just in time,” he purred.
I took a step forward, but he stopped me as one of his talons curled around her throat.
“Tsk, tsk, Ronnie. One more step and she’ll die forever with no hope of being brought back. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see that, now would you?”
“No,” I whispered.
I looked down at Brenna and saw how fragile she was. How innocent. She wanted so much to be normal, but it just wasn’t in her to fit into a world made of stupid rules. That was why she pretended to be a vampire. She thought she could get away from the rules, but not everything is breakable. Her fate caught up to her, and she became tangled up in the web of my life, my destiny. Tears poured from my eyes as I looked at her, wanting her to be so far away from here, back in the heat and heaviness of New Orleans where she could still pretend to be whatever she wanted. My heart broke as I saw her there dying on the floor, her life now imbibed by Devon.
“You love her, don’t you?” he asked, completely baffled by the thought that I actually felt some emotion. He never truly loved me when he thought to marry me years ago. I was just another conquest. “This just gets better and better.”
“Why? Do you find it so hard to believe? Just because you don’t have a heart doesn’t mean I don’t.” I hissed.
“Oh, I could not care less about my heart. No, Ronnie, I was just saying this gets better because if I had known how much you cared for this mortal then I’d have done this ages ago just to torment you. As it is, this whole time has been wonderful. And Brenna, she’s delicious, but I’m afraid she’s dying, and I’m late for a dinner date.”
He glanced one more time at Brenna and then put her down, letting her head thump against the hardwood floor. Her skull cracked from the impact. I moved then and gathered her up in my arms as she grew colder.
“You’re going to let her die? You can’t just leave her.”
“It’s not up to me anymore. It’s your decision. You can let her die or bring her back. Either way you’ll have the guilt of her demise on your conscience for the rest of your indentured life, and then you’ll realize everything I told you was right and you’ll beg me to take you back.” He paused and fingered a few of the cards on Edmund’s table. He drew one and looked at it, smirking. Then I felt his hot breath on the back of my neck as his cold talons encircled my throat.
“Then, you’ll wish for the mercy I’d have shown you if you had come back to me willingly. All of these games try my patience. The next time I won’t be so fooled as to let you out of my sight. You’ll be starved, emaciated, your blood eating away at you before I let you feed. And then in between I’ll make sure you never have enough to heal properly. In time these pretty features will be scarred, with maggots and worms crawling inside of your skin, and not just your face and neck this time, this time inside your whole body. Oh yes, you’re not going to get away from me that easily.” He breathed in my ear and his forked tongue caressed the side of my face. I tried to pull away, but he held me in place.
“Remember, I’ll be seeing you.”
With that, he was gone. I assumed he went out the way I came in because I didn’t hear the elevator nor did I hear any doors open. He just vanished. And I knew it wasn’t over. No, everything had just begun.
I held Brenna close to me, pressing my fingers to her seeping wounds. Tears freely flowed from my eyes. For the first time in a long time they came, as I had no walls encasing anything in me. Everything I was, beast and all, cried out for the rape of this innocent, for the taking of a life. Ronnie surprised me and I even felt her sadness. Strange, because I thought she didn’t feel any kind of positive emotion. I wondered what had changed. I posed the question.
This human sees us for what we are. She has grown on me
, my beast answered and then retreated. I dared not ask anything else since I doubted I would get an answer. Still it was something to ponder.
My hand hovered over Brenna’s chest as I felt for her pulse, but my hearing wasn’t wrong. With each beat her heart struggled to pump the last trickle through its arteries. Her skin grew colder, losing body temperature as she plunged into death. I swore to myself I wouldn’t bring her into the life I had led. She would not become a monster. She would not end up like me.
“Who says she’ll be a monster?” I looked up at the voice and found Edmund standing in the doorway. Through my tears I wondered how long he had been standing there. The more I looked at him, the more I realized I saw the hallway right through him. I hugged Brenna close to me as if trying to protect her from the specter, but she was already beyond my protection.
“Why do you say that?” I asked Edmund, the ghost or whatever he was. I didn’t care if he read my mind. I needed to know what was in store for Brenna.
Edmund walked into the room. I noticed the energy around him rippled as though he were coming through space and time to be here, to help. As much as I wanted to know how he did it, and what he truly was, at this point I didn’t dare ask. Brenna was slipping away.
Edmund passed his hand over Brenna, seeing when Death would claim her.
“She’s not gone, and you know she made her choice the moment she came onto this plane. If you think meeting her was an accident, you’re wrong; just as you meeting Devon, or meeting the old gypsy in the park, were not accidents. She knew when she came this was going to happen. We even discussed it when she was here. She knew something from the dark would bring her into the light.”
“I’d be condemning her to darkness. To live like I am. Forsaken by God. Forever to be a demon.”
Edmund shook his head. “Have you ever asked her what she believes? Maybe she doesn’t believe in God the way you do. Maybe she sees the world through the eyes of one who accepts all creatures. Maybe a Goddess, even. You’ve seen this representation from the painting on the wall, of one who accepts. She sent you love the day you walked in here.” Edmund gestured toward the painting on the wall.
I followed his outstretched hand. The woman was no longer on the wall, but standing in front of me with her arms outstretched.