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“Do what you wish,” I answered with a plain, disappointed tone. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes, “I’d like to be alone now, Warren. I have to clean up this mess that I made.” Although that mess could be any number of things I orchestrated tonight.

His sigh was loud and full of regret. I could see him shifting on either foot uncomfortably.

“You did the right thing for us,” he said as if he was trying to convince himself of that. He would get over it the minute she opened her eyes. He never would have to live with the decision to push venom into her veins, to make her a creature of the night against her will. No, that feeling would always and forever more be mine to keep.

“Yes, I suppose I did,” I mused, “But I don’t know if we did the right thing for her.”

We were selfish, but I almost felt a wave of relief roll through me as Warren scoffed before carrying our girl down the hall toward one of the bedrooms to rest. Cecelia would live. She would have every reason to be cruel and every right to be upset. She could leave us, she could kill us.

But at least I didn’t have to see her die. It might have almost been worth it, at the end of it all.

42

CECELIA

Something had changed.

The blinding fire inside me had begun to slow, my body being wrapped up in a blanket of weightlessness. The end had been coming for me, a final darkness calling my name from the end of whatever tunnel I was trapped in.

But then it stopped.

For a moment, everything stopped. I prayed that it was the end, the torture of my pitiful human life finally coming to its conclusion.

And then.. Everything.

Everything was happening all at once.

Like someone had lit a match and dropped it on my kerosene soaked body, I was nothing but flames and fury. I screamed against the prison I was being held in, throwing my mind against the bars of my own thoughts and letting myself rage.

I became a bodily manifestation of ferocity as I fought against the frenzy taking hold of my body.

I fought.

And fought.

And fought.

But my screams remained silent and my body was a husk of what it was. I was nothing but a consciousness in a fiery hell.

* * *

Time meant nothing to me.I had once counted down the days, minutes, years, of my life like the clock of my life was ticking away and I was standing still. I felt like every turn of the hand, every grain of sand emptying my hourglass, meant the end of a life I hadn’t even begun living.

It was so stupidly, humanly naive of me.

Time only ran out when you had vampire venom in your veins, replacing the blood that once pumped there. Time was nothing compared to a parasite eating you alive, draining your existence until you were nothing but a puppet.

Time… What a crazy, human concept.

* * *

I was being claimed.I could feel it in my soul, the very core of my being; the parasite was working its way to my heart, which had stopped beating minutes ago.

Venom, previously a flaming inferno I couldn’t escape, now coated my system like ice, freezing my body in time.

Vampires didn’t need time because they didn’t age…

I didn’t need time anymore either.