"ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT THIS?"
Niall's face is a mixture of skepticism and worry unlike anything Jo has seen. Finding out that Adeline Monroe of all people is the famous "Benjamin" behind Sacrosanct had shocked them all, but the idea of having to turn her into a vampire seems to scare him more.
Mitch's living room looks wildly different from how it did when she woke up an hour ago.
Citing "ancient ritual" was the only concise answer to her confused face when she stepped into the room from the shower to see what they transformed it into. Hundreds of tea light candles are meticulously arranged on the floor with barely-there gaps left for them to weave their way into the kitchen or to the staircase in the main hallway. The fire flickers dancing shadows all across the room, and she finds it strangely beautiful. Curtains drawn, the room is only lit by the orange tones of the fire as she stands in the center of the chaos.
The couch is pushed out of the way, and, in its stead, a bed of cushions covered by a smooth red thrown blanket that looks like it'd lull her right to sleep if she laid on it, but she doesn't. Not yet anyway, not when she's standing in front of two vampires who aren't nearly as keen on turning her as she is to be turned. It's no secret that they would prefer to be the humans they once were if given the choice.
Partly, she understands. She has the mortality they long for, but what they don't understand is that she is willing to sacrifice anything, even her human life, to kill Adeline herself and save Harry.
"I already told you a million times, I want you guys to turn me," she says without a smidge of space for them to doubt.
Niall and Mitch stand in front of her, the latter holding a small bag she hasn't a clue of what the contents are. In her half-asleep state of exhaustion and grief the other, they had explained the process of turning from human to vampire, but she has only retained the basics of it: drain the entire body of blood and replace some of it with the blood of a vampire.
The only catch is that she must die to make the transformation.
Technically, she died months ago. What happened in the alley was enough to hurt her with no chance of recovery...until Niall saved her and carried her through the gate only seconds before she was gone for good. This, however, would mean actually dying, not hanging onto that thin thread connecting her to life, but dying completely before being injected with vampire blood.
Mitch is the one who breaks at long last. His features harden, jaw clenching with the understanding that this situation is out of his hands—seeing as she'll go through the gate and kill herself in the process if they don't help.
"Fine, lay down on the cushions," he says, then his voice drops into a soft tone that is only reserved for the few people he considers dear friends, "I'm only going to warn you one more time...you have to be ready to die. Signing your soul away isn't a pleasant experience."
Without a second to waste, she nods once, holding his gaze, and sinks down onto the plush bed of cushions surrounded by a sea of candlelight and shadows. The blanket is soft beneath her palms, and she forces herself to engrain the memory of it into her mind as one of the last she'll ever have before her life is forever changed.
It's worlds better than her other potential last memory before death that was composed of blood, snow, and the dead bodies of multiple male vampires littering the ground. This time, two friends are in her line of sight, along with the comforting warmth of fire and a cozy blanket beneath her back. The only thing, or person, that's missing is the very person she's doing this for. Even though it's impossible now, she wishes he were the one turning her instead. She adores his friends, that fact cannot be mistaken, but her trust for him is on a different dimensional plane than her trust for them.
She trusts Niall and Mitch in the way many trust a grappling rope while climbing. They trust the secure, anchored equipment to be their backup plan in case their hands slip on the rocks, sending their body swinging back and forth in the open air until they find their footing again. They're safe, secure, the kind of people that can be trusted with her life, but they are no Harry.
She trusts Harry in the way people of religious belief put blind, leaping faith in the hands of their guardian angels assigned to swoop in and save their human. She trusts him in the sense that her hands could slip on the rocks, her grappling rope could break, and he would be there to catch her mid-flight.
While both are meaningful forms of trust, one runs deeper than the others, and she has the mark on the inside of her wrist to prove it.
The gravity of the situation fully hits her when they both kneel on the ground on either side of her. Mitch pokes around in the unzipped bag he brought from upstairs until he seems to find what he was searching for and pulls out a plethora of medical supplies, most of which she actually recognizes from work. What he unpacks is, essentially, the necessary components in a blood transfusion, and when she thinks of it as a blood transfusion instead of sacrificing her life for immortality, it isn't as terrifying.
Plenty of people get blood that isn't theirs through an IV line, the only difference here is that she'll have to allow herself to die before hers is replaced.
She won't lie to herself and pretend that it doesn't scare her shitless. It does, it scares her more than anything she's done in her entire life, but how can she claim to love someone she wouldn't die fighting for? He would do it for her. Even though he might hate her for putting him through the pain of enduring the death of his blood-bonded partner, she knows he would be doing exactly the same thing if the roles were reversed.
The second item he pulls out is a cylindrical container of salt.
