by Gray, Sophia
I thought about jumping on him and finishing the job, but I didn’t think that I was up to it. How could I kill Ben? Even if he was no longer the boy I’d known, I didn’t think that I’d be able to stare him in his blue eyes that I knew so well and watch the life fade from them.
I turned around and fled with all my speed. I didn’t look back, but just tried to keep myself steady as I navigated through the trees. I thought I knew my way back, but when I reached the mountain it was at an unfamiliar point. I fell against the wall, unable to carry on.
Bringing my knees to my chest, I sobbed. My best friend wanted me dead. My best friend, the boy who had made my life bearable for so long wanted to fire a crossbow-bolt through my heart. Why? I thought. Why would he want to do such a thing? What had I ever done to him?
I’d left him for Galahad; that was true, but he seemed to hate me, and not just that, but the way he’d spoken had given me the impression that he hated all vampires. He was no longer the boy I had once known and I had to accept that, I told myself as I wiped my eyes and stood up.
I tried to remember which direction the entrance was, but I was disoriented from running away from Ben and couldn’t figure it out. I stepped back and looked at the mountain, hoping maybe that it would give me a clue, but all I saw was a sheer lump of rock, much the same in one direction as it was in the other.
After a few minutes of pondering, something occurred to me. I knew Galahad’s scent well; I had made love to him and embraced him so many times that it wasn’t hard to recall it now. I sniffed the air, and the tiniest modicum of his scent drifted up my nose. It was to the left, I decided, after some deliberation.
I wasn’t completely sure, but it was better than standing around waiting for Ben to catch up with me. I wasn’t scared that he’d kill me; I was scared that I’d have to kill him. Even though he clearly was deranged and no longer the person I’d once known, the thought of killing him still unnerved me. I couldn’t kill Ben. Ben was my best friend. How the hell could I kill my best friend?
I laughed. That was exactly what Ben was willing to do, I reflected. He wanted to kill me. Over these past few months I’d thought that I had changed so much, but now I realised that compared to Ben I was virtually the same scared little girl that I’d always been. He had changed so much that he was no longer recognisable; I still felt like crying when I thought about taking his life.
What was I thinking? I thought when I recalled how I’d let him kiss me and nearly make love to me. His kiss had been strong, and it had awoken a passion in me usually reserved for Galahad. I felt guilty, and scared when I thought about how Galahad would react. Would he cast me out? I hoped that he wouldn’t, but knew that I had to focus on the task at hand before thinking about that.
I sniffed again, and the scent was stronger. I was sure that I was going the right way now. I picked up my pace, eager to get to Galahad as quickly as I could. We were going to get married! The thought washed over me in a wave of happiness and hope, but then another thought struck me. When he found out that I’d kissed Ben, would he still want to marry me? I gulped and buried the thought. That could wait.
I stopped running and inhaled deeply. I was close now, very close. The night was so dark that without my vampire-smell I would have been completely lost. I took some solace in that; Ben had said that he was going to kill me, and every vampire that he saw, but he wouldn’t be able to follow until morning. I ran on, and after a few minutes I was at the climb.
An involuntary smile lifted my lips as I climbed. Even if Ben did somehow find the entrance to the Council of the Undead, how was he going to climb to it? The handholds were barely existent and it was sheer, and high so the drop was fatal . . . for a human, I thought, and my smile faltered; I hoped that he wasn’t foolish enough to attempt it. I didn’t want him to die, I realised, but neither did I want him in my life. I just wanted him to go away forever and leave me alone. I got the sense that he wouldn’t do that; he no longer cared for me. All he cared about was blood.
I was tired when I got to the top, and all I wanted to do was collapse and go to sleep, but I knew that I had to find Galahad and tell him what had happened. I entered the Council and followed the scent until I came to the main chamber. I was about to enter, but then I remembered that the Rites of the Undead were being spoken. I couldn’t interrupt them; they were too important.
The door to the main chamber was made of old, rotting wood, and was full of holes. I looked through one and watched the Rites of the Undead. Luckily the door was at the top of the room, so I had a clear view of everything that happened.
There were about ten people in the room, stood in a circle. They all wore robes, dark red like blood. As I watched, an old man, who looked like he would fall other at any minute if not for his walking-stick, read aloud from an ancient-looking scroll. “Vú crashní bú taá draegbanií túu!” he said.
The entire chamber repeated what he said aloud in unison, and then he set the scroll down. Looking around, he addressed the entire Council. “Those are the last of the words, brothers,” he said. A woman, my mother I realised, coughed. “And sisters,” the old man said, nodding his head, and my mother smiled.
Galahad stood next to her, his expression a mixture of boredom and restlessness. He sniffed the air, and then looked straight at me. I didn’t think he could see me through the door, but he smiled like he could, and I smiled back. He mouthed the words I sensed Isadora’s death. I can’t wait to marry you, and my heart swelled with happiness.
