I lost control.
I toss and turn in bed replaying the fight in my head.
I struck Astrid several times. Did I know what I was doing? Maybe. But I didn't try to stop myself because something came over me. Something animalistic and powerful got unleashed. Something I have yet to understand.
I have become something...more.
My body feels exhausted, yet I dread sleep, fearing to see that dark entity appear in the corner of my small room once again. The thoughts help a little in keeping me awake, as I lay here remembering Astrid's unconscious, bloodied body. If it wasn't for Rio, who knows how far I would have gone. I shudder to think about it, but at least he was there. And I wasn't. I haven't been since I checked out of Silver Bow.
What else was I supposed to do? Running away means leaving everything behind and making sure not to rekindle the connections to home, right?
Because I never want to go back.
"Bianca?"
I bolt out of bed at the mention of my name and see nobody standing there in the dark corner, but a soft knock on my door. Sniffing the air, I sense Valentina on the other side. I let her in quickly.
"Are you crazy? It's the middle of the night."
"Princess, I—"
"You know how they feel about vampires, Valentina," I chide her further, a mixture of scolding her and taking out my frustration now that someone's here to take it.
"I just wanted to talk," she says, her dark eyes vulnerable under the faint glow from the light out in the courtyard.
I sigh and ask her to sit beside me on the bed. Even though her rejection at my desperate pleas to run away with me stung at first, I soon realized how stupid and naïve I was to even ask. What does she really mean to me anyway?
"There are so many things I want to apologize for, Princess."
"Please stop calling me that."
She nods. "Of course, Bianca." She looks down at her hands and begins her apologies. "I'm sorry for leaving you to journey all this way on your own. I'm sorry I didn't realize soon enough. I'm sorry for causing such a commotion upon my arrival. And," she hesitates and swallows hard, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner that I love you."
Valentina looks up at me finally and I feel...nothing.
I have thought about this moment several times over the years of my relationship with the vampiress. Even though I have always been pining for my best friend, I would have immediately told Valentina that I loved her back were she to say the words first. I would have done that just to pretend for a while that I could move on from loving Astrid. But Valentina never said it. Never uttered a word of something beyond lust. I suppose I shouldn't have expected more from such a skewed power dynamic where Valentina was the older, experienced mentor and I, the naïve student. How could that ever turn into love.
And yet here I am, feeling absolutely nothing after her confession.
I look at Valentina, softly biting her lower lip, her brows furrowed in anticipation of my response. Normally, I would reach out and bite that lip myself and this night would lead to another among countless others of lust-filled cries and ecstasy. But the desire to do so is no longer in me.
"It must have taken great courage for you to say these things," I tell her. "But there's no point in me giving you the forgiveness you seek, Valentina."
She scowls at this.
"Because," I continue, "The person you're looking for is no longer here."
"What do you mean?" she laughs nervously, taking my hand and placing it on her chest, where her dead heart lies still and unbeating. "Chérie, am I not sitting in front of you? Are you not here in this moment with me?"
"I am here. Just Bianca. Not Bianca Greywood of Silver Bow. That is who you love. And who might have loved you back in another life."
She shakes her head. "Just because you broke away from your pack, doesn't change who you are to me. And you don't have to say it back to me right now. Just being with you is enough."
I sigh. "You're not getting it, Valentina. I need to become something for myself before I become anything for anyone else," I tell her. "Forget about who you knew before. She's gone."
Her nostrils flare. "I did not fly all the way to Midnight Shadow to obtain this daylight ring and then fly some more to the Himalayas just to hear that old 'it's not you, it's me' spiel."
She takes a breath to calm down and study my face. Unfortunately for her, I feel my expression stone cold and unchanged. No matter what excuse I may end up throwing at her tonight, I know my heart wouldn't be in any of them.
"That's it then?" she scoffs incredulously. "I can't believe that after all this time of not even being your girlfriend that you would break up with me like this."
She curses at me in French, but I still feel nothing. Not even a little grief.
"And I told you all my secrets," she continues. "How I wasted more than half of my life following a man who never loved me back."
