| |
––––––––
ICY SILENCE HUNG THE air, freezing time for a fraction of a moment as what had just happened crystallized in Greyson’s brain. Blood pooled around her. A crimson halo in the snow-covered pavement encircling her body. She looked like a morbid, porcelain doll. Beautiful and broken.
Alex Lockhart was dead.
A gust of wind picked up, carrying on it flurries of snow that had just begun to fall, enclosing the alleyway in winter’s peaceful embrace. An ironic scene, at odds with the gruesome sight of death. The death of an innocent girl.
A death caused by the men in front of him.
Greyson’s nostrils flared. Heat snapped down his spine and turned his blood to molten lava. A tightness centered in his chest, and the dread and hatred he’d harbored in his soulless being awoke from their slumber. Fury shook his body. The lust for blood—for vengeance—overtook him. Kill. The word vibrated and echoed through every cavernous hollow that existed within him, pounding in time with his fevered pulse.
Snapping his head up and away from Alex’s fallen form, his gaze trained on the man closest to him, the one who wore a blue shirt, and in an instant, he was upon him.
Descending with unearthly speed and precision, Greyson tackled the man to the ground, pinning him before he had a chance to even react. Palming the man’s face, he slammed his head to the pavement with such force the asphalt cracked. The man’s skull split with a sickening thwack. Eyes and mouth wide but unable to scream, the man stared up at Greyson in shock. Greyson gripped the sides of his face and twisted his head to the right hard, snapping his neck instantly. He allowed the man’s open skull to flop back to ground in a gory puddle then sprang to his feet and lunged at Darryl.
Gun trembling violently between clutched hands, Darryl warned, “S-stay back!”
“Or what?” Greyson growled. “You’ll shoot?” He laughed mirthlessly. “Go ahead. Shoot. Shoot me.”
“I will and you’ll die like that bitch!” Darryl shouted.
Bitch. He’d called Alex a bitch.
Rage gathered deep inside of Greyson, a rage so pure and volatile it scorched a fiery path from his core and seared his veins. His entire body began to tremble and his vision wavered. But Greyson didn’t break stride. He closed the distance between him and Darryl in the time it took Darryl to squeeze the trigger of his gun. The blast rang out but the bullet didn’t hit Greyson. Instead it whizzed past him, boring into the man with the blue shirt’s corpse. Peppered with the bullet, the body jerked and Darryl swore just as his gun was ripped from his hands.
Greyson threw the weapon to the ground, kicking it out of reach then gripped the front of Darryl’s coat. He lifted Darryl off the ground with both hands balled in the fabric of his coat and slammed him to the ground. Cracks could be heard. Likely vertebrae or ribs. Darryl gasped, the air knocked from what he imagined was at least one punctured lung. But Greyson didn’t care. He was cradled in the arms of rage. He was vengeance personified. Kill was still the word resonating through every cell in his body. Kill. He wanted neither Darryl’s blood nor the blood of the man wearing the blue shirt. Theirs was tainted beyond want or need. Alex was dead. They had killed her. And while others he’d drained had committed far more crimes and of an arguably far more repugnant nature, Darryl and the man with the blue shirt’s transgression had affected his present and his future. They’d killed his one source of joy. His only source of peace. They’d killed Greyson’s hope.
Alex, an innocent...
In his periphery he saw her lying there, cold and lifeless as snow fell on her body.
“Look what you’ve done.” His voice was a low, lethal growl. Greyson pointed to her, so pale and lovely still with her hair fanned out around her, flowing down her shoulders. An earth-bound angel.
And they had killed her.
Feeling every ounce of self-control leave him, Greyson’s thoughts were suddenly dominated by savage emotions he couldn’t control. Emotions he didn’t want to control. Pouncing on Darryl like a deadly feline predator, Greyson straddled him. Wrath blistered and burned from him like a firestorm. And when the first of a tempest of punches landed, he unleashed a conflagration, a brushfire that incinerated everything in its path
Drilling Darryl’s face with tightly clenched fists, he felt the violence of each blow. Relished in the feel of his knuckles thrashing the murderer’s skull. Bones yielded. His temples caved. Blood and snot burbled from his destroyed nose, bubbling in a wheeze of wet mash. Before long, Darryl was unrecognizable.
But Greyson didn’t relent.
He was the black shadow of destiny. Vengeance embodied. A harbinger of doom. And he was about to take away Darryl’s last breath.
He delivered a series of blows. The last one ended Darryl’s life. Greyson heard his heart still. Funny, he thought the moment would have felt more satisfying. It had been minimally so in the past. He’d taken lives to right wrongs, feeding, as well so that two needs had been met. This had been different. This felt different. Claiming their lives, though exactly what he’d wanted to do and exactly what had needed to happen, didn’t return Alex to him. It didn’t bring her back.
