Damnation (OLD AND DISCONTINUED, PLEASE READ NEWER VERSION)

CHAPTER 9

Zack avoided me for the entire school day, and I found it pretty irritating. Whenever we would see each other in the same hallway, he would dash in the other direction. I'd try to track him down, but he would always go in the boy's locker room. At lunch, I caught him sitting with his friends from football instead of with me.
He'd prefer the company of Josh to mine.

By the time school was over, I was finally able to stop him. When the bus arrived at our bus stop, I grabbed on to his arm and dragged him off the bus. Once we were off, Zack jerked his arm away from me. He looked away and brushed his bangs out of his face. I snorted at him.

"Okay, Zack. You've been avoiding me the entire day. What's your deal?" I asked him. He looked back at me. My green eyes met his crimson ones.

"What's your problem? What, is it now a hobby of yours to kill people for your enjoyment?" He scowled. I was aghast.
"Okay, you know for a fact that what happened with Sandra was an accident. And I was on a rage that last Saturday. I would never-"

"Are you sure about that? Because of what happened, I don't think the odds are in your favor." He started walked away when I pulled him back by the arm.

"Gina, let go of me," he ordered.

"What's the point of asking me what my problem was when you're just going to interrupt me and leave?" I said. He tried to pull his arm back, but I held on.

"Gina, let go of me... now." I could tell Zack was angry at this point, but I didn't care.

"Zack, please. Listen to me."

"Stop, Gina!" He finally pulled his arm free. I waited for an answer. Zack exhaled in frustration.

"I thought you were better than that, Gina," he spoke. "I thought that you were better than what your vampirism made you into. But I guess I was wrong. I guess...." He bit his lip. He clenched his fists. Without another word, Zack stormed off without me. I just stood there, shocked from what just went down. It started to get a little chilly, so I dug my hands in my pockets. Something hard was inside. When I pulled it out, I found Zack's voice recorder in my hand. The memory of our little fight ran in my head. I ran home, realizing what I had to do.

When I walked inside, Jacob sat down in front of a new flat screen TV. He still watched the news without mocking it as he did with his friends. I slammed the door.
"I have the TV right now so leave," Jacob stated. I snorted and ran upstairs to my bedroom. I made sure the door was closed and the windows were, too. I grabbed my earphones from my drawer and plugged them into the voice recorder.

"Okay, let's see what Zack has in store." I said to myself. I pressed the play button.

"Testing, testing, one, two, three. Okay, this is going to be the first log of my new voice recorder. Mamá gave me this voice recorder, thinking it would be helpful to jot down my thoughts, but whatever. So to start, I want to talk about the most important people in my life, beginning with my best friend Gina. She became a vampire a year ago and she's pretty cute. Earlier today, I noticed that Gina had a small pimple on her left cheek. Anyway...." I immediately became bored. I was a little offended that he spoke about that pimple. I skipped through the logs. When I thought I checked all of the logs, there was one more labeled "Secret". I knew I had to look. I pressed play.

"I walked home with Gina today. There seemed to be something wrong with her, so I asked her about it. She said there was nothing wrong, but I knew there was. On our way home, we came across a terribly injured dog. It was gross to look at; whoever did that was a horrible person. I wanted to walk away from it as soon as possible. I told Gina but she didn't hear me. She only stared at the dog. I called her again, and she said she at least wanted to check the dog out. Soon after, she bent down close to the dog. I didn't understand what she was doing. I called out to her again. Her eyes slowly turned orange. Before I realized what was happening, she grabbed the dog's snout and ripped its head off. After that, she just ripped the dog apart. Blood spewed everywhere and I could hear the dog yelping in pain until it died. Gina fed on the dog, eating every single bit of it. It was too frightening to look at. I just-" I stopped the log. I remembered that day; I was just in a daze. Was that really how Zack felt? I couldn't bear to listen anymore. I thought I was done but there was another log labeled "Untitled". I forced myself to press play.

"It's been a year since I saw Gina eat that dog. I remember nearly wetting my pants. It was scary to see Gina like that. I know I've been in a place like that before. I mean, I'm a werewolf; it happens to me every month. But I've always known Gina as a sweet, innocent girl. I know she's a vampire and all, but still. She was never the demon I saw that day." There was silence. "But I won't let this 'mistake' change the way I look at Gina. Gina is Gina, and Gina is my friend." The recording ended there. I just stared at the voice recorder in my hand. Tears started to stream down my cheeks. I took out my ear phones and dropped the voice recorder on the ground. I understood his anger now. He believed I was more than just a blood-sucking, life-stealing vampire. But I proved to him I was just that. I clenched my fists. I let him down.

I looked down at the voice recorder on the ground. I knew I had to return it, but a huge part of me wanted to hold onto it. I groaned and lay back on my bed. Sometimes, I just hated my life.

When I woke up, a black cat was right in my face. It stared back at me with its amethyst eyes.

"Ellie, is that you again?" I asked, still half-asleep. It nodded its head. The cat jumped down to the floor in a spot that I couldn't see. After a few minutes, Ellie as a human popped out of nowhere.

"How are you feeling?" she inquired. As I sat up on my bed, I shrugged.

"Well, after betraying my friend's trust by killing another friend, I'd say I'm feeling great," I said with a sarcastic tone. Ellie furrowed her eyebrows.

"What?" I shook my head.

"Nothing, don't worry about it." I sighed. Ellie reached into her boot until she pulled out another vial filled up with a purple liquid.

"You seemed to like the taste of my blood, so I thought I'd bring you another," she spoke. She handed me the vial. I took out the cork. The sweet smell of witch blood filled the room. I gulped it down without another thought.

"Thanks, Ellie," I noted. She smiled.
"You're welcome. It's a guardian's duty to make people happy," she replied. She was about to leave when she stopped in her tracks. She started sniffing through the entire room. "Hey, do you smell that?" I snorted.

"Wow, okay. It's a pleasure to have somebody tell me my room stinks," I retorted. Ellie turned back to me.

"No, it's not like that. It's a sweet smell, but...." Ellie froze. I stood up. She started swaying around as if she was in a daze. I ran up to her right as she dropped to the ground. I lifted her up and shook her.

"Ellie! Ellie! Wake up!" I called out to her. But she didn't respond. Suddenly, I started to smell something. It was sweet, but a sweet that made me want to puke. The smell was everywhere, and it hurt my nose.

"Whoa. What's... what's happen...?" I dropped Ellie on the ground. I felt lightheaded. I tried going to the window, but I fell to the floor. My vision became blurry. I was on the brink of consciousness. And that was when I saw it. There was a broken smoke bomb on the ground. Someone had tried to kill me. With that, I finally passed out.