The Sound of Their Presence

Chapter Nineteen: Glory and Gore

Shane's POV

    I could almost swear I was the one screaming when they slit her throat. I know that hot tears rapidly stream down my face, as they- my mother- begins to drain Cheyenne's blood into one of the jewel encrusted goblets. She swirls it around in the goblet with one of the unicorn horns.

    Matilda appears from behind a log. She is shackled and looks like she has just awoken, but she screams as she watches her beautiful daighter's body drained of blood by cold, cruel people. The people that I am flesh and blood with.

    Cheyenne's mother rolls on the ground until Damian walks over and knocks her over the head with one of the many goblets. I can't beleive the woman is still alive, but Matilda seems to be a true fighter. 

    "Bring Shane here!" my own mother shouts, almost gleefully.

    "C'mon," my father braces me against him, his arms beneath my arm pits, keeping me from falling to the ground. "You heard the boss," he continues with grit in his voice.

    I am held before Lilith, and she lifts the blade that gleams in the moonlight. I see the red shine, from where she cut Cheyenne. I suddenly hold back the urge to vomit.

    "I am doing this for you," LIlith claims, holding one of my wrists below the deadly blade.

    "How? You kill her, and now you will kill me? Is this how we treat our children, now?" I nod at Cheyenne, before spitting in Lilith's face. Her expression grows weary, strained and pained.

    Lilith apparently still wished to lie to me. She looks me in the eyes, a single tear falling from one of her own. "I am doing this for you," she sighs. "Why can't you see that?"

    I feel the cold metal from beneath the warm blood that coats the blade. Cheyenne's blood. What I wish was Lilith's blood, her injury! Her death.

    Instead, the cruel, life taking metal is raked across my wrist, again and again. Again and again, until I can't help but cry out in agony. Agony is replaced with anguish, when Lilith holds my head to her chest as she drains blood from my wrist into the goblet that is already filled with Cheyenne's. Half of the portion taken from Cheyenne is poured into a second goblet, before Lilith continues to drain me into that one, too.

    Damian steps forward, under the pale moonlight, a single unnicorn horn in hand. He hands it to Lilith, who uses it to stir each goblet full of Cheyenne's and my own blood. After she does this, the horn is stabbed into Cheyenne's stiff stomache. Her still body suddenly moves. Cheyenne doubles over, wheezing. I see her neck wound begin to close. Her eyes grow larger, more frantic, when Lilith approaches her.

    Lilith wrenches my still bleeding arm from my side and reslices Cheyenne's neck, slightly less deep than before. My wrist is thrust against Cheyenn's throat, our blood mixing from where our injuries meet. For but a single moment, time slows down, I can feel pain again, and what I feel most is an overwhelming sense of the fact that Cheyenne's blood is on my hands, both in a litteral sense, and metaphorically. We look into each other's eyes, before hers flutter shut, and she is allowed to collapse to the ground. 

    I do not know if still breathes at this point, but her neck begins to slowly heal considering that she is part unicorn. I notice more about my surroundings and can actually taste the blood on the air. I look down at the blood filled goblets Lilith holds in her hands.

    "Drink up!" She smiles smugly.