Pieces of Me

Chapter One:

You're What You Owe

For those, death was an ending, but for me it was the mere beginning.


I stand here in the light, bathed by its purity as it casts away all sins. Now it is there turn to become nothing more than fractions of time and space. Now it is there turn to melt, to become abridged to a meager puddle by my feet. Now it is there turn to die.

I stand here in the light yet it remains unknown. No one sees me. No one can except for the few, the ones like me. I am just a figment of their imagination, those blessed mortals, just something vial that should be forgotten but can never leave.

I stand here in the light, left to listen to world sigh as it turns relentlessly alone.

I stand here in the light waiting, waiting for something that will never come.


There is no sunset but the one that dusts the painted skies of the mid-summer Louisiana. The clouds, wrapped and limply bounded by a delicate shade of pink and illustrious shade of orange one wishes to simply lounge in, giggle amongst themselves as they gingerly pass one another in the never ending race to reach the test of time. The grass sways kindly towards the whispered goodnight from the Earth as each lid falls into place. The fading sliver of the sun casts its golden glow one last time across the land until it slowly slips away, engulfed by the hunger of the plum in the night. All things cease, stop upon the very same breath, the one that catches in all our throats as we all breath out the same string of words; how beautiful.

And indeed it was.

It was over now, the sun has left to be replaced by the pale beauty of the moon but the ecstasy remains. It will always remain.

It is always the simplest of moments in life that remind us of our presence, how truly alive we are. This can even be said for someone, or something, like me. Watching the ending of the day and the beginning of the night always reminds me of the person I am or at least of the person I think I am. Even in the still of the night I remain as the girl who stands long enough for the sun to set and then wonder if it will ever return. And even if it does, will it ever be as sweet as I remember?

Amazing how the low whistle of a few leaves rustling together can change one's perspective and bring them back towards the persistent crashing of reality. I am not particularly fond of my reality at this moment. In this one I am in trouble, an action never to be committed when your jury consists of angel face demons with sharp teeth. And if this was horrid, and by all means it was, then I cannot wait to see my punishment.

Here he comes now; to bid me hello and yet my thoughts still remain on tomorrow. Was I always this blatantly foolish? Yes, yes I think I was.

"Do you miss it?" my voice barely above a whisper but coming out clear across the still of the night. In truth, it was a bit breathlessly really. But how could it not steal my breath? To think of his pain is something I will never comprehend. The dead always suffers more.

I turned to stare upon the dead man's eyes, a familiar shade of brown that was spun until soft. It always amazed me at the amount of life they held. I remember when I thought that they had died, truly died, laying broken and defeated like the rest all because of her. How I hated those days. How I hated her for bringing them upon him, but they are gone now, and the life remains. The kind of life I crave to see from someone whose heart had stopped beating so long ago.

"Every day." His words were softer than my own as they gently parted from his lips, left to caress the air in its bitter sweet tone before being swept away by the hands of time.

My gaze, now heavy from his remark, fell upon the star struck sky to wonder back to the thought of the sun. Will it ever rise again?

"Eric is still upset by your actions." The immediate change of topic only seemed to strengthen the rising edge towards his tone, as if any moment he will cast me off from its cliff. Bitter, bitter tragedy. I had hoped to prolong this by means of our previous conversation. Alas, I have clearly failed.

"What makes him think it was me?" It appeared to be an obvious and thus justified question in my opinion, yet Bill merely scoffed at me in a way that hinted towards his alliance with Eric's accusations upon me. Regardless, he formed an appropriate response upon my behalf.

"Ginger did not see anyone open the door to lead them towards their freedom. She swears it opened on its own accord." His accent was rich in its original southern dialect, embellished by the rising frustration stuck within his vocal chords.

I could feel the coy smirk stretch upon the thinness of my lips in a way that I never knew it existed. "So it must have been me," I concluded for him, the smirk never faltering; something Bill found to be unappreciative and otherwise unsupportive.

"Eric will arrive here shortly." His syllables were pressed harshly upon the ruff of his mouth before being granted an exist. "I suggest you form an apology before then."

Something about the curve in his throw left me helplessly unguarded as I mumbled under a fixed breath, "Let him be mad at me. What can he do? Kill me?"

Bill and I both knew that Eric of all people would be the one to find the way. In the months I have come to know him, I must admit we have had more rocky starts than a rabbi and a priest finding they were to become brothers in law. In all authenticity, I find myself slightly surprised that he has not found the remedy to this curse my presence inflects upon him. It can't be that hard to end the life of a girl who is already dead.