The sound of Niall's voice a few hours ago surges to the forefront of her brain, "...then, a circle of salt is poured around you to keep any demons from possessing your body once you're dead..."
It made her laugh, but he was completely serious. And when she thought about it, she had no room to doubt them after everything she has seen here. There she was laughing to herself at the idea of demons possessing her as she was about to be turned into a vampire.
Her gaze follows his movements as he pops open the lid and pours a near-perfect line of salt surrounding the cushions with him and Mitch inside of it. If she didn't know any better, she'd think he's taking part in this ritual before. He hasn't, according to what he said about being nervous to turn his first human, but Mitch has. He only did it once to turn Sarah into a vampire too. Much like this situation, he didn't want to do it, it was what she wanted and he knew that he'd regret it if she grew old and died without him.
By the time everything—the circle of salt, the IV supplies, and a bag of Niall's blood to push into her veins—is set up where it needs to be for them to begin, her heart pounds at a pace fast enough for both vampires sitting, crouched by either side of her, to notice. They both share a kind of look that only friends who know each other well enough to speak in facial expressions and movements instead of works can share, then Niall nods.
He inches closer to her, his knees sinking into the soft fabric of the blanket until the presence of them up against the side of her thigh makes her turn her head to look at him.
"I promise, I won't make it hurt," he says, "Just let yourself fall asleep."
Those are the only words of advice or encouragement she gets before he reaches down to grab her right arm and turn her wrist up for him to access it. In her head, she tries to reason that it isn't any different from when Harry used to feed from her. She'll die this time, but not for long, and they'll all be waiting for her to return from the other side.
Her other arm rests flat at her side with her hand balling up the blanket into a tight fist in anticipation of when he'll bite down into her wrist, and she turns her head to the other side of the room to avoid seeing it happen. For some reason, despite her efforts to liken this to the times Harry has bitten her, it isn't anything like it at all. Those moments were soft, intimate, and, most of all, safe. Though he was drinking her blood, it didn't feel as terrifying as this, and it actually managed to calm her more than anything else could.
All she feels when Niall's teeth puncture her wrist is fear. Fear that she'll never come back, and for Harry's future if she doesn't. He'll already be put through enough pain when she dies, the last thing she wants is for that pain to remain permanent and scar him for the rest of his life with a void that can never be filled.
The only thing that keeps her from ripping her hand away is the ever-present reminder in her thoughts that this is for him, for the greater good of her fellow humans too, and the pain he'll endure is ultimately temporary. She clings to it like a lifeline, repeating it in her head over and over as he drains and drinks her blood for minutes at a time. It isn't until a few moments in that Mitch joins to speed up the process and leans down to nose at her neck until he finds a perfect spot to bite down into.
This time, she doesn't flinch or tense up the way she had when Niall initially bit her, some of that calming effect she once felt with Harry has come into play, either that or she beginning to fade away. It isn't enough for her to pass out yet, but the fatigued wooziness is clear even as she lays flat on the blanket.
It's a strange feeling.
Now that her muscles have relaxed and she has resigned herself to the situation at hand, it's a little like the times Harry fed from her in the sense that she feels as though she might drift into sleep.
She no longer fights the tug of sleepiness that washes over her the longer they spend drinking her blood, and time starts to meld together in the process of it. There's no telling how long they spend here as minutes elapse past without her realizing or even caring, slipping further and further away as the amount of blood drained from her body spikes rapidly.
Based on her knowledge about dying, her blood pressure should be dropping right about now, and her pulse should be racing, but much weaker than it normally is. Yet, above the weakness and racing pulse, the most unpleasant symptom of all is the chills. Her fingertips are turning a pale, bluish color so unlike the warmth usually lingering beneath her skin. The lack of circulation to anything that isn't as vital as her internal organs makes her body twitch and shiver from the cold.
And it only gets worse as they continue, the coldness spreads up from those pale fingertips all the way up the length of her arms until, suddenly, she doesn't even feel the cold anymore.
Her body still trembles in the grasp of her friends, but her mind does not recognize any pain or anything outside of the fact that she keeps getting weaker. Whenever she tries to move her body, her failing muscles refuse to listen to her commands no matter how hard she tries.
In the distant background, she can almost hear the sound of a voice telling her to come closer. It's buried beneath layers of muffled sound and becomes clearer the farther she drifts away from reality, and it isn't until she's hardly conscious at all that she realizes whose voice it is.
It's a hallucination, but it feels too real for her to turn away from when Harry's voice beckons her out of her physical body into some other, undefined place she cannot see or touch, but feels as she becomes sleepy.
As her eyes flutter shut, she follows his voice into the darkness.