Grey II - Ghosts

Chapter 3 - Buried

Cut off my wings and come lock me up.
Just pull the plug, I've had enough.
Tear me to pieces, sell me for parts.
You're all vampires so here, you can have my heart.

Bring Me the Horizon - Doomed

I awoke from a nightmare, my hands shaking, but it hadn't been a nightmare, it had been real, I could feel it. It was just an image of Jordan, her big gray eyes hollow, her face an empty mask, and then there was Jev with a sinister smile and sharp teeth tinged in red.

I knew what had happened, what she had done. How could I have been so stupid to not see it coming? She was alone, she was vulnerable, she was lost without the Clan, without her Pair. She still knew next to nothing of this life. I had kept her hidden, protected in the manor, thinking I'd have time to teach her everything, time to show her the world she had been born to but lived outside of for so many years, but now she was alone.

Of course she would make a move for power, for protection, for the anesthetic venom that Jevin's bite would give her. Even I had considered the option, to make the pain go away, the guilt, the despair that my own brother, my own family, had disowned me after everything we had been through together. But I knew they would, I would do the same, at least that's what I told myself. I had done worse to lesser bloodlines than myself. I just couldn't believe it was over, all the years of hiding myself, of being the best leader I could be, of fighting my nature with everything I had in me, all my work gone in one night, in one horrifying, wretched night. I always had hated Juda.

I swore at the sky as I stood, gingerly stretching. My wounds from him would take time, especially without anyone to heal me, but I had done my best on my own and it didn't seem he had used any poisons. I'd barely made it out of the cemetery to the surrounding woods before I collapsed in a dry spot under a large pine. I was unconscious within moments. I had used too much of my energy, too much of my power to even consider travelling any farther in my current condition and I had no will to anyway. I just wanted relief, a sanctuary from my own mind, I needed it. But even in sleep I wasn't safe and now I had forced my Pair to become a monster she didn't even understand.

I doubted Jev had fully disclosed the pitfalls of his species, but I didn't let my nightmare haunt me. I had already left my emotions, discarded them like the crippling weights they were. I buried them so deeply, so completely, until I couldn't feel them at all, not even the sadness. I let one emotion remain though, one to guide my actions, to be the beacon I'd follow. Rage. The only thing I felt was a white hot anger, a burning inside my gut, a drive to make the one responsible pay, the need to kill the one who had ruined my life, ruined me, over and over and over again. The Collector, my father.

It would have been frightening if I had kept the ability to fear how quickly my emotions fell from me, sinking into the void where my soul should have been. I hadn't done that, felt that, since I was a child living under my father's rules. Since I had no need for emotions, since I had only looked at them as burdens. But that's what they were again, smoke and dust that clouded my judgment, that didn't allow me to think, to act. I needed to bury them if I was going to get revenge. And now with Jordan throwing her life away because of the tragedy our Clan had become, now I just had one more reason to want to see my father dead, to hunt him down just like I had done to so much evil like him. He was the cause of this, he was the reason my life had never been worth living, and as soon as I killed him, I would follow him. As soon as I sent him to Hell I would join him, destroying all he had worked for, all he had created. Creatures like me weren't meant to live.

A cold smile touched my lips and I realized my Shift had covered me. I remembered the feeling of no longer trying to control it, no longer limiting it, holding it in. I used to always have my Shift pulled around me. I'd rarely gone without it, even when I didn't need it. Jev had taught me to bury it, he had trained me to only use it when I needed to, but I didn't care anymore if it corrupted me. With my emotions gone, my humanity gone, it seemed only fitting that my Shift should replace them.