“Victoria,” he said, as if I was the only one in the room. “I’ve finally figured out what it is.”
He stopped there and I was momentarily caught off guard. I didn’t think he had even been close.
For a few seconds a startling hope came over me, that maybe in some fashion our two destinies were intertwined, that him figuring out what I unlock and me following my desire were in fact the same thing.
The order had done it. It had put events into motion that had rebalanced itself. My presence here, following all the guidance I had been given, had put things right. And, I really hadn’t needed to do anything.
I had done it.
“You have to die,” Ivy said and the words reverberated around the room like a pinball in a machine. “I didn’t want it to be this way, but it’s what has to happen. Your death is the key that unlocks my perfect immortality. Sunrise is in one hour. We’ll be going to the warehouse. Your friends too. They can’t stick around.”
He left the room as abruptly as he entered and when the door closed, it clanged in a way that it hadn’t before.
The four of us sat too stunned to speak.
And only one thought entered my mind.
I guessed I was going to get what I always wanted.
7
None of us moved for what seemed like eternity (pun intended), but finally, bodies were moving and mouths were running all at once. It was chaos.
Kace was saying we had to get back up to the main portion of the house right away, that we needed to run and maybe if we hurried we could catch everybody up there by surprise. We would have to leave the city, of course, but we’d figure it out.
Matt was saying he could outrun any of them, so as long as we could get to an exit. Nobody could stop him and he’d figure out a way to get all of us out.
Lola agreed and disagreed with both of them at the same time and was practically halfway out the door by the time I could even figure out what was happening.
Only I sat, silently, trying to piece together what had happened when it seemed like we were so close to figuring this all out.
I didn’t have much time. I needed help. Right now.
Something told me to stay put.
It was crazy. We should have already been trying to escape, getting as far away as we could, making arrangements to leave the city. But that’s not what I felt I should do.
I couldn’t explain it, but the same thing that had been speaking to me all along was talking now, and it was saying to go to the warehouse. That everything would be fine.
Maybe I was supposed to die.
Maybe that was how this all ended.
And I guess, in some way, it was my true desire.
To be mortal.
And mortality meant death.
Matt was grabbing me around the arms trying to get me to move. Hurrying me. But I didn’t want to go.
“I’ve got to stay,” I said, and it was so quiet that none of them heard me.
Matt tugged on me again and I didn’t budge. That got his attention.
“Vic, we’ve got to go. This game is over. And they’re about to win. C’mon.”
“I’ve got to stay,” I said, louder this time and standing up.
Matt looked at me like he was angry, horrified, and terrified at the same time, and I knew he thought I was abandoning him.
“He’s gonna kill you,” he said, throwing his hands in the air.
I hated disappointing him, hated making him angry and making him worry, but I was certain this was what I needed to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said and tried to grab his hand, but he yanked it away from me before I could reach it.
“You’re sorry? All this, and you’re sorry?”
He was agitated. I could hear it in his voice and his hands shook ever so slightly.
“Why did we do all this?” Matt asked, flinging his arms around him and indicating everything we had done. “Just so you could give up in the end? You should have given up earlier. Would have saved all of us a lot of trouble.”
His voice was loud, and his words reverberated around the room in a way that hit me over and over.
The thing I wanted to say rose in my throat where I held it for just a second before letting loose.
“I never should have turned you,” I said in the most hurtful tone of voice I could muster. I wanted him to feel it. To feel my regret. My anger, my disappointment, my...disgust at what I had done. “It was nothing but an accident. A momentary lapse in judgment. I wanted you to die that night, and I’m not sure what pulled me back from killing you.”
Matt went silent. So did Lola and Kace.
The words I wasn’t supposed to say had stolen their voices.
“That night that you followed us. I didn’t want you there. I was hunting and I already had a target. You just got in the way. And before I knew it, I had you on your knees and my fangs were in your neck. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you like I knew I should. You ruined everything, Matt. My hunting, my life. I couldn’t go back.”
I knew I was hurting him, but I couldn’t stop.
“I’m a killer, Matt. I’m a monster, if you hadn’t noticed. And I made you one too. This isn’t anything to want, like those idiots upstairs do. But by the time you notice that, it’s already too late. Much too late.
“Killing you would have been merciful. What I’ve turned you into...you can’t ever get rid of. Years will go by and then centuries and you’ll end up like our Mr. Greene. Constructing elaborate labyrinths beneath his house to catch humans to eat because there’s nothing else to do.
“Or, shutting yourself in a box for years at a time, letting your blood stagnate, just so the time passes more quickly. But the thing is, even when you wake up and fifty years have passed in what feels like three minutes, you actually haven’t done anything, because you’ll never run out of time. There will always be more. And you won’t be able to stand it. You’ll fool yourself into thinking you love it, that it’s some kind of paradise—most vampires do. But on the inside, you’ll be dying, except that you can never die.