"I shouldn't have come to see you the day I left," I tell her as I get up to walk to the door. "And I didn't ask you to find me. I didn't ask any of you to."
She flinches at my words. "What's gotten into you?"
"I am becoming who I'm supposed to be." I twist the door handle. "Goodnight, Valentina."
She sits on the bed for a while, sniffling as tears fall, then leaves.
I go back to bed and fall asleep easier than before after finally admitting that I'm changing.
Sometime during the middle of the night, I get woken by a distant scream.
I sit up, expecting to see the shadowy figure in the corner of my room, but nobody's there; nor do I feel like I am hallucinating or going through the motions of a fever dream. A bang on my door startles me as it moves down the hallway outside.
I peer out the door to see one of the fighters of the barracks waking everybody up.
"Everybody get up and get out of the building, now!" she shouts.
"What's going on?" I ask her.
The fighter stomps off before she hears me and continues to bang on other doors.
I get dressed quickly and rush out. As I step outside, the clean and dry mountain air greatly amplifies the smell of smoke. I watch in horror as several buildings nearby are caught aflame and burning vividly. I hear a child's screams from a home nearby as the wooden walls cave in on the house and watch as fighters move in to rescue the trapped child.
Worse yet, the gazebo at the entrance of the underground hall has collapsed in on itself, blocking some elders and others underneath. I spot Rio, Alex and Ganzorig attempting to clear the way as Astrid and Guru stand by. When I reach them, a menacing cackle fills the night air.
At first, I recognize the distinct tone of Valentina's voice, but soon other voices envelop hers and dread fills my heart as a dark chill rises up my spine.
I look up to see the fog lifted up above, revealing a burst of bright stars alight in the night sky and the full moon directly overhead. I look around, searching for the cackling that seems to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
And suddenly, she appears, floating in mid-air, enrobed in a shroud of black smoke, her eyes glazed over in complete darkness, just like that shabby vampire from the night I arrived in this country.
I let her in and in doing so, provided a host for the God of Death to take over.
I did this.
"Valentina!" I yell out, hoping that whatever semblance of her is left in her body can hear me.
She shakes her head and grins. "White Wolf, I can see through every memory in Valentina's little head," she taps at the side of her. "She's gone."
"What do you want?"
"You have fulfilled your purpose in letting me in," she says in a cacophony of voices. "For that, I must thank you, White Wolf."
She looks behind me and smiles. I turn to see Guru and Astrid standing by as Rio instantly steps up protectively in front of them.
"First Son!" Rio shouts.
In the confusion of hearing the Death God's other name, realization sinks in of how deeply rooted and far reaching the danger really is.
"So, you know, son of Luc," she says, the sinister smile disappearing from her face. "The Alpha Eye, is it?"
"I saw you bind your mother and tie all of our fates together. Why?" Rio asks.
I remember Guru telling Rio he had the power to communicate to the Moon Goddess through his black eye and I wonder the extent of his words to the First Son, hovering menacingly above us all. Our fates? What does he mean? Was I bound the same way Astrid and Rio are? To what and to whom?
"To get you far, far, far away from home," the entity behind Valentina answers as she looks up.
I follow her gaze to find movement all the way at the top of this mountain peak. Two, ten, twenty and many more bodies begin to fall from the opening as some land and some shatter from the impact of the height. The same sort of shabby new born vampires I encountered before.
"A feast for you, my children," the voice behind Valentina speaks.
The undead army grows by the number as more of them fall from the sky. They start attacking the citizens of Sanctuary. In the nick of time, Alex and Ganzorig are able to open enough space for the trapped elders to escape the burning underground hall and immediately move onto their next task of fighting off the vampires.
"Valentina!" I shout desperately again. "Please, come back to me!"
Her face twitches slightly, but the parasitic Death God inside of her shakes it off.
"She's not here anymore," the voices say. "You sealed her fate, White Wolf."
I charge forth, shifting into my white wolf. But the black smoke grows and swallows Valentina, dispersing all around me then shoving itself straight at the exit. The stone wall bursts open at that, streaming in many more new born vampires as Valentina and the black smoke disappear into the night air.