Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Sliced through her neck, decapitating her.
Her head rolled my way, stopping at my feet.
Beautiful, lifeless eyes staring straight up at the sky, the color of unfurled leaves in spring.
There was no time to feel broken at the loss, at the horror. No time to weep, to grieve, to even feel shock.
I became a monster.
I fully gave in to what I was trying to hold back, that last piece of humanity running away from me like the blood from Mina’s severed head.
With a surge of fiery power, I let out another roar, inhuman enough to make blood run cold, loud enough to shake the earth, and I fought. I surged forward, clawing, biting, like a ravenous bear.
The soldiers stabbed me with their swords, but they didn’t kill me, and the pain only felt sweet and I kept going until I had their swords in my hands. I worked my way through the soldiers, biting into their necks, tearing out their throats, stabbing them in the chest, the face, the head, leaving them to bleed out while I destroyed them all.
The general at this point was trying to get away. He was running on foot for the hills. He had no one left to protect him.
I gave chase after him, this time it felt more like a game, like I was actually enjoying this, predator and prey. I laughed maniacally as I went, slowing down and speeding up, letting him think he had a chance of escape when I already knew he didn’t.
Finally he fell down, too exhausted to get up, and I was on him.
I took my fingers and plunged them into his eye sockets, ripping out his eyes until his eyeballs were in my hands, then, while he was screaming, forced his eyes into his mouth. Grabbed his jaw and made him chew and choke on them.
Then I put my body over his, bit into his neck with newly sharpened teeth, and drank down his blood until that hunger I had was finally satisfied, until his screams vanished into death.
It was the end of me.
It was the beginning of someone else.
Something else.
It took decades of killing people and animals, drinking their blood, and hiding my true self as I traveled south, taking a boat across to Estonia, then disappearing into Eastern Europe where it was easier to hide, before I finally met others that were like me.
When I discovered there was a term for what I had become.
A vampire.
And that my birth parents had been vampires too. If they had raised me, I would have known that at age thirty-five I would transition from human to vampire.
But I didn’t know.
I found out in time to save my own life.
But too late to save Mina’s.
Too late to escape a cursed life, one that will follow me into all of eternity.
Chapter 2
Dahlia
I’m dreaming again. A nightmare.
Same one as always.
I’m on the ground, cold and frightened. Chaos surrounds me: the sound of thundering hooves, horse’s whinnying, clashing metal, and the feeling of so many people on the precipice of violence. A man stands above me, dressed in some type of armor, his face full of malice and contempt as he stares down at me. He has his boot on my middle and is pressing down on my uterus and though I don’t feel any pain in my dream, it hurts all the same. There are vague feelings that come and go, that he is going to kill my lover, that I am pregnant and he’s trying to kill the baby, that he means to kill me. The most disturbing feeling of all is that he is my father.
He raises his sword in the air and I know he means to cut my head off. I scream but it’s caught in my throat and I can’t make a sound and as much as I struggle, I can’t move. His boot has me pinned and I am weak in the way that dreams make you. I am frozen in place.
Then there’s another scream. From a man. It’s my name, even though I can’t understand it, I know it’s my name. Something so blood-curdling and primal that it makes my skin erupt in goosebumps. I turn my head to see the man who screamed but I can’t see him. He is being held back by soldiers and as much as I try to focus on him, he is just a blur of a man.
But I know he wants to stop what is happening.
He just can’t.
I feel his anguish and his love for me and my love for him and in that moment I will do anything to escape, to be with him, to run away.
Yes, I have to run away.
And as I turn to look up at the man above, the devil who I think is my father, the blade lowers and it catches the light of the sun until the glare makes me close my eyes.