Bite Shift

72

When he was full, Will released Monica and let her fall to the ground. Three heaps were scattered throughout the rotting wooden building. Three people who had made the mistake of caring for me and now lay on the ground, awaiting their death. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to get air into my lungs. The smell of blood swirled through the air around the only two people left.

I stood, as gracefully as I could manage, and faced my killer.

"Just finish this."

I was, fucking, done. My daughters would never be safe with me. My friends would be dead by morning. I should have died last week and I knew it. I had cheated death and death had come for me. It was time to face my fate.

He arched an eyebrow. "You are so eager to be mine?"

"I want this over with, you sick bastard. I won't fight. I won't give you the satisfaction."

His expression changed, revealing his rage. "I will make you fight me, Kate. I will not have this ruined."

I slowly began to close the distance between us, never breaking our eye contact. Grabbing the bottom of my scrub top, I lifted it over my head and tossed it to the side. He shook his head.

"No," he said like he was chastising a child for coloring outside of the lines. "This is not right."

I continued my unhurried and deliberate walk towards him, pausing to kick off each shoe, and returned to task of reaching him. He looked stricken, confused. "Stop this."

"Why?" I asked. "Isn't this what you want?" I added a sway to my hips and shook out my hair to make it fan around me. He stumbled backwards, knocking into the hay and falling to his butt.

I saw him, sitting in front of me. The air around him swirled and the barn faded. A stone wall filled the space behind him, candles were spaced out along the rock and their flames danced, giving off the only light in the room. His hair was shorter, combed back, and his uniform jacket lay on the bed next to him. His journal was face down in his lap. A woman's voice begged, behind me, while echoing in my head at the same time. She spoke in a rich French accent. "Vilhelm, I beg you, let me go and I will give you what you want. You will be as you are forever."

I/she reached to him. It was her hand, smaller than mine, but our thoughts. We thought, if we showed him kindness, gave him the gift of our blood, he would set us free. We thought we could be back in our cave by sunrise and then, tomorrow night, would leave Germany to return to our village and look for our maker.

I knew he would not. She believed he would.

He let us touch his face, the roughness of it. He had not shaved in several days but the hair was so light it could not be seen as easily as it was felt. He turned his face into our hand and let us hold his weight. We could see that he was growing fond of us but knew it was not safe to stay another night. Inside of him was evil, we could smell it. We knew that making this evil man a vampire would be wrong but there was no other way out.

"Serine," he whispered.

We sank fangs into that throbbing pulse in his neck, drinking and drinking until his heart slowed and was silent. Tearing into our wrist, we opened our vein and we laid it on his slack mouth. For a moment, he was still. Then, his lips parted and he drank. As he regained his strength, his smell changed. We had been wrong. Anything good that was in him, was lost, and only wickedness remained.

We've made a mistake. He is a monster.

He stood, reaching behind him and a flash of silver caught the flame of the candle in its gleam. As quickly as he had retrieved the knife, it sliced across our neck.