“He’s beautiful,” I started to say, completely drained of energy, and then I screamed again.
Dr. Crane looked perplexed. He wrapped up my son and laid him in a basinet. His cries rang in my ears. My arms reached out weakly for him. I wanted my baby.
I screamed again and clutched my mid-section. What was going on? What was happening to me?
I had thought I was fine. I had thought Jonathon was just overreacting about the labor killing me. Little man had come out fine. Except for the broken pelvis.
But this? It felt like my insides were being torn apart. My lungs were doing overtime. I couldn’t get enough oxygen. I knew I was dying. I had gotten my hopes up, thought I could stay human, but that wasn’t the case. Jonathon hadn’t lied like he had about so much else. My sweet little baby was going to be my death.
Dr. Crane sat down again and seemed to pale. “What is it?” Jonathon and I asked at the same time. I looked at my husband and saw that his relief had turned to horror.
“There’s another baby,” he gasped in astonishment.
“What?!” we screamed this time.
“I can’t do this again,” I whispered and my heartbeat seemed to affirm that. “I won’t make it,” I looked up at Jonathon.
The look he gave me was of pure horror. “No,” he growled. “You’re stronger than you think. You can do this! You can pull through! I know you can! I believe in you! I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you.” I kissed him with as much passion as I could muster, which wasn’t much. All my energy was gone and I knew I was going to die this time.
Jonathon’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. “This isn’t the end,” he gasped. “It can’t be.”
I looked at Dr. Crane. “Let’s get this boy out,” I said with a resolve I didn’t know I had.
He nodded solemnly.
With my next contraction, and a deep breath, I pushed as hard as I could.
I heard a gasp. “I can’t believe it,” murmured the doctor.
I was fading and quickly. It felt like my insides had been ripped apart. I took a gurgling breath. My throat was filling with blood. I had thought that I was going to make it but I wasn’t. The second baby had taken the last of my energy and in the process my life. My body had been able to handle one baby but not two. I didn’t know how Amelia had survived this.
Jonathon’s teeth bit into my neck and I could feel the venom entering my bloodstream. “Stay with me,” he whispered.
“I… love…you…”
I wasn’t sure if I said the words out loud, or just in my head. In the end, it didn’t really matter.
My heart stopped beating.
Chapter Fourteen: Burning
I was in hell. There was no other explanation for the heat. The burning in my veins was unbearable. I thought I knew pain. I thought giving birth to my sons was the most painful experience I would ever endure. How wrong I was.
My body began to shake and convulse and it was out of my control.
I wanted to cry. What had I done to deserve going to hell? I was a good person wasn’t I?
But then I felt my heart beating way too fast. I thought it would beat right out of my chest. But if I was dying, why was my heart beating?
Then it clicked into place.
I was changing.
I was becoming a vampire.
My throat began to burn and ache and I screamed with the pain as the flames consumed me. It was ironic in a way, this burning. You had to burn in order to become a vampire and one of the only ways to truly kill a vampire was to burn them. If I hadn’t been in so much pain I would have laughed.
But the fire wasn’t going away. It was only getting stronger. I could hear voices but I couldn’t make out their words.
I clenched my teeth to try and quiet my scream. It helped… some.
I kept my eyes closed but behind my lids it felt like they were about to burst. And I was so thirsty.
My whole body shook uncontrollably from the pain.
“Make it stop!” I screamed. “It burns!”
I felt a cold hand touch my skin but it did nothing to cool the burning. “Principessa, you’ll be fine. I promessa. It will stop soon.”
I screamed again and my body shook with it. My back arched up off the table and slammed back down. I had no control over my own body.
“I changed my mind! I changed my mind!” I screamed through clenched teeth. “I want to stay human! Make it stop! Please!”
I felt a hand brush my forehead and assumed it must be Jonathon. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed and felt his hand fall away. “I hate you!” I spat, still not opening my eyes.
I couldn’t believe he’d done this to me. How could you put someone you loved, through this amount of pain?
“Patrick?” I heard Jonathon ask.
“Ignore her. It’s the venom. Surly you remember your own transformation? You sounded just like her and I do believe that you said that you hated me during the process,” said Patrick and I screamed at his words. How dare he talk about me like I couldn’t hear him!
The pain was unbearable. I hadn’t thought my veins could get hotter but they did. I was sure the pain was about to split me apart and my body was going to shatter into millions of pieces.
And Gabriel had been right. I was on fire but I was cold too. My limbs shook uncontrollably in violent tremors. I screamed and hissed and cussed and clawed at anything I could get my hands on.
The burning was all consuming. It was all I could think about. I couldn’t even conjure up the image of my son. I hadn’t even had a chance to see my second son. But right now they didn’t matter. In fact, with the venom coursing through my veins, I hated them too. If I hadn’t been dead set on having a baby I could have stayed human. I shook my head and screamed again. Even without them I had made my choice to be by Jonathon’s side forever.
This had to stop eventually but it felt like it was never going to stop. I didn’t see how hell could be worse than this.
The pain radiated from every limb and every pore. It was everywhere and therefore I couldn’t escape it.
