He hadn't meant to.
But his predator instinct had sent him, once again, far from recovery. She had been so easy, so naive. Trust between the two of them had certainly flourished, and he betrayed it once more.
He felt nothing as he grabbed her around her shoulders, sinking his teeth into her warm flesh. If she struggled at all, he didn't notice, not then, anyways. Afterwards, he would remember every pleading cry, every movement of struggle, and it would tear him apart all over again, driving him back to the numbing insanity he never seemed to be able to run far from.
She was a lifeless, nameless form at beneath the lab table now. He hadn't even finished her, and blood was pooling around her neck, spreading a dark stain like an approaching nightfall. From a distance, he watched her die, watched her dead, vacant state take over her. Myrnin was ….. ashamed? Worried? Guilty?
No, he was too afraid to carry on without her. He promised to protect fragile, innocent little Claire, and the irony made him laugh; a terrifying noise that filled the void he was entrapped in, and overflow in the dark room.
He approached her.
Claire.
The silence was a seemingly taunting reply.
CLAIRE.
It knocked him off of his feet, sweeping him to the floor. He was just as dead as she, he realized, and he pulled himself to her, cradling her head into his arms.
His teeth ripped at his own petrified flesh, but the sound was distant, and almost comforting. He held it to her lips, watching carefully as the liquid began to seep into her mouth.
He waited hours for her to move.
Her phone rang again, and he grabbed it, hurling it across the room . He knew the boy would be here soon, and he knew well how it would end.
He had killed her mercilessly, and yet he was baffled as to why it tormented him so. He had felt responsible for Ada, and thus made her capable of living after he had killed her, but this was very different. Claire was not his lover. She had always trusted him, for reasons unbeknownst to Myrnin, and yet she knew the danger she was in by working for him. How was Myrnin responsible? She was always there, testing his sanity, always fortunate enough to get away.
Until now.
And it pulled at his unbeating heart, poison spreading through his mentality. He hummed an old tune, murmuring the words ever so softly, as he lifted her into his arms. He held her tightly, breathing in her scent once more.
Thank Heaven! The crisis,
The danger, is past
And he danced with the dead girl, demented as it was. He was mad, and he had killed his one reason for sanity.
And the lingering illness
Is over at last—
He sensed the portal open, but didn't seem to hear the infuriated shouts, or the stake as it slid through his heart. He paid it no mind …he was already dead, he told himself; Just a deteriorating mind in a corpse. He stayed standing until the boy pushed him to the ground, a blazing fury on his face. He let him take away his dead beloved, and eventually let go of himself, as well.
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.
He hadn't meant to, he told himself.
But it was inevitable that she would die by his hand, and he would not allow himself to live through it once again, as he had so many times before.
And I lie so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
That you fancy me dead—
And I rest so contentedly,
Now in my bed
(With her love at my breast).
That you fancy me dead—
That you shudder to look at me,
Thinking me dead:—
It wasn't so much peaceful as vacant, he thought, the final dying recollection of a tormented madman.