Obliterate

sixteen

WARMTH ENVELOPED SOPHIE'S body, in all the best ways possible. Awareness seeped through her veins, washing away the haziness of sleep that lingered. On her side, she laid with her cheek against Eli's bare chest. One of her legs was thrown around his. His skin was hot against hers. It was nice. It was sweet. It was happiness.

Her fingers twitched against Eli's chest. As she lifted her head a bit and her eyes adjusted to the darkened room, she stared at her hand. Confusion trickled through her system, followed swiftly by the hair prickling tingle of alarm.

A rusty color stained her fingertips.

She blinked several times and sat upward even more. Her gaze followed a trail of dried blood up her arm and across her chest. A startled gasp escaped her lips and she surged backwards, fumbling over the edge of the bed. She hit the ground with a loud thump. Her heart stopped entirely in her chest. "Not again," she whimpered.

Eli shifted around on the bed. Sleepily, he sat upward. A hand lifted to scratch at the back of his head. "Sophie?"

All the air in her lungs solidified as Eli's gaze dropped down toward her. Said organs squeezed her heart into a tiny, shriveled raisin as she watched him blink. Once. Twice.

Concern immediately flooded his features, followed swiftly by confusion and a brief flicker of disgust. "What the fuck?"

Tears began to fall down her cheeks.

He launched from the bed, immediately in front of her. His hands grasped her face. A thousand questions poured from his lips. "Sophie, what's wrong? What's going on? Where did this blood come from?"

"I don't know." Each word came out around blubbered sobs, nothing more than a shattered whisper. "I don't know. I don't know what it's from. I don't know what is going on."

Eli's concern seemed to increase tenfold. He fluttered around her, trying to figure out what was wrong with her. There wasn't an obvious spot where the blood seemed to originate from on her body, though it did seem to accumulate the most around her throat. It confused him. There didn't seem to be much around her actual face or mouth, where the blood would have been had she been feeding. Yet he still decided that the blood wasn't her own. It was also obviously not Eli's blood, as his body was blood-free.

"Sophie, when did you leave the bed? I don't even remember you getting up."

"I have no idea," she told him. "I don't remember anything. I don't know what happened."

His lips pursed and he hesitated. The doubt was evident in his expression.

The hurt that rocketed through her made it hard to think, hard to breathe. She couldn't handle this. This. This was exactly what she'd been terrified of. There was no answer that she could give without some sort of seed of disbelief forming in his mind. She couldn't answer any of his questions, which allowed him to speculate, as he seemed to be doing now. She'd obviously left the bed without him realizing it. She'd obviously hurt someone, as she was now covered in someone else's blood. It didn't matter how hard she fought to convince him that she was as clueless as a walnut. He still doubted her.