10. - – Paul
CHAPTER TEN
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PAUL
Dying is the scariest thing ever. You know how people talk of a white light, warmth, and all that angelic shit?
Well, it’s all a lie. What happens for real?
Nothing. Everything ends, except your consciousness.
You can’t see anything in the pitch black, and you can’t hear anything either.
But you can think and feel. You can sense the utter aloneness in the vast nothingness that is death.
Almost no one ever gets to come back from that, and I feel for their souls, I really do. I, on the other hand, am only in the void for moments before the feeling of the bullet in my chest returns, and the sounds of the people around me flood back into my ears, deafening me.
What’s the worst, though, is the pain. The absolute physical pain of my body dying and coming back as something else.
It’s like hot pokers being shoved under my skin, and a knife twisting in my guts.
It’s an agony that I never could have imagined, and I’m coming through it like a lost soul traveling through a fog or misery.
I come back to the living, well, kind of, screaming like a banshee from the utter torment that the transition puts my body through.
Flailing and ripping at my flesh, I open my eyes and am blinded by the light.
It hurts almost as badly as the imaginary, searing, white hot blades slicing through my body.
I’m making sounds like I’ve never heard before, growling and barking, and then everything just stops.
The pain disappears like the fog has lifted, and the brightness dulls. My hearing changes and everything sounds muffled, everything except for one slow and soft heartbeat from across the hall.
“Misha.”
Her name is the first words from my lips as I sit up amongst the large, congealing pool of blood.
I’m drawn to her, to the sound of her heart, to the warmth of her body, like a moth to a flame.
Then it hits me. Like a punch to the gut, a hard jab of pain that twists through me and makes me salivate. I’m hungry. No, not hungry, starving.
I want to take her, to devour her, to eat her up. I want to become one with her, and to dine on the cancer that riddles her small body.
“I’m hungry.” I say to Marcus, who stands over me, his large, tattooed arms crossed over his broad chest.
“I know. That’s normal.” He answers me, looking back and forth between me and Misha’s slumbering form that’s still cradled in Derrick’s embrace. “Normally I would have gone and gotten you a meal, but I’m going to keep our deal.”
“I’m going to take her?” I ask him, the drool dripping from the corner of my mouth as I feel a sharp point poke my bottom lip.
“You will. She’ll be your first, and we’ll help you bring her over. Before she wakes.”
Looking around me at the four men I’ve come to know over the years standing over me, watching me become one of them, I finally understand everything about them and their ways.
All the things I thought were odd about them and the way they handle themselves all make perfect sense now.
I can feel it in my bones, the hunger and the desire to destroy flesh, and as much as it turns me on, the idea of doing it to Misha has a sour taste in my mouth.
“It’s okay. It won’t hurt her to take her.” Lucian says, answering all the silent worries in my mind. “Only coming back does. And we’ll do that for you.”
I can’t answer with words. There are no words to speak that could complement the gravity of the situation we’re in now. So I nod my head yes and slowly crawl out from the crimson puddle on my hands and knees.
She smells better than I remember, like vanilla and musk, all clean and warm, and with my new senses it’s stronger and makes my head swoon. I can’t get enough of it as I slide up next to her and Derrick, and sniff her hair and face, like a dog sniffing an offered meal.
“Do I just bite her?” I ask Derrick, as he passes her unconscious body to me gently. “Where?”
“Anywhere you want that’ll allow her to bleed out quickly and painlessly. The neck, the wrist, the chest, or the inner thigh.”
“Where does it hurt the least?”
“The neck.” All four of them answer me in unison.
“Okay.” I say to them, keeping my gaze on her, watching for any signs of her rousing from her fainting spell, making sure she feels no panic. “Here it goes.”
It’s a massive battle inside of me. The new monster that I am wants to rip into her, to tear her to pieces, and to fill its gullet with every ounce of her.
But the man I was, or maybe still am somewhere inside, wants her to cross over peacefully while feeding the hunger that’s stabbing me in the stomach.
“Just let your fangs come down and bite her.” Lucian says, stooping down next to me to place a gentle hand on her shoulder, pulling it down so her neck is exposed more.
“Try to go in straight, like you’re piquing her, not tearing at her.” Marcus adds as he too comes over and kneels next to us on the cold floor, putting his hand over one of hers, holding onto it.
“And suck hard. Take her as fast as you can.” Derrick says, stroking his knuckle down her bare arm. “You want her dead before she wakes.”
“Dead before she wakes.” I repeat his words. “Seems so…strange to say.”
“Get used to strange.” Cary says, slumping onto his ass on the other side of Derrick while sticking his finger in the almost sealed bullet hole in his belly. “Everything is going to be strange from here on out.”
If anyone is to die, or to be resurrected, a setting like this is perfect. I have the guidance to take her in the most gentlest of ways, and she has the support of her entire adoptive family surrounding her, so that even though she's unconscious, she’ll not be doing this alone.
The hunger is becoming too much for me to bear, so I finally give in to it.
Opening my mouth, I feel my teeth elongate, stretching my gums, making them bleed a little bit.
It’s strange, just like Cary said it would be, but it feels good too, and it feels even better when my new fangs sink deeply into Misha’s soft neck.
I can feel the skin pop as I pierce each layer, then my mouth is instantly full of her blood.
It’s hot and metallic, and it goes down my throat like the smoothest ale.
I suck hard, like Derrick said, swallowing over and over again, trying not to spill a single drop of her, draining her quickly, killing her and feeding myself.
I should feel guilt or remorse for what I’m doing, but I know it’s for the best. She needs this. Her cancer is too advanced for her to survive long, and this way she, no, we can live forever, never being sick or injured again.
She doesn’t even wake up. As I suck harder and harder, filling my belly with her, she quietly fades away. Her heart slows, then it takes its final beat, pushing out a whispering breath from her deflating lungs. She simply ceases to be in the most beautiful and peaceful of ways.
“I’ll do it.” Derrick says to me, touching my shoulder, letting me know to stop. “Let me bring her back for you.”
The quiet one of the group, the lover, the sweetest one of them all is the perfect person to bring her back to me, and I thank him with a silent nod, handing her lifeless body back to him, where he pulls her onto his lap once more, and opens her mouth.
The blood pours from his wrist in a steady stream when he rips the skin open with his teeth, and he directs it over her face, letting it run into her mouth, over her tongue, and down her throat.
It’s messy, and a sight I never could have imagined seeing, but it’s glorious and calm as well. That is until the first wave of her resurrection begins.
Just as I came screaming back to life, she does the same, only hers seems more violent, more painful, and harder for me to bear.
I would do it a thousand times over for her if it meant she wouldn’t have to, but I can’t.
All I can do is help Derrick hold her, keep her as still as possible, and offer her a warm smile when the thrashing stops and her pale blue eyes turn to the same amber color everyone else has.
“Paul?” She finally says, her lips trembling under the drying coat of blood.
“Yes, kitten. It’s me.” I say to her, gingerly touching her face, wiping her bottom lip clean with the pad of my thumb.
“You’re alive?”
“Not really. Kinda. But, no.” I say to her on a quiet laugh. “And neither are you.”