Basically, my life had gone to shit in a heartbeat!
But hey, with me dead, then that would be a sure way to break the curse at least, or so I hoped.
As the last of my breath was being strangled out of me, she reached out a hand toward me. I questioned why but before I got my answer, her plan went to shit pretty quickly. Just before her hand reached me, her eyes grew wide in fear. This before a deep and vicious growl sounded behind me, one so frightening it could have come straight from the devil himself!
The sound of my own choking was not enough to drown it out, nor enough to blur the sight of darkness as it entered the room. The way it rolled along the floor like the fog was searching for victims to kill. It started extinguishing the lights, one byone. First the candles whispered back to an unlit wick and then the bulbs burst, smashing around her and making her shriek in fright. The fading light of day was all that was left shining down on us from the dirty skylight above. Like when the sunlight breached the clouds, it created beams through the age-old dirt on the glass.
“No… they… they are here,”she said, all color draining from her face when the last light died, and those dark tentacles started to rise up and reach for her.
And the men that controlled them, they were quick to step up behind me, each one sounding like wild beasts at my back. But this was when she told them,
“You’re too late, say goodbye to your blood reign!” Manic laughter followed and just as all the tentacles launched out at her, she stomped on the pendant and was sucked into a swirling void of darkness. After this I felt my lungs give out as Victor roared,
“NOOO!” The desperate sound echoed my own pain as I finally closed my eyes and became weightless. As if some other supernatural force was trying to claim me from this world. But then I could also feel the grip of life hanging on, unwilling to let me go yet. Which was when I realized that all the beads released me as one. The sound around me was like rain as each one slipped through the cord and fell to the floor. And I would have done the same had Talon not caught me. One brother saving me while the other tried to stop the witch.
“Fuck! FUCK!”Victor roared in fury as I was finally able to try and get my breath back and open my heavy eyes. Talon held me in his arms before lowering me to the floor so he could care for me. Which made my heart break, as I croaked out,
“Nnn…oo.”
“Ssshh, don’t try to speak, baby,” Talon said, making my heart break all over again. Because it didn’t work.
Her curse…she onlytook part of it.
The one that had given me the gift of luck and my only weapon against the Vampires when it came to evading them. And as for the brothers, they were clearly still left to believe I was their Fated. But Victor, who was now realizing it was too late to do anything to save the dagger from falling into the wrong hands, came over to me.
I couldn’t help but flinch, thinking he was going to take out that anger on me.
“Easy, girl, I just want to check on your injuries to ensure that bitch can’t take anything else from us,” he told me. Then he paused, confusion mixed with anger on his face as he sniffed, his nostrils flaring as he smelled something he seemed to be mad at.
“She is bleeding,” Talon told him, and Victor’s jaw hardened before he went straight to the source. His deep brown eyes narrowed down at my wound, his dark brown hair falling forward, seeing as it was loose for once, now framing his striking features.
As for Tal, his light green eyes no longer held the mischief I was used to seeing ignited in their depths. It was actually the first time I had ever seen him looking worried, as if the moment he saw me the world no longer continued to be his playground. In fact, he looked as if it was now a Hell he was living in that was about to claim me. He even tore a frustrated hand through his sandy blonde hair, pushing it back before the longer strands on top fell through his fingers.
“Ahhhh!” I shouted the second Victor pulled my sweater up, revealing the slice to my side so deep that it caused me enough pain that I nearly threw up.
“Ssshh, it’s alright, you’re safe now, we will heal you… it won’t hurt soon enough, Nessa,” Talon cooed before nodding to his brother.
Victor was already rolling up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing his strong forearm at the same time his fangs extended. I then gasped as I watched him tear into his own flesh at his wrist, making blood gush from the wound. He then let this crimson stream flow into his cupped hand before then letting it drip on my exposed wound, making me hiss instantly at the burn.
“AHHH AHHH!” I screamed, forcing Talon to hold me tighter from behind while Victor crowded me from the front. And he did this by placing his lips to my forehead to kiss me, before pulling back enough to say,
“It’s alright, sweetheart, I know it burns but soon the pain will fade, that’s it…calm for me, Nessa.”
I nodded, gritting my teeth and letting his blood do its work. Whatever that may be, I didn’t quite know, nor did I truly understand the depths of it. I just knew that after a minute or two, the pain finally started to calm, like he said it would, and I looked down to find my skin knitting together. My eyes widened in shock as I watched my body heal at an incredible rate, the skin turning pink and fresh, as if it had been weeks not minutes.
“You… you healed me?” I asked, before my astonished gaze rose to meet his dark amber eyes.
“Of course I did,” Victor answered instantly, no longer the furious Vampire from before.
“Even after everything… everything I did… you both saved me, you still healed me?” I said again, looking from one before twisting to look at the other.
I didn’t miss the way Talon communicated something silently to his brother. And before I could ask what it was, Victor frowned before gathering me in his arms so he could hold me to him. His hand cradling the back of my head as he held it tucked under his chin.
“Oh, Vanessa, we will always save you. There is nothing more important to us than you are… tell me that you finallyunderstand this now?” he asked, making me sob as the emotions escaped, feeling as if I had let them down. Because the curse hadn’t been broken for them, meaning only one thing…
I had failed them both.
Which also meant that I would have to escape them another way. At the very least, the witch had taken something away, and that had been the compulsion to seek them out. Along with the compulsion to do everything they asked of me as soon as night fell. Now I could only hope that it would be enough.
