Vigil's Echo

Chapter 12 (Full)

I barely mustered the strength to mutter the mantra through clenched teeth, my words echoing in my head behind the consistent rush and flow of blood followed with a muted explosion as wave after wave of aneurysm smashed through my brain, when the world around me fell silent and empty. One moment, I felt the witches magic wading around me and the next, a void of all existence.

It was suffocating.

My mind sifted through every moment I had experienced in this life, strolling leisurely through my years with Alex St. John, and backward still through the memories of my mother just before the light of life left her dazzling eyes.

A light. Tiny. Dim. Fluttered around me, blinking...or flashing, maybe. It buzzed closer, still sputtering, barely separating itself from the great emptiness around me, and I reached for it with arms I couldn't feel. It blinked away again just as I thought I'd caught it, and returned the next moment.

I struggled to try again, feeling wholly disconnected from...anything. Everything. Did I exist? There was no light. No darkness. Nothing, save for this little blinking dot that sputtered so quickly in and out of sight, I couldn't even tell what color it was. If it had a color. Much like how I couldn't tell if I had a life or not. A body or not. An arm or not.

No, Brenna, you can't think like that. The fact that you're thinking at all, that you have any awareness, means you're alive. Alive means you exist, my mind pleaded.

A thought crossed my eyes. An image. No, a memory. A traumatic one, sure, but a memory, a connection. Proof of existence. Proof of life.

"Subject 8329," the voice of the woman who would become the bane of my existence - or so I'd thought at the time - barked at me. I wouldn't understand this for another week of bloody, blunt force contusions on my scalp that leaked a little too lightly for me to really be human, but that was actually my new name. Subject 8329. I was five.

I towed the line between urging my mind to continue down the horror of this memory and snuffing it - and any connection with the life I'd suffered - out altogether just so I wouldn't relive it.

It's 'push through, or die,' Brenna, my mind scoffed. Remember the last time you were this weak? The thought echoed in disgust. You swore you'd never be this weak again.

I swore. I did. It was the first oath I ever took for myself. "Subject 8923! Respond when you are called upon," she sneered. I strained my mind to remember. Her. Her words. The venom in her eyes. The evil.

My eyes opened. There she stood, evil...breathing. Her face was contorted into a permanent scowl that seemed more painful to uphold than to behold. I remember asking her...
"Why are you so scary?" My voice was shaky, tiny. Tears fell freely from my eyes.

Her eyes widened, her scowl growing even uglier, if that was possible, and glowed bright with rage as her brain struggled to find the most poisonous and traumatizing response. She leaned down, drawing her face level with mine.

"I'm scary?" she scoffed, snorting a vehement chuckle that sounded more like being strangled. "You killed your mommy, just by being born! All because you're a monster, an abomination!" she spat. "You don't get to be scared, Subject 8923. You're the demon here," she added, a sick smile twisting its way onto her face.

She righted herself, standing straight and squaring her shoulders, and turned away. Just as I'd opened my mouth in confusion, her arm swung around - metal billy stick in hand - and she grunted as she swiped at me with all her might, the metal clanging against my jaw, shattering the bones from my temple down to my collarbone.

I thought I had died then, too. And I had, it just didn't stick.

When I woke up wincing in more pain than my tiny, still developing body should have even been able to endure, locked inside of an icy metal corpse box, I had ignorantly hoped that was the worst and only abuse I'd ever have to endure at the hands of the real monster.

And for years after, Alex St. John had found new ways every day to prove to me that she could do worse.

My mind ripped through the memories once again, forward this time, from that first attempt of murdering me at age five, all the way to the first time in my life I'd had a taste of revenge. The first time I'd killed. Or rather, strongly and magically suggested unaliving oneself to Alex's favorite guard. Her protégé. The only one willing to sleep with her to move up.

Sure, it wasn't slow, fulfilling or beautiful. It was ugly, messy and much too quick. But his blood had spilled until he was empty and I'd carved myself and my name - my real one - in bloodshed into Alex's heart - or whatever organ she had pumping evil through her veins - before she had the chance to escape me. I made sure she knew his blood was more on her hands than on mine. She died guilty, with no hope for atonement, no way to make things right. She died in agony, just how I wanted.

My mind relished the memory of when she finally croaked. It was so satisfying. So satiating. So...euphoric. I wanted that feeling again. I needed it. There was warm blood that needed to run cold beneath my finger tips.

But who's? Who could I not remember? Who's face was it that carved its way into my heart with the need of vengeance so deep, that even in the void of all life, I refused to go quietly? Who did my new found will to live really belong to? I owed it to them to make good on whatever promises I'd made of ending their lives. I owed it to myself.

And Death, even, for cheating her so thoroughly.
I willed my memories to continue surfacing. I sifted through more moments, some disgustingly tender with a relative...a cousin. Bonnie. Why did I remember hating her? These moments with her seemed warm. Was I so adverse to warmth that I wanted to end her too?

Onward still, the memories traveled, moving my mind forward in my timeline of existence. I was attacked. By one of those monsters Alex was so afraid of. Like me, but uncouth, less refined. Less rare. A Vampire. Naturally, I ended her. I wasn't even angry at the time. It didn't sate any desires. It didn't scratch any itch. It was necessary and messy. Ugly. Her face didn't even register with how lackluster it felt to kill her.

I was growing bored. Until something shifted. The energy, the tone of the memories. They sent my magic buzzing - dragging me back to a body I didn't know I still had.

Finally, there it was. The golden moment. The moment I marked her, my next 'Alex.'

"Brenna? Brenna," my name rolled off her lips in a gentle, worried tone. My enemy. My victim. She should be worried. But not about me. "Brenna, wake up," she called, warmth emanating from where her voice responded. Soft hands nudged my shoulder. "It's just a nightmare, Brenna, wake up," she cooed again.

I shot straight up, my eyes finally cracking open, as air whooshed in and out of my lungs roughly. My chest stung, like I hadn't been breathing for very long. My eyes shifted to my left as trembles raked through my body.

"Shh, you poor dear," her voice was wet with unshed tears as her English lilt thickened, "You're safe now, it was just a dream. I'm here and you're safe," she whispered, pulling me into her arms.

"E-Emma?" I stammered.

"Yes, yes it's Miss Tig, sweetheart, I'm here," she hushed, gently patting my back as she held me in a tight embrace - one I was sure was meant to comfort me. But why? I was here to kill her. How could she not know?