✧ 58 ✧
After Martha's last squeal, the coven went quiet. The silence was loud, amplifying Anne's cries in the hall of this ancient secret underground church for vampires.
That was before she, too, went silent.
The vampire elders stood still, what was left of them, at least.
They stared above... Mouths open is a restrained gasp.
Anne, on her knees, stopped crying and joined the strange gesture of the members of her coven.
Maggie was left free. She stood up and looked around her. Something weird was happening to the elders. They stopped fighting all of a sudden. They just stood motionless. Their eyes were bulging with pain.
Her mother was there in front of her, doing the same thing. Goggling. Gaping. Unresponsive. She stopped screaming, stopped sobbing. Eyes leaked silent tears.
"Mother?" Maggie whispered, worried.
Then, Anne's exposed skin on her arms and legs sizzled. Body bubbled with blisters. The tears she shed evaporated as soon as they touched her cheeks.
Her eyes returned to their natural human color—blue.
"Mother," Maggie said, louder this time. "Mom. Mom!"
Anne's face wrinkled. After years of being stuck at forty-eight years of age, she aged. Not a year or two, but ten years in a minute.
Anne's eyes shifted towards her daughter at terrifying speed. Her face was soaked with tears of agony that quickly vanished into thin air as they slid down her reddening face. A face that was wrinkling and bubbling.
She let out a shriek in sync with all the other coven's members.
The shrieks rattled the basement and Maggie's heart.
Maggie quickly covered her ears and shut her eyes. Then opened them to see her mother. The gaping mouth was now silent, yet the eyes spoke to her—help me.
Maggie knelt and shook her mother's shoulders.
"Mom! What's wrong? Mom, talk to me!"
Suddenly, black liquid started coming out of Anne's mouth. A stinky smell rose in the coven. They were all vomiting this dark-as-sewage blood, dripping down their chins.
Maggie recoiled as everyone fell to their knees.
The process was painful. They gagged and gurgled. The black thing was burning its way out of them.
Thick.
Heavy.
And abundant.
When they emptied their stomach of the black goo, they screamed again and scratched their wrinkled faces. Their writhing bodies started to emit hot steam.
Maggie fell backward. Tears gathered in her eyes as she watched her mother decay at unnatural speed.
"Mom." Maggie's voice was small. "What's happening to you?"
The elders' bodies dropped to the floor.
They began to change from flesh to bone or, something like it.
The screams diminished until there were none.
Statues of dust and ash stood in place of the bloodthirsty creatures as if bones had replaced their skin, a very thin layer of it that could fracture at the slightest touch.
Maggie finally dared to approach her mother, hand placed an inch away from Anne's face. Maggie was about to cup her mother's cheeks, but stopped herself when she saw how fragile her mother's new face was. Dust flurried across the basement, ashes from the dead undead.
Maggie pulled her palms to her face. Her wide blue eyes gleamed with tears. Her cheek flushed pink. Her sight blurred.
Her mother was gone. Despite disagreeing with her often, Anne did one thing right: she kept Maggie safe.
Maggie shed her first tears in forever. She had lost another family member. Now, she was alone in this dangerous and ugly world.
Maggie dabbed her tears away and snuffled when she remembered why she came here, why she defied her own species.
The human boy. That innocent doe-eyed boy.
Time was crucial. He could die any second now from blood loss.
She stood tall with her graceful pride as if nothing had happened to her or her family. She hurried to the table and removed the IV needles that were draining the boy's blood. Then she started untying the straps holding him in place.
"Hey. Human," she called him. "Wake up. It's not your time to die. Wake the hell up!"
Maggie worked quickly through the straps, too quickly for her unbothered character. Her eyes weavered, and they never do, when she didn't get a proof of life in the boy's bruised body. But she was willing to go beyond her nature to save him.
There was something about him that was worth fighting for, as if God himself had destined them to meet during the darkest times of this village.
From the corners of her ocean eyes, she spotted Martha's still body; her twin in life, undead, and now perhaps her afterlife.
The last thought almost made her crumble to the ground.
Her knees felt weak once she realized that her sister was really gone this time.
Not a zombie, but gone, gone—A pond of blood underneath her. She didn't look like she was breathing.
Maggie lifted her head and yelled, "Shit."
The twinkles in her eyes multiplied and soon turned into a wave of tears. Her heart hurt; it hurt so much that she could barely breathe. She lost a piece of her, the other half of her, her twin. She lost her for real this time.
Her mom was gone, and now Martha. All she had left was this human boy.
She stared at him. His peaceful unconscious face. His cute button nose. His sad downturned lips. His wounds and bruises. The boy was the most innocent, beautiful human she'd ever met.
Then his scent reached her nose. Something has changed in his body. She noticed the bags of purple blood, his blood. Something has indeed changed. Still, she hoped that he was the same innocent boy she had first met.
Once she set him free, she looked at his face again. Something drew her to this boy, a special connection. Despite her actual age, she still felt like the sixteen-year-old girl before her transformation, and the same silly teenage affection.
"Hey. Human boy." She shook his body. "Wake up!"
His eyes twitched—a sign of life!
She prayed his eyes open and saw a familiar glow in them, not like the red glow of her eyes but a violet glint. A faint violet shine in a pool of green.
That's strange, she thought, then she had the craziest idea. Although his eyes weren't red like hers in her full vampire mode, this mad idea might actually work.
"Don't worry, human," she whispered to his ear. "I'll help you."
She put her arm on top of the boy's face. Without hesitating, she drew her dagger to her wrist and slit it open. Crimson blood fell straight into the boy's mouth.
Ilya swallowed.
Suddenly, big violet eyes snapped open. Ilya grabbed Maggie's arm with effort and fed on her vampire blood, her nutritious tasty yummy crimson blood.
Maggie helped him. She cradled him like a baby needing milk, like a starving animal in the desert. She held him close to her chest as they lay against the wall.
She stroked his head as he fed and whispered, "You're gonna be okay."