Rare Blood

Chapter Forty-Seven: Battling Heartache

The moment Cyrus hit the hard floor and slid back into Elsie with Dmitri on top of him everything slowed.  He saw Roxy take off around the corner, and Elsie scramble up from behind him tearing after her just as Dmitri raised his fist.  He hammered Cyrus in the face with a sickening crack, breaking a few bones in his cheek.

This was it, Cyrus realized. There would be no submitting, it was a fight to the death, but it wasn't gonna be his.  He wasn't going out like that, he wasn't going to let Faye down, and when Dmitri swung at him again Cyrus was ready.  He caught his arm and used Dmitri's momentum to roll him, but before Cyrus could strike Dmitri gripped his head and flipped him over slamming him flat on his back. 

They were both able to get to their feet from that position and Dmitri gave no pause before charging at him with his head down which Cyrus was able to lock up and direct right into the stone wall of the corridor putting a massive dent in it. 

Dmitri staggered as he turned, and then he was on Cyrus again, taking him down with both hands on either side of his face.  Dmitri smashed Cyrus' head against the marble flooring over and over causing his skull to crack and Cyrus knew he wasn't going to be able to withstand another blow to the head without blacking out temporarily.

In an effort to stop the assault Cyrus reached out and his hand connected with the broken wooden handle from his ax. He gripped that handle and rammed it up into Dmitri's throat. 

Dmitri gurgled and made a move to pull it from his neck, but Cyrus had him.  He jerked Dmitri's head around breaking his neck and then kept going. He twisted Dmitri's head until his bones snapped in protest and he was able to remove it completely, like pulling the top off a pumpkin.

Sparing no thoughts to the fact that he had just beheaded the most powerful vampire in the US, he let Dmitri's head hit the floor and took off to find Faye, Elsie, and Roxy.

He came upon Elsie first. She was naked on the floor with a needle sticking out of her rib-cage. He knelt down next to her and pulled the syringe out, then took his stolen shirt off, and slipped it over Elsie's head thankful that he had it.  He then scooped her into his arms and carried her as he continued to follow Roxy's scent which led to a door with a guard seated out front.

There were traces of Faye's scent all around and Cyrus smiled as the guard produced an eight inch knife from a sheath strapped to his lower leg.  One guard with a tiny knife, and one locked door, were all that stood between him and Faye. He sat Elsie down and killed the guard effortlessly, then put his foot through the door breaking it off at the hinges, and there she was... in Roxy's arms.

Roxy jumped up at his intrusion and tried to run, but he grabbed the knife from the hand of the Vampire on the floor and stuck it right in the center of her neck. She gasped then gurgled as he pulled the blade from the right to the left severing her head as he should've done the first time he found Faye in Roxy's arms.

He let her body drop and turned to Faye. Her blonde hair was fanned out around her head and she was lying on the floor awkwardly. He dropped down next to her pulling her delicate limp form into the cradle of his arms.

"Faye..." he said looking down at her only to be startled by her appearance. Her skin was too white, her cheeks were hollowed, and her mouth was smeared with blood.

"Faye," he called to her smoothing some strands of hair from her face, but she didn't respond.

"Faye, wake up," he tried again, shaking her slightly, but the only thing he heard was Elsie's heart beating quietly in the hall. The sound terrified him because he realized it was absent in Faye. There was nothing where there should've been a steady thumping. She wasn't breathing.

 "No!" Cyrus cried cradling Faye tightly to his chest as the realization of what he walked in on played out in a flicker of images.

Roxy had been feeding her, attempting to turn her. He buried his face in Faye's neck and when all he smelled was Roxy he positioned his fangs and bit. He started siphoning what he could of Roxy's blood out. When there was nothing left, Cyrus tore a large chunk of flesh away from his wrist and let her head fall back as he shoved the wound over her mouth, keeping her upright as his blood flooded into her.

He wasn't going to let Roxy have her. He wasn't, and when his skin began to tighten, healing, he ripped back into it exposing his vein once more.

Cyrus trembled as he tore his vein open over and over. His only concern was getting as much of his blood into Faye as he could, and if for some reason it didn't work and she didn't come back, he was going to take his own head.

Life wasn't going to continue for him without her, it wasn't an option. The thought that he would never hear her laugh or feel the electricity of her touch made his vision dark and the temperature plummet, or at least that's what he thought was turning his insides to ice.

It turned out to be his body shutting down from blood loss. His last conscious moment was a delusion of Faye's eyes fluttering open, glittering green with specks of gold, and then she smiled at him before everything went black.