Death of a Nightingale

CHAPTER 44: TURN

Everything is in slow motion. I feel the fall. Some small pieces of glass break off the rim with me and join in formation for the long dive down. It's surreal. A few days ago, I talked people off the ledge for a living. I adhered to the rules. I wrote them. Now I'm the one jumping. I love the fall. The feeling of complete loss of control and gaining the ultimate freedom at the same time.

I watch Grace twist, unable to do anything about it as her lethal plan unfolds. Her back is toward the dark figure, who embraces her in a sharp, deadly hold, one of his knives to her throat. I'm still sailing through the air excruciatingly slowly when I finally see what she has been working towards. Grace's hands place the wooden stake onto her own chest. My landing is the final blow driving it through her own heart, just as she opens her arms to catch me and hold me tightly one last time. My eyes go wide with horror knowing the inevitable end and I land, my weight and momentum piercing the stake through her. Deep and true.

I hear her inhale in my ear, feeling her breath and her lips on my skin. I scream.

All three of us tumble and roll in a comical clutch of death. In one last act of love, Grace's fingers grab a hold of mine and force the stake deeper through herself, all the way through the ancient monster clasping us both from behind her.

As we come to a stop, something changes within me. A sensation, a smell, I cannot tell what it is. But I feel an urge of some feral kind. Grace's hands release their hold on me and as I manage to scramble to my knees, I spot her. Throat slit from the creature still pinned to her body. Blood flowing freely down her neck taking its time, finding each crevice and seeping into the fabric of her clothes.

Her eyes fix solid silver onto me and every so slowly change back to their stunning blue color. Beautiful in death. I watch them dull as my last hopes of happiness fade with her.

I SCREAM with an agony I've never known. Broken. Not empty anymore. I am filled with a newborn rage, all-consuming and raw.

"No. You have to come back to me. You always come back to me." I sound different. My voice is stronger. I cup Grace's face in my hands. Stroke her cheeks and memorize the feel of her velvet soft skin. Tears should be running down my face but I don't feel any. I only feel heat rising within the hollows of my stomach. Burning.

I hear labored breathing below Grace from the monster, still pinned between the rubble and the stool leg I helped drive through him.

"She won't this time." His voice wheezes, close to death himself and waning with every passing second.

"She figured it out. So smart of her. To have us both die for you. You'll be very strong." His words ring in my ears. They're still very clear and for the past hour I've been putting things together piece by piece. But he continues, sparing me any additional confusion.

"You gain the strength of the one you kill." Miraculously my rage grows to unknown heights.

"You killed her. Only another immortal can kill..." My spitting words flutter out when the true, cold realization hits me. I sob, but where tears should be, my skin feels like perfect marble. The creature coughs a dark, blood-spattered laugh.

"Oh no, darling. You did. Both of us died at your hands while our blood flowed in your veins."

A bitter frenzy fills my head with a pounding so loud that I don't know where to move to make it stop. He's right. They both bit me. I tasted his blood in the waters of the aquarium. And Grace... She knew. She damn well knew. This was her plan. Dying. She's wanted to die all along. In the end, she still picked death over me. She could have...the thought breaks off again and I remember our last kiss. Her small bite stinging my lips gently, but enough to break my skin, taste my blood, and give me hers. She knew and chose to leave me alone in this world. Like her father did to her.

My scream ECHOES through the remaining glass, as my hands shoot out and clasp around the monster's throat. I've never felt anything like this before. True power. I can feel the flesh melt between the smallest movement of my squeezing fingers. I don't take my time to enjoy killing him, but I do pull and rip out his throat from the bone, leaving nothing behind.

His head falls slack to one side and I feel a small amount of gratification. Icy silence shrouds us as snowflakes slowly dance around me. My breath is my only company as I stare at the two dead creatures.

The night is young. My body knows this on instinct. A prickling sensation of endless possibilities. I walk home through the snow. Each step leaves a small footprint, keeping my new, deadly secret. Grace knew. She knew if she did this to me, I would be alone. Would have to be alone like she was. Yet, I love her, and miss her. She's all I can think about until this new, burning pain revisits my body. It drives me mad. I try to take in air and ignore it, but it comes again and again. Stronger each time.

When I reach the house, I debate not entering, but the curtains of the kitchen window flutter softly in the cold wind. Just hours ago, I climbed down that side of the house.

I enter the kitchen. A newfound numbness hits me like a punch in the gut as I see my mother in a pool of her own blood. For a second, I am frozen to the spot. Unable to move. I just breathe, no tears coming to my new, sharply focused eyes. My mother must have picked up Emma's letter from the trash. It's on the kitchen table and I pick it up and I slowly walk over to my mom's body. I fold it and pocket it. No need to read it, I know the words.

"Last night upon the stair,

I saw a girl who wasn't there.

I squint my eyes shut, willing this to be a dream. A nightmare I can wake up from at any moment. Not real. Not real at all. A flash of Grace's stunning silver eyes visits my mind but is gone equally fast.

"She wasn't there again today,

Oh, how I wish she'd go away."

Another moment flares through my brain. A stolen kiss on a roof. Soft and still hesitant with shyness.

"She loves a songbird, pure and fair.

A nightingale, a song of air.

Of Innocence, of life and yearning."

The burning sensation makes me hallucinate. I can barely see straight. Is this hunger?

"A bird of love, but dead come morning."

I bend down and touch my mother's blood with shaking fingers. I can't. I love my mother, I think, but the burning is unyielding. Merciless and ancient. I have no choice but dip my fingers carefully. I feel the dried, crusty fluid, repulsed and shocked. But the burning is stronger. I inhale deeply and have no control left as I lick my fingers clean.

The night went on. It's almost dawn now and I am not sure I can stand this strange new existence. But before I decide what I can do about it, I have this new urge within me that must be addressed. And there is one specific place I have in mind, that may just deserve this specific kind of attention.

A RING.

The doorbell CHIRPS again as I press it down a second time. A tired, drained, and confused middle-aged man opens the door. Blinking through his receding slumber, adjusting nothing about his disheveled existence but his mustache. Emma's father.

The recognition hits him. He knows he's seen me somewhere before. I don't care much about whether he can actually place me at his daughter's funeral. I care about his cruel treatment of her. His loveless, callus way of driving her to suicide one day at a time. For the first time in my likely long, immortal life, I make my pupils turn. His eyes widen as he stares into dead, cold silver. I am ready and I pounce.