Taint (Formerly Claimed) Dark Midnight 1

Chapter 45

Prepare for the angst.  Because every good vampire story needs angst.  :)

(Also, if for some reason you didn't get my spam updates, I updated ALOT this weekend.  At least 6 chapters i think, so please go back and read them so you aren't confused)

Chapter 45

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Eliot knew he was a coward.

He had done unspeakable things in his lifetime, if you wanted to call it that.  He had killed and bled and maimed and crippled before, and loved every single second of it.

He could look grown men in the eyes, even as he killed them with a simple twist of the neck.

He used to get drunk on mortal blood, and there were days that he craved it still.

But, one little mortal girl with a death sentence had him doing something that not even the horrors of his past could.

He was running away.

Mindlessly, his fingers wrenched the steering wheel to follow the curves in the road as his car careened through the mountains.  Luckily there were no other cars on the road, but even if there had been, he wouldn’t have cared.

Nothing mattered other than getting away.  Running away. 

Escaping her. 

Her scent. 

The sound of her voice.

Her smile…

If he tried to rationalize the way he felt about her he just couldn’t.  She wasn’t exceptional, beautiful, or smart. 

She wasn’t special.

Her hair was frizzy. 

She was too short. 

She had a smart-assed habit of making jokes when she should have been afraid. 

She’d laughed when he told her about vampires.

 Shivered when he touched her hand. 

Sensed the slightest bit of emotion from him, when he had spent four long centuries trying to lock any feeling up tight.

In a way, she reminded him of a lamb with something faulty in its brain who skipped along beside the wolf while it hunted her.

So damn innocent. 

But no…now that he thought about it, that wasn’t exactly right.  Goodness radiated from her like a beacon—but there was a little darkness lurking in her too.

A darkness that allowed her to accept was he was and not be afraid.

She scared the hell out of him; she was so much like Alazzdria it terrified him.

Was he any better than Vaddrian for craving to stroke that darkness in her almost as much as he wanted to shield the light?

Because the truth was…he wanted to turn her. 

He wanted her to be like him. 

 He wanted to see her skin pale like marble and cool like ice.  He wanted to run beside her beneath the trees for as long as the sky stretched out above them and show her…

Everything.

He didn't want to have to worry that he’d snap her apart if he lost control.  Drain her dry.