I Am A Monster

I Am A Monster : Chapter 47

Chapter 47

Amari continues to fight. She's worked her way over to me, and now she's taken a blade from one of the guards and is in human form--same as I am--standing over me and snarling fiercely though in human form. I watch through half-shut eyes as she beheads a particularly fierce-looking vampire; several more vampires look at the headless corpse with wide eyes before turning and fleeing out of the tunnel.

We're backed up against the wall. There's a trail of blood in my wake, and I feel myself getting weaker and weaker. I know I can't last for long; I'm fighting desperately now to not black out. The pain is agonizing, waves of it washing over me, making me not be able to breathe.

Then, to our left, I hear a battle cry. Amari doesn't even look; she continues to fend off our enemies. I do, though; my cracked lips make a vain effort to smile, though it comes out as more of a grimace.

Sabrina is in the lead. She's in human form, holding two bloodstained silver blades and Black Flame. Black Flame is tucked safely in her scabbard. She's holding one silver sword in each hand, slicing deftly through our enemies, her dark hair bouncing around her shoulders, her coal black eyes murderous. She stabs another vampire in the heart and then her eyes bore into mine, and I see an echo of excitement in her eyes. She runs towards me, dropping both blades, and then her warm arms are around me, and my blood is staining both of our shirts.

She pulls back, her dark hair partly soaked with blood, a gash on her cheek, covered in dirt, and she still manages to be the best thing that I've seen in days.

"Bree!" she groans. "Your arm...I thought you were dead....What happened?" Tears glisten in her eyes. It's the first time I've seen Sabrina cry before. It looks unnatural on her face, like her strong features are disappearing.

"Stabbed me...twice...gonna black out," I gasp, clutching her shoulders. My hands are sticky with blood. I can tell that some of my blood is on my face and in my hair. My shirt is soaked with it.

"It's okay, Bree," says Sabrina, looking like she's trying not to panic. "You'll be fine...." She tries to rise.

"They're monsters," I whisper desperately, my bloody hands squeezing the sleeves of her shirt. "Look what they did to me."

"I know," she says, her voice soft. She takes my hands and gently tries to pry them off her shirt, but I grasp her shirt as tightly as I can and bring my face closer to hers so that our faces are inches away.

"I'm a monster," I tell her. "I don't deserve to be saved."

I don't know where these sudden thoughts are coming from, but suddenly I want to stay.

"What--what do you mean, Bree?" asks Sabrina. Her voice cracks. It's high, hysterical, disbelieving. "We went all this way--"

"Look what I did to them," I tell her. "Leave me. I--I'll be fine."

"Bree!" she sobs. "You're not--you're not in--you're not in--you're not in your--not in your--not in your right state of--of mind!" Tears glisten on her cheeks.

"I'm fine," I whisper. Then my hands go slack and let go of her shirt, and I finally black out from pain.

* * *

I wake up to the feeling of sunlight shining on my face; it's hot and uncomfortable, and I'm sweating. A thick, heavy, squashy blanket is draped over me, and the mattress underneath is warm, soft, and just as squashy as the blanket. Same with my pillow. I'm so comfortable, I don't want to move. So comfortable except for...

My right arm feels like it's being burned by focused, white-hot flame. I cry out in pain, and my eyes snap open.

"Bree!" It's Emma. She sounds just as hysterical as Sabrina did...when? What day is it now? How long was I out?

My eyes wheel towards the sound of Emma's voice, and I see her standing at my bedside. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying. A few crumpled-up tissues lie in the garbage. Another is clutched in Emma's hand. Sam is standing next to her, his left arm around her waist.

"Emma," I acknowledge, looking into her eyes and having a little trouble focusing. My head is swimming and I feel like my brain is filled with Jell-O."What happened? Is the base destroyed? How long was I out?"

Emma grimaces, like these are all hard questions. "Yes, the base was destroyed. Completely. Every last vampire killed, every last human Infected"--Infected means bitten by either a werewolf or vampire and contaminated so that you will change into the thing you've been bitten by"--and every last werewolf nursed back to health or buried...if it was too late."

She avoids looking into my eyes, and instead shuffles her feet.

"Did...was anyone we know there?"

"There was Maggie's mother. She's okay, don't worry."

She gestures towards our left, and, looking over, I see rows and rows of people in hospital beds, being tended to by nurses. She points to a dark-haired werewolf woman in human form, with long, thick lashes and full pink lips.

"And...Melanie."

"Melanie?" I try to shoot to my feet, but I'm so dizzy that instead I fall off the bed. Emma catches me before I hit the ground, her hands stronger than I remember, gripping my wrists tightly to prevent me from falling.

"Yes," says Emma. "But...Bree...." She closes her eyes.

"Don't tell me she's dead," I whisper, stricken, frozen.

"No," Emma assures me. "It's just..."

"Just what?" I demand. My head is swimming and my arm is throbbing painfully, but I ignore them both, my eyes glued to Emma's face.

"She...she's not awake right now. And...I know you want to see her...but, Bree, she's in really critical condition," says Emma, talking in a rush now, "and you can't wake her up, she needs her rest, or else she might not..." Her voice trails off, and she quickly wipes a tear off of her cheek with her sleeve.

"Live," I finish quietly. "She might not live."

Emma just nods the tiniest bit, not looking at me--looking anywhere but at me.

"So, is everyone okay?" I ask, trying to change the subject, but inside I feel like bursting into tears. Without Melanie...without Melanie...no....

"Sabrina got a good-sized cut in her cheek, but she's fine," says Emma matter-of-factly. "Amari, apparently, was stabbed multiple times. Of course, she decided it didn't matter and told us she was fine, but then in the middle of a meeting we realized that she had changed shirts and there was still blood--she was stabbed in her right shoulder, her left forearm, her left leg, and she had cuts in multiple places....She's fine, don't worry," she adds, seeing my expression. "Amari can stand anything. Didn't even black out from the pain, although it must have taken some sort of effort. She's in a hospital bed right now, in an intensive care section--though, of course, she would say she's fine, but she's tied down--and she fell asleep before she could protest when we got back. Apparently she'd been up the entire last night, too fired up to really get to sleeping."

"How do you know all of this?" I ask Emma.

"Sabrina told me," she replies. "Apparently they were having a conversation in the mind link on the way back. She told Sabrina why she was so tired, and explained a few things she'd figured out."

The door to the hospital room opens, and Sabrina steps inside.

"Bree, it's December nineteenth," says Sabrina. "I need to know that prophecy about Amari. We only have twelve days left."

By the way, at first I just thought that people didn't like my story. Now I realize that a lot of people are probably just forgetting, or don't feel like doing it, or etc. So I'm just going to be putting a reminder at the end of each chapter that reminds you to vote if you were thinking to. And if you don't like the story, don't vote. It's just tricking me to believe that more people liked the story, when really not as much did. Here goes the first reminder...I might change what they look like in the future....

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