Hey everyone! I'm so sorry for the nearly year-long hiatus! I didn't think I would be gone that long, but things just kind of...happened. Again, I'm really sorry, and I'm thankful to all of you who will still read my story even after that. So, here it is finally: chapter thirteen. Reviews are greatly appreciated, and I would like to thank everyone who has already reviewed this story. I'm grateful for all your comments :D
Chapter Thirteen:
The stench of burnt corpses and stale blood filled the air. All around us ashen piles sifted in the gentle night breeze and, along with scattered limbs and strewn intestines and splattered blood, were all that remained of what used to be almost two dozen un-dead beings. This was the result of the battle between Gabrielle's nest and Damien's; and at the centre of that gruesome circle stood Eric and I. We were both covered in blood, soaked in it, some of it ours, most of it not. One of Eric's trouser legs was ripped away, revealing a deep gash across his thigh that bled freely. He did not pay it any mind ‒ his gaze was focused on the broken arm that dangled uselessly at my side, and the ugly wound on my torso