Zugzwang
"It is so hard to live half monster, to hurt everything you love by trying to protect it wrong."-Clementine von Radics
I.
You know how the story goes. A monster meets a human. The monster falls in love. It's a fairy tale on paper, a tragedy in real life. You tell yourself it can come out differently this time, that it can come out right, even as you know you're fighting fate, a destiny that deemed you both lost and star-crossed long ago.
You turn her, eventually, on the floor of a dirty garage where she came hunting for a story and found a stray bullet. You waste precious seconds trying to stop the bleeding while she turns paler beneath your hands, and finally you let go long enough to brush the hair off her neck and swallow hard. She gasps for air, mouthing silent words, begging you not to, as her hands push against air and the cold cement. But you're selfish and weak, and you break your promise to her as you sink your teeth into her neck and taste her blood for the second time, salty and bitter and pulsing against your tongue. You don't feel the pain as you tear open your own wrist and let the blood slowly fall onto her mouth, painting her lips and teeth scarlet as her eyes flicker open.
She doesn't speak as you take her home, her eyes flickering hungrily over the people you both stumble past, weaving like a drunken pair against the shadows of the city. You help her into a chair when you reach your apartment, bring her the bags of blood you know she's craving, and watch, a knot twisting in the pit of your stomach as she hesitates only a moment before gulping it greedily.
When she's strong enough, her first emotion is anger, striking you. You don't speak, make no attempt to block the slaps she gives you, and after a few minutes she collapses against you, sobbing, and you allow yourself, like stroking a spider web, to brush a hand against her hair, frail and hesitant. You don't ask for forgiveness, not for something you don't deserve, but you whisper an apology into the skin of her neck.
At dawn, you sleep together in the freezer, and if you had a heart, you think it would be bursting in your chest with fragile hope. You think later that you were a fool, and always have been.
II.
If she was beautiful as a human, she's radiant as a vampire, as if her appearance has been enhanced, giving her an otherworldly look, half goddess, half demon enchantress. But her scent has changed. The sweet smell of life, intoxicating and tempting, is gone, as is the flowery scent of her perfume. She reeks of death hers, and blood, with the faintest first whisper of decay.
Your hands clench, tighten at your side, even as you watch her, eyes conveying all the apologies and pleas you cannot give voice.
III.
She adjusts surprisingly well to her new life. There was always a part of Beth that was held spellbound by his world, some part of her that hungered to reach out and bite into all the forbidden fruit. They build something of a life together, and at first it's a gift, his hands trembling as they brush the hair off her forehead, no longer afraid to hurt her, no longer tempted by her taste.
It's an accident the first time she kills, or you want to believe it is, because Beth, your Beth, could never take a life so callously, when you find her, crouched next to the freshie. Her eyes lift, palms spreading upwards, dripping crimson, thumb to thumb, casting butterfly shadows on the walls.
"It's beautiful." She says, almost dazed, the scarlet droplets striking against the floor with a sound no human could hear, unbearably loud to your ears.
"Beth..." The word is more breath than voice, broken in two before the question can form, as she smiles at you, like a feral thing, and you realize, for an instant, she was more stranger than your Beth.
IV.
You don't know when she changes, or rather, when you realize it, because time has no meaning to an immortal, and days bleed into weeks, and months into years like blood running from a vein, swallowed up without leaving a single drop to mark the flow.
She starts to hunger for the taste of life, starts to roam the streets in the darkness, hunting prey with the stealth of a cat, terrible and brutal. It's criminals at first, the deserving, perhaps, or so he tells himself, but the rules bend with the years and the scarcity of that particular form of prey, and she starts to discriminate less and less.
You blame yourself, because you made her a monster, stripped away the human as carelessly as one might shuck an ear of corn. There was always a darkness in her, that contrast to the warmth that tempered it, and you'd loved them both in their measure, even if you'd seen the hints of what she'd be, unrestrained by humanity, with the anger and coldness that guided the stake she'd driven into Morgan's chest.
"Leave her, Mick." Josef says quietly, sounding every one of his years, old and decayed and weary, as you stare at your hands in the dim light of his apartment, both of you alone as Beth hunts, somewhere in the city. "Leave her before it's too late."
"I can't." You say, and it's all you can say, because since the first time you saw her, you've belonged to her, her fingers closed over the dry husk of a heart behind your ribs, fingernails embedded in an organ that can no longer feel pain, and can only mistake obsession for love, and pity for kindness.
In the darkness and cold of the day, she curls against him like the fragile child you saved all those years ago, and yet nothing at all like her, head against your chest where a heart would be beating if you were anything but what you are.
"How long are we going to be together?" She asks softly, and for a moment you can almost imagine that she's still human, still alive, still capable of love. But perhaps you were always deceiving yourself.
"Forever." You whisper, swallowing down the bile in your throat, as you press a dry kiss to the ice of her forehead, dead and cold as the hollow in her chest. "Forever."