We Were Eternal Once

3. A Flight, A Night

A Flight, A Night

We leave the temple.

I don’t know where we’re going, I don’t know anything outside of the temple. My head swims, my body one giant ache. You warned me the change wasn’t pretty or easy or quick. How long has it been?

I’m grounded by your hand in mine, by the gentle but incessant tug that keeps me towing after you. I smile at your back, remembering the euphoria, remembering the high. Will it always be like this?

You glance over your shoulder. I spoke aloud.

“No,” you say quietly.

I frown. “It won’t? If you were to bite me now, I wouldn’t feel as I did last night?”

“That,” you say. “That is forever.” You stop and turn me to you, your hand raised to push my hair from my face. You hesitate. Your gaze rubs my skin raw, I feel blisters where you look. Have you ever looked at me like this before?

“I promised you forever together,” you say. One of your many lies.

(“I don’t recall leaving you.”)

“Do you think forever is but a day? A week?” you continue. “Forever is a very long time, Melinoe. You will come to understand this, and only then will you understand the depths of my affection for you.”

I smile again, stupid child that I am.

“Now come, you must rest,” you say. “The sun rises.”

The sun. Once the creature I tracked my days by, the thing I woke and slept by. No longer a companion, but a nemesis. I will never see the sun again, never feel its warmth.

But I don’t mind, because you offered something more than the sun.

Didn’t you? You must have. Why else did I leave my life and follow you so resolutely?

Again I wish to reach into my mind and find those memories from before, but I cannot.

So I will trust my former self, my new vampire self, filled to burst with potential.

You pull me off the path and into the valley below the temple. I’d only seen it from afar, never been allowed to journey. We move through the olive trees, outrunning the rise of the sun. There is a shack ahead. I wait outside, staring up into the trees.

My senses sharpen, honing in on every heartbeat around me. All I smell is blood, as though I am covered in it. But no, it’s the creatures around me. The fawn, the wolf, the horse, the donkey. I am smelling their blood, hearing their heartbeat as they rouse for the morning.

One heartbeat stops abruptly—a predator catching prey. I smile, because I am now predator. It is dark with no moon, yet I see everything. I see the trees as though they are illuminated, I see every bramble and branch that would try to trip me.

I look down at my hands—dark, dirty, blood under my broken nails. I turn my hands over, marveling over the mud crusted there. It flakes as I flex my hands, falling to the ground like dried blood.

Your hand is on my face, tilting it to look at you. “Come, you must rest.”

You lead me into the shack. Together we move the meager furniture, pushing it against the door so we won’t be disturbed. The ground is dirt, soft and mossy. We dig. The grave is shallow, but I am not large. I am a mouse of the temple, meant to fit into small places. I am underfed and neglected.

Was. I was underfed and neglected.

Now I will want for nothing.

You help me into my grave. I am lethargic, my body swaying, the need to sleep overwhelming. No longer am I sharp and aware, but a hollowed-out thing. Your grip doesn’t falter as you lay me down and cover me with dirt.

Your face is the last thing I see before I sleep. Your voice the last thing I hear before I take the final step toward my death, the irreversible last act. If I do this, I am bound to you, always and forever. I will feed on blood, I will never see the sun, I will abandon my life from before.

I will no longer be…what was my name? What was my name before you stole it?

My memories swim—the altar, your hand between my legs, the blood coating my feet. No, not my feet—my foot, from the rock. The screaming—no, the singing. It was just you and I, just me singing.

(“What did I say to you? What were the last words you heard as a mortal?”)

No. This is a trick. You’re trying to talk me out of this, trying to save your life. What is next, hmm? You’ll tell me that I kill us both if I drive this stake into your heart?

I am no longer that stupid, stupid girl. She died in Rome, in Alexandria, in Paris. She’s died a thousand times over and every time come back stronger.

(“For me, then. What did I say?”)

For you. As if I owe you the courtesy.

“Rest now, I will stand guard,” you say, layering the dirt over my body as my heart slows to a stop in my chest, as my lungs stop breathing air, as I die. “No one will harm you as long as I’m here.”

I thought you meant forever, but you only meant while I slept.

Another lie, but a beautiful one to hear on your deathbed, nonetheless.