Okay, so here's the deal. Some of you may have read this first chapter two years ago when I posted it on my blog as a teaser for the book. This was shortly before my hiatus, where I abandoned blogging for a year to deal with life stuff like grad school, my wedding, and home improvements. Unearthed After Sunset was put completely on hold at that time and it wasn't until this year that I returned to it. Since then, the book has gone through some changes (including chapter 1).
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1
GREG
I slumped onto a cracked leather stool and slapped a twenty on the bar. Duke’s was a small place near campus. Their tap beer ran a little musty, but the bottles were always cold. I looked around, waiting for the bartender to get to me. At the back of the room, a couple of frat guys had a game of pool going. ESPN played on the TVs, and the dim lights made the room feel a little depressing, but I was okay with that.
My eyes focused on a flyer, advertising tutoring sessions. That was how I met Sarah.
It was hard to believe things were over between us.
Her words still echoed in my head.
“God, Greg, this is just all too much.” Her voice broke and she bit her lip, green eyes filling with tears. “I just can’t do this anymore.”
I ran a hand through my hair. The bartender asked for my order and I stammered a moment, lost in thought.
“Whisky sour,” I finally said.
My life felt like it’d been sucked into a jet engine and shredded into a million pieces. I’d failed the summer class I needed to graduate, lost my internship at Douglass and Smith Publishing, got fired from the terrible landscaping job I picked up to cover the bills, and to top it off, my girlfriend dumped me because I’d kept all of that a secret.
I suppose I deserved that.
The last few weeks I’d pretended to head off to my internship every morning, but really, I’d lined up job interviews. The landscaping job I’d landed for the first few months of summer had gotten me by, but the owner and I had some creative differences over removing a stump in some old lady’s yard and now I was broke, again.
I don’t know why I kept it all from Sarah. Maybe embarrassment.
I replayed the moment she ended it over in my mind.
Sarah sighed and wiped the tears away before they could fall. “You’ve been pushing me away,” she said. “We could have worked through this together.” She took a breath. “But you’d rather keep secrets and lie to me.” A beat passed. Her eyes focused on some imaginary point in the distance, glossing over with tears. “I think moving in together was a bad idea.”
The weight of my heart tripled. I rubbed the back of my neck, realizing she was angry about more than one little lie. She’d scraped together an accumulation of my faults, twisted them into a heavy ball, and I couldn’t argue any of them. I had kept her out, lied to her, and hurt her. My heart sunk as I realized what an idiot I’d been.
“Sarah, can we just talk about this for a minute?” I’d asked.
She took a deep breath. “I’m just—I’m done.”
As I sat sipping at my whiskey sour I couldn’t quite figure out when things had changed between us. At some point, Sarah just stopped being the person I turned to, the person I confided in. I still cared about her, but I wondered if I still loved her. Maybe it was better this way.
I ordered a second drink and the bar grew busier.
Three girls walked in, two blondes and a brunette. They squeezed in at the bar beside me to order drinks.
“It’s too expensive to start drinking this early,” one of the blondes said, turning toward the other.
“It’s happy hour,” her friend shot back, laughing. She had the prettiest smile. She was blonde too, but her hair bounced around her face in large curls.
The girl with dark hair ordered drinks as they chatted.
“I’m just saying, if we’re planning to be out all night we should pre-game first.”
The girl’s pretty smile faded. “Except we’re not all planning to be out all night, at least not out drinking all night.”
“Care-bear has to work tonight, remember?” the brunette added. The bartender brought over their drinks. As the brunette grabbed hers, I glimpsed a tattoo on her arm. A skull with red flowers had been inked into her skin. “Which is why we’re hanging out now.”
They stepped away from the bar and found seats at a table behind me. I couldn’t help glancing back at them. The girl, Care, smiled again. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place her. I turned back around and finished my drink, then ordered another.
A short while later I tipped the bartender, slid the rest of my crumpled bills back into my pocket, and got up to leave. As I turned around an icy splash met my chest. The drink soaked through my dress shirt and dripped to the floor.
“Oh my God,” a girl said.
I looked up and met the horrified gaze of the girl with the cute smile.
“I am so sorry.” She set what was left of her drink on the bar and leaned over to grab a bar rag. Her short skirt swished around her thighs.
“It’s okay,” I said, but she was already dabbing my shirt, trying to clean me up. “Really.” I grabbed her hands to still her.
