The sun was beginning to set as we began our quest to find James. Though Roy and Arthur had ceased to be werewolves when they became vampires, they were still skilled at tracking. All evening they’d followed the scent of James, and his victims, across Savannah. Albert and I went with them as they were immersed in their tracking experience. It didn’t take long before we discovered his location. He was staying in an abandoned building downtown.
It was in absolute disrepair. The ceiling was falling in, and the walls were collapsing. The floor was a cracked mess of dirt and wood. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. Could he have found anywhere more stereotypical for a monster to hide? Short of Dracula’s castle, probably not.
We walked carefully as the boys followed James’s scent to the top floor, a trail of blood leading the way. He wasn’t even attempting to clean up his destruction. James must have gone completely off the deep end. He had always been so put-together and well-groomed. Now there was blood all over his nightmarish residence.
Albert’s hand was on my back as we climbed the stairs to the top level. We walked so lightly that even a vampire couldn’t hear our footsteps. Arthur gave a signal for us to move forward, and we continued our ascent.
When we finally reached the top floor, we were greeted by a heavy wooden door that was falling off the hinges. Years ago, it may have been sturdy. Now it looked like it would fall apart if we tried to open it.
“He’s in there,” Arthur whispered.
Roy nodded. “I can smell all the blood.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
They all looked at me. “You’re the boss,” Albert said.
I took a deep breath before motioning toward the door. Arthur took that as his cue to go. Moments later, the door collapsed onto the ground after Arthur and Roy kicked it with their vampire strength. I dashed into the room with Albert behind me, only to run straight into James.
I took a few seconds to breathe, taking in his filthy form. I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. Even after all the mental hoops I’d jumped through, I hadn’t been able to prepare myself for this. His once-blond hair was matted to his forehead with sweat and blood. James wore a plain T-shirt and jeans, but they were covered in the dried blood of his victims. His hands were stained with dirt, and his fingernails turned black.
“Anne?” James asked.
There was confusion in his eyes. He really didn’t know why I was there. Maybe he truly believed he hadn’t done anything wrong. But how was that possible? How could he have lost so much of himself? This wasn’t the James I’d fallen in love with. He had ceased to be the sweet human boy who brought me roses. Instead, he’d become a terror.
“How many people have you killed?” I screamed, with tears dripping down my face.
But before he had a chance to respond, a gasp went up around the room. We all turned to look at another vampire we hadn’t accounted for. In fact, we hadn’t known she existed. Not as an immortal, anyway. This was a girl I’d known. I’d talked with her, shopped with her, and laughed with her. She was Roy and Arthur’s sister, Darcey.
James must have changed her. That was the only answer to the question as to how she’d become a vampire. When we’d left Savannah, she’d been a werewolf like her brothers. It was incredible that James had managed to pick her for his vampire sidekick. This made the situation so much more complicated. She, like James, was covered in blood. Her hair was filthy and matted to her torn dress. She looked like she’d crawled out of a grave.
“Darcey…,” Arthur whispered.
Roy stood silently as he watched his sister with horror. How could we react to this? Now there were two people in this room we loved but had to kill. They both looked like monsters. But even so, did I have the heart to do it? And even if I could kill James, what would we do about Darcey? We had no idea how she’d gotten wrapped up in all of this.
Roy flew across the room to James and pinned him against the wall. “What did you do to my sister?”
“She wanted it,” James hissed. “After she saw how amazing it was, she begged for it.”
“You better do it fast, Anne, or I’m going to,” Roy growled.
“Do what?” James asked.
Albert sneered. “Drive a stake through your pathetic heart.”
Darcey screamed. “No!”
Arthur grabbed her from behind and held her against him. Darcey struggled against his grip but wasn’t strong enough to push her brother away. He held her with a fierceness that she wouldn’t be able to escape from.
James looked at me pleadingly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in love with me? I thought that was what this was all about. Didn’t you turn me so we could be together forever? What happened to that love, Anne?”
He was trying to manipulate me. None of this was what he honestly felt. At this point, his emotions were buried too deeply to make a reappearance any time soon. This was a survival mechanism. All he was doing was trying to make me freeze. He wanted a chance to escape. Perhaps he knew that Albert wouldn’t do something against my will.
I shook my head. “I don’t love you anymore.”
James was still trapped in Roy’s hold. “So you’ll kill me because you lost feelings? Or are you jealous of Darcey? Is that it?”
It was a low blow. He was lashing out in anger. It was fear that was controlling him. It was all too clear. He underestimated me. James took me for a helpless girl, but I wasn’t. After years and years of immortal life, I was a woman capable of doing the unimaginable. I could kill, but only in situations like this. I had to end his life to prevent the deaths of innocents. He was a homicidal serial killer. This couldn’t go on. If we let him keep killing people, it would be our fault. At this point, killing him was the only choice I could make that would free him from his own murderous mind.
I wanted to scream. Teardrops were still dripping down my cheeks. “No, James! It’s because you’re killing people. You’re throwing human life away like it’s trash.”
He laughed. “It is, Anne! That’s what they’re here for. We need to feed. It’s who we are.”
I hardly wanted to believe this was real. He was truly becoming the nightmare I’d wanted to avoid. Maybe it was better not to focus on the negative aspects. It was hard to deal with the memory, though. Continual reminders of the former James were all over my skin, like a layer of ice I couldn’t shake.
Mascara was running down my face, along with my eyeliner. “You’re a monster.”
James smirked. “Said Bram Stoker to Dracula.”
