Dark Ruby (Adult Chapters)

Here are the adult chapters, if you have to vote please be so kind as to vote on the main story as well. Thank you and enjoy this. I know you will.

It was so slight at first, almost undetectable if you didn’t know what you were watching for. But Ruby saw it. She concentrated on Annette’s eyes, the eyelids now still, as though they hadn’t fluttered at all. Ruby wondered if it was a trick of the shadows combined with her exhaustion, making her jump to conclusions. When she saw it again she knew it was not.

“Edward,” she whispered frantically, pulling on the sleeve of his jacket. She didn’t need to point. He was gawping at the corpse, face ashen and eyes engorged with disbelief.

This was it.

Ruby held her stake tighter, turning her attention back to the body. The face was animated now, muscles around the mouth twitching and eyelids fluttering at top speed, the eyelashes a blur of motion. All the air was stolen from Ruby’s lungs by the freakish display of shunned death and Edward breathed heavily, like a frightened animal. Ruby tensed again, thinking he would run; flee from the unnatural demonstration of death without giving her a second thought.

He didn’t take a step, didn’t move a muscle, and didn’t abandon her. He was there, when she needed him the most, and she knew that if he didn’t leave her now than he wouldn’t until this was done with. Ruby didn’t have any prior knowledge or experience in this but it only took a minuet for Annette to emerge from her death slumber, to sit of a stretch, as if she had just awoken from a long nap. Her hair shimmered in the light with all the allure of a predator trying to attract its prey. Her movements were slow and graceful as she slipped out of the coffin, lowering herself off the stone slab, not yet facing them.

Ruby lifted the stake higher, clenching it tighter self- consciously, a couple of splinters pricking her palm, though she didn’t feel the pain. With a quick glance over her shoulder she saw Edward clutching his stake defensively, though he didn’t know how to use it efficiently.

Annette turned.

Ruby had seen it before. She should have been ready, she should have been prepared.

She wasn’t.

Annette was flawless. Her unblemished skin as radiant with energy, face bright with happiness, with the joy of discovery as she flexed her fingers freely, testing her new form. She was more majestic in the white dress than she had been while sleeping, the natural alluring powers of a predator now active. She ran her hands over her bloated stomach, smiling, and for the first time tonight Ruby wondered how the vampire blood had affected the child, if it had died a mortal death or been reborn into darkness, soon to burst from its unholy mother.

Annette finally realised who was there, watching her. She beamed wickedly. Ruby saw her teeth, similar to the ones Anastasia had brandished, the ones that Anton had donated to her. Ruby had seen these strange teeth before, in something that looked human, in something that had once been human. Edward hadn’t. He made a mingled noise of surprise and fear, grasping Ruby’s shoulder, yanking her away.

Ruby turned her head, speaking sadly.

“I did tell you. I had to show you. You wouldn’t have believed me otherwise. I’m sorry.”

Edward alarmed, there was fear on his face for the first time, fear of the unknown, a whole new world that had been exposed tonight but there was a resolve to stand by her and fight, not a cowardice in him that made him shirk the mission. She had been right all along. Edward was a valiant and capable man. He wouldn’t leave this place without her. Tears filled her eyes, no matter how she tried to supress them. Her stomach twisted with shame and she was finding it hard to keep her legs steady. It was harder to be here than she had anticipated. It would be even harder to do what she had come here to do.

Annette frowned.

“Why have you come, dear sister?” she asked gently, confused, perhaps disorientated by the transition, “I feel strange. I don’t feel weak anymore. I feel strong. I feel powerful. I feel…I feel…I feel hungry…”

Ruby saw the demon flit across her features like a ripple, deforming it with the darkness that now lived inside her as the light ebbed. It passed within a couple of seconds, the light recovering, illuminating a very pale, very ethereal Annette. Her eyes had transformed, from the sombre, dark green they had been in life. Now they were as dark as Anton’s, glimmering with the same scarlet light of desire. The desire for blood.