Her eyes met mine, and she smiled again. At that moment, I forgot that I’d just been dumped. I forgot that my life had been slowly crumbling apart. She smiled, and I was lost.
I cleared my throat. “Let me buy you a new drink.”
“I don’t know, I’m here with my friends.” She glanced over her shoulder. Her friends had abandoned their table and danced near the jukebox. She turned back to me. “Well, maybe one.”
I smiled.
When I turned back to the bar, my previous seat had already been taken. I waved to the bartender and ordered drinks. Once we had them in hand, my eyes searched the room and I realized there wasn’t a free seat in sight.
“We could go out on the patio?” she suggested.
“That’s a good idea.”
A small fenced in patio had been built off the back of the bar as a place for smokers to light up without having to abandon their drinks. I led the way outside, and we took seats beneath a bright green umbrella at one of the tables. Small, round string-lights were suspended above our heads, and the sun hung heavy in the sky.
“I’m really sorry about your shirt,” she said.
A grin slipped across my face as I shook my head. “I never liked this shirt anyway…it’s Care, right? I heard you and your friends talking earlier.”
“Um, yeah. Caroline.”
“I’m Greg.”
She smiled again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Greg.”
“Same here.”
She took a long sip of her drink. That feeling of recognition hit me again; still, I couldn’t place her.
“You look really familiar,” I said.
Caroline nodded. “We had that history class together with Professor Fitzberg last fall. I sat in the back.”
It suddenly clicked and I remembered watching her wander into class late one day. Her hair had been pulled back in a scrunchie, and she’d worn bright pink sweatpants. I’d thought she was cute then, too.
“Right, I remember now. You were smart to sit in the back. That guy spit when he talked.”
Caroline laughed.
“So, what are you going to school for?”
She looked at her drink. “I’m not anymore. I was going for business, but had to drop. I wanna start back up soon though.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say next. She looked a little sad, and I didn’t want to pry into why she’d dropped out.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she said, breaking our momentary silence.
“Yeah, I don’t go out much.”
She tilted her head. “So, what brings you here tonight then, bad day?”
I laughed. “Bad would be an understatement.”
She looked genuinely apologetic. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
My mind conjured an image of Sarah pushing her dark hair back as she wiped at her tears. I shook the thought away. “What brings you and your friends out?”
Caroline let out a long sigh. “I guess I’m just trying to squeeze as much fun as I can into the last of my summer. I’m out for a drink before I go to work.”
“Where do you work? Kind of late to be starting a shift. Do you bartend?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s boring really. Just some stuff I do for my dad. Lots of paperwork, that kind of thing. I also waitress at the Blue Coyote.”
“Yeah? I know where that is. I’ve never been in there though. Good food?”
“Yeah, definitely. You should stop by sometime.”
“Maybe I will.” Our eyes met, and though I’d just met her, I couldn’t help but feel a connection between us. Maybe it was the alcohol, but I knew then: I definitely wanted to see her again. I was already thinking about when I could make a stop by the Blue Coyote.
“What about you?” she asked. “The tie says ’job,’ but the tiny hippo polka-dots don’t exactly scream corporate. Intern?”
I laughed. “Actually, unemployed. I had an interview today that didn’t exactly go great. I got fired a little while back and haven’t had much luck.”
“That’s rough, and it explains the bad day.”
If only it explained all of my bad day.
“Do you still go to ASU?” She asked.
“Yeah, hopefully I’ll graduate this fall. I’m on the five-year plan.”
“Five isn’t so bad.” She grinned. “I wouldn’t sweat it. No one gets out in four anyway.”
I smiled back. It amazed me how in that short conversation, Caroline had made me smile and laugh more than I had in the past month. Another hour passed as we chatted. The time seemed to disappear as we joked about random things like music and movies. I told her I had an affinity for horror flicks and she admitted to secretly liking musicals.
The sun hovered just above the horizon now, casting the world around us in a lusty red glow. Caroline stared at it, then took another sip of her drink.
“It’s getting late; I should get back to my friends. I’ve got to leave for work soon.”
I wished we could sit and talk longer, but figured I should be headed out anyway. “Yeah, I’ll walk you back in.”
We both stood and took a few steps toward the door. Then Caroline stopped. She turned back to me.
