Beta: Allison Cullen
The Evolution of Breaking Bonds
Chapter 2
Identity
I open my eyes to see where the wind has taken me. I groan as I open my eyes and realize that the wind has brought me to a god damned cemetery. “What the hell? Why here?” I shake my head and look around at the rows of headstones. “Fuck awesome. Nothing says good time like hanging with the dead.”
Who knows, maybe it’s a sign.
The cemetery is large and there are plenty of big, old trees to provide me a lot of cover. I see a sign across the small road that leads around the cemetery, and I realize I am still in Massachusetts. By the dense air and sounds of heavy traffic I know I am very close to the city. I spot a hospital across the street, and I can sense by the smell of fresh cut grass and sand there is a golf course close by as well.
Maybe this isn’t such a great location.
It may work, however it lacks one thing I am dying to have, a nice, hot, shower. I stay in shadow as I move silently through the cemetery, taking in my surroundings. I see that the golf course I smelled is right behind the hospital, and then I see a small sign that catches my attention. I reach in my pocket and pull the coupon that I took earlier from the home of the kind people who’d helped the child. I look at the coupon and then look up at the store. They were the same.
I really need fresh clothes.
I close my eyes and cringe at the idea of taking something without paying. I feel so low at this point and I want to crawl in one of the graves and die. With a deep breath and against everything I believe I materialize inside the small store. I allow my cloak to conceal me in case the store is wired with cameras or security alarms.
I will only take what I need.
With that in mind I find a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a pack of undies. I know I have lost so much weight from not eating so I decide to try the clothes on, but when I catch my reflection I change my mind. It takes everything I have to stare in the mirror. Slowly I start to peel the dirty clothes from my body and I almost double over to heave the nothingness that my stomach has become. I study my skinny arms with disgust until my eyes wander to my hands. The tips of my fingers are tinged with red where they had bled from my clawing at the forest floor and the skin of my hands are cracked from the cold. Filth! Filth so deep I can’t even make out the tattoos that cover my arms, neck, chest and back. I can see the bones that make up my ribs and when I turn to see the back I can see my spine.
I am nothing that I use to be.
My hair is so matted and tangled it is half the length of what it should be, and it is dark as dirt, because that is what I have been laying in. Mud and dirt. I reluctantly pull back on my grimy clothes and return to shadow. I vow to myself to return and pay the owner back for what they have lost. When I am out of the store I look around for a hotel and being so close to the city it doesn’t take me long to fine one.
I take form in an alley, just outside the Hotel. I am not sure how to put thoughts and suggestions into human minds. My old family would tell me how they could manipulate the thoughts of humans because their minds are weak, much weaker than vampires. I am so desperate for a hot shower that I am willing to try.
With as much pride as I can muster up I come out of shadow and walk to the door of the hotel. I am surprised when the door man opens the door for me with a smile, even though I look like a street rat with a heavy drug addiction. The minute the desk clerk makes eye contact with me I hold his gaze in mine and begin to invade his mind with ideas and thoughts. When I reach the desk he nods, hands me a key and I go on my way.
I feel so horrible. No matter if human minds are weaker or not, I feel like I have no right to invade their privacy and take their free will away. Stricken by guilt I close my eyes and continue my walk of shame to the room that I just acquired wrongly, in shadow. The room I was given was on the top floor in the very back, this is fine with me because I don’t plan on staying long.
The minute I get inside the room I walk into the bathroom. I rip the dirty clothes from my body and will the shower to start. I almost cry when I see how stocked the hotel bathroom is. Shampoo, conditioner, a toothbrush with toothpaste. I had forgotten how nice it was to have those things at my disposal.
I step into the shower and I flinch and back away from the hot water when it first hits my skin. It feels like it has been forever since I have taken a hot shower, it’s not something my skin is used to. I slowly make my way back under the water, and now it feels much better. Soothing. It dawns on me that I might take longer than I had anticipated. The water is almost black as I wash the dirt, mud and debris from my hair. I wash it twice, because it feels so good and I am not sure how long it will be before I can do this again.
When I step out of the shower I feel so much better already. I brush my teeth, and then decide to brew some coffee for the simple reason of it being there at my disposal and it smells so good.
Like home.
