Bloody roses

5: Freedom

I have quite some chapters saved on my Google doc. The thing is, I'm not sure I you guys are still interested in the story. I had some self-doubt issues, I thought this story was so bad that I should delete it completely. Now, I've decided to publish the finished chapters, and maybe I'll write new ones.

It continued that way. Lacrimă and her bat friend travelled at night. She fed on some humans in the village. After the incident with the guards, she had avoided bigger cities, and she slept in nature. Of course some villages sent people after her, only then she killed them too. The problem was that people throughout the area heard about the travelling serial killer, and it was getting harder to find food. She had learned to hide her bite marks and arrange her victims as if they were sleeping while intruding in some poor souls' house. Sometimes, she did not manage to be stealthy because there were multiple people nearby, and her immense bloodlust got the better of her. She was glad though, as she had reached France. Now, she just had to find Paris and her grandfather.

But with every minute she spent in the absolute freedom she was in, the more unwilling she got to meet this person and get locked up again. On the other hand, she was afraid to disobey her father’s order, despite him being dead. So, she had trained escape methods and gotten a lot stronger. Additionally, she had trained her pet to bring her items like keys, for the case he shackled her. Even with all this protection, she was still afraid.
At the same time, she knew there was no way she could continue this lifestyle, as fun as it was. Humans were starting to catch on to her route. Just following the hairpin had become too risky. She knew that she was incapable of dying, but she was terrified of getting locked up in one of these ‘prisons’ and her father had always told her humans were not supposed to know about vampires. As soon as she arrived in France, she changed her strategy completely. Instead of avoiding the big towns, she now headed straight for them and buried her prey’s bodies somewhere. In these towns, there were always a lot of people, especially poor ones, disappearing.
She made it a game to lure nobles out of the safety of their homes to feed on them. Lacrimă knew that it would be easier to head for the poor, but she did not want to have families starve. If she took a poor human, their family would starve in a lot of cases, and though she liked killing, she was merciful enough to kill fast. The vampiress knew what this pain felt like, and it was nothing she wished or inflicted upon anyone. The humans seemed to believe that the notorious killer had stopped her rampage. Nobles were quick to put the blame for disappearances on their enemies, not a travelling woman.
Lacrimă had obtained some new clothes from a carriage that had crashed into a tree not far from a city, and her little bat friend had completely healed.
He loved flying in front of her, even though he had no clue where to go. Sometimes, he would take the wrong corner, and Lacrimă had to call him back. He also liked hanging on her arm while she was walking.