“I don’t want you to think I’m blowing you off or anything. I really do just have to get going.”
“It’s fine. Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer to stop by the Blue Coyote for lunch one day.”
Again, I was caught in the beauty of her perfect smile. “Maybe we could swap numbers, then we could hang out sometime when I, you know, have time.”
“Yeah.” I pulled my cell out, a beat of excitement rushing through me. “And my phone’s dead.”
“Oh, okay, here.” Caroline dug into her purse and pulled out a pen. She took my hand and wrote her number on my palm. “Just, don’t sweat.”
I laughed.
She put her pen back in her purse, then looked up. Our eyes met as the door opened. It swung into Caroline, causing her to stumble as a group of people pushed through. She fell against me, and instantly my hands wrapped around her. Our noses bumped. Her soft chest pressed against mine, and her warm breath slid across my skin. The door slammed shut behind her, but she didn’t back away.
A tingling jolt of electricity coursed through my veins, and I did something I wouldn’t normally do.
I leaned in and kissed her.
Her lips were soft. Our kiss was short. Once again, her breath tickled my skin as she pulled back.
Her cheeks flushed red. “I um, I should go. Call me,” she said, walking away.
The door shut behind her and I ran a hand through my hair. A warm rush of feelings flooded through me, but they quickly faded as I thought of Sarah once again. Guilt trickled into my mind. I laughed. She broke up with me and I felt guilty? But I did. I hadn’t meant to meet someone that night, and I couldn’t help but feel like Caroline was special somehow. Still, it felt too soon.
I looked down at my palm and the black ink of Caroline’s digits written in her curvy handwriting.
“What are you doing, Greg?” I mumbled to myself.
I fisted my palm, hiding the number, but couldn’t wipe it away. My fingers loosened. I wouldn’t.
The air felt cooler as I left Duke’s and strode down the sidewalk. Sarah had kicked me out so I headed to my friend Dan’s, but his apartment was more than a few blocks away. Dan and I were the same age. Unlike me, he graduated a semester early and moved off campus. We met in the dorms sophomore year. Dan had been a jock basketball player, and I was a quiet kid. He’d been nice to me and forced me to have a social life while I kept him from flunking English. We weren’t best friends, and we didn’t have much in common, but I suppose there wasn’t anyone else I felt closer with.
I didn’t have many friends growing up. I never knew my father, and after my mother died when I was twelve, I went to live with my great aunt, Mara. Starting college at ASU was supposed to be the beginning of the best part of my life, but it didn’t seem to be working out that way.
After walking a few blocks, I contemplated taking a shortcut to Dan’s. Across the street stood a black metal arch with the title Ironwood Cemetery woven into it. I recognized the name. Dan lived only a block from it, but I passed the east gate and Dan lived on the west side. It was closed now, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to cut through.
Darkness fell around me as the last lingering traces of the sun were swallowed by the horizon. I stumbled through the cemetery gate. The farther I moved from the street lights and beams of passing cars, the higher the hairs on the back of my neck stood. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, a graveyard, landscaped with native plants and a pebbled walkway weaving through the grass, came into view. A short brick wall enclosed the space, and as a breeze brushed by, I felt at peace.
It was a clear night, heavy with stars. I tried to remember the constellations I’d learned in the astronomy class I’d taken my freshman year, but few came to mind. As I crossed the yard, I read the names on the headstones. Sometimes I stopped and looked at the epitaphs.
“Here lies…Aaron Ackers,” I read on one grave marker. His headstone lacked a cross or any other religious symbols. “Aaron Ackers…atheist, all dressed up with nowhere to go.” I chuckled to myself.
I began walking away and nearly tripped. One of my shoelaces had come untied. Kneeling beside Aaron’s grave, I retied them. After righting myself, my sight traveled across the yard, and something new caught my eye.
Long tan legs kicked out from the wall. My eyes followed their movements for a short while before trailing up her body. Silver light from the near full moon reflected off her tight white top and the blooming flowers growing beside her. She looked so innocent sitting there in her short floral skirt, the wind catching the edges of the fabric, making it flutter against her thighs.
She tapped her nails against the wall and sat slouching to one side. Then I saw her face. Caroline. What was she doing here? She looked bored, dark brown eyes rolled up to the sky as she sighed. Why was she in a graveyard, in this part of town, at night? She told me she was on her way to work. She couldn’t work here, could she?
