Nimr on the top
The clock on the nightstand read 23:42. If I wanted to leave, I would have to be forced to wait a while until everyone was asleep. Vampires were nocturnal creatures from what I had heard. So, to pass the time, and since I wasn't tired like I had claimed to be earlier, I decided to have a look at my wounds.
In the room, aside from the bed and the nightstand, there was a dresser with a mirror mounted on the wall above it. I stood before it, my eyes roaming over my reflection. My dark brown hair was a mess, disheveled all over the place like I had just walked through a particularly rough wind storm. There was even a twig buried among the strands, and I quickly plucked it out while I attempted to smooth my hair down. My efforts didn't amount to much, so I left it, reluctantly.
Moving on from that, I saw my cheeks had grown a little more hollow than I last remembered, enunciating my cheekbones, and the area under my eyes were shaded a dark black due to my troubled sleeping habits. I looked sickly, as if I hadn't eaten in days, which was a tad truer than not... it made sense why Elric had suggested on me eating something earlier.
I couldn't help but wonder, still, why they seemed to care as much as they did. We were two unmistakably different species, and in most cases, we would undoubtedly be enemies. But, for a strange reason, I felt as though they were different than the vampires told to me in stories. Those vampires had appeared ruthless, maliciously relentless, and even a little power-hungry. These vampires, however, didn't seem anything like that, and it was quite confusing.
When I quickly shifted my attention back to the mirror, I caught the glimpse of a makeshift necklace hanging around my neck, three jagged and roughly cut pieces of stone dangling on the thin string that wrapped around each of them tightly, and I felt my heart constrict ever so painfully in my chest at the sight. How could I have possibly forgotten to check if that was still there after everything that had happened? That necklace was such an important and dear thing to me, and yet I had hardly remembered to make sure it was still there when I first woke in this house. How was it even possible for it to still be there after everything that had happened?
I felt as if an enormous weight had suddenly been dumped on me, like stepping under a raging waterfall. An enormous weight of shock and self-hatred. My hand immediately reached up and enclosed around the stones, grasping them tight, as if I was willing myself to believe that they were, indeed, still there.
How could you? How could you have nearly forgotten your only connection with them?
No, distract yourself, Ryder.
My eyelids flickering, I forced my view away from the necklace, and instead focused on the bandages that covered nearly my entire torso, and remembering why I was standing in front of the mirror to begin with, I reached up to start undoing them. Slowly, I unwound the gauze, revealing the scarcely-tanned skin underneath. My front was perfectly fine, but I was more worried as to what my backside had in store. Unwrapping the rest of the bindings, and setting them atop the dresser, I took a deep breath to steady myself, and to rid of any mild shock left over from my previous find. Once I felt calmed enough, I turned, revealing my left side, and I craned my neck to get a better look. My eyes widened at the sight they were met with.
The first of the injuries that I noticed were two bullet holes, both a grotesquely dark red with charred blackened flesh rimming the edges, revealing the awful effects that the silver had inflicted upon them. One was near the top of my back, where the bullet lodged in my shoulder blade used to reside. The second was a little lower, just barely missing the shoulder blade and instead showing where the bullet stuck between my ribs used to be. Of course, that wasn't all that had shocked me.
A long and deep, jagged scar ran from my shoulder all the way down to the bottom of my rib cage, and it couldn't have been more than an inch wide, though it wasn't easy to tell with the several knots of stitches pulling the skin closed. The flesh around the lengthy gash was also red, and appeared very irritated, like an angry bull ready to charge at the slightest sign of movement, or for the incision, the slightest touch. It had to have been where that sharp broken branch decided to scrape into my flesh. It was quite the unfortunate coincidence, for that to have happened.
Remembering the most sensitive of the injuries, I turned my back as much as was bearable to fully reveal the third bullet hole, the one near my spine that seemed to cause so much trouble. Upon first glance, it was obvious that that wound was the most repulsive of the four. It was an even darker shade of red than its brothers, burgundy almost, with the same sickly black charred flesh around the edges. Unlike the other wounds, though, it was accompanied with a worrying dark purple that reached out with ominous claws over the skin around it. This wound appeared far more than irritated, no, it looked utterly enraged. No wonder the wolf within me acted out whenever it was touched.
Continuing to sweep my gaze over the wounds, I felt a growing guilt towards anyone who had seen them at their more previously damaged state. I felt guilty that they had to look at something so utterly grotesque.
