Bloodbank

Nineteen

The streets of the city were yellow.

Bathed in sunlight and caked in sand, the buildings were dry and the cobblestone floors appeared to crack under my stumbling feet.

My tangled hair felt hot beneath the sun, and I could already feel my nose beginning to burn in the dry heat. Despite the water I had swallowed down, my lips were as dry as the sand, and nausea threatened to collapse me at any moment.

I looked towards each house for signs of human life, just as Scott had said. But those living here didn't seem to want to alert to their neighbours that they had blood to give, and so curtains remained drawn, identical front gardens appeared brown and withered, and any fortifications on doors was hidden to my hungry eyes.

One street took what seemed like eons to cross, my worn shoes dragging in the sand, producing elongated, unnatural footprints. It was as I turned the first corner that I realised this was the first time since the Bloodbank that I had been alone. And that it was the hundredth time since the Bloodbank that I had felt I would die.

I could've done it; curled into a ball in the middle of the street and allowed death to take me. It was tempting. My feet ached dully, each step sent my vistas teetering, my best friend was dead. And there was still a good chance Mason would reclaim me and take me back to the Bloodbank. Somehow, death seemed like a better option than that.

But the other option was tempting, so tempting. A life with Scott, with the impossibly perfect man who had chosen me, not my blood or my value. We could use the diluted blood to gain power and influence, go to a place where Mason and the Lord could never find us, and live out our days in bliss, in a shaded forest, far away from the cursed wasteland, and never have to see an inch of sunlight again.

That dream had a white tinge to it, though. An impossibility that warped it and muddled it like gazing into a pool that was disturbed by a splash.

Still, I clutched onto it, white tinges turning to red as I remembered Nathan. With power and influence, I could avenge Nathan. Melt Mason like a candle as he did my friend, rip him limb from limb as he watched.

My footsteps fumbled, and I stopped, sure that if I continued my face would meet the dust.

The idea of me exacting revenge on Mason in exactly the same fashion that he killed Nathan should have shocked me. A few weeks ago I would've repulsed the idea, but now it intrigued me. Mason had taken one too many things from me, and it was time for him to pay. 

A small, so small I could have imagined it, breeze graced the street, throwing sand across the cobbles. I closed my eyes, relishing it for as long as possible. My eyes set on a door, identically beige and cracked like all the others. I had given up, and now my fate hinged on a single choice, a coinflip. If a vampire lived there, I would accept death as an old friend. If a human lived there, I would gain an ally, save Scott, and begin my path to killing Mason. In my eyes on that desperate afternoon, it was a win-win situation.

I knocked, carefully, quietly, with a small hope that if it was as vampire residence, it wouldn't wake them. I waited, agony crawling from the soles of my feet up my legs. Swallowing bile, I raised my hand to knock again, but hesitated. Vampires had enhanced hearing anyway. And I couldn't risk a human resident not hearing. Again, I put my life in the hands of fate, resigning that death by the hands of a random vampire was infinitely more merciful than whatever the Lord had planned.

My loose fist hit the door three more times, loudly, boldly.

A moments wait, and the door opened.

~ AUTHORS NOTE ~

sorry this chapter is so short, but this cliffhanger ending was too juicy to pass up. Expect an update soon, im getting my shit together. and so is ebony by the looks of things

love moist xoxox