Torn Asunder

Chapter 4 Dante

Keeping track of time when you are no longer boundy by mortality is... frustrating. I learned the hard way that the first thing to go with vampires, was their need for haste. What's the rush? You're going to live forever anyways. I wanted to take off like a bat out of hell, and slammed the hotel room phone down so hard, I didn't just crack the plastic, but also the marble table top it was resting on. I need to remember that I am no longer bound by mortal constraints.

Valentine wasn't home. Mom and dad had done exactly what I feared, and drove her away with their incessant nagging and harping. My twin was.... deceptively vulnerable. She has this outer shell of snark, attitude, bravado and awkward arrogance. Like a baby tiger that thinks its so badass but it's just a cute and fluffy kitty still. If she cares about someone, then that person's opinion means EVERYTHING to her. She will bend over backwards to try and make you happy, because Valentine is just that kind of girl. And for the longest while that meant she lived to prop me up, make me seem to be some kind of golden boy while everyone over looked the real hero in their midst.

Because it was Valentine who had actually been the one pushing everyone. I can remember my parents redecorating the guest room. Dad had been having an on again- off again affair with the flu, mom and tools together is just asking for a trip to the hospital and I was.... off doing something or someone. Valentine just stayed up all night and got the room done. And when mom and dad asked about it, she didn't even bat an eyelash when she said that the two of us had done it overnight. So they would never know I had snuck out. And how she is with her friends... everyone I know who knows Valentine all say the same thing. When you're around her, you just feel happier. She exudes this air of relaxed content that's contagious. Though when she gets a bee in her bonnet, as our grandmother used to say, she's hell on wheels until it's completed.

Something my parents said or did drove her back to her friends at school. The Sentinels, a biker gang, seem more accepting of her than our own parents. God I just hope they keep her there. With all hte crap she's been picking up from me, she has to be frantic.

A strange tumbling sensation rippled in my gut. No other vampire needed to breathe, save me, and hte air wooshed out of my lungs as I was hit with a wave of vertigo that collapsed me over my knees. Inside my head I was rocketing over the continent, zooming towards a beacon. My mind's eye opened when it found my twin, and for the first time in days I felt the pain inside ease. I hadn't even noticed it was there until it wasn't anymore, and I could relax a little.

But Valentine wasn't safely away. She was here in Europe. Oh god and whatever it was she had done to pull me here was summoning other things towards her. I could feel them, like off key echoes chiming out across the distances between.

'RUN!' I tried to warn my twin. 'They're coming for you RUN!' There was no acknowledgement from her though. She couldn't even tell I was here with her. And then I could feel, something locking around her, forcing me away.

My eyes opened back in my own body and I felt the blood racing through my veins, the Hunger simmering just under the surface. My twin was in danger and it was my fault. A shuddering started to rack my body, the Hunger pushing past my control, filling me with the need to lash out, protect what was mine.

I could see the last rays of sunset staining around the edges of our heavy curtains. Wherever we travelled, Isa always had these blackout curtains she could pin over the windows, just to ensure our security during the deadly daylight hours. I was still sitting on the chair next to the cracked table and phone, and Isa was stirring from her sleep. Now that my body was only half dead, I didn't get the corpse sleep that the others were forced to endure during the sun. I... just slept, as if I were still a normal person. I dreamt, I sweated, I got normal hunger pangs and I survive by drinking blood. An abomination for both species....