Just as I was about to turn away from the awfully repulsive sight, no longer wishing to gaze at such a thing, my eyes caught something else out of place. Down on my hip, another scar just shyly showed itself above the hem of my dirty and tattered pants. It wasn't as deep as the others, nor as red, but it still appeared as though it would scar just as much.
Probably from the first time, when a bullet just barely grazed me....
Deciding I was finished with looking at the proof of my failure to evade the hunters, I rewrapped the gauze around my torso in the same pattern Elric had made, and turned away from the mirror, not planning on ever looking at it again.
As an alternative, my gaze roamed over the empty room. There was hardly anything in here besides the three pieces of furniture, and there was absolutely no sense of decoration besides the thin flowing curtains that covered the window. The plainness of it all, though, had me feeling rather calm. It wasn't loud, in the visionary sense, but simple and peacefully quiet. I found that I didn't mind the emptiness so much, like others who would prefer more eccentric things probably would.
However, I was disappointed with the fact that I didn't have much to do before I left. I certainly didn't want to try sleeping, not with the fear of waking up from another nightmare and someone coming in, alarmed at my whimpers and stifled screams.
My eyes slid over to the large window once more, the thin curtains hardly swaying with the air pushing up from a vent on the floor, making them look as though they were a ghost. Swaying, whispering, beckoning me. I complied to their beckon, stepping up to them and gently brushing them aside to have a clearer look at the outside world.
I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, but I could say I was pleased to see that the house was surrounded by miles and miles of pine trees. They were the only color seen in the vast blanket of white that covered the land, and, thanks to the light reflecting off the snow, the ever yellow night sky. It reminded me vaguely of my old home, a small one-story cabin no less than ten miles from a small town. We, too, preferred to live in solitude. It was easier back then, since we, my family, had each other. But, I couldn't say the same anymore.
A small spark of pain stabbed at my chest, almost similar to the self-hatred that befell on me earlier, and I winced. At the thought of my family, I was reminded of the vampires.
I could tell that they were happy just having each other, too. I could hear them all downstairs right now, either laughing or just talking about simple things, the gentle vibrations of their voices thrumming against the walls of the house. I was sure they had no one else but themselves to worry about. And that was but one reason why I had to leave; I couldn't risk taking that carefree lifestyle away from them just because they thought they were helping me. Part of me was sure they wouldn't care anyway, if I left. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting me for company, and after having met me, I was sure they had rathered never found me, as well.
I felt as though I had taken away many other people's happiness just because I had gotten in the way. When you're a rogue, it's quite truly a dog-eat-dog world out there. You had to fight if you wanted to survive. I've killed more rogues than I could count just because my wolf instincts kicked in, the anger of my loss getting the better of me. But, in the end, when my pale fur was bloodied and mangled, and my muscles ached from scratches or bites, I would always remorse in my actions. There was always someone I ended up taking from someone else's life. Whether it be a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a son or even a daughter, I had taken one of those from some other family out there. From what I could imagine, possibly the same way my family had been taken from me.
I shuddered. Gruesome images of my family members' disemboweled bodies, hardly recognizable, flashed through my head. Swallowing thickly, I tried to will the images away by focusing my attention on the snow outside, a lingering shiver of discomfort coursing throughout my body.
I distracted myself by watching small little flurries of snowflakes fall gracefully onto anything they could stick to. I tilted my head a bit as I imagined the flakes' movements resembling a sort of dance, their routine ending once they came to rest with the others. Yes, this was a good distraction.
I sighed, wishing my life was as simple as a snowflake's. I guess, in a way, it was, but certainly snowflakes didn't have nightmares or a long lasting feeling of depression eating away at their soul.
Deciding to watch the snow as I waited, I lifted myself up onto the wide windowsill and situated myself so I was sitting. Being careful of my back, I leaned against the frame, and placed my bare feet on the other end. I huddled my arms close to my chest, suppressing another shiver at the slightly cold gushes of air coming from the edges of the window.
"We just have to wait, now..." I whispered to no one in particular. I sighed, tilting my head to rest my forehead against the window, proceeding to watch the soft flurries of white fall from the sky. While doing so, I held the stone shards in my hand again as a way to grasp some much needed reassurance. My fingers slid over the jagged pieces with tender care, their rough crevices gliding under my fingertips. The snow outside was peaceful, and gentle, with hardly a care in the world.
