Death of a Nightingale

CHAPTER 33: HELP IN DARK PLACES - GRACE

The pain, this unknown feeling is mind-numbing. I cannot say that I've missed this. Blood is seeping through my thin undershirt and slowly covering me all the way down to my waist. I can feel my eyes changing back and forth from blue to silver. My flawless, lethal body is as confused as I am. But I need to go. I need to find Ness and keep her safe. He's going to kill her in her bed. Her mother too. If she had the good sense to go to work, then he'll kill her mother and then follow Ness' scent all the way through the city. Like I did when I first saw her.

The thought makes me angry and fills me with panic. I take a deep breath and hold the air in as I try to strain against the blade still stuck through my shoulder, deep into the wall behind me. I scream so loudly that I'm sure I can be heard miles away. Usually, I would care, but not today.

Close behind me, I hear a throat clearing in one of the cages. A woman is trying to get my attention.

"I'll help you, just let me out."

She rasps and I am surprised at her steadiness. She just watched another prisoner get torn apart brutally, then watched two immortals go for each other's throats but she has the guts to pipe up regardless and offer me help?

"I can't move." I reply, unable to look her in the face.

"I'm right next to you." She pipes and I slowly try to twist my head. Her small hands extend slightly through the crate.

I'm sure her offer is not entirely selfless. If I let her free, who's to say she won't just run away and leave me here to rot? That's what I would do in her situation. That's what she should do.

But she currently is my only option to get to Ness in time and try to hold off this monstrous uncle of mine. Uncle. This thing is related to me. I push the thoughts out of my head and focus on the immediate need.

"I'm a doctor, I'll patch you up." The lady continues. Normally I would laugh, but even the small huff escaping my mouth hurts so much that it almost causes me to faint. I manage to glare at her out of the corner of my eye. Nothing to lose. She runs, she runs. If she frees me, we've saved two lives. With my free hand, I reach out. Tapping the lock, but I'm not able to really grab hold of it. Another labored groan of pain escapes me. I feel the weakness spreading through me like a cancer.

I pull against the knife. More blood streams out of the gaping wound but I manage to palm the lock. Squeezing it with all my remaining strength. A few heavy breaths fill the pauses between. Another squeeze. It pops open. Finally. I am amazed at the difference between the monster and myself. He is so much stronger. It didn't take much for him to break the same lock.

The dirty woman climbs out of her confinement. She steps around me, whether to sneer at me and run away or to burn my face into her mind to tell authorities, I cannot say.

But she does neither and stays true to her word. Without so much as a look into my eyes, she examines the wound with swift, practiced hands.

"We're going to have to pull the blade out together. This is going to hurt." She tells me with the detached efficiency of a trauma surgeon. I can only blink at her.

"Why aren't you running?" I find myself asking her.

Her eyes find mine. No compassion or hate, just simplicity.

"I swore a Hippocratic Oath." She replies and I admire her true and stern integrity. I wish there were more people like her. Then her scent hits me fully and my eyes turn silver. In between the grime and the few days of imprisonment, I smell it clear as day, blood. I struggle against the urge and our hands meet at the blade as she starts finding leverage to help me pull it out.

"You have to go. You're bleeding." I order her. But she does no such thing.

"That time of the month. I can't control it." She says and checks the angle of the blade. She disregards my order and I try to growl to scare her off, but she starts her doctor countdown without any further discussion.

"On three."

"Please run. Now." I beg her, knowing that when I'm weak, I will kill even if I don't mean to. My eyes stopped changing back to blue. I can almost taste her.

Our hands interlock with strength.

"One, two..." And like any good doctor, she pulls on two, not three, so that there is no flinching and the expectation of pain is replaced by surprise and quick relief. I SCREAM. It's bone-chilling even for me to hear it. But the blade moves and as the woman stumbles back with the force of the movement, the sword clatters to the ground. A deep inhale centers me within my body. I have my freedom back. The last clink of the metal coincides with my teeth piercing the doctor's neck. Deep into her throat. I can't control it and drink deeply. Bursts of life coming back to me. I feel ashamed as I gulp. Horrible and like the true demon that I am.

I don't make her suffer and with a quick twist, I break her slender neck, putting her out of her misery. Her body collapses into my arms and I ease her gently onto the floor.

"I'm so sorry." I tell her and mean it.