Kiss My Sassy Vamp

Page 104

Rue

The spiderweb of cracked mud made me stumble. I dusted myself off and continued to trudge towards the forest of decay. My gasping further hinder my stride, I looked like an asthmatic pufferfish. With each step away from everything and everyone I knew, my shoulders shook more furiously. Sorrowful sobs that I couldn't control. I was choking on my grief. Swallowed up by a feeling that I would never be good enough. The spiteful clan was dwindling down to nothing. Even the strongest was dying off. Soon they would be left with the weakest.

Me.

I was the one that everyone could do without. Yet I was still there. Still in the way after all this time.

Mentally and physically exhausted, I threw my leg over a rotten tree and sat down on the hard mud. As I leant back onto the tree, a branch dug into my back. I leant forward and slammed my back against the branch, over and over again until the pain faded away.

'I just want to be normal, please. Make me normal,' I cried out.

The birds continued to chirp. Happiness lay beyond my reach. A breeze lapped at my face. All it did was push my tears into my skin where they burrowed back down into my damaged core. There was life beyond where I sat but I couldn't move from my spot. Wedged between a rotten stump and the dry ground.

My fingertips brushed over the dried mud. Like my clan it had clumped together yet I had fallen through the cracks. I tore into it and threw it away. It smashed into the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces. The hollow space just reinforced my own obscureness. When the clan was gone it left a gap but I was the empty space hovering above it.

I placed my foot into the hole. The twisted position made my groan in agony. My foot was too small. No matter what I did I always ended up at the bottom.

'Spiteful,' a voice behind me made me jump. 'The alliance is signed. Don't get up, stay in the ground where you belong.'

A sob rocked my body. I covered my face, embarrassed by my own humanity.

'Not that I care but why do you cry?' The voice was callous but oddly familiar.

'I'm Rue Ky—'

'Did I ask for your name?' Its rude interruptions brought back my feelings of rejection and loneliness. Rage bubbled to the surface and extinguished every other emotion in its path.

I snapped back, 'Do I need your permission to give it?'

'Stupid spiteful. Tell me that's not why you cry. So your name means tears of regret, who cares? Mine means descendant of the dark, but you don't see me crying about it.'

'I'm no good at this, but what else can I do?' I rose to my feet, eyes levelled at my prey. There was a pit in my stomach that nothing would be able to quench.

'That doesn't surprise me, you don't look like you can do anything. Let alone have emotional control.' The vampire's illusion distorted. Suddenly I could see the creature's face, it was deformed by the hatred that lay there. Every wrinkle etched with putrid emotions that no man would admit to owning.

'Without this I don't know what to be. I can't handle that, not when I have nothing and I don't know who I am.' I could feel my blood boiling, I took a deep breath, but my anger was still burning a hole in me.

If you choose not to fight: belly crawl to page 105...

'Loser,' I snorted.

A foul feeling that consumed my stomach and throat. Without thinking, I sunk my teeth into the vampire's flesh and injected my poison. The sickening sting of anger was replaced with a tingling chill that made my body shiver.

There was a rustling in the bushes... continue on page 106...