As Long As I Have You

~Prologue~

She couldn't stop screaming. The piercing echo of it hung in the air and rang in her ears the way it always did, as if the sound had just passed her lips and made her deaf to all else.

She raised her hands to her waxen face, knowing, yet still fearing what she would find. As before, her hands were covered in blood. The liquid was dark and sticky, and traced a slow line down her arms to her elbows. It was cold and pungent and seemed to take on a life of its own, hanging there in defiance of gravity, refusing to fall. Refusing to let go of her.

She tried to flex her fingers and a current of terror raced across her forearms. Her skin jumped to life and cried out for air beneath the crimson flow of death.

The world spun around in confusion and then quickly readjusted itself the way dreams always do, and she was kneeling on the ground now.

The man laid helplessly in front of her, but all she could do was stare. Her hands were still drenched in blood but now they were on the man's chest. Her delicate fingers slid across his blood-soaked clothes searching for the injury, but every time she moved her hands in one direction, thick liquid surged from another unseen wound.

She needed to save him, even if she didn't want to. Her eyes flew to his in desperation, and still the words wouldn't come. Her terror seemed to ignite his own and she could only watch as he gasped and struggled to fill his lungs with air. Her hands moved frantically back and forth across his chest even as she prayed for death to snuff out his life.

And then they came. They always came. Too late to save him, but just in time to judge her for her crime. First it was tens of people. Then hundreds. Soon thousands and more until there were too many to count.

She never looked at them. She had eyes for the dying man and no other. When he opened his eyes and found her she knew the effort would be his last. It always was. And still she could clearly see the dimming orbs fighting to hold on to the words he wanted to say.

The words did not come. They never did.

Only horror found her, and it swept through her until all that was left were screams and the darkness...