Chapter 2 #3
My heart shattered into pieces. I now understood why Torin called himself a monster.
The woman’s neck dropped awkwardly to the side. Her body remained unmoving as her life force ultimately left her. Her skin turned abnormally pale.
My next breath stuck in my dry throat. The air weighed heavily with the scent of blood and death, a metallic tang that filled my nostrils and made my stomach roil.
My racing pulse rang in my ears. A chill ran down my spine as I witnessed Torin’s vampire eyes take on an unnatural sheen.
“Torin, stop. Just please stop,” I shouted and frantically waved my hands in front of the beast.
But he was a newly turned vampire with no control over his thirst. A low growl rumbled from his chest.
I knew Torin couldn’t see or hear me, but something prompted him to pull his fangs out of the girl’s flesh. Perhaps it was the realization of what he’d done, what he’d turned into. As he pulled away, his face twisted with anguish.
Blood still seeped from the two holes in the girl’s delicate neck. Torin released her body slowly to the snow. The last remaining drops of her blood fell onto the white powder surrounding her unmoving body—a sight forever etched into my memory.
He didn’t lick the puncture wounds as he’d done mine when he drank from me in the secret dungeon. Because he likely knew the girl was gone.
He used his sleeve to wipe his mouth, and then he stared at the crimson stains on the white fabric, his eyes widening as if in disbelief at what he’d done.
I better understood Torin’s reluctance to drink from me—the act reminded him of this very nightmare.
Everything about Torin had changed as if the vampire Queen had turned a switch. His crimson eyes looked wild. His breathing sounded shaky, and as he watched the girl’s dead body, he stumbled back and kept wiping his lips with the backs of his hands. Red traces remained around his lips.
Then he stared at those same hands while his transformation into his new form began. His facial features turned sharper, and his hair changed to silver. The vampire Queen watched him with so much awe in her eyes that it made goose bumps prick on my arms.
“He’s my creation and all mine,” she said.
Her words were as toxic as her obsession for the man.
Although Dad had told me her dire story, now I felt no compassion for her.
Before she was the vampire Queen, the woman was called Victoria.
Centuries ago, the vampire King turned Victoria, but he soon replaced her with other women.
I wanted to feel sympathy for the woman who had to live an eternity with the betrayal of the man she loved, but I couldn’t make myself feel anything positive for her.
Hurt and unwilling to live eternity alone, was she trying to create the perfect mate for herself now?
With crimson eyes, Torin watched the girl’s dead body with so much regret. The fire in his eyes had dulled with pain. His jaw clenched tight, and his sharp cheeks appeared hollow. He now had to live with the consequences of his actions for eternity.
Waking from his trance, he lifted his gaze and charged at one of the vampire guards. Any remaining softness in his features abruptly morphed into a hardened facial expression. Anger flashed behind his crimson gaze as he faced the vampire guard.
It was the moment when Torin’s immortal fury toward vampires had begun.
His movements were much faster and lethal, just as in the present.
He grabbed the vampire man by the throat and snapped it, tossing the body to the side as if taking another life meant nothing to him.
Then he glared at the vampire Queen and sprinted into the forest. He knew he had no chance of defeating her now.
His vampire form had aided him in escaping today, but I knew the vicious woman would catch Torin again later.
I sucked in a sharp breath. The past could not be changed, but I could be more understandable to Torin in the present.
The urge to return to where he kneeled at the fence with the Hollywood sign overwhelmed me, and I thought about all the words I wanted to say to him.
That he didn’t have to mark me if it caused him so much emotional pain.
That he was the one I chose. That I would compromise on having kids if he didn’t want any.
My eyes watered as I thought about all the moments when I’d pushed him and challenged him to mark me. He hated biting another even though he was a vampire and only resorted to drinking the enemy’s blood. That was how Torin found peace with the monster within him.
The snow turned into the familiar white fog, signaling I was about to move on to another memory. As the images faded, I last heard the vampire Queen ordering her men to chase Torin and bring back her new pet alive.
That marked the start of her long-standing obsession with capturing Torin, an obsession that lasted for decades and persisted into the present.
The images sped up as a fast movie preview, the memories fading in and out of focus.
A glimpse of Torin running, looking over his shoulder, and hiding as vampire guards chased him flashed through the stream of colors, shapes, and figures.
The background around Torin constantly changed to forests, streets, and interiors of buildings and apartments.
As time passed, so did the images, as if the magic of the witch spell searched for the relevant moments to display.
Time only slowed enough to show Torin leaning against a wall in a dark alley.
He looked exhausted and disheveled, breathing with heavy gasps, with blood on his shirt.
He held his throat as if fighting his thirst for blood.
As the images sped up around me again, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. But the next thing that was shown to me was the very familiar bedchambers from Torin’s dream realm.
She had caught him.
I held my breath as the images ambled slower as if the magic knew I had to learn about something. But I didn’t want to see what came next. I should have closed my eyes but looked around the familiar room instead.
Torin was naked, chained, and covered in blood in front of me. It was the worst déjà vu I couldn’t avoid.
Appearing from the side, the vampire Queen sauntered toward Torin in her silky camisole covered by a thin red rope.
She held a silver sword in one hand, the other extended toward Torin as if impatient to touch him. She walked behind him and slid her free hand over his chest, smearing blood. The ecstatic expression on her face made me queasy. My stomach churned with each of her touches upon his skin.
She then paced around and stood in front of him. She sliced his shoulder and then his chest with the tip of her silver sword.
At first, the wounds seemed superficial. When she removed her sword, blood dripped to the ground, but it was mixed with a silver fluid that I guessed was a melted silver solution.
The vampire Queen had laced her sword in liquid silver to brand Torin as her own.
She didn’t mark Torin like the supernaturals usually did, with their fangs and mouths. But perhaps she had already marked Torin’s brother, who had disappeared, and the closest she could get to claim Torin as her own was to scar him forever.
No wonder Torin refused to leave his mark on me—the act reminding him of this cruel and disgusting woman.
But wouldn’t he ever be able to see a mating mark on me as different from the abuse the vampire Queen inflicted on him?
Something else must have also restrained him from marking me—I sensed it with my entire being.
Torin pressed his lips together to stifle the painful screams threatening to escape his mouth. He fought with everything in him not to give her the satisfaction of watching him break apart.
Because that was what she wanted—break Torin and make him beg for her mercy.
Bile rose to my throat, and I tasted acid on my tongue. A wave of dizziness washed over me. I couldn’t stand these images.
As if the magic knew that, it spun the images faster, and I held my breath for the next moments of Torin’s life.
A life full of torture and pain.