Bill's eyes had averted from mine in a straight line that feel short of the dusty sidewalks across the street. No words were exchanged for words were not enough during moments like these. The tension in his stride brought me to realize that line that I had crossed, that I had promised to never cross again. It was enough to remind me of the previous arguments we had shared and how much I would hate to falter back towards one.

Instead, I watched him leave. Something about the way people walk away that brings you crashing towards your knees in a fleet of tears as you watch them carry away a piece of your life, a piece they will never return. I watched and waited for him to look back, to acknowledge me one last time before he left, but his head never turned.

And there it was, the hallowed out feeling I have come to know as home.


I lay here in the light, a light that bathes me pure. And yet, I remain unseen. I'm right here in front of you. Can't you see me? Can't you hear me?

No, I guess you cannot.


Bill happened to be correct about Eric's mood. I never knew hatred as raw as his before. It was something black that tainted the fine lines of his life. I could tell this was going to be a long night.

Perhaps in all of his six foot plus masculinity, the most terrifying feature he possesses is not his height but rather his eyes. They were the palest shade of blue I had ever seen and despite their illusive shade, they reminded me of an everlasting fire set aflame upon shards of crystallized ice. Something in the way he looks at me reduces me to a hollow empty shell of my former self. All that remains is fear. A fear so cold and bitter it lapses upon your sides slowly gnawing away all humanity. When everything leaves, the fear remains. It will always remain.

It became stuck, wedged somewhere between the lining of my throat and stomach. It burned. Oh how it burned. My mouth failed to open, refusing to release their bitter flames. And so I swallowed, hard and inexorable.

He just stared at me, glaring with his thousand years of burdened hate. His face was contorted in such horrid rage I feared it would remain for the rest of his years. Eyes, reduced to slits upon the sunken and swollenness that surrounded them, revealed his murderous intensions as they screamed at me in a language I could not comprehend, a language I wish he would never speak again. His lips ripped and curled upon his dead flesh revealing the recollections of his jagged fangs. They gleamed under the fluorescent lighting of the room, something that only seemed to improve his threatening demeanor. The glint in the ablaze of his eyes spoke of no intention of retracting them anytime soon.

Unable to withstand his gaze any longer, I dropped mine to the door. It lay broken and defeated upon the dusted carpet, a minor casualty that needed to be sacrificed for the better of Eric's grand entrance. Even if I were able to mend it, it would never stand the same again. It was broken just like me, just like the rest of us.

"Theatrical appearance," The words had formed from the tip of my tongue before my mouth was able to sustain them. The thought of duck tape crossed my mind several times that night but never I had been so inclined to actually use it.

And there it went, the tip of the ice berg that sunk the Titanic. "Don't you dare patronize me little girl." It was the first he had spoken to me in a while and the words rasped upon the thickness of his tongue, rubbing off as a malice growl that was left to pierce the stillness of the night.

The smirk I had grown accustomed to from Eric was long gone along with his heart. He stared upon me in a manner that I cannot describe in all of my years of existence. Never had I been looked upon with such vial and abhorrence before, and never do I wish to be looked upon it with it again.

I wanted to scream at him, thrash out and yell from the top of my lungs everything wrong with the world. Yet my lips remain frozen, pressed into a small frown that leisurely curled down at the corners. All prior anger had slowly ebbed away with just one look. Now I do not know what remains. I could feel the hole it left me, a hollow emptiness where my emotions should have been. All was lost and all will forever be lost. It numbs the body in the most peculiar way, this loss of mine. I believe I preferred my anger. At least then I was familiar with its harsh blows and ragging demands.

In my absence of speech, Eric had decided to form another low growl. It ripped across the room, dividing everything in its path. "What you did was wrong –"

Within his mid sentence, I suddenly found my anger. Its rage coursed throughout me, leaving something familiar upon my bones. The strength and audacity to stop him mid sentence was regained as I bellowed out a growl of my own. "And what you did wasn't?" I am unaware of the range in my emotions and the effect they have upon my appearance but I am sure if I had tried hard enough, I could set him aflame. Perhaps that is an action I will save for later.

"That doesn't justify your actions!" I had clearly struck a nerve as his voice reached a tone that shook the high heavens above. There was a flash of red that took to be Jessica in all of her curiosity checking upon my sprawl of words with her idol. I wonder if there was a bet forming against me towards my loss of this fight. The thought did little to surprise me.

"And what justified yours?" Numb, numb with anger. Such a wonderful way to die.

