River of Red

XXXI

Domitius swam ahead of me, his black hair swishing in the crystal clear water. It was still dark out, since we had left the shore not twenty minutes minutes ago. My guess is that we had covered a mile on that amount of time.
Thankfully, when I got in the water I grew a tail once more, which was great because then I wouldn't be half nude in from of Domitius. I was very freaked out about the fact that I was a mermaid. I always thought it would be amazing to be one, and it really was, but it wasn't really my cup of tea at the moment. For one, I hated the pain switching caused. It didn't hurt nearly as bad the second time, but it still felt like someone had drug a hot knife down my legs.
The darkness swallowed the water, but my new eyes cut through the black water, and made it an almost blue shade to see. Kelp fronds swayed in the current, and little fishes darted in and out of the green stalks. The ocean floor was otherwise unmarred, except for the occasional coral and plant life.
Domitius swam very quickly in front of me, which forced me to swim at my top speed. Since I was a new swimmer, and had a tail, it was considerably hard to go as fast as I could.
Domitius was once more cold and detached, which made me a little bit pissed off.
More like a lot.
His mood swings were going to be the death of me.
The slope of the ocean was steadily climbing up, I guessed we were slowly swimming to land. Emphasis on slowly. I wondered how much longer it would take to get their, how many more miles we would have to cover before we reached the shore.
I knew I was pushing myself too hard,
My side was hit with a stinging, burning pain, though not from injury, from a mundane thing such as my side stitch. I groaned out loud, and little bubbles struggled their way to the surface of the water.
How come I couldn't be killed by rogue vampires, but my sidestitch could still hurt if pushed too hard?
I clutched my side in pain, stopped, and waited for the pain to pass. My stopping made me start to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Domitius kept swimming on his merry way, seemingly unaware of my lack of following. He dipped into a  Kelp forest and disappeared from my view.
Through the pain, I tried to start to swim again, worried that he would actually leave me with my own defenses in the middle of the ocean with no idea where to go. I kicked off the ground rather hard, and a sudden, large plume of sand exploded up behind me, which engulfed me in a brown hazy cloud. Silt grated at my eyes, I tried to swim up and away from the dust, but something closed around my wrist, effectively stopping my climb upward.
I couldn't see what it was through the haze, though, the rough, tight grip felt like fingers.
I tried to yank my wrist away from the hand, but the grip was iron. I started to panic, as the dust cleared I could start to make out a pale, blue-tinted hand with long, cracked, brown nails and exposed veins.
I screamed.
The scream didn't travel very far underwater, and unluckily, used the last of the air in my lungs, which meant I couldn't do any more screaming underwater any time soon.
I kicked my tail at the thing, which stirred up more sand to cover the creature in thick, dark blankets. It tugged me steadily down to the deeper and to the bottom. I tried to focus, but I felt too out of control at the moment.
I heard a sudden muffled bang, and the hand released my wrist. I swam as fast as I could toward the surface, away from the hand and whatever was attached to it. I almost jumped out of my skin when another hand wrapped around the base of my tail, but when I looked down it was only Domitius.
I started to sink down to be level with him, to show him my relief, but he gestured for me to continue swimming up. I tried to calm my racing heart on the way up to the surface, but I couldn't. The thought of what the thing could have done to me made me want to curl in a ball and eat pancakes. When I surfaced, I took in a breath, just in case I had to do any more underwater screaming any time soon.
When Domitius surfaced beside me, I gasped.
There were five claw marks raked down the side of his face, dripping with blood. I lifted my hand to graze his injured cheek, wondering what had made it, even though I already knew.
Only one thing had claws, and they had just been attached to my wrist.
His black gaze burned into mine, and I found myself studying them in the starlight. For the first time I noticed tiny gray and blue streaks that the moon seemed to make  stand out against his black irises. I finally noticed that I was staring into his eyes like a dumb fool, so I moved my gaze to his sliced cheek. The cuts were healing slowly, blood still trickled, but was stopping by the second. I watched in wonder as the smallest slice closed completely, leaving no scar or sign that it had ever been there.
The rest of the cuts soon followed suit. I traced my hand over his now healed cheek, and wiped some of the dark blood off. We both steadily tread the water, me kicking my tail unsteadily, and Domitius somehow staying perfectly still.
There was a moment of awkward silence where neither of us made a motion to talk.
I opened my mouth to ask if he was okay, but I couldn't. "What was that?" I asked, my voice almost shook with unknown fear. He betrayed no emotion, and brushed off my question with ease.
He closed his hand over mine, and brought my hand in front of his face. For a moment I thought he would kiss it, but instead he licked my wrist. I tried to pull away, a little grossed out, but he held my hand tightly.
"It hurt you." He whispered, his voice dangerous and low.
I looked at my wrist and realized it was slightly red, bruises already formed, with three cuts on the inside of my wrist. While I watched, the cut he had licked healed completely, while the others were only healed very slowly.
"It doesn't hurt," I replied honestly.
He didn't respond to what I said, instead, he continued to gaze at my harmed wrist. He brought his fingers to his mouth, and licked them. He then brought his fingers to trail over my two cuts. I watched him the whole time, his face closed off and blank. I could feel my skin regenerating, the wounds closing off forever.
"How do you do that?" I asked.
He closed his eyes momentarily, when they opened they met mine.
"Vampire saliva has healing abilities, almost better than blood." He said easily, as if he had explained it a million times, which he probably had. I hated how he could be so calm and collected in bad situations. I hated how perfect he was and how un-perfect I was.
I nodded, finally understood why he licked me those times. It was very weird, though. I didn't like people's tongues on me, it was gross, which I hope every body else thinks.
He wrapped his hand around my own hand instead of my wrist, and started to tug me back underwater.
"Let's continue, Dove."
And so we did.
________________________

