The Torn Sins

Chapter XI

However, as I push my venom into him, the anger starts to fade and it is replaced by pure love as visions of Natham and I together start to race through my mind. He clings to my body tightly, his hands down at my waist as I drink from him, taking out the old and making it new. It is a beautiful moment, and a pride I've never known stirs through me as I sire someone for the first time.

Then, his body jerks, taking that thought away from me just as quickly as it had come. Panic rises up in me as he pulls away and begins to tremble violently. "Natham, what's wrong?!" I question quickly and then to almost everyone's shock he doubles over and proceeds to vomit. Within the mixture of food and bile unmistakably resides my venom, smoke rising up from the puddle as the poison evaporates into the ground.

Realization dawns on me as I look up at Natham with wide eyes. "That's...that's impossible," I whisper.

"Not really," Natham speaks, his breathing heavy but the nonchalant tone of his voice is obvious.

I gaze at him carefully before feeling betrayal enter my heart, "You knew...you knew your body would reject it?"

"Not exactly. It's happened before, but I wanted to see if anything had changed over the years. I knew that if I told you the truth straight out, if you found out what Antoinette and I were keeping from you, then you'd never agree to try it. So instead, I pissed you off, you took the bait quite well, I must admit."

My anger was rearing up again but I held it down and gazed only at Natham. "Explain, now."

"Years ago, when Antoinette and I were both children and we weren't so...cruel to each other," I see his eyes flash briefly towards her and a pang of something strange hits my heart...jealousy perhaps? "I managed to convince her to sire me. She had never sired someone before and it's not like we could ask any older vampires for help. We didn't know what we were doing to begin with, so when I got quite sick the first time, we assumed she had done something wrong during the process. It wasn't until the third time around that we realized she wasn't the problem, it was me.

"We couldn't try anymore, her parents were concerned about me being so sick all the time and in all honesty, we were concerned too. There were some moments when I thought death had come for me...but it didn't. Years later, and here I am, thinking that perhaps I can try again, that this time it'll work and I'll change just like every other human. I didn't want to tell you about my history with such things because if you knew it had made me sick in the past then you wouldn't have been willing to try."

Somewhere in the midst of all of that my body had gone numb, and I had sunk to the ground in an elegant plop. My eyes glazed over and my mind zoned in and out, hearing his words, and capturing them, but not truly focusing on what he was saying.

This had been my one chance, my one opportunity to protect him. Now what? He would stay human, which was what I had wanted all along but still...I was fucked, we were fucked.

"Cybil, Cybil can you hear me?" his voice is faint, barely present to my mind. I hear him whisper a curse, before movement flashes in front of my face. Panic is slowly but surely building up in me as my own thoughts get more and more frantic and then to my surprise the taste of blood manages to seep through my crazy thoughts. My fangs slide out and I latch onto Natham's arm, drinking the nectar he has offered. In his other hand, he's holding a pocket knife, and I now understand that he has cut himself for me.

Once my mind returns to the present, I pull away from him. To my surprise, he pulls me back, bringing my forehead against his own and letting out a relieved sigh. "I thought I'd lost you there," he whispers, his love for me shining through.