Library: The Shadows of Spring

Her strength was equal to mine, perhaps superior. With one motion, she had grabbed and hurled me across the length of the room. The solid wood wall cracked and splintered under my impact. I roll quickly to my feet and dart back towards her, I can't let her have a moment to remember her original prey. Why? Why am I protecting him? Anna glares at me with red feral eyes. I am not sure how it is that she can be stronger than me when she has only just become a vampire. Perhaps it is her madness. She charges me, teeth bared, nails extended. I move quickly to the side and let her pass, then rake my claws along the back of her head. My nails dig deep and I come away with pieces of hair, skin, and bone, but no blood. She hasn't fed. Anna turns with savage speed and again lunges at me. I dodge backwards but an overturned table catches my foot and she is upon me. Her rank breath is hot upon my face as she digs her claws into my upper arms and her mouth tries to find hold on my throat. A few feet away, still in shock, Stevan watches in horror. My eyes touch his briefly and for a moment, I think to control him and have him attack her. That thought passes quickly with the river of pain I feel as her teeth find my flesh and then touch into the bone of my shoulder. I put all my effort into one push and send her flying across the room into the door which crashes down upon her impact. Before she can react, I have covered the distance between us and am upon her. I get no pleasure from the thought of destroying her. It will be the second time I have done so. Anna is consistant. She fought hard for her life when I found her alone in that alley a month ago, and now, she fights with savage passion to prevent me from taking her recent un-life. I leap upon her but she has twisted in such a fashion that a piece of the door has shifted point u has shifted so that a shard of wood is now point up. I feel a pain so intense that I am paralyzed as the slice of wood slides into my chest . . . nearing my heart. The blow I strike Anna sends her reeling and she does not see my injury, she only knows she must escape. Anna staggers quickly from the house and into the darkness. I feel the wood within me . . . killing me. My eyes are wet with blood, my veins ache and throb within me. This is how I will end. My blood, my veins ache and throb within me. This is how I will end? My thoughts whirl about me like a cloak that can no longer shield its wearer from the elements. Only a month ago . . . I had taken her as I have taken hundreds . . . thousands. She had been alone and walking down a dark alley towards her home. I remember her clearly for unlike many, she did not succumb to my mental powers and fought me the entire time I drank her life from her. I can still feel her fists pounding against me as her heartbeat fades . . . fades . . . and stops. At least, I had thought it had stopped. I left her crumpled body in that alley alongside the trash left by the humanity I could no longer be a part of. But she had not died. Perhaps a week later, I had again come to this place and had felt pain emanating from someone with such intensity that it had drawn me to it like moth to flame. His name was Stevan. I watched him through his window as he sat upon a bed too large for one to sleep in alone. I had been careless and let myself be seen, then had been foolish and actually let him speak to me. Stevan had been Anna's husband, but only for a short time. For the first time in my unlife, I had been forced to see the devastation that I had wreaked upon others in order to pay the price for my life. I discovered that Anna had lived an entire day after my attack before finally succumbing to deaths cold embrace. Or, at least that is what all believed had happened. I could sense movement in the room. Through a haze of agony, I turned my head and saw Stevan moving slowly towards me. What would he do now? Should he kill this monster he views before him? Does he realize that it was me who took his beloved from him? And could he know that I am also responsible for what she has become now? I fled Stevan that night upon learning of what I had done, the pain I had caused. I ran like the night wind to the place I hide from the day and I sank into it in hopes that I would slip into the death like sleep which holds me during the sunlight hours. It did not come. I lay awake, feeling the horrible guild rising up within me. All th I had hoped for emotions to return. I had dreamed of the feeling of something other than the unending apathy that I found within myself. I would gladly have taken apathy over this terrible feeling. This self hatred. Stevan is now leaning over me. My thoughts are hard to focus but still, somehow I cling to this existence, I still fear death. I try to speak but all that emerges is a gurgle. Blood has filled my lungs and the shard of wood has shifted so that the tip is pricking at my heart. I am helpless. Stevan is touching me, trying to move me. My scream of pain stops him. He backs away from me . . . he has seen my blood covered fangs. He stands there, watching me as I lay in an expanding pool of my blood . . . well, blood I have taken recently. I had not planned to come to this place again, to see him this evening, but as I had risen from the place which hides me from day, I had felt something unlike anything I had felt before. It was as if a second set of thoughts were brushing upon mine. I felt distracted and was clumsy in my first kill of the evening. Then my thoughts were of Stevan and I knew that something was going to happen to him. I could not allow any more pain to come to him and so had raced to his home only to find her there. I don't know which of us was more shocked. Stevan had tears running down his face and he was embracing her. He must have seen her as she wished, for he made no reaction to her dirt covered clothes, red glowing eyes, and enlongated claws. She sensed me almost at once and attempted to sink her teeth into his neck when I crashed through the window and began our fight. Had Stevan not invited me into his home that first time, I would have been helpless as the life was drained from him. Stevan is again leaning down next to me. He is saying something, asking if there is something he can do. I almost laugh but it comes out as a choking sound. That he would want to help the one who has caused all this is the most absurd thing to me. I want to live. I force my hand to brush against the tip of the wooden shard that is within me. I look at him and will him to understand . . . and he does. Stevan gently closes his hand upon the exposed piece of the wooden shard and begins to pull. I hear myself moan and then there is only blackness . . . . Stevan is looking at me. I am weaker than I can ever remember being and there is something else that is bothering me, but I am alive. Stevan has me in his arms with one hand holding my head. Though I still feel groggy, I try to speak. My voice sounds ragged to my ears as I thank him. He nods and then tells me not to move. He has a wet cloth and is cleaning the blood from my face and neck. He is very handsome, I notice this again and feel a strange comfort as I feel his arm under me, supporting me. He does not look at me as he asks me what I am. I mutter to him that I am a monster and that he should have killed me. He looks at me and I wonder if he will now take that advice. He tells me that my wounds seemed to have closed and that he isn't sure what he should do to help me. I try to rise but find that there is no strength in my body. I also realize what is bothering me so, it is almost day. I feel a panic begin to rise within me and Stevan must have sensed it as well for he is asking me what is wrong. I look at the place where I had been injured and see the cause for my weakness laying in a pool in the partially repaired doorway. I need blood. My voice trembles as I tell Stevan what I need, and I feel self loathing as I watch his face turn pale. He begins to ask me questions, asking me what has happened to Anna but he grows quiet when I tell him I will soon be dead. I tell him that I will answer all his questions, that I will return at night fall and will explain it all, but to survive, I need some of his blood. Stevan looks at me for a long time and I can feel the first heat from the soon to be rising sun. After moments, he nods and then asks me what he should do. I tell him he need do nothing more than lean close to me, and he does. My teeth slide gently into Stevan's neck and immediately, I feel the warm life giving rush of his blood entering me. My arms slide around him and I feel him relaxing as the sensation begins to reach him. The bite of a vampire can often be quite pleasurable if the victim does not fight and for the first time, I feel a sensation as well. To have someone offer me their blood is something I have never before had happen. I take only what I need and begin to stop when I feel his strong hands holding me against him, urging me not to stop. I pull away and tell him that I will be here at dark. I tell him that he must not let Anna come near him and that he must not tell any of what has happened. Before he can answer I am racing into the fading night towards the place I hide from the day. Much has happened and there is much to do. Somewhere, in the last bits of night, another is preparing for the coming day and she too has much to do . . . To Be Continued in "The Shackles of Summer"

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Library: The Shadows of Spring