Unspoken questions remained unanswered in my mind.
What had drug me down?
Where were me and Domitius headed?
Domitius had left me a while ago. He said he had some business to take care of, and from every single movie I had ever seen that means he went to go kill someone. The rock under my toosh was hard, and it had started to chafe my bare bottom. I was at the bottom of a cliff, he said he'd come back with cloths, but so far the only thing I had gotten was a pair of Under Armor boxers thrown down from above.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who they were from.
What Domitius didn't know it that I would rather willingly eat my own foot rather than put on his used boxers.
So nasty! I thought.
They smelt clean, but I only sniffed them from a distance. I hadn't mustered up enough courage to actually touch them, but I did waft them.
Wafting wasn't effective, that much was for sure.
The ocean brought scents of salt and fish: the forest above scents of trees and dirt. The land was untamed, no building in sight, no boats. Only the land and nature were available in this section of the world. It was still dark, but the moon finally seemed close to going down.
I rubbed my sore behind. Domitius had an hour or so ago. I had started to get very impatient, the wait rubbed my frayed nerves.
"You were supposed to put them on!" A deep voice shouted from above. I jumped, startled, and cupped my hands over my parts.
I looked up at Domitius, who stood on top of the twenty foot cliff.
"I would rather die, you turd!" I screamed back at him.
He smiled, even though I couldn't heard it over the wind, I knew he had laughed. He jumped off the cliff and one second later he stood beside me on my rock.
He still had a smile on.
"As much as I love you outfit right now, Dove, I think you'd better find something to wear for now." He told me. I gave him a look like, really? Wow I didn't think of that!
I frowned, "Go put your undies back on, just give me your shirt."
He smirked, "Are you telling me to get shirtless, Dove?"
I tried my best attempt at a scowl, and threw one his direction.
He laughed once more, and unbuttoned his shirt. He was left with only a pair of low, black jeans. I tried not to look, I really did, but he was just too hot. His abs were chiseled to perfection, much like the rest of him. He was seamlessly carved out of stone, from his face to his feet. His body left nothing to the imagination, because once imagination sees him she dies of his attractiveness.
I finally raked my eyes away, only to see his face now confused, like he was holding something back. He threw his shot to me, and hit me in the face. I scraped it off, but not before I caught a big whiff of his earthy, unnatural smell.
He picked the boxers off the rock, turned, and fled up the hill.
I figured that was a sign for me to dress.
I tried the sleeves around my waist. The shirt was so big it wrapped around my waist like a skirt, and for that I was glad.
When Domitius came back down I was fully equipped with a shirt skirt and a bikini top.
With our cavalry full, we began our journey to town once more.