The old man continued. “It is the wish of the Council that vampires protect humankind as much as we can, and that we limit human deaths as much as possible. Of course there will always be casualties, but we are going to enforce the one-human-per-town-per-year rule more vigorously from now on, so hopefully that will curb their deaths to some degree.” He stopped and leant heavily on his walking stick, and I got the sense that he was very tired. “Has anyone any other points to raise?” When the Council was silent he smiled. “Okay then. The Council of the Undead is reformed. Our power is restored. Let us all praise Galahad for his efforts in this, for without him, and his master before him, the honourable and just Benjamin, we would not be here.”
The entire chamber said in unison, “PRAISE GALAHAD, THE RESTORER OF THE COUNCIL, AND BENJAMIN, THE SAVIOUR OF THE COUNCIL.”
With that they started to move out of the chamber and I hid in the shadows, in a little indent near in the corridor. The Council moved past me. Most of them were old men, but I was surprised to see a little girl and boy walking, hand in hand, out of the chamber. Eventually my mother and Galahad reached me.
Galahad embraced me, and I hugged him tightly. My mother was smiling. “Zoey, we will marry soon,” he said. “This very evening!”
This was the happiest I’d ever seen him, and it took immense effort to pull away from him. “Wait,” I said. “There is something I must tell you first.”
“What is it my love?” His smile faltered a little.
“Not here,” I said. “Let’s go to my room.”
#
“You did what?” he said. His rage was obvious. I was sitting on my bed and he was stood up, but when I told him he slumped to the floor and started to shake. I felt horrid then, watching him. He wasn’t crying, but it looked like he could at any moment.
“I kissed him, and I nearly made love to him, but then a blood frenzy took control of me.” Part of me wanted to lie and say that I’d stopped myself, but that dishonesty would only be destructive; it would eat away at me and the guilt would lead to me eventually telling him, which would just make it worse.
“I was going to marry you . . .” He trailed off, and was silent for several minutes. My heart lurched in my chest. He was going to marry me? Did he not want to now? I didn’t know why I was so surprised. How would I have reacted if he’d kissed and nearly made love to another woman? I suspected that I would be just as angry as him.
“You still can,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady,
but failing. I wanted to reach out to him, to feel his skin against mine and the soft firmness of his touch, but I knew that I had to give him space for a while.
What had I been thinking? Why would I risk everything I loved for a few measly seconds of pleasure? It made no sense to me now, but at the time I hadn’t been thinking about Galahad or the ramifications of my actions; at the time I hadn’t been thinking about much at all.
I felt like such an idiot. I had had the opportunity to marry the man I loved, and I’d risked it for nothing—that’s what my brief exchange with Ben had been, I realised, nothing but a huge mistake. “I’m sorry,” I said, and now the fight to stop myself from crying was futile. I broke down, sobbing lightly at first, but then hard.
Each sob made my whole body convulse and my eyes ache. Galahad didn’t move, but I could see that my crying was making him uncomfortable. I felt bad; I didn’t want him to forgive me just because I cried, so I forced myself to stop. It was hard, but eventually the tears subsided. My heart still pounded in my ears, and I knew that Galahad could hear that, his vampire-hearing making it clearly audible.
Galahad had been still now for around twenty minutes and hadn’t said a word. It worried me. If he’d shouted at me or cried or said he never wanted to see me again then I would’ve taken it, but this silence was harder to deal with.
Now that I’d stopped crying he no longer looked uncomfortable. His face was one of boredom. A thought struck me then, and made me want to burst into tears all over again. What if he didn’t care about me anymore? What if now that I’d betrayed his trust he’d decided that he’d no longer love me? Could you do that, decide that you no longer loved someone? I didn’t think that you could, but looking at him in that moment, the coldness on his face and the stillness of his body, I wouldn’t have found it hard to believe.
I waited a few more minutes and then spoke, daring to break the silence. “Galahad, talk to me, please.”
He opened his mouth and I thought that he was going to talk, but then he screamed. The scream was terrifying. It was low and powerful, and I thought he was going to attack me. When he did spring to his feet, it wasn’t me that he struck, but the wall.
He pounded it relentlessly. He did this, screaming, the room filling with the scent of his blood, for a long time. I tried to stop him at one point, but he turned his eyes on me and I lost my nerve. Eventually he stopped screaming, but he didn’t stop striking the wall. The thud, thud, thud of his fists frightened me, each one louder and more dangerous-sounding than the last; I thought that he was going to seriously hurt himself.
At first I was angry and scared. What was he doing? Why would he do something so self-destructive? But then I realised that this was just his way of letting out his anger, and that I’d done the exact same thing. When he’d lied to me about Isadora I too had punched my hands bloody on the wall. All I could hope for was that he would forgive me like I’d forgiven him.
Eventually he stopped and collapsed to his knees, and started to cry. His sobs were guttural. He turned and faced me, his eyes full of tears. When he wiped them away, I was startled by how bloody his hand was. “I still love you,” he said. “And I still want to marry you. But you never do this to me again.”
I walked across the room and fell into his arms. “Never, I promise,” I said. “I love you too.”
We cried together until we couldn’t cry anymore.