I watched as his face smoothed upon the question. Remorse etched itself upon the lines of his heavy eyes, as well as the corners of his mouth, causing them to drag in the most peculiar way. For once doubt had formed upon the contents of his mind. It has heavy and lush as it tipped over to spread its seeds. Unfortunately, their life span was incredibly short. They came and passed, following close along with Eric's sense of emotions. His face was carved from the very stone of his heart, a stone that could never be broken. "We have our own law." It was a mere whisper that took me by surprise. So soft and low the possibility of it coming from Eric was inconceivable.

"Law?" I questioned to find the elasticity in my own tone. "Eric, that wasn't law. That was chaos."

"They killed one of our kind, Danny." Tempers were soon beginning to wail once more and seemed much greater than the last as his low growl regained its rightful property of his throat. He had been passing, lost in thought. Yet he was still now, his mind clear as the ice in his eyes.

I wonder who will be left standing. Me, or the Viking? That seemed to be the question picking slowly at the corners of everyone's mind.

"So you locked them in your basement?" I glanced back to see his lack of emotion. There was nothing there but it was enough to fill my words with spite. "You starved them, beat them, took every ounce of their humanity," there was a dynamic pause between each one that I found myself adding out of sheer persistence of my subconscious. After each one my tone became something unrecognizable to my own ears. The thought of reality came and passed as I heard my callous words, unable to distinguish if I was the true one to say such things. Regardless, it does not matter now. What matters now is that I wanted to hurt him; that much was clear. But I wanted so much more. I wanted him to suffer for his actions, take all the time in the world for him to hear them. I wanted them to be repeated to him in soft spoken whispers that turned into mutilating screams during the dead of night. I wanted them to haunt him, be the only things he ever thought of. I wanted the satisfaction of knowing and inflicting his pain. I wanted him to know he was wrong. "And then you killed them." The word seemed foreign on my tongue and I loathed the way it tasted, charred to a blacken state of perplexity.

His expression was ever changing until finally resting upon a blank stare. The remorse had cracked and crumbled away just like every other emotion he ever had. Anger was the only thing left holding on and even now I can watch it slowly slip away like the rest. I despised the vacant expression he had abided with. I was expecting more screams, more strings of curses, anything that showed there was something still inside him, some spark of life. But now I see that there is nothing left. He was truly dead.

"You don't feel anything do you?" It was a soft whimper now. It shared the same pain in my eyes as they watch him die in front of me. He was so vacant, so empty that I thought if I blinked he would wither away before they opened again. "You just killed seven people and you feel nothing." Such pain, such burden, the mere thought of it stung the confinements of mind. I couldn't stand to be near him, to be in the same room as him. He burns me.

"And what if I do feel nothing?" Curiosity was still something a dead man can form apparently. His words scratched forth upon his throat, tearing and clawing away until breaking free.

He burns me and then laughs, I concluded. Such horror, such unconfined horror.

"Then you shouldn't have killed them Eric." I could feel my throat tighten with every world yet they persisted. "You should have killed yourself."

There was a sudden shift in his emotions; a violent wind that raged passed every nerve. I could tell he was rising from the dead. His body was rigid and pressed against his spine. He would never let me live this down. Our eyes locked, mine in brilliant shade of sympathy and his in scorched rage. They crashed greatly, forming sparks across the room that danced and swayed to the rhythm of our argument.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand." His words were so cold but it made no difference. His mind was now set and there would be no savior tonight. "Vampires are creatures of revenge and defined order. We will never be like you insufferable humans."

His words shook something inside me, something that will never be the same. "Then why are you even trying?" Exasperation was soon closing in, suffocating every thought until they all blurred into one. "What's the point? If this is all you'll ever be then why are trying so hard to hide it?"

For a long moment he did not answer me. When his mouth formed to speak once more, they were not the words I were hoping for. "I expect you to be in Dallas with me tomorrow night. You owe me for this one."

And that was it. Our argument was done and I had survived only to receive my punishment. He left in a furry of wind that managed to knock other furnishings down from their proper place. His last words were still violently ringing upon my ears.

You owe me for this one. They still slithered upon the hard wood floor, seeping into the walls where they will stay there for all eternity.

I sighed heavily before biting the bottom of my lip. This was far from over.


AN: Thanks so much for reading. I hope you all liked it. Feel free to leave a comment if you like and thanks to those who already put one there and to those who already added this story. Sorry for the incredibly long wait but it's out now with two hopefully coming out sometime soon.