“Enough!” Roy screamed.
His face had gone totally red. The anger in his eyes was continuing to build. Albert stood beside him with the same amount of contempt in his eyes. Arthur was still holding Darcey, who was sobbing in his arms.
I walked up to James with my stake in hand. When he saw it, he seemed to finally process what was going to happen. I’d only ever killed one other vampire before: the man who’d turned me. It had been out of pure fury and rage. I’d felt no remorse for ending his life. But this, I wouldn’t be able to forget it for the rest of my immortal life.
“Remember, I’ll do it if you don’t want to,” Albert whispered in my ear.
I took his hand in my own. “It’s okay. I should be the one to end it.”
“Please don’t hurt him,” Darcey cried. “I love him!”
I raised my eyebrows. “You barely know who he is.”
James rolled his eyes. “The girl falls fast.”
“Say one more word, and I will end you,” Roy growled.
The only thing that had stayed consistent about James was his emerald eyes. When he had been human, they had held so much love. Now they were covered in darkness, but still so beautiful. Part of me wanted to try to pull him back. And maybe if I had been a stronger person, I would have tried. But I wanted to put James out of his misery.
I felt the wooden stake in my hand. It was heavy and cold, dark and ominous. I felt like I was in a horrible movie. It was literally the opposite of Romeo and Juliet. This had to be a dream because it couldn’t be real. There was no way my love life was this catastrophic.
“You’ll really do it, huh?” James whispered.
“I can’t let you keep hurting people,” I replied.
“That’s all right,” he sneered. “I’d rather die feeling alive than be the weak, sickening version of an immortal you are.”
With one final look into his eyes, I drove the stake into his heart. I didn’t know what to expect. Since I’d only ever seen one vampire die, and in a far less delicate way, I had no idea how it worked. Honestly, it was quick and simple.
His eyes fogged over before his lips turned white, and his body became inhumanly still. Soon after, his skin became grey and started falling to the ground in flakes. I watched as the man I’d once loved melted into ash. He was falling into nothing. In the distance, I could hear Darcey screaming. It sounded like she was a million miles away. I was too focused on watching James blow into the wind.
My knees hit the ground as I landed beside his melting body. At this point, my hair had fallen around my face in a jumbled mess of chaos. My face was stained with makeup and dripping with tears. I looked like an absolute disaster, but it didn’t matter. All I could feel was a stabbing pain in my chest. I felt as if I was choking on air. The very floor beneath me seemed to shake. My vision was going blurry as the wave of emotions rushed through me. Albert was beside me with his hands on my back, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. The world had gone dark.
In a moment of distraction, Darcey escaped from Arthur’s hold and dashed toward me. She tackled me to the ground and began snarling at me. She seemed like a rabid animal. In her current state, she was far more animal-like than the werewolf she’d once been. This was the crazy type of vampire ancient people had been scared of. Humans in centuries past had been terrified of vampires like this. Darcey was a creature far different than us. She wasn’t civilized.
When I looked into her eyes, I saw horrific pain. She hated herself. There was a part of her that was still the Darcey she’d once been. Even so, we couldn’t save her. She had to choose that for herself. And at the moment, the only thing she was trying to do was kill me.
“You killed him!” Darcey screamed.
Not more than a moment after she’d pounced on me, Albert pulled her back and threw her against the ground in a blind rage. Roy and Arthur grabbed her arms and held her down. She was snarling and screaming beneath them.
This wasn’t what I’d wanted. I’d never planned on anyone else getting hurt. But Darcey, in her blood-stained dress and makeup-smeared face, was in pain. Whether or not she’d actually wanted to become a vampire, it had clearly been a mistake. She was filled with pent up rage, and none of us knew how to help her.
Arthur and Roy shared a brief glance that seemed to speak volumes. Before Albert or I had the chance to say anything, they pulled a piece of wood from the fractured floor and shoved it through her chest. Like James, she fell into a pile of grey flakes that turned into nothing. In mere minutes, we’d ended two lives: my ex-boyfriend’s and their sister’s. There weren’t even bodies to bury. It was just ash, pieces of dust that melted into the shadows.
The room was completely silent. Not one of us moved. There was a bit of blood streaked across my cheek, but it wasn’t mine. It belonged to one of James’s victims. We were all stained with blood from the clothes of the two vampires we’d just killed. It was as if we’d escaped from a battle. Though I looked like I’d just won a war, I certainly didn’t feel like it. Everything inside me was falling apart.
“We should get you home,” Albert whispered.
Arthur and Roy were in too much of a daze to do anything but follow as Albert lifted me from the floor. He held me tightly against him as we left the desolate building to flee from the scene. I never wanted to return to this place. In fact, I wanted to leave Savannah. I didn’t want to be in Georgia anymore, not after this.
The moon was bright in the sky when we arrived back at Albert’s apartment. None of us had said a single word on the drive back. Arthur and Roy hadn’t even fully processed the events. I could tell by the glossy looks in their eyes that nothing seemed real anymore.
Nina and Anya greeted us as we walked into the living room. They didn’t say anything as Albert took my hand and led me toward our bedroom. After Albert closed the door behind us, he picked me up and placed me on the bed. The grey covers were soft and cool beneath my fingers. I felt as if I were sinking into an ocean made of cotton.
Albert stroked my cheek. “I’ll start a bath.”
And with that, he left me alone to ponder the death of my ex-lover. The room was dimly lit. As I lay thinking of the life I’d just taken, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was the monster.