“So how dare you stand there and tell me that I shouldn’t go into that warehouse and get fried by the sunlight, because, you know what? I’ll be free. And you won’t be, and that’s my fault, but what’s done is done. There’s no going back now.”
I walked toward him and he looked stunned. I got up close to him, inches from his face and said the thing I had been wanting to say from the beginning.
“You should be dead right now, Matt, and in a way, you are. And for that, I should die.”
I turned around and began packing up some of my possessions, for what reason I had no idea. I certainly didn’t need them where I was going. Maybe I just wanted to make a neat exit.
Lola and Kace still hadn’t said a word and I half expected Kace to bolt for the door any second. Lola would stick around. Loyalty was one of her strengths in a way that it had never been one of mine.
And Matt, I didn’t care where he went or what he did. I couldn’t. And then he said it. The thing I had been praying he wouldn’t say.
“But I love you.”
“No, Matt,” I said and spun around to face him again. “There is no love in this life. There’s sex and attraction and fun and temporary companionship, but there is no love. If you thought I turned you to be with you, you’re wrong. I turned you because I pitied you.
“I pitied your weakness, your desire, your attraction to me. I pitied the way you were so easy to handle, to manipulate to my purposes. In my arms, you were dying, and you loved it. And that’s why I saved you because I pitied your humanity.”
I heard the door shut and realized that Kace and Lola were gone. Matt stood up.
“If you want to die, I can’t stop you, but I do love you. And if you don’t love me back, I can’t stop that either, but I’m saying it to you because it’s real to me. I don’t want you to die. I want you to be with me.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I realized
just how long it had been since I’d cried.
I didn’t want to. Crying made me feel weak.
I stood there feeling stupid and alone, wanting to bridge the distance between Matt and me, but I couldn’t for fear of being found out.
Finally, he came toward me.
Even after all the awful things I had just said.
Matt walked slowly, like I might bite him, and when he got close enough, he opened his arms. I stepped into them and put my own arms around his back and my head against his chest.
I hoped he would forgive me.
An image flashed through my mind at that second, of blood through veins and enzymes unlocking the transformation process.
I felt Matt’s body against mine, but my mind was far away, receiving the message I was meant to receive.
I saw a key and a lock, and I heard The Three telling me about the loophole between life and death. Something clicked into place for me.
Matt was mine. His blood was of my own.
I pushed him away and temporarily saw the hurt in his eyes as he thought I wanted to be rid of him. But before he could get too far away, I grabbed him as best I could, sat him on the edge of the bed, and held out my wrist.
“Drink,” I said.
He looked up at me like I was crazy and didn’t immediately take my wrist.
“But—” he started, and I shook my head.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Trust me.”
“What will happen? Will I be put to sleep?”
“No,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”
His eyes were large and trusting, somewhere between a child and a puppy, and he grasped my wrist tighter.
“It’s okay, Matt. I’m setting you free.”
He gave me once last glance and then sank his teeth into my wrist.
PART TEN
1
When his fangs descended to break the skin on my wrist, I realized this would be the last time he ever used them.
There was a fierce pinch, and then my blood flowed freely into his mouth.
It was like some kind of sick marriage proposal.
He looked hungry, though I knew he had just recently eaten, and soon, a good pint of my blood had been ingested.
I thought that would be enough.
I pulled my arm away and he looked like a child being pulled away from his mother’s breast before he was done. But I knew he was ready.
He licked his lips, all red and moist, and stood up, and we both waited for whatever it was to start happening.
I saw it in my mind first.
His blood vessels constricting, muscles tensing, brain working overtime. His whole body was pulsating as my blood unlocked his.
I realized now what Ivy was picking up on. Except that I wasn’t the key for him.
He was the key.
And I was the lock.
And his blood would unlock mine.
And set me free.
Free from the centuries of exile from humanity. Free from the constant hunger. The constant cravings. The creeping around at night, and most of all, the killing.
I would be human again.
Just as Matt was now.
The process was over. I could feel it.
Matt looked around the room, and did that thing that people did who felt over-joyed and lucky to be alive. He put his hands all over his own body, feeling for the life there, for the solidness of flesh. And he had found it.
“What happened?” he asked, looking nervous, his eyes wide.
I just laughed.
“Drink,” I said, again, holding out my other wrist.
And once again, Matt got down on his knees and grabbed my wrist.
But this time he hesitated.
He licked his lips once again and stared down at my wrist, holding it like it was something he wanted to get rid of.
We stood there, he and I, for a good ten seconds before he spoke.
“Something’s wrong,” Matt said. “My fangs won’t descend.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“No,” he said, in a grave tone of voice. “I...”