“Kill me! Please! I don’t want this! It hurts! It burns! Kill me!” I begged them but my words fell upon deaf ears.
They stopped talking after that. I heard the door open and close and I knew that Patrick had left.
“I’m so sorry,” said Jonathon. I could hear the agony in his voice and for just a moment the burning stopped. I was hurting him. I was always hurting him. When would it stop? I didn’t deserve him. Not at all. I was hateful and resentful where he was kind and forgiving. I resolved to not speak anymore but I couldn’t control my screams.
Hours, or maybe days, later he spoke again. “Principessa, we’re going to have to move you. We have to get you home. Dr. Crane was supposed to deliver the baby—babies—at home but there wasn’t enough time. We can’t risk you attacking an innocent.”
I screamed. They were going to move me! I squished my eyes tighter shut as I felt his arms wrap around me. My heart was beating so fast that it hurt my ears.
“Don’t worry it’ll be over soon,” he whispered. I didn’t believe him.
I heard Joseph and Patrick come into the room.
“How are we going to get her out of here?” Joseph asked.
“I don’t know,” growled Jonathon and the vibrations sent me screaming again. My skin was so sensitive to their touch that the pain was increasing.
“The stairs are clear,” sounded the high soprano voice of Diana. I screamed again. “You’re going to have to shut her up though.”
“Really?” asked Jonathon sarcastically.
I felt one of the vampires grab my ankles and another my arms so that I was held immobile and then a hand clamped down on my mouth. It stifled my screams.
They tried to hold me as still as they could but every jostle felt like hundreds of needles being jabbed into me. I continued to scream despite my best efforts to stop. Finally, they pulled me into a car but kept their hold on
me so that I couldn’t get loose.
I finally opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn’t. My eyes were ready to burst and my sight was already changing. I could tell that I was getting closer to being a vampire than a human. Everything was so bright, but blurry somehow, like a film still covered them. I felt like throwing up. I closed my eyes again and decided to not open them again until the whole process was over.
When the car stopped I screamed again and then when they pulled me from the car I thrashed, trying to get away.
They finally laid me down on a bed, I didn’t know where, and I didn’t care. I clenched my teeth and screamed again. I heard the scraping of a chair against the floor and the sound of someone sitting down. I assumed it was Jonathon.
Violent bright pulsing flames consumed my body. The fire danced behind my closed eye lids and I screamed and clawed at my own face. Eventually, as the flames shook me, I cried. I wanted it to end but I knew it never would. I was damned now. I clenched my teeth as I burned. Idly, in the back of my mind I thought of the Salem witch trials and how they were burned at the stake. I was jealous of them. The flames consumed them and they died where as my internal fire raged on and on and on.
Hours passed and I continued to scream and thrash. Everything hurt. And then, as the venom made its way through my body, I could feel my pelvis bone knitting back together. I screamed the loudest then. I wanted to cry, but already my tear ducts were dried up.
I would have welcomed death at any time. Any reprieve from the burning. But death didn’t come. Just as it never would. I was joining the life of horror stories. I was becoming a myth, a monster.
My heart thudded violently in my chest.
I began to hear things that didn’t seem possible. In fact, I could hear everything. It was extremely disorienting but I still refused to open my eyes again and put sight to the noises that I was hearing.
I felt the venom make its way down to my toes.
I shook violently and screamed again. In the back of my mind I wondered how I didn’t lose my voice with all the screaming I was doing.
The cold fire in my veins lessened. I knew the fire was leaving. But I didn’t know how long it would take. I clenched my teeth to stifle my final scream.
With one last resounding thud my heart stopped all together.
But I wasn’t dead.
My eternal life was only beginning.
I opened my eyes to my new life.
* * *
My first thought was that I could see and hear everything.
My second thought was, poor Jonathon, what must I have done to him?
My third thought was that I was absolutely starving. Or was parched the right word? It felt like a porcupine had been shoved down my throat.
“Principessa,” he breathed but didn’t move.
Despite the aching thirst in my throat I was surprised to find that I still felt like my normal sarcastic self.
I noticed that I was still wearing the hospital gown. I pulled it away from my body. “Ugh, could you have not put me in something a little less… revealing?”
He chuckled. “I explicitly remember you telling me not to touch you.”
“Didn’t you have to touch me to get me here?” I countered.
“Touché,” his smile was hesitant, as if he was waiting for me to start screaming again.
I looked around his room, our room, with new eyes. His paintings that I had loved and admired so much before, when I was human, now seemed to glow with some kind of internal light. I could see every grain and knot in the wood beams above my head. I saw every separate fiber in the blanket on the bed. I could see every dust mote floating through the air…they looked like little balls of rainbows. I noticed that the colors were so much more vibrant.
“Wow,” I murmured.
“It’s quite something isn’t it?”
“Quite,” I agreed. I sat up slowly. Or did I? It seemed like my movements had blurred. “Whoa.”
“You’ll get used to it,” he explained. “You’ll learn to control your movements to match a human pace.”