She hopped down from the low brick wall and walked deeper into the cemetery. I started to follow when two gangly men approached her. Dressed in dark clothes, they loomed over Caroline’s petite frame.
My eyes remained stuck on her as I ran. The two men circled her, obviously trying to intimidate her. Neither looked like he had good intentions. My heart was already pounding, but I ran faster.
Caroline said something, the sound of her voice no more than a whisper in the wind. A man laughed. The other lunged at her, and I fell flat on my face. My foot had caught on a root, unearthed from the hallowed ground.
I pushed myself up as one of the men stumbled back. Caroline held her fists out before her. Had she punched him? The other man grabbed her from behind and wrapped his arm around her neck as his buddy got up from the ground.
I got back on my feet. “Hey, stop, let her go!”
The men turned to me. I slowed my pace, glad to have their attention, but also suddenly cautious for the same reason. I tried to think of something clever to persuade them to leave her alone, but no words came to me.
At that same moment, Caroline flipped the man that held her by the neck over her shoulder. He landed hard on his back. The other man turned back to her. I started running again. She pulled something from her purse and kneeled beside the fallen man. I wondered what she was doing. She should run. Instead, she took the object in her hand and drove it straight into his chest.
I stopped running.
Every square inch of breath in my lungs heaved out.
She killed him.
What happened next had me questioning not only how sober I was, but how sane. The man she’d stabbed dissolved into dust. He broke apart in a burst of ashes, leaving nothing behind but a flattened pair of slacks and a greasy shirt. I realized I should run, but couldn’t move.
The other man sprinted in my direction. He moved so fast, I barely had time to process how close he’d gotten. He grabbed me by the arm and threw me to the ground. His lips twisted into a snarl, revealing the longest set of canines I’d ever seen.
My eyes squinted shut, anticipating a hit, but it never came. I opened my eyes. The man’s features had frozen. His skin turned ashen, and dark circles formed beneath his eyes, making them look sunken. His dark hair lightened, turning gray, then white, and his skin grew loose and wrinkled. Within moments, the man before me aged half a lifetime, and then he started to decay.
Before I could convince myself I’d seen the real life incarnation of all the horror movies I’d watched as a kid, the man before me exploded into dust. His clothes fell, landing on me, and his remains floated away. Through his drifting ashes she stood, slowly lowering her stake.
“Greg? What are you doing here?”
“W-what the hell was that?” The stutter in my voice told me I was even more shaken than I thought.
Her expression softened and she reached a hand out for me to take. “Nothing you need to worry about.” Effortlessly, she pulled me to my feet.
My legs wobbled a little before I found my balance, along with some composure. I looked her up and down. Her girly top and skirt were deceiving; along with her soft blonde curls and doe eyes, she seemed innocent, maybe even a little naive and helpless. But, after what I’d witnessed, I could tell she was none of those things. She was strong, much stronger than she looked, and by the way she moved, taking out those two men, she wasn’t helpless.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Caroline.”
“You and I both know I didn’t mean your name.” I gripped my hands at my sides to stop shaking.
She bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder. “I’m nobody.”
A nervous laugh fell from my lips. “Well, you’ve got to be somebody.”
She shook her head. “I’m just some girl you met at a bar, where you got way too drunk because I think you’ve been hallucinating.”
I did wonder if maybe I was seeing things. I shook my head. “No, don’t do that. What the hell just happened?” I imagined the look on that man’s face before he disintegrated before my eyes.
Caroline quickly changed the subject. “What are you doing out here so late? The cemetery’s closed this time of night.”
I laughed again. Now that the threat was gone, I found her avoidance of my questions amusing. “I could ask you the same thing.”
What was she doing alone in a graveyard? I thought about her fight with those men, how easily she took them down. The way she killed them—or had she? There were no bodies, yet I’d watched her stab the one in the chest. Then I thought about the man that grabbed me, how long and sharp his teeth were, the way he crumbled into dust, and then Caroline stood with a stake in her hand, like they were…vampires. Was I really thinking that?
Caroline’s eyes widened in a flash, and she crossed her arms. “Look, you should go and forget you ever saw me.”
She started walking away, but I followed her. I couldn’t let her off that easy. I’d just witnessed her staking a vampire.
