Chapter 23 #2
Catching up to the woman was easier now that I could run with enhanced speed.
A curious but beneficial perk of the undead, it seemed.
She screamed as I lurched into the air, tackling her into the shadows.
I descended on her and feasted like it was my right, my purpose.
She kicked and screamed and it only fueled my anger, my desperation to take every bit of her blood for myself.
Mon amour, STOP! You must control yourself. I will come to you and we can talk!
NO! I screamed at Levette in my head. Do not come near me!
I tried to warn her, but she chose not to listen to me. Her stupidity made her weak, and now she was paying the price. The bloodlust was overtaking me like a high no drug could give and I wanted more. The foolish woman should have taken my advice because now, her death would be my release.
NO. That was wrong. Cruel. Venomous.
I yanked myself away from her, hearing her pulse give out as her blood coated my skin.
What had I done?
My chest was heaving as I stumbled into the darkened street, the lights suddenly blinding me.
Everything was too bright, too loud, just like it had been when I first turned.
My head pounded and I could hear the rhythmic thumping of human heartbeats everywhere.
I wanted to sink my fangs into them all, feel them bleed out and into me.
Mon cher, you have got to control yourself! Do not let your anger make you into a monster. You do not have to be like me.
I screamed, covering my ears with my hands as I ran through the streets. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!
Without meaning to, I had sped through the Quarter and found myself passing by the prostitutes lingering outside the brothels. I paid them no mind, trying to force myself onwards until whatever was happening to me passed.
Until I saw a priest trying to grab at one of the women. She pushed him off and he grabbed her, smacking her across the face. “Who are you to tell a man of the Lord no, whore?” he spat at her.
I rushed up behind him, whispering in his ear, “As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests,” before ripping his grip off the woman and pulling him into the darkness. “You shame the Father and yourself. The world would be better with you.”
His scream pleased me as I tore open his throat, barely even drinking his blood before I let him fall and watched it pour onto the street.
I blinked, and the sickness at my actions returned. Doubling over, I vomited up the blood I had drank, it tasting like bile in my throat.
Was this my punishment? I had given in to temptation, practically lain with the devil. God was punishing me for betraying him. I sobbed into my hands, my mind a cluster of tangled thoughts I could not unravel.
My love, please. Let me explain. Let me help you.
I DO NOT NEED YOUR HELP. LEAVE ME ALONE, LEVETTE!
Warren, the sun is coming up. Come home!
He was right. I looked up at the sky and saw the day slowly breaking, the dark coverage of the night disappearing.
WARREN, COME HOME!
I could not bear it any longer. Hearing his voice, feeling the tug of our bond so strong that it was near impossible for me to ignore…It was all too much. I loved him as much as I could, but he had always meant to betray me. To turn me into a monster and damn me to the fate I feared above all.
He had changed me into something I could not come back from. I was irrevocably changed and the demon inside me was winning. If I continued, it was only a matter of time before there was no humanity left in me.
There was no choice, not anymore. I knew what I had to do.
I ran out of the streets and to the closest place I knew—St. Louis Cemetery.
Fumbling my way through the maze of headstones and mausoleums, I found a small tomb directly in the center. I climbed atop it, dropping to my knees.
Warren! Please. COME HOME TO ME!
I could hear the anger and fear in Levette’s voice as he invaded my mind. He showed me himself at our apartment, my shirt in his hands as he cried for me, pleading with me to come back. He looked so broken and it pained me to see; yet, had he not broken me just as terribly?
I love you, mon amour. Please! I AM BEGGING YOU. DO NOT LEAVE ME LIKE THIS!
Sobs wracked through my body as I shuddered, scrunching my eyes closed. This is too much. I love you, Levy, but I cannot do this anymore. It’s too much chaos—you are too much chaos.
I could hear him scream, begging, but it was nothing to me.
I had made my decision and it was the only way to go forward.
I would see the sunrise one last time and let it burn the venom from my soul.
The light would eclipse the dark in me and even if I was sent to the fiery pits of Hell, I would know that I had done one last thing to stop myself from becoming evil itself.
Levette continued to cry out, call to me, beg me not to leave him. I could not shut my mind from him, but I opened my eyes instead, watching as the sun slowly rose.
My head began to vibrate as I looked up, and I screamed aloud, pressing my palms against my temples. Dizziness swallowed me up, my vision blurring at the same time.
“That’s enough of that. Levette needs to learn to shut the fuck up,” a familiar voice called out to me. “Now, what the bloody hell do you think you are doing?”
I looked up to see Lena, the vampire I had met at the club with Levette, grabbing me by the arm. She was pulling me out of the sun.
“No! Leave me. Please!”
She cursed in an old language I didn’t recognize and pulled me anyway, dragging me off the roof and into a stone mausoleum. I screamed at her and tried to hit out, but she pinned my arms behind me and held me like it was nothing.
“Apologies, my little vampy, but I will not let you kill yourself like that. You have potential, and meeting the sun over a lover’s quarrel? Well, that is theatre dramatics reserved for bitches like Levette.”
I roared aloud, trying to wrestle free from her grasp. I did not know this woman and yet here she was, taking another choice from me. It felt as though my life was no longer my own. To live meant becoming a monster I did not want to be, and I was not allowed to die.
“I do not want to be here anymore,” I confessed through anguished sobs. “I do not want to be a monster.”
Lena knelt before me, her young face full of an emotion I could not place—hope, perhaps, or understanding—as she held my face in her hands. “Then come with me, little one. Allow me to show you a different way of living. A fresh start far away from here.”
My breath stuttered as I tried to will myself to stop crying, to control some part of my emotions. “You do not even know me.”
“No, but I would like to. You have hope,” she said, smiling softly, “and that is something I have not recognized in a vampire in a long time. Let me nurture that for you.”
She got to her feet, holding her hand out. “Will you join my coven, Warren?”