Bloodlust

chapter twenty-five

I get to the apartment and I feel the stakes, tucked in my waistband under my shirt. My fingers are itching to grab the stakes and lunge. I open the door and James is standing there smirking in front of me. I’m so fucking close. The anxiety is pulsating inside me but on the outside I’m calm and still.

“Well,” James says as I walk forward. He shuts the door behind me and starts circling around me. I stand perfectly still. James is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, both black. That’ll make staking him easier; I won’t have layers of clothing to rip through. “Did you have fun on the remainder of your little trip? Don’t think I don’t know about the guy you killed.” I’m a little more nervous now because if James knows that, then he could know about my plan to kill him.

“Good for you,” I say calmly, not letting him get on my nerves at all. This isn’t the kind of stuff James thrives on; this isn’t one of the raging arguments we always get in.

“You know,” James says as he comes to face me again. “I thought it would take a long time.” He goes behind me again and I have to force my hand still to keep it from twitching near the stakes. I’m almost there but not yet. “But you’ve become so much like me in so little time. I think it’s quite flattering.”

It comes as a shock to me. Not because the information is false, but because it’s so true, and I was too stupid to realize that I’d become so much like him. I want to accuse him of lying. I want to tell him it’s not true. But that would all be a lie.

“You’re right,” I say calmly. “I am like you. Even down to the ruthlessness.” I take the stake out from my waistband and turn around, stabbing at James. He slaps my hand away but I still hit his arm, creating a large gash. James looks at his arm for a few moments, stunned. He wasn’t expecting the move and he wasn’t expecting the stake to hurt him.

“Not so tough now are you?” I ask. James looks at me with the same shock on his face like he didn’t expect me to even hurt him, like he trusted me. It stuns me when he grabs the other stake from my waistband though.

“Sometimes being prepared can kill you,” he says as he grazes my arm with the stake he took. The pain comes as a shock to me, a sharp burn. This is the first time I’ve really felt pain since I was human. I can see why James would be surprised. Not feeling pain until now. Why won’t he just stake me in the heart? I lunge at him again and hit him in the stomach. The blood is darker than normal blood and it looks slightly thicker.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to do this,” I tell him as I stab at him and he grabs me, tossing me towards the living room. I land on the living room table and it breaks, the wood splintering and buckling under the force of my landing. I growl and stand up, shaking off the wood. It’s strange how the wood from the stake hurts me but the wood from the table doesn’t. My guess is that it has to do with the preparations that James was talking about. I silently thank Alex. I throw myself at James and he and I both go flying into the TV, causing it to break and scatter all the movies James had there. He stabs me in the leg and I yell out in pain.

“Die you bastard!” I yell through the pain, and I aim for his chest again. He twists around so I hit him in the shoulder.

“I don’t plan on dying tonight,” he hisses as he pushes me off him.

“Then why won’t you kill me?” I ask him. “If you won’t let me kill you, then you kill me.”

“No,” he says as he runs at me and drags the stake down my leg. The pain tears through me and I stab his back, missing his chest by a mile again. James stabs me and hits my chest, touching my heart enough to let me know that I’m going to die again.