“Fine, I’ll forget. But, if I’m going to forget this, you can answer me one thing. What are you doing here, other than I guess, slaying vampires?” Suddenly, having said it aloud made it so much more real. “God, is that really what I saw?” The last of my fear vanished as curiosity took its place.
She stopped abruptly and shushed me. “You didn’t see anything. And if you’re really going to forget, me answering that isn’t going to help any. You’re safe now, but you should get out of here. It’s not safe to be wandering around this part of town alone at night.”
I nearly burst out laughing at the irony of her statement, but was too stunned.
“Wait, should I forget that I ever saw you, or just that I saw you in the graveyard?”
She smiled. “Forget that you saw me here.”
So, she was into me.
“I have to go.” She spun away. In the distance, a man’s voice called for her.
I stood immobilized, staring after her. A few moments passed before my limbs came alive again. I couldn’t leave yet. I hovered back a while before slowly following after her. I stayed out of sight, hiding behind trees and tombs as she met up with an older man. Crouching beside a headstone, I looked him over while they talked. He appeared to be in his fifties, had salt and pepper hair, a distinctive scar marred his cheek, and he carried a crossbow.
I tried to get closer; wanting to know what they were talking about. So, I kept low to the ground and sneaked toward them, watching with every step. Caroline crossed her arms. She cracked her neck and let out a deep sigh as the older man spoke. He seemed to be scolding her, emphatically gesturing with his free hand. Still, I couldn’t make out his words. I crept along the side of a mausoleum and peered around the corner to watch them. Finally, their voices came into focus, and I listened intently.
“Caroline,” the older man said.
“I was doing my job; I know you said to wait, but what was I supposed to do?”
“Without backup you risk—”
“Risk what? Getting killed? Don’t I do that anyway? You always let Michael hunt alone.”
The man pursed his lips in annoyance and color flooded his cheeks.
“Sorry,” Caroline said with more than a hint of guilt in her voice.
The older man looked like he was about to say something more, but just then a sharp crack, like that of a stick breaking beneath the weight of a boot, echoed through the graveyard. The man spun around, raising his crossbow. I crouched lower, frantically searching the spaces between the trees. Within seconds another group of people appeared. A dozen or so men and women emerged from the shadows. They moved with the same predatory sway as the two men who attacked Caroline earlier.
One of the women in the group laughed a sharp, shrill giggle. Before anyone could say a word, the man fired his crossbow and imbedded an arrow in the chest of one of the intruders. He exploded into a shower of ash, his remains floating away in the breeze.
A fight erupted. Caroline moved like some kind of ninja-ballerina, gracefully slinging punches and landing hard, elegant kicks with her long, tan legs. I stood entranced, mesmerized by her strength and skill. I’d become so obsessed watching her that the fight got away from me. It took me a moment to realize that the people – or more accurately the creatures – she and her older male companion fought had finally had enough.
There were less than half of them left, and they ran in my direction. I sneaked along the edge of the mausoleum, until I reached the other side. There I spotted the heavy metal door that served as the entrance to the tomb. Pulling it open, I quietly slid inside. Footsteps on the pebbled walkway echoed as they neared. My heart pounded as I pulled the door shut. Those things were dangerous, but unable to suppress my curiosity, I left the door open a crack and peered out into the night.
They ran past: four men, a woman with reddish-blonde hair, and another with light brown locks that swayed around her face. They dashed by the mausoleum where I hid, and then one of them stopped. The brunette woman paused, looked over her shoulder, and stared straight at me through the sliver of space between the door and its jam. Her blue eyes locked on mine, and as the moonlight hit them they flashed yellow like the reflective eyes of a dog or a wolf. I jumped back. My breath hitched, and my heart stuttered. She couldn’t have seen me. It was too dark, my peephole too slim, but it felt like she’d stared straight into my soul. Cautiously, I looked through the crack once again. She was gone.
I let out a deep, relieved sigh and stepped away from the door. Turning, I ran a hand through my hair. Tonight’s events felt unreal. My brain tried to rationalize everything, and I wasn’t sure what to believe. Maybe I drank more than I thought? Maybe it’d been a trick of the light? Maybe they’d been on drugs? I didn’t really believe any of the things the logical part of my brain suggested. Those were vampires.
I gasped as acceptance of that thought came to me. This was real. Turning back toward the door, I planned to find Caroline again, but what I saw then froze me.