When I get back into the bathroom I turn the bathroom light on and then I reach to turn it back off because even with a shower my reflection looks no better. I can see my tattoos again. Remnants of a destiny never reached. I let the towel that covers my body fall to the bathroom floor. I think for a moment that I need to do something about them, reflecting on a lost past I turn to see the story that continued on my back. When I lay my eyes on the scribed marking on my lower back I can’t breathe.
An acute pain shoots through my body from the bottom of my spine to my heart and then to my head.
“Fuck, I would give anything to see your face right now, to hear your voice.” My Lost Lover’s pull brings me to the floor below me. I can feel him; I can see him in my mind now, looking at me with his brilliant eyes and cocky smile. His mouth is moving but I can’t hear what he is trying to say. I don’t need to, I can feel it.
“No, I can’t baby.” I begin to cry because telling him I can’t do something for him kills me. “I’m sorry. I have to get up.”
I look in the mirror when I get to my feet. I run my fingers over the tattoo around my eye. This is what warns the world that I belonged to him. That I was more than just a woman. I was a protector, a guardian. I feel his pull again and I fight to keep upright, struggle inside against it.
“I have to get rid of them baby, but I will keep this one.” I try to breathe, it’s so hard because the tears are coming to fast, too hard. “I’m gonna keep this one.” I tell him as I run my fingers over the tattoo again. It’s almost as if I can see him ask why. “If I keep this one, I have to stay away. I’m so sorry Angel Mine.”
With determination and even through hard sobs I walk over to the phone and call the front desk. The lady who answers must feel bad for me, because she treats me as if I am a real paying guest. Not a crook, not a killer, not the lost bitch that I am. I tell her I need scissors and I order food while I am at it. I sit on the bed and breathe deeply to gain control over my emotions. It does not take long for the scissors to arrive and I am relieved to have something to divert my attention. I’m ready to start the evolution from my past. I think. I answer the door in my towel and the young man who brings them greets me with a smile. I nod, take the scissors and close the door.
I remove the towel from my head as I walk into the bathroom. I comb through it quickly with the comb that comes with the room and then I raise chunks of it, and cut it free. I can’t keep the tears back as I see my Lost Lovers hand gently running through my hair all those many nights we spent together, lying in bed, watching, adoring each other. I feel like I am cutting something he loved from me, and this idea is tearing me apart with each chunk of hair that falls to the bathroom floor.
By the time I am done with my hair I hear a knock at the hotel room door. I can smell the food and I feel my stomach rumble. When I answer the door I insist on pulling the cart into the room, and hotel employee doesn’t put up a fight.
It doesn’t take me long to eat the food, I eat it too quickly to really taste it, but I don’t think anything of it. Nothing is really important right now; at least that’s how it feels. I push the cart into the hallway and then I think about what I am about to do next. I shake the tears back, because god damn it, I’m not gonna cry again. Pulling the towel from my body one more time, I turn in the mirror and look at my tattoos one last time. These were the same tattoos that started as dreams and turned into the ink I see now. I mapped my destiny I thought; now they all just seemed my dreams.
Nothing more. Christ why couldn’t I have seen this? I guess it wouldn’t have mattered though, wouldn’t have changed anything. I guess.
With my foot I move the towel to cover the gap under the door. I don’t want any light to escape. I don’t want any unwanted attention. I close my eyes and allow my aura to build around the top of my head and slowly permit it to seep down. I can feel it move over my body, and each inch it moves I can feel my tattoos being pushed deeper into my skin, until they are gone. I can feel the aura moving down my back and right before it gets to the tattoo on my lower back, I open my eyes and look at it in the mirror one last time. I start to feel his pull. I close my eyes and turn my head away from the mirror.
“I’m sorry.” I can barely even whisper, before I allow my aura to wipe the tattoo that I received on the day of my mating. The pain is unbearable. I lose feeling in my legs and I collapse to the bathroom floor bawling.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh god, please forgive me. I didn’t want to lose you. It hurts me so much to live without you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
I don’t know how long I lay there sobbing. Apologizing in my head over and over, eventually I get to my knees to crawl towards the bed. I curl up under the covers and let myself sleep.
When I wake up I stretch and glance at the clock on the bed side table. I slept for 4 hours, that is the longest I have slept since I left my Lost Lover. I can already feel that I am going to have to feed soon, and I honest to god don’t know how I am going to do it. I think about what I have done, erasing the life that was etched on my body, it still hurt like hell, but the life those tattoos reminded me of, hurt far worse.