#
I packed up all my things as quickly as I could. My sleeping bag and tent and other non-essential gear I hid under a bush, planning to come back to it later. I took my knife and my crossbow, and a handgun that Johnny had given me; he’d told me to only use it if absolutely necessary, as the vampires would hear it and hone in on me.
As I packed my mind wondered. I didn’t know who I was anymore; less than twelve hours ago I had been in love with Zoey, or so I thought I had, but now I didn’t feel a thing for her, except a cold desire to kill. I didn’t know where this desire came from, but I suspected that it was my training with Johnny; he had taught me to kill vampires, and that was what I was going to do. It didn’t matter that he had betrayed me and everything he’d stood for. His message was still valid even if the man himself was not.
I was a psychopath. The thought had occurred to me before, after I had killed my father and felt nothing, but now I was sure. My father had been a horrible man and I had felt nothing but loathing for him, but Johnny had been like the father I’d never had. I should’ve felt something for him, guilt at having taken his life, but I didn’t. I just felt coldness, emptiness and nothingness in my heart.
I wondered when that’d happened. Once I’d been full of love; I’d loved Zoey with everything I had. A memory came back to me; the day when I had bought her a chocolate bar, the day all this craziness had started. I had been so excited. I had chosen that type of chocolate especially because I knew it was her favourite and that she’d enjoy it. I’d had to steal money from my father to pay for it, and when he’d found out he’d beat me bloody, but it had been worth it just to see the smile on her face. Now that memory filled me with disgust. Why had I put myself through pain just to give someone a chocolate bar? It made no sense to me now; the very concept of love now seemed a bizarre notion reserved for teen movies.
I was a killer. That was the only identity that I needed. Before I had latched onto my love for Zoey as my defining feature; my life had been so unbearable that the only way of coping had been to devote myself to her, but now I no longer needed that. All I needed was a goal, and I had one; I was going to kill every vampire I came across, starting with everyone in the Council of the Undead.
I shouldered my crossbow and tightened my belt, and set out into the forest. Zoey’s tracks were laughably easy to follow. She clearly had made no effort to hide them. She had been moving fast, I could tell. Somewhere along the way I got confused because her tracks crossed with what I assumed were Isadora’s, but then I found the trail again. Eventually I ended up at the bottom of a mountain.
I looked up. There was no entrance that I could see. I examined the tracks once more. She’d rested here for a time, it looked like, and then she’d moved on to the left, hugging close to the mountain. I followed. The sky was clear and the sun burnt down brightly, so it was an easy task. I stopped at the bottom of a sheer rock-face.
I examined it. There were very few handholds and the ones that there were, were small and looked difficult to grasp. Johnny had taught me how to climb, knowing that the Council of the Undead headquarters were in a mountain, but this was beyond anything he’d prepared me for. Plus we’d lost our climbing equipment a while back, so I’d have to go without. I swallowed deeply, fear crawling up my back. If I fell I’d die, but what else was I supposed to do? I wasn’t exactly going to turn back and return home. There was nothing for me there. This was all I had now.
I had to make the climb.
As I climbed I remembered fucking Isadora. It had been a strange experience. I’d known that I was going to kill her even as I’d started, and yet it hadn’t stopped me. If anything, it was more enjoyable for that fact. I’d heard people say that one’s first time should be special and things like that before, but I didn’t know what they were talking about after having sex with her. It wasn’t special; it was just something I did because I could.
My fingers were burning as I wedged them into each handhold. My legs were on fire too, each lunge causing them to ache painfully. Sweat caked my body, and I wished that I’d discarded my crossbow; it was extremely heavy and weighing me down. I would need it when I got into the Council, I knew, but right now I would’ve happily done without it. I contemplated dropping it, but I would’ve had to manoeuvre myself into an awkward position and risked falling. I gritted my teeth and carried on.
I was about half way up when I nearly fell. Both my feet slipped and I nearly lost my grip on the handholds. The muscles in my arm strained horribly as I held myself up. My heart was thumping in my chest. I scrabbled to get my feet on the wall, but I
couldn’t find anywhere to put them. Each passing second my grip was slipping. In the confusion the crossbow fell off my back. I cursed. Now I’d be forced to use the handgun or my knives. I wondered if it was worth going down to get it, but knew that that was madness. I was tired, and making the climb again would be too much.
Eventually I managed to get a hold on the wall and steady myself. I was breathing heavily and a wave of rage washed over me. It wasn’t a haze of anger that I used to experience when I was weak and allowed my father to beat me; it was the focused, honed anger that I’d experienced when I’d throttled my father to death. I was angry, and I would take that anger out on whichever vampire I saw first.
I reached up to the next handhold. I was nearly at the top.
#
We stood in the main Council chambers. I looked around. Every Council member was here. I’d asked Galahad about the little girl and boy, and he startled me by telling me that they were the oldest vampires in the room. I found that odd, seeing as most of them were old men, but he just smiled and said, “The old men were old men when they were turned. The children were children when they were turned.”