A thought occurred to me. “I… I still feel like me…” I patted my arms and my face. “I didn’t expect that.”
“I didn’t tell you much about the process of becoming a vampire or how you would feel after simply because it’s different for everyone. You seem to be handling it exceptionally well. I’m very proud.”
“I’m sorry,” I frowned. “For the things that I said while I was… Well, you know.”
“Don’t apologize. I remember my own change and it was far from pleasant. It’s… I hated seeing you in so much pain.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured again. “I hate hurting you.”
He stood from the chair slowly and came to stand between my legs. He bent down to my eye level and took my face in his hands. “You’re even more beautiful than I ever thought possible. And getting hurt is a part of life,” he said and then his lips claimed mine.
This kiss was nothing like our others. My senses were so much stronger now. His delicious scent invaded my nostrils and his taste was like no other. He made my life complete, he was all I needed. He was my air, my food, my life. I realized I couldn’t feel the cold temperature of his skin anymore. We were the same now. I wasn’t breakable anymore. I was strong now. My skin was rock hard like his, impenetrable. He bit my bottom lip and his hand came around to cup my neck to hold me closer to him. He gasped and pulled away.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“You… you’re the… Patrick! Patrick come quick!” He called. A smile broke out across his face. I hadn’t seen him smile that big in a long time.
“What is it?” Patrick repeated my question as he entered the room. “Kylie,” he gasped, stopping in his tracks. “You look…”
“Isn’t she gorgeous? She was gorgeous before but now? It’s like a light had been turned on inside her,” Jonathon smiled proudly.
I raised my eyebrows. I had no clue what they were talking about but it couldn’t be me. I was covered in my bloody hospital gown and I had been writhing in pain for days. I knew I had to look like the grossest thing ever.
“But that isn’t why I called you up here,” Jonathon danced giddily on the balls of his feet. What had gotten into him? “Look,” he pointed and lifted the hair off the back of my neck.
“Oh my,” Patrick gasped in shock and then he too smiled.
“Someone better tell me what in the hell is going on. I’m a vampire now and I’m not afraid to use my superhuman strength on either one of you,” I warned, pointing a finger at them.
Jonathon chuckled and Patrick joined in.
“Kylie, you truly are one of a kind,” Patrick looked at me with wide, astonish-filled eyes.
“Please, tell me. Is there something wrong with me?”
“No,” said Jonathon. “Everything is just great. Normally your symbol doesn’t show up until your first feeding and sometimes it can take days but you already have yours.”
“I do?!” I couldn’t contain my excitement.
“Yes,” he smiled. “A very rare, almost unheard of power.”
“Yeah, right,” I rolled my eyes and snorted.
His eyes twinkled. “Kylie…”
“Yes?” I asked. “Are you finally going to tell me what this very rare power is?”
“You’re the Seer,” he grinned proudly.
I laughed. “You’re kidding right?” I put a hand over my mouth to stifle my giggles.
“No, I’m most definitely not. You are the Seer. One of a kind. There hasn’t been another Seer since Simone. This is amazing. And it will be most helpful since the prophecy came true,” he whispered the last part.
“It came true?” I asked quietly.
“Yes,” he said and then smiled. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So, am I going to have visions or something? How does this work?”
Jonathon looked at Patrick.
“We’re not sure
. Simone was dead long before we were created. But I do know a vampire that would know,” said Patrick.
“Who?” I asked, and then I understood but he answered anyway.
“Gabriel.”
“Call him,” Jonathon commanded. “And find a way to get him here. I’ll tend to Kylie.”
“She needs blood,” said Patrick.
At the word ‘blood’ my mouth ached and watered. I felt a sharp stinging pain as my incisors began to elongate.
“Got it right here.” Jonathon pulled out a bag of blood. In the aftermath of waking up, and being desperate to know what my power was, I hadn’t smelled the blood. But now its scent threatened to consume me.
Before another word could be spoken I ripped the bag from Jonathon’s hand and sucked it down in one gulp, moaning in ecstasy.
Patrick was gone.
Jonathon chuckled. “Want another?”
“Yes,” I reached my fingers out, opening and closing them in a grabby motion.
I drained four more bags before my stomach finally felt full. But full wasn’t the right word. I was… satisfied, but the ache was still there. I rubbed my throat.
“It gets better,” Jonathon nodded in sympathy.
I smiled weakly.
“Why don’t you clean yourself up and then you can meet our children.”
I smiled. “I get to see them?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “They’re spectacular. You won’t hurt them, since they’re dhampir. They do have a heartbeat and blood runs through their veins but they don’t smell human.”
I smiled. “I can’t wait to see them.” Even if they had smelled human, I don’t see how I could have ever hurt them. They were my babies. Vampire or not, some emotions were impossible to ignore, and I could never look at my children as food. It was a relief though, to know that wasn’t an issue I needed to worry about.
“I’ll be here while you clean up,” he plopped on the bed, “and it’s going to be quite a shock when you look in the mirror so just be aware.”
I didn’t believe him so I just rolled my eyes and sauntered into the bathroom.
Forever (Fallen Series Book 3) Page 16