Both she and Solon look at me.
Holy fuck.
I swallow the brick in my throat. “So, then what? I tear a hole in her chest and Lenore gets her blood all over it?”
“It apparently worked with me,” Solon says.
I shake my head. There’s a part of me that actually has no problems with tearing into her like that, and that’s the part that makes me ashamed of who I am.
“This is sick,” I mutter, feeling disgusted.
“You’re not sick,” Solon says. “You’re a vampire.” He takes another step forward. “And more than that, you’re in love.”
“This is a fucked-up thing to do for someone you love,” I snarl.
“And love is a fucked-up thing that’s done to us,” he answers. “Wolf. It’s worth trying. Isn’t it?”
I stare down at her face in my hands.
Her sweet nose, her full lips, those soft cheeks, the freckles she gets on her forehead in the summer, the scar on her chin she’s always trying to cover up with makeup, her eyebrows that she’s strangely obsessed with, every part of her that makes her who she is.
She did this for me.
She told Lenore to turn her into a vampire.
She knew the risks and she did it for me.
This is the least I can do for her.
To make her sacrifice worth it.
I just have to make peace with being the animal that I am.
I take in a deep breath, then gently lift her head off my lap, lowering it on the tiles. I unfold my limbs, moving over her so that I’m positioned over her chest, my lips inches above her breastplate. Normally, I would feel the warmth of her skin without it even touching me, I would hear the strong beat of her heart, the song of her blood as it sings to me.
Now, there is only silence.
And that painful silence is what spurs me on.
I let the primal animal inside me take over, that hungry lizard brain that just wants to feed and fuck and nothing else. I erase my conscience for a moment and let my inner beast out. We all have that inner beast, and mine’s been buried for a while.
It happens fast.
The hunger flows through me like a river and suddenly my fangs are bared and I’m ravenous for blood, for her blood.
I bite her chest, hard, harder than humanly possible.
I crunch through skin and muscle and bone.
An animal.
A monster.
A vampire.
Tearing a hole in her chest.
I gorge and I bite and I drink her blood until it’s spilling down my throat and I can almost feel her sweetness swirling inside me, the beautiful essence of who she was, and it brings me out of my hunger for a moment, shocks me with sadness, and it’s then that I realize Solon is behind me, pulling me back and Lenore is yelling at me to stop.
I fall back onto the tiles, staring at the mess I made, the gruesome sight of Amethyst’s chest torn wide open, her heart exposed.
Her very still, very quiet heart.
Meanwhile, Lenore is biting herself again, not just her wrist this time but her forearms, both of them, a surprising show of violence. Blood pours from her wounds and she leans over Amethyst, red liquid covering her heart, trying to give her life.
Please fucking work, I think, feeling that animalistic violence inside me starting to fade. Please fucking work.
Come back to me, baby. Come back to me.
“Amethyst,” Lenore starts to plead as her blood fills the wound I left around her heart. “Come on. You can do this!”
Solon and I are holding our breath, watching, praying, wishing we could do something.
Hoping beyond hope.
“Amethyst, please!” Lenore screams, the desperation coming through.
Fuck.
I feel the light inside me start to drain, my heart wasting away.
I can’t…I can’t lose her…I…
“Amethyst,” I whisper, my voice hoarse and broken. A tear spilling over my cheekbone. “My love.”
My love.
Suddenly a loud gasp escapes from Amethyst’s open mouth, filling the room and Amethyst’s eyes widen as she takes in a ragged breath, her body jerking to life.
We all jump back a little.
“Holy shit,” Lenore cries out, bloody hands over her mouth.
Our surprise wants to melt into relief, because she’s alive.
But is she still Amethyst?
We’re still on edge.
Amethyst sits right up, gasping for air, looking around the bathroom with wild eyes, staring at us like she doesn’t know us, maybe she can’t even see us at all.
“Amethyst,” I say softly, trying to sound stronger than I am. “Amethyst.”
She brings her gaze over to me and I look into those violet eyes and I see her.
I see her.
Not a mad beast, not even a human.
I see her, as she is now. A vampire.
Perhaps as she was always meant to be.
“Wolf?” she cries out, trying to catch her breath as she stares at me, taking in my face like she’s trying to understand. Then she looks down at her chest. “Oh my god!”