He stopped here as if he didn’t quite know what to say.
“I don’t...I don’t want to drink your blood.”
He looked up at me horrified, and I thought the irony of it was beautiful.
“That’s a good thing, Matt,” I said, smiling. “It means you’re human.”
He got on his feet, taking both my hands. The wrist he had originally bitten into was already healed.
“What do you mean?”
“My blood. It unlocked yours because you come from me. That’s the puzzle. The final piece. What Ivy has been trying to figure out. To feed on your own creations will put them to sleep forever, but make you immortal without having to feed, going outside of life and death. But to feed on your own creator makes you human once more, restoring life and death. Congratulations, Matt. You’re going to die again one day.”
The expression on his face was priceless.
“No. How could you do that? Now we’re definitely separated.”
He looked even worse than before, but the situation was about to get much worse than even that.
“It was what was always going to happen. I had to figure it out. You helped me. But, Matt, listen carefully. There is one thing I need you to do right now.”
He looked hopeful, his eyes lighting up, feeling like this situation could be redeemed. But I had only had one thought in mind.
“Run.”
2
“I mean it. Get out of here, Matt. You’re in danger. They’ll eventually figure out you’re human. You have to go.”
The shock of what I was saying coupled with the shock of what had just happened made him hesitate for a moment.
“But, I might never see you again.”
I knew this, and I knew it well. But it was the risk I had to take.
“I know,” I said, this time coming toward him. “But I might just make it out.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Are you going to try to drink Ivy’s blood?”
I answered as honestly as I could.
“I don’t know.”
I knew I wanted to. I thought anyway, but how I would do that remained... unclear. I didn’t know where I was going from here, but I knew Matt was now human again, and this was more of a separation than death would ever be for us.
What had once drawn us together was now a great divide. Immortal and mortal. If I couldn’t restore my humanity, it was over for us, even if I lived. Time would not be kind to us, and eventually it would separate us anyway. It was over.
A tear passed the threshold of my eye and fell onto my cheek. Just one, but it was enough to make me feel all the things that I had felt about Matt that would not come to the surface.
I loved him.
And that was why I had set him free.
Even if it meant I couldn’t have him.
If I didn’t do this—become human again—I didn’t know how I would ever go back to hunting the way I used to. It would be unbearable—the nights, the stalking, the feeding. I couldn’t do it, didn’t really want to anymore, the thing that used to sustain me would kill me.
So maybe I should just die now.
Become human or die in the light.
Really, it was a win, win.
I couldn’t say the thing I really wanted to say to Matt. So I didn’t say anything.
I beckoned him close and kissed him for maybe the last time.
What the future held, I didn’t know. I just knew what I needed to do right now.
“Go,” I said.
Matt grabbed his few possessions and backed away from me slowly, toward the door, looking like he wanted to stay, but knowing that certainly meant death.
I smiled and hoped I was communicating that everything would be okay. Whatever that was. Whatever happened.
He was my first creation, and my last, and I had figured out how to let him go.
He smiled too.
Then he grabbed the doorknob and pulled it, slipping out into the stone corridor, and was gone.
For me, maybe forever.
I sat down on the bed and the tears started. Not just one, but many sliding down my face, making me wet.
And I cried, not just for the loss of Matt, but the loss of the years, of the daylight, of my emotions and my humanity.
I cried for my life.
3
I waited.
Knowing that they would eventually come for me.
There was a knock on the door, and the formality of it surprised me. When I opened it, it wasn’t Ivy. It was Lucas.
He only nodded his head backward to indicate it was time for me to go. The hospitality, the reverence even, that I had been shown previously was gone. I was no longer of any use. I even wondered if Ivy would be there when I died.
I didn’t know where Lola and Kace were. They had probably been kicked out already.
It was just me, alone. As I had always been.
I didn’t worry about my stuff. I would no longer need it and they could divvy it up or throw it away or whatever. I didn’t care.
It was a blur from my room to the car. Through the stone passageways, out into the main area of the house, out the back.
For a few seconds, I thought about the passages we had found above the underground maze, how close we had come to figuring things out and stopping Ivy.
But we had been stopped short and I was in the position that I was always meant to be in.
Ready to die.
At the moment, I wasn’t too worried about the pain, but that would change when I was tied up in the middle of that warehouse, the sunrise coming for me.
If dawn was ever the hope of mankind, it was my salvation now because it would destroy me, destroy what I had become and in some way, I would die a mortal.
I would become human.
My desire fulfilled.
It’s funny how you think something means a certain thing, only to find out otherwise.
I had just assumed, well hoped really, that I might actually live as a human again. That I might walk this Earth without needing to drink blood, that I could grow old and love and walk around during the day. And that wasn’t to be.
Bored To Death_A Vampire Thriller Page 24