* * *
My heart pounded painfully in my chest, flooding my ears with its thick and rapid pulsing. It felt impossible to breathe, and at the sight before me, I thought I'd never be able to again.
My father's head, ripped off at the neck and eyes wide along with an open mouth, was lying by the front door, and his body laid only a few feet away. His chest had been ripped open, and his entrails were strewn around him. Sickly splatters of blood covered nearly every space on the floor and walls.
"P-Papa...?" I croaked, a sickening feeling overtaking my stomach, a feeling of something rising up my esophagus and simmering threateningly at the back of my throat, ready to overflow. The muscles in my legs instantly grew weak, and as I tried to crouch down, my knees buckled, landing with a noiseless thud on the wooden floor. My heart hammered away in my chest as I reached out with trembling hands, sliding my fingers through the strands of my father's raven black hair to pick his roughly-severed head up off the floor.
"...Papa?" I whispered hoarsely again, a desperate call that fell on deaf ears. His blank and dull brown eyes stared back at me. Soulless, unresponsive. At that painful observation, the realization of his death sunk like a thousand rocks in my gut.
"N-nh!" I gasped, flinching awake. Immediately my eyes darted around at my surroundings, my nerves crawling at an uncomfortable height. Confusion swarmed my mind as, again, I forgot where I was, but once my frantic gaze landed on my trembling hands, recognition calmed my frightened heart. However, the organ continued to thrum against my ribs as my entire body quivered from the aftershock.
"J-just a dream, just a dream..." I whispered to myself. No, a memory. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, shaking the unsettling thought from my mind.
I kept them closed as I waited for my body to calm down entirely. It took quite a bit of time, fear pulsing through my chest until my mind managed to wrap around the fact that everything was alright. When I opened my eyes again, I was surprised to find that it was no longer night, but early morning, and I was no longer on the windowsill, but on the bed, the covers draped over me in a snug fashion. It seemed that someone had come in to check on me during the time I had fallen asleep. I never even noticed doing so.
Heaving a sigh to soothe the last of my nerves, I pushed the thick comfortable blanket off my chest as I sat up. My back said its good morning, to which I replied with a wince and a grimace. When the ache of greeting subsided, I stood and ambled over to the door, opening it ever so slowly so as to not create a creak announcing my presence. I peeked out into the hall when the door was but a centimeter wide, and when I saw no one appeared to be around, and most of the other doors were closed, I decided it was safe to venture out into the rest of the house.
It was quiet, almost in the eerily sense, as I stepped slowly and silently down the hall. Remnants of the others' scents stuck to the walls as I passed, their trails of movement mingling together, and I came across the staircase.
Trying not to make the ruffling of my pants too loud or my footfalls too heavy, since I knew such sounds would alert anyone of my whereabouts, I stepped down the stairs one by one, taking my time. I had learned many times over the years, that patience was always the best option to stand beside.
I hesitated as I came around the corner of the stairs, the rest of them leading into the large downstairs area. I had to be sure that no one was amidst there, or at least, to the extent they could spot me. With a glance around the interior, and seeing no one, I padded gingerly down the remainder of the stairs.
Stepping into the kitchen, I almost forgot where the front door was located, until I quickly recalled the night before. With the help of that memory, I easily spotted the front door. Nimr had made his entrance there, and I would make my exit there.
I had just rounded the corner of the island counter, when a sudden curious and strange feeling prickled at the back of my neck, like an unknown presence had newly accompanied mine. A feeling of someone watching me, and with a rather intent gaze.
"Leaving already?" Nimr's small and light voice spoke behind me. I froze, suffering a nervous swallow, before timidly turning around to face him. Nimr stood by the stairs, and I saw how his appearance had hardly changed from the night before, aside from the fact that his mouth no longer held host to a few smears of blood.
"I, uh-" I began, but I couldn't seem to be able to finish whatever it was I was planning to say, as if my vocal cords had suddenly been slit. Nimr merely waved me off with a subtle gesture of his hand, which I also noticed was no longer coated in blood. I watched as he then walked into the kitchen, where he opened up an upper cabinet. I was just a tad surprised he was even able to reach the cabinet, due to his frame appearing so small. He probably stood a little below my shoulder when directly next to me.