My heart plummeted a thousand feet and violently splashed into the shallow pool at the bottom of my belly. The woman—no, the vampire—who’d caught my eyes a moment ago stood inside the crypt with me. She looked me over and her red lips curved into a smirk. I stood speechless. By the time it occurred to me that I should yell, she’d darted forward and coiled a hand around my neck.
This couldn’t be happening.
My hands clawed at hers. It was hard to breathe. Panic pulsed through me.
A garbled gurgle fell from my lips. Caroline’s voice rang in the distance. My head cracked against the cement wall. Sharp pain. Everything went black.
I woke with stiff limbs pressed against hard cement and breathed cold, musty air. My head throbbed as I sat up and rested on my knees. A wave of nausea surged forth. I swallowed it back. Images slowly returned to my consciousness. Vampires. My hand rose to my neck, fearing what I’d find, but there weren’t any bites. As I tried to figure out whether I could trust my memories, I realized I was still in the tomb. Staring at the cement ground, I rubbed my temples. I’d just started to convince myself that I’d imagined the worst parts of last night when her voice filled the air.
“You sleep like the dead.”
Startled, I nearly fell over. I twisted around to face her. Pushing myself off the floor I attempted to appear strong and confident despite physically trembling in fear.
“Though, I guess that’s my fault for knocking you unconscious, but I needed you to be quiet until the hunters left.” She sat atop the stone sarcophagus. Her ankles were crossed, and she leaned back on her arms. Dark blue eyes focused on me, sizing me up, making me feel small.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Her full lips, painted bright red, twisted into a grin. She stood and circled me. I couldn’t help eyeing her milky white legs. I followed their lines to the hem of her black floral dress; dark red flowers folded around her slim frame below a short, black leather jacket.
She ignored my question and poked me in the chest. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Alone in the graveyard, that is?”
“Could ask you the same thing,” I said, remembering how I’d said those very words to Caroline. I’d never realized how popular of a hangout the cemetery was until that night.
She smirked. “It wouldn’t make much sense to ask me such a thing. That would be like asking a chicken why she’s in the henhouse. I belong here. You’re the one that’s out of place.” She had a sultry voice, sensuous like a jazz singer. It slinked through the air and sent shivers across my skin.
I remembered I should be scared of her, and I did feel the fear deep in my gut, but on the surface, it was hard to be scared of something so beautiful. I still hadn’t learned that looks can be deceiving.
“What are you?” I asked. Vampire flickered through my mind, but the logical part of my brain still fought to deny it.
“Now that is a better question.” She walked back to the sarcophagus and sat down. “You’re not homeless, are you?”
“Are you always this evasive?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
I glared at her; she didn’t appear to be a threat. “No, I’m not homeless…or well, I suppose I am, but not like how you’d think.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” She tilted her head and bit her lip. “Just, lost I suppose. Yes, you look lost.”
“You’re not human, are you?” I knew what she was, but I needed her to say it, or I’d never truly believe it.
Again, she ignored me. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not going to answer any more of your questions until you answer mine. What are you?”
She stood again and walked to me. Looking me dead in the eye she leaned in until the leather of her jacket brushed against my chest. I flinched but didn’t back away.
In a whispered voice she said, “Silly lost boy; I’m the thing that found you.”
Her breath brushed against my skin, feeling like a winter breeze. Then the panic set in. Panic I should have been feeling from the moment I looked upon her lovely face. She reached forward and grabbed my arms. Her grip tightened and her nails dug into my flesh. She held me with strength like she was made of steel, and she moved fast.
The next thing I knew, I was screaming and her ruby lips were at my throat. I’d never felt pain so intense. It started as a sharp stabbing then grew to a fiery burn, flooding my entire body. An unpleasant numbness followed, beginning in my toes and fingertips, spreading inward.
I couldn’t move. I tried to twist out of her grip, but it was useless. Tears slid down my face. Worse than the lightheadedness and sharp, shooting pain, however, was knowing I would die, and couldn’t stop it.
I fought, yelling and pleading for my life, but the torture never ceased. She covered my mouth. I tasted blood – her blood. Her wrist muffled my screams as she forced her blood down my throat. She continued until one by one, every part of me shut down. It felt like switches being flipped in my brain, turning off each system in my body. I felt each one go out, knowing my consciousness, my soul, my whatever I was would be next. And then, just like that, I blinked out of existence.
