Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Elise: Part Two

This was a mistake.

Ludovic shouldn't have tried to turn her.

He didn't know what he was doing.

Forty-eight hours had passed since he'd drunk down his wife's blood and fed her his own. When Ludovic himself had been turned, he'd awoken almost immediately, but Elise had spent all that time in a state of half-wild semi-consciousness, moaning and thrashing in their bed. Even when she lost consciousness entirely, she clawed frantically at the air, and when he tried to restrain her, to stop her hurting herself, her nails raked bloody furrows into his arms.

Was this normal?

Had he done it wrong?

Ludovic tried to feed her, bringing small animals into their bedroom and cutting their necks, holding them over her open mouth, and that seemed to quiet her for a while, but it never lasted. Always the wildness took over.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, pulling her head into his lap and stroking her hair. "I should never have done this to you."

Elise moaned and twisted, the whites of her eyes showing beneath her fluttering lids.

Ludovic had never felt so helpless.

He'd never been so bleakly aware of how little he actually knew about vampires. There was no one to ask, no one to help.

All he could do was continue to feed Elise, and talk to her and soothe her, and hope with everything he had that she would get better.

He had no idea what to do if she didn't.

Another twenty-four hours passed, and Elise seemed to get worse. She scratched Ludovic's arms to ribbons, but that was nothing compared to what he felt he deserved for doing this to her. He loved her so much, and she was suffering because of him, because of what he'd talked her into. Could he really pretend he'd done it for anything other than selfish reasons? Any reason other than that he was scared to be alone again, scared to lose the only good thing in his life? Now that good thing was paying the price for his cowardice.

"I love you," he whispered, hugging her to him.

A hand trailed along his jaw and his eyes flew open.

Elise was looking up at him, and though her eyes were vampire-red, the madness had faded. The desperate, barely conscious vampire was gone, and he held his wife in his arms again.

"Elise?" he whispered, touching her face with a trembling hand.

She offered a weak smile.

Ludovic helped her sit up, and leaned her against his chest, handling her as carefully as if she was made of glass. "How are you feeling?"

She took the time to consider the question. "Strong," she said. "I feel strong."

"Really?" He tilted her head back so he could get a good look at her.

Her skin was paler than he'd ever seen it, making her freckles look like specks of gold, and her eyes gleamed red.

"How long have I been in bed like this?" she asked.

"Three days."

Her eyes widened. She looked down at her hands, splattered red, drying blood under her nails. "Whose blood is this?"

"It's mine."

She jerked away from him, for the first time seeing the clawed scratches on his arms. "I did that?"