I was frozen with wariness as he pulled down two mugs, setting them on the gray marbled counter as he then moved to a different cabinet, in which he pulled out two packets of what I could only guess to be hot chocolate.
"I-I wouldn't bother making me any. I... ha-have to leave," I whispered, suddenly granted my voice back when I glanced at the two mugs again, coming to a conclusion that Nimr was planning on making us both a drink. Nimr didn't turn to me, or made any sign that he had heard me, and instead merely began tearing open the packets and proceeding to pour the contents into the mugs. As a brown mixture hissed its way out of the packets, my suspicion was proven correct that it was, in fact, a hot chocolate mix.
"Why do you want to leave? You seem in no condition to be out there on your own. Nasty weather we get up here," he said to me. I stole a glance out of the window above the sink, and took in the lack of drifting snowflakes and howling wind. The weather appeared just fine to me, a clear winter day.
"I-I don't belong here. I-I appreciate you trying to help, but..." I began in answer to his question, but once again I appeared to lose my will to speak. I couldn't very well tell him straight up what my true feelings were on the situation. Certainly he wouldn't understand, I highly doubted any of them would.
"Yes?" Nimr asked, pressing for me to continue. His head was tilted a little towards me now, giving me the assumption that he was eyeing me questionably. Still, I found I was unable to respond. Once again he smiled, as if he understood my silence, and went along his business of pouring water into a glass measuring cup, which he then stuck in the microwave to heat up.
"Is it because we're vampires, and you're not?" Nimr asked after a little while, the microwave humming quietly in the background. Was it? Well, it wasn't the entire reason why I wished to leave, but I could say that aspect played a minor part in it. Not trusting my voice to respond, I nodded, looking down at my bare feet, and suddenly feeling ashamed.
"To be quite honest, Ryder, we don't care about that," he responded casually. I was a little shocked at the soft undertone that laced his voice. It sounded as if he understood my general feeling of being out-of-place, and I felt minorly touched that he connected with it as fast as he had.
"I-I'm sorry," I quickly told him, my voice mimicking his in softness. I still felt so ashamed, because I was reminded, again, of just how kind these vampires were. And here I was, ready to leave without a glance back.
"Relax, you're fine. Besides, I'm the one who brought it up," he assured me, waving off my apology. The microwave went off in its bland near-silent tune. I was still uneasy as Nimr took out the glass measuring cup and poured the steaming water into the two mugs, and then slid open a drawer to pull out two spoons, which he then placed in the mugs.
He picked one of them up, and handed it over to me. Knowing it would be rude to decline, and considering how rude I had already been, I took it, the heat burning my hands slightly. Nimr, with his own mug in hand, took a seat at one of the stools surrounding the island counter.
"You should sit, and drink. You look like you need a replenishing cup of hot cocoa," he observed, beginning to stir his drink with the spoon. I held back a defeated sigh, and sat myself down as well, on the opposite side of the island where the small vampire sat. Based on his statement, I figured it was quite obvious just how drained I truly was.
Tensely, I stirred my drink, careful not to make the spoon clink too loudly along the interior edges. Once I thought the mixture was evenly distributed among the liquid, I took a small sip, regretting it instantly when the still-steaming beverage nearly burned my tongue.
Nimr, on the other hand, appeared to be drinking his with ease, much unlike myself. Deciding it better to wait a little for my beverage to cool, I glanced around the interior of the house. During so, my eyes fell on the eight seats surrounding the dining table, and I quite recalled only meeting five people last night.
"Are... are there any more of you?" I asked timidly. Nimr shook his head, replying after he took another sip of his drink.
"There's only five of us. Sometimes we have some friends or relatives come and visit, but it happens rarely."
I nodded, and we fell back into a comfortable silence, or at least, a little more comfortable than the last one. I thought it safe to drink my hot chocolate then, and I was relieved to say that it no longer burned, but the taste of it was skewed as most of my tastebuds were still healing from the previous harm done to them.
While I drank the smooth liquid, Nimr appeared to be a little lost in thought. His teeth nibbled at his bottom lip, picking away at the dead skin, and his fingers played with the handle of his spoon. After a few moments, Nimr finally smiled a little and flicked his head to the side, as if to try and whisk his hair out of his eyes, though the action seemed to hold no avail in doing so.
"How would you like to go hunting with me later?" he asked.