With trembling limbs, Greyson climbed off of Darryl. The realization struck him. He staggered toward her.
Gazing down upon her, a struggle had begun. A war was being waged. An inexplicable ache smarted in his chest. He’d never see her again. The waitress who had never been fazed by him had talked to him about everything and nothing at all. But somehow, some way, all of that nothing became something. Something he looked forward to. Something he relied on. Something he needed. And now she was gone.
He felt like he was standing at the center of a snow globe that had just been shaken. But instead of a magical landscape encased in glass, the scene before him was macabre. A nightmare set against a dreamlike snowfall. All around him, fat flakes swirled and eddied about, a dizzying arrangement that mirrored how he felt.
Gripping the sides of his head, he squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Come on Greyson. Think.”
Greyson had the power to save her. He could change her. But could he condemn her to a life like his own? Could he damn her to a centuries-long sentence? Could he make her a monster?
And all to suit his need.
Was he that selfish?
He’d promised himself long ago that he’d never do to another what had been done to him. But somehow this was different. Alex was different.
Still, the many questions firing in his head balled to form a large burr that rolled about in his brain. What would he do? He certainly couldn’t leave her there. Like trash on the street and beside the lowest forms of life on Earth.
No. No he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave her here and he couldn’t accept her death.
In a rush of impulse, he dashed to her side, knelt and swept her hair off her neck. He felt himself transform, felt his canines lengthen. Sinking his teeth into the tender flesh of her throat, he found that her blood was still warm. The blood of the dead was akin to spoiled meat, tainted and inedible. But not Alex’s. Her blood was still ripe and fragrant. The sweet scent of it beckoned him, taunted him as it fell upon his tongue. Fighting back the primal urge—the urge of a monster—to feed and drain her, he breathed, and allowed the venom to flow from him to her. Infecting her with the curse of his kind.
When he’d flooded her with his poison, he began chest compressions. Her heart had only been still for a matter of minutes, though the passage of time had felt eternal. Regardless, his venom would hit her with the force of a defibrillator. In less than a minute, he could hear the pulsation of her heart return. Faint at first, it grew stronger with every beat. He stopped chest compressions, scooping up her keys that had fallen from her hand before scooping her up into his arms. Carrying her, he opened the back door of her car and placed her in the back seat. He then started the engine, blasting the heat and shutting the door so that she stayed warm as the venom pumped through her veins, changing her irrevocably.
Closing the door, his mind raced. He’d turned her. When she regained consciousness, she’d be like him. She’d be a vampire. Two bodies and lots of blood remained in the alleyway. He’d never left such a mess before. And while he doubted anyone would miss the two thugs and gathered they each had a rap sheet, he didn’t want to risk it.
Moving as fast as his body allowed him, he removed the bodies, slinging them over each of his shoulders and racing them out of sight to a nearby waste disposal plant. Running so fast he’d be a blur on any security cameras, he entered a restricted area. It smelled of fetid food, melting rubber and plastic, and another sour substance he couldn’t identify. Here, workers were required to wear protective gear. But Greyson wasn’t there to work. Instead, he pitched each body over a high railing that prevented him from falling into the enormous vat before him where waste was being chemically broken down. Both bodies landed soundlessly into the noxious mix. Greyson took off, returning to Alex’s car. He gathered her purse and found her driver’s license inside. From there, he was able to learn her address. He drove her car with her unconscious in the backseat to her driveway.
Alex’s house was dark. Not a single light was left on for a girl returning home from work in the earliest and darkest hours of the day. It saddened Greyson. Realizing he couldn’t simply leave her in the car in the freezing cold—that would spark suspicion and possibly accusations of drug use—he was forced to chance more than he’d ever risked in his sixty years as a vampire. With a sigh, he turned off the car and climbed out. He opened the rear door and cradled Alex in his arms then ran her to the front door. He tried the first key he found and lucked out. It opened the front door. Creeping inside quickly and silently, he sped to her room unseen.
Placing Alex in her bed, Greyson took a long look at her. Some would argue he’d saved her life, but he knew better. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he knew she’d died twice in one night. Once by the hand—or bullet, rather—of a lowlife thug, and the second was at his bite. Though her heart beat and she breathed, and she’d live for centuries, never aging and never suffering the illnesses that plagued humans, she’d been condemned to a horrific existence. A fate handed to her by him.
Greyson was certain there wasn’t a deity that existed that watched over vampires. After all, a creature with an insatiable bloodlust could’ve only be spawned in hell. Still, he clasped his hands in prayer and begged the God he served and bowed before many moons ago and said, “Please, forgive me.” Then, as he turned and left her room, he whispered, “God be with her.”