Pushing the rising pain I can feel building at the base of my skull, I get up and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I look in the mirror and realized I had cut off more of my hair than I had intended. It used to hang over my ass, but now it’s just a few inches past my shoulders. I realize I need so much, just in personal hygiene items alone, and I have no idea how I am going to do that either. I shake my head at myself and figure the best place to start to do anything is by getting dressed.
Dealing with all this shit is just too fucking hard.
When I am done getting dressed I walk over and pick up the clothes that I had worn for so long, torn and dirty. The last time he’d kissed me I was wearing these; the last time I held my children I was wearing these clothes. I find that I don’t want to get rid of them, but decide to rip a small piece of the shirt free. I pull it to my nose and inhale deeply. I can still smell them.
Every last one of them.
With the old clothes in my hand I walk over to the window and open it as wide as I can. I summon all my energy and watch as the clothes burst into blue flames and quickly turn into dust. I watch as the wind carries the ashes from my hands into the night sky. I can feel the tears in my eyes, falling down my check, but I won’t give into the sorrow this time. I feel my Lost Lovers pull.
“I’m not letting you go. This was just something I needed to do.”
Right as I am about to close the window and pack as much of the hotel’s generous freebies as I can, I feel my fangs elongate, and I smell blood, and judging by how strong the blood is, it’s close, and a lot of it. I can feel my instincts kick in and I go deep into shadow and follow the scent. When I materialize I look down to my feet and I see a human, dead with almost his entire throat missing. Even though I am hungry with thirst, the brutality of the human’s death makes me sick to my stomach. I followed the groans and growls that are coming from around the corner. I see three monsters fighting over a small female body. She is bleeding on the pavement. They are fighting over her, feeding from her, draining her dry.
I can feel my blood start to boil. I can also feel that these monsters are vampires, but nothing like me. Nothing like my family or the alliesI had made once. They are crazy, driven by an extreme hunger and desire to do horrid things. I growl thinking of how the humans must have been terrified before these fuck nuts took their lives. When they raise their heads toward me their eyes are the colors of burning embers, and they have a vertical slit in their eyes, just as feral as a cat.
I step toward them and decide they were not going home tonight, no matter where they were from. I refuse to let them kill like this again. The first and the biggest stood and growled at me, challenging to protect his prey. I could see that there is no turning back for me now, I either have to stay and fight, or turn and die. I am next on their menu.
“Too fucking bad, motherfuckers.” I tell them with a smile because I have already decided on their fate.
I let large amounts of hate and anger fill my heart. It is the same feelings they are projecting toward me. They hate the sight of me, and they want me dead. I will use their anger and bloodlust to my advantage. All they can think about is protecting their kill. All I can think about is killing them. I act quickly, paralyzing them with small volts of electricity and I grab the biggest one of the three and rip his head from his body. I hiss as I realize that didn’t kill him. I summon even more of a charge in my body and send a blast of heat that not only turns the monster I just decapitated into ashes, and takes one of his friends with him.
I grab the third monster by his neck and slam his body against the brick wall on one side, then swing his body and toss him against the other brick wall face first. I growl and hiss, then go into a crouch. I give him no time to react and I jump onto his back. I am so overwhelmed with the situation, with the smell of the human blood, with the throbbing of my fangs, that for reasons I am unclear of, I pull his head back and sink my fangs into the monsters neck with brutal force.
Even though I know what I am doing is wrong I can’t ignore the power I already feel surging through my body from his strong, toxic blood. It burns my throat going down, like cheap whiskey. I can feel my body absorbing every cell. I can feel a forceful power building in my stomach. I release the monster I just drained dry and turn him to ash. I stumble back because already the power is strong. It has been a long time since I felt this. I can feel it’s not the same. Different, but too much for me at this moment in my life. This new building pressure scares me so I close my eyes and throw myself at the mercy of the wind.
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It is hard for me to watch her struggle, watch her try to hide who she is because she feels as if she can’t continue to be that person without her Lost Lover. I almost can’t take it when she breaks down and calls out to him. I wish they could to be together, for her, my child, I wish nothing but good. I begin to see a new purpose, a new era with Alelan, this vision drives me to change the course of her travels and close my eyes. It will be over soon Alelan, soon my child.
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