Prepare for the angst. Because every good vampire story needs angst. :)
(Also, if for some reason you didn't get my spam updates, I updated ALOT this weekend. At least 6 chapters i think, so please go back and read them so you aren't confused)
Chapter 45
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Eliot knew he was a coward.
He had done unspeakable things in his lifetime, if you wanted to call it that. He had killed and bled and maimed and crippled before, and loved every single second of it.
He could look grown men in the eyes, even as he killed them with a simple twist of the neck.
He used to get drunk on mortal blood, and there were days that he craved it still.
But, one little mortal girl with a death sentence had him doing something that not even the horrors of his past could.
He was running away.
Mindlessly, his fingers wrenched the steering wheel to follow the curves in the road as his car careened through the mountains. Luckily there were no other cars on the road, but even if there had been, he wouldn’t have cared.
Nothing mattered other than getting away. Running away.
Escaping her.
Her scent.
The sound of her voice.
Her smile…
If he tried to rationalize the way he felt about her he just couldn’t. She wasn’t exceptional, beautiful, or smart.
She wasn’t special.
Her hair was frizzy.
She was too short.
She had a smart-assed habit of making jokes when she should have been afraid.
She’d laughed when he told her about vampires.
Shivered when he touched her hand.
Sensed the slightest bit of emotion from him, when he had spent four long centuries trying to lock any feeling up tight.
In a way, she reminded him of a lamb with something faulty in its brain who skipped along beside the wolf while it hunted her.
So damn innocent.
But no…now that he thought about it, that wasn’t exactly right. Goodness radiated from her like a beacon—but there was a little darkness lurking in her too.
A darkness that allowed her to accept was he was and not be afraid.
She scared the hell out of him; she was so much like Alazzdria it terrified him.
Was he any better than Vaddrian for craving to stroke that darkness in her almost as much as he wanted to shield the light?
Because the truth was…he wanted to turn her.
He wanted her to be like him.
He wanted to see her skin pale like marble and cool like ice. He wanted to run beside her beneath the trees for as long as the sky stretched out above them and show her…
Everything.
He didn't want to have to worry that he’d snap her apart if he lost control. Drain her dry.
He wanted Miriam to be a vampire, and he hated himself for it. He was a cruel selfish bastard for wanting to keep her even if it meant destroying her.
Was it really fair to ask that she welcome the change any differently that he did?
He had been overwhelmed by it, why wouldn’t she?
Even Alazzdria had allowed herself to be corrupted by the power.
What made Miriam any different?
She’s already different, he realized as he glared at the snow-covered road. After only a few days around him, already she was beginning to lose some of the innocence in her fathomless gaze.
‘I threatened to kill someone tonight,’ she had told him in horror. ‘And I meant it. I loved being in control…’
There would be a lot more of that if she was a vampire, he realized grimly. Would she be able to stomach that kind of power?
If someone threatened her again, would she be able to stop herself from crossing the dangerous line?
Would he even want her to stop?
The predator he was shied away from the thought of it. He had been alone for so long…
Was it so unfair to want someone by his side? Someone to talk to?
She could be that.
“No.” He spoke the word out loud, shaking his head in an effort to erase the annoying thoughts.
Miriam wasn’t like him. She was different.
He couldn’t destroy her just to erase his own loneliness.
He couldn’t…
But, a cruel part of him hissed, she can’t do much good dead, now can she?
It was a long while before he realized that he had come to a stop along the side of the road, hands clutching the steering wheel so hard that he was surprised the thing hadn’t broken off.
Almost on its own, his hand reached up, fingers snagging the round orb of the blue stone around his neck. He glanced down, eyeing the fragile pink sliver of shoelace.
Then, he pictured a pair of wide brown eyes, empty and unseeing.
Dead.
His fingers clenched the stone. 'A monster wouldn't be wearing a pink shoelace around his neck.'
He pulled, and the windshield shattered into splinters as he hurtled that fragile little stone through it.
Smash!
The stone shattered into millions of turquoise bits, leaving just a small chunk stuck in the center of that pink shoelace as it bounced off the hood of the car to plop onto the icy road beneath.
Eliot was already out of the car, bending over to pick the broken necklace from the ground. He reached out, but just as his finger brushed that vibrant pink…
Blue.
It filled his vision like a hazy wave, drenching everything in navy. He froze, blinking—but before his mind had fully registered it the blue faded.
It could have been a trick of the light. A reflection from one of those broken bits of blue stone.
