Sin Eater [Ed Sheeran]

3. Bleed

A pale face looked in through what once was the passenger window, his copper-colored hair making a stark contrast with his white skin. I had to blink a few times in an attempt to clear my vision a little to check if he was real. He seemed to be since every time I reopened my eyes, he was in the same spot as before. Then it dawned on me, he was the one on the road.

I squirmed and struggled to get free, it hurt and I could feel a fresh rush of blood seep into my sweater with every move but whatever chance I could get to get away from this man, I was going to take and run with it. I started yelling when the man reached in and placed his hand on my shoulder, his eyes as blue as the Mediterranean Sea.

Calm down. You're not afraid, you're relieved and you won't remember the last thirty seconds. Now ask me for my help.

I looked at the man peeping into the window and silently thanked whatever god was out there. I turned my attention to the stranger, "Please, my friends and I need help, the girl behind me needs to get looked over-"

"She's gone." The man said monotonously as he focused on my face. His eyes were such a pale blue that they were near white. A chill suddenly settled around me and my breaths came out in puffs of white.

"No she's unconscious and there are two guys outside somewhere." He only shook his head but glanced behind me at Nadia.

"She's dead. She sustained a head injury to the temporal lobe. She's not coming back from that." This man was so calm that it was unsettling and what made it worse was he tapped his index finger against the side of his head as he spoke, "She was hit in the right spot, died instantaneously."

A wave of nausea rolled my stomach and ignoring it I asked, "Have you seen two men out there? One's hurt pretty bad and I don't know how the other is doing." I tried to lift my head to look at the stranger, but it felt like cement.

Instead of answering my question, the man reached in and ripped the seat belt from the side panel. My upper body jolted as the tether that was holding me in place gave way, sending me down to the roof of the car. Sometime during the descent, my foot got sandwiched between the door and the seat. I screamed in pain as I felt a pop between the ankle and foot.

For a split second, I was hovering just above the roof, suspended only by my foot. The man easily dislodged my foot, the car's metal frame protesting as he twisted it out of the way to make room for himself. I felt so faint that I couldn't bring myself to question the how of what he just did. I let him drag me out of the car, the inky night sky looking so serene compared to this entire situation.

The next few minutes were spent with the strange man looking me over. My leg had a cut running from knee to ankle, my head was bleeding steadily from being upside down and I couldn't move nor feel my left arm. My ankle was shot and I whimpered every time he touched it to check the severity.

"You lost a quarter of your blood supply." The man noted, his tone surprised as he examined the source of all the blood. "There's a lot of glass fragments in your skull, you're lucky none of it hit your temporal artery or you'd be dead as your friend."

I looked at him again and realized he was the one who stood in the middle of the road, causing the car to roll over and Nadia to die. As the man still prodded the tissue on my head, I gripped a small rock in my right palm and swung it as hard as I could at the man's head. There was a connection and I struggled to get away, my leg and ankle is a problem but my disorientation and lightheadedness were posing an even bigger issue.

Moving aimlessly I called out to Ben and Kev again, sometimes yelling for help or trying to take stoke of my surroundings. I couldn't have been more than a yard away from the car when I saw the man leaning casually against a birch tree that was about twenty feet away.

"You know," He said, running a hand through his hair, "When people try to kill me I generally make it a point to return the favor with an agonizingly, slow and painful death. But you're an innocent so I'll make an exception just this once."

I swayed heavily to the left and before I slumped to the ground, the man was right in front of me and caught my limp weight. The man tsked disapprovingly as he swept me up into his arms, he carried me back to the crash and laid me down on the dirt. He brushed my hair from my face and grasped my uninjured hand in his.

"I made a mistake. And I do not make mistakes on this night, but I have and I need to right my wrongs."

I think I asked what he was talking about but I wasn't so sure because I couldn't feel my lips.

"Don't worry Josie, your so-called friends were dealt with accordingly. Although, Nadia would've been fun to make suffer." The man shrugged dismissively and smiled, his incisors looking unusually long and pointed. Like dogs or cats.

"Ben's demise was sufficient enough for the both of them I suppose."

Gathering enough strength I forced out, "What'd you do to Ben?" My words came out slurred like I had been drinking excessively.

The man laughed humorlessly, his eyes becoming a radiant clear blue. "I just finished him off. He did get thrown through the windshield, after all, sustaining sizable injuries. Among them was full body paralysis." He must've seen the horror in my eyes before he continued, "He was in a lot of pain being fully conscious and all. I took some mercy on him. Some." He smiled again at the thought.

Even though I felt queasy my eyelids fluttered shut and the man-made another disapproving noise. Something wet touched my lips and I turned away from it.

"Drink Josie." He ordered and pressed the wet thing closer. "It'd be a shame if you were to die. I wouldn't have my perfect record and an innocent would've died."

I gagged trying to swallow the warm liquid lying down, but as soon as the man sat me up enough to drink, everything seemed to shift. Whatever he was giving me was sweet, like dessert wine and smelled like warm spices, making me consume it more heavily than before. My head no longer felt heavy and the dizziness all but faded away.

It felt like a lifetime when the wine like substance was pulled away. My eyes flew open to search for it, to bring it back but all I caught was the man doing something to his wrist. He was licking the inside of his arm with a clinical kind of demeanor.