Reckless

Chapter 1

Character POV: Ariadne

3 MONTHS EARLIER

It's been nice having a guilt-free human meal, someone that didn't make me feel like I had to think. I'd equate it to how college kids feel going home on break and eating their favorite meal again at their old safe space dinner table. I lay the girl on the ground gingerly, like she's sleeping, before moving off down the alley way. I miss how I used to have fun with this, but now it's getting harder and harder to tune out the voices of the prey I come across. It's getting harder and harder to relish in the destruction and to put her out of my mind. Everything remind me of her anymore, from the broken desperates that I find in alleyways to the celebrities doing documentaries on their inner demons.

Stopping in the opened doorway to my small apartment in the midst of a sprawling city, the thought slams into me without any way for me to dodge it. She is out there somewhere, still in the thrall of that bitch. I wonder how she's doing, if she ever came to terms with the demons in her own mind instead of seeking to save everyone else around her. I wonder if she's still pretending that we didn't happen, that she's just like everyone else.

I glance to my left, where a portrait from the 1600's hangs. It's an original, and I will never sell it off to an art gallery. She has accompanied me throughout these centuries, through literal wars and a thousand moves. I walk up to the portrait, tracking the splashes of green, the forest sprawling behind the focal point- her. Sitting there, a small shy smile on her face despite the slashing scar over her eye, the way her red dress pools around her legs, hiding the marred flesh beneath. Her blue eyes bore into me even though her real eyes haven't settled on me since a week after this was painted. Her blonde hair hangs wavy around her shoulders, so at odds with the pinned-up and stuffy looking wigs most women favored back then. I'm personally grateful for the change, even if it makes it harder to sink my teeth in. It's better to look at.

Hesitantly, as if I'm afraid I'll spook the painted woman, I lay my hand over her heart and just stare for a moment. I've respected her wishes for thousands of years. Salem has gone from being a place of terror for her kind to being a tourist attraction. Countries and nations have fallen. Humans call themselves witches without fear of recompense. Humans pretend to be vampires and hide in clubs. But the world still hasn't changed enough for the truth, not for her. Roxanne. That's the name she's going with these days. I never saw the sense in changing my name. I'm Ariadne, Queen of the Vampires. And she is one of them, those immortal witches. And I think it's time that I make my presence known once again. This denial has gone on long enough.