Chapter 14 - Marella #3
There was something different about Garrett’s blood, something that ignited a fire within my own.
I’d felt the life-giving quality of blood plenty of times before.
But this was like caffeine. It was like a drug.
With each deep pull, I felt myself growing stronger and more energized, and felt my eyes widening.
The colors in the apartment seemed to vibrate, and dancing lights filled the corners of my vision.
I’d never experienced anything like this before. I never wanted it to stop.
Beneath me, I barely registered that Garrett was no longer standing on his own. I was supporting him with my arms, and he’d grown extremely pale.
"Marella," his voice was so quiet, barely a whisper against my hair. It held no intonation, but it felt like a plea.
Still, I didn’t let him drop.
Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I felt a surge of fear. I wanted to let him go. I needed him to live.
But what is living if I don’t feel like this?
He knew the risk. He knew what could happen and let me drink anyway. If I kept drinking, if I took all he had to offer, perhaps I wouldn’t need him after all. His blood made me believe I could fight the Stone Witch myself. I could force her to let my family go, bargain be damned.
His pulse began to grow fainter.
The decision had been made for me. I felt more of his weight lean into me, felt him slumping and slipping as I continued to lap up as much of him as I could get.
"Marella," he whispered again, this time a prayer. "Marella."
Finally, his breathing grew quiet. I could no longer feel the fluttering of his heart beneath my lips. And suddenly, the absence of him flipped a switch within me.
I gasped, retracting my teeth and pulling away. As I did so, he toppled wholly into me, and the sudden force of his weight nearly knocked me over, despite my newfound strength.
"Garrett," I said, lowering him to the ground softly, so he wouldn’t hit his head. "Garrett!"
His face was pale and gray, his eyelids open only slightly. I watched his pupils dart back and forth, as if searching for some final thread with which to grasp his hold on life.
What had I done?
I felt tears beginning to pour from my eyes as I continued to shout his name, pleading with whatever power could hear me to spare his life.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Frantically, I looked around the room for anything that could help him. The wound on his neck had already knitted back together, but the skin there was still bruised.
There was nothing in this apartment that could heal an exsanguination.
Slowly, I lowered myself onto the floor next to him, letting my tears fall in heaving sobs.
I’d killed a lot of people in my centuries as a monster.
But none of them had been like him. This man, this sweet, selfless man who’d dedicated his life to protecting strangers in a foreign country and who hadn’t hesitated to offer himself up as a sacrifice…
I’d killed someone truly wonderful. And with his death, I’d sealed my fate. Although I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted to break the curse. As it stood, I didn’t think I wanted to live with this guilt for longer than absolutely necessary.
I lay down on the tile floor beside him, watching his chest rise and fall in shallow, shaking breaths. I’d seen enough death to know it wouldn’t be long now.
His lips, once so pink and full, were pale and listless, moving ever so slightly, as if he were whispering silent pleas to the empty air.
I wrapped an arm around his torso and let my head rest on his chest, closing my eyes and listening to his heartbeat as it slowed.
If only there were a way to put blood back into a body.
My eyes flew open.
I didn’t know if it would work, but before I had time to second-guess myself, I lifted my wrist to my mouth and ripped open the vein there with my teeth. Blood poured from me like a fountain.
If I could be sated by drinking blood, maybe he could be saved in the same way.
With a desperate prayer to a god I no longer believed in, I held my dripping arm over him. I used my free hand to pull his lips open fully, so that my blood filled his mouth. It pooled there slowly until it began to pour out the sides, and I realized that I didn’t know how to make him swallow.
But some of the blood must have found its way down his throat anyway, because he suddenly sat bolt upright, coughing desperately and spraying blood across the room, including onto the shirt he’d so carefully removed.
I jumped backwards, crawling away from him.
When the coughing finally subsided, he turned to look at me, eyes wild, face covered in blood. He gasped, inhaling air like a man who’d nearly drowned.
And then, he fell backwards once more, landing hard on the tile.
After a few painfully silent seconds, I crawled over to him tentatively, the cut in my own wrist nearly completely sealed, so I left only a small trail of blood.
He was breathing again, this time the slow and even breaths of sleep instead of the agonizing breaths that precede death.
He was alive.
With a sigh of relief, I let myself lie down beside him once more, this time curling into a ball a few feet away. I didn’t feel like I was worthy of touching him, but I still reached out one hand and let it rest on his chest, worried that if I couldn’t feel his breathing, it would stop entirely.
And that’s how I fell asleep, covered in blood, and knowing I’d saved a life.