But, instantly he knew in his gut that something was wrong.
His hand yanked the necklace from the ground and he turned on his heel, leaving his car along the side of the road.
_______________
He was too late.
The thought plagued him, as he dashed through the double doors of the hospital.
Too late, too late, too late.
He didn’t know how he knew she was here. How he knew to race to the sixth floor and rush down that narrow, silent hallway and into that small room near the very end…
It was almost cruelly ironic that they had placed her in the very same bed they had put Alazzdria in during her comatose rouse.
Only Miriam wasn’t playing a sick game.
She wasn’t faking, as she lay pale and still beneath a starched white sheet.
Her eyes were closed. That beautiful brown hair was cut ruthlessly short and smooth back neatly by what he figured was a motherly nurse armed with a brush.
She looked beautiful. Like a peaceful version of that sleeping beauty fairytale humans adored so much. If it wasn’t for the smell of death that clung to her, despite the steady beeping a heart monitor in the corner of the room.
He couldn’t look at her.
He turned away, fumbling for the door.
“Wait.” The tired croak made his head jerk around to a figure sitting in a chair by the window he hadn’t noticed before. The voice belonged to a man with sandy brown hair who looked exhausted.
Drained.
About as dead as the girl lying on the bed.
“Are you…are you one of Miri’s friends?”
Eliot left.
Like a ghost, he moved through the hallways, not stopping until he found himself surrounded by trees on all sides, still clutching that sad pink shoestring in his fist.
“Eliot!”
He wasn’t that surprised to realize that Sage and Hazel were behind him—though they didn’t have to worry about the sun, for now.
Thick, patches of snow drifted down in clumps, coating the forest floor in blankets of ivory. This time, Sage hadn’t even bothered with a sweatshirt and all Hazel wore was a dark dress while the snowflakes coated her black curls. Their black hair was slicked back and Hazel had ditched her lacy parasol.
He didn’t know why they had followed him. At the moment he really didn’t care.
He skidded to a stop and whirled around to face then, almost anticipating the moment they'd say something stupid so that he could spill his anger.
“What do you want?” His voice came out harsh—broken. Guttural.
Hazel flinched and took a step back, but her brother only drew himself up to his massive height.
“We know what happened to Miriam,” he said. “We’ve been…following her.”
He glanced at his sister and they adopted instant defensive stances; arms held out to the sides as if expecting him to attack.
But all Eliot didn’t instead was turn heading blindly through the woods. Maybe if he ran fast enough. Hard enough, he could erase the sight of those brown eyes closed forever?
“Wait—”
Sage appeared to block his way, and Eliot reacted on impulse. He lunged, shoving the other vampire back into the trunk of a tree, so hard that his head cracked off the bark.
As he watched a trickle of blood dribbled down from Sage’s lower lip, striking something in him.
“Eliot, wait—”
His hands curled into a fist and he punched. Sage’s aristocratic nose snapped with a crunch and healed. all in an instant amid a spray of blood.
Red. The color snapped something in Eliot’s mind.
Smack!
His knuckles collided with the side of Sage’s chin—sending even more blood to coat that marble skin.
“Eliot!” Hazel shrieked from behind him. She threw herself at him, pulling on his arm. “Stop!”
He shrugged her off so hard that she went flying into the trees.
Then, gritting his teeth he turned back to Sage.
Blood.
It coated his fingers he realized. Thick and red and…
Brining his fingers to his nose, he breathed deep, ignoring the vampiric taint and just focused on the predatory instincts that scent awoke.
Yes, a dark part of him purred. Blood will help.
Blood can erase her.
Drown her.
Make you whole again.
All he had to do was find a victim, pierce a vein and just—
“Eliot!”
Sage’s shout was his only warning before the broadside of a pale fist slammed into his cheek. The blow knocked him off his feet—temporarily.
In an instant he was already whirling around, legs tensed and ready to spring…
“Kill her.”
The statement, growled by Sage threw him off. Just long enough for the other vampire to shove him back firmly into a tree of his own.
Agony exploded along his ribcage, as several of them broke and healed within the space of a second.
“Kill her,” Sage repeated, reaching up to wipe the blood from his chin. “Here, I’ll even help you.” Glaring, the vampire reaching into the pocket of his dark parts and pulled out two slender vials both filled with liquid.
The fluid in one was a crystal clear, almost like water, that reflected the light. The other was a deep, dark shade of scarlet.
“Kill her or fix her,” Sage said simply, dangling the vials in the air by their narrowed white caps. “One of these little beauties is filled with poison that will stop her little mortal heart with no fuss. The other…” He trailed off, gaze black with meaning. “It’s your choice, Eliot—that way you can’t bitch at us when you end up alone. Because, the next time you come at me like that, I’ll have Hazel run circles around you while I wrestle a wooden stake into your chest.”
The vampire’s tone was casual, but Eliot couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not. Though with Sage it was always better not to guess.
“You’re choice,” Sage repeated. He let the vials fall harmlessly to the snow and turned around. “Come on, Haze. We’ve got packing to do.”
“Ooooh! Let’s!” Hazel skipped merrily from the shadows to dart past him all the while dusting the snow from her skirt. A drop of blood dotted her forehead, but she didn’t seem to notice, or care.
“Choose well, Eliot,” she murmured, glancing back to give him a grim look from over her shoulder. “What’s better? A life like ours…or death?”
Wasn't that the million dollar question?
_____________
Midnight on the sixth floor of Wafter’s Point Memorial wasn’t any different that the day. Except, maybe for the fact that the patient’s rooms were dimly lit, and there were slightly less people wandering the corridors.
But it was still silent.
Like a crypt.
A graveyard.
A lifeless abyss.
Eliot entered Miriam’s room virtually unnoticed. It wasn’t even like he was trying to hide himself—just that no one seemed to notice him among the sea of blank, empty faces.
Hell, he looked more alive than Miriam did.
But, at least her skin was still pink.
Barely...
He was able to come closer to her, this time. To move over to the bed and take her pale hand in his own.
Her coldness shocked him.
She felt frozen. Like ice.
End it.
Sage’s words played through his mind as he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those slender vials. He had made his choice...
“What are you doing in here?”
He turned to find a woman standing in the doorway, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand. But it wasn’t until she took a step forward, enough for the glow from the monitors to wash over her pale face that he realized who she was.
Those brown eyes widened when she recognized him as well.
“It’s you,” she breathed, clutching at her chest. “The vampire from—” She broke off and that gaze narrowed. “Just what the hell are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” he said—but he couldn’t quite find the will to make his hand release Miriam’s. His grip only tightened, squeezing the limp fingers while he slid the vial back into his pocket.
“Nothing?” Allwyn repeated. Skeptical, her gaze darted down to her daughter’s hand locked in his grasp. For a long moment she watched him with an unreadable expression. Then, she sighed and sank into a chair along the far wall. “I guess I’ve been gone from Miriam’s life for too long to be alarmed at the fact that she seems to hang around a vampire?”
She laughed to herself when she didn’t get an answer, but there were tears in her eyes. Slowly, she stood, leaving her coffee on the windowsill, and moved over to Miriam’s other side.
“They say there’s no medical reason for it,” she explained, reaching for her daughter’s other hand. “She just stopped…”
Her voice trailed off as her hand moved to cup the side of Miriam’s face.
“They all think that she can pull through this,” she explained, voice hollow. “But you and I both know the truth. She’s never going to wake up…”
It was a while before he realized that the woman was watching him, eyes sharp in the dim light.
“Unless,” she added meaningfully.
Unless… The word hung in the air about as subtle as Miriam’s silly baseball bat.
“You’d want that life for her?” He asked, glancing down at Miriam’s pale face, completely serene.
Allwyn released a cold laugh. “Do you think that I really get to make choices about what’s ‘best’ for her now?” She made it sound like a cruel joke. “All I know is that she doesn’t deserve this.”
She leaned down to press a cool kiss against Miriam’s cheek and stood wiping her eyes.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” she announced, running her fingers through her hair. Deliberately she walked past the steaming cup left behind on the windowsill, but she paused near the door.
“Vampire,” she called without turning around. “I know that my kind isn’t exactly on the best terms with yours, but…Miriam is more mortal than anything. She deserves a chance at life—any life…”
Eliot didn’t turn away from the bed to see when she finally left. But, after a long moment, he reached into his pocket and withdrew one of Sage’s vials.
Each one had a tiny needle which he stabbed into the top of the IV running into Miriam’s wrist.
It didn’t take long to force the liquid in, and watched it drip down and swirl with the clear solution already in the plastic bag.
It didn’t take long for the heart monitor beeping steadying beside her to suddenly flat line.
Nurses and doctors rushed into the room as alarm bells sounded from the machinery.
But, in the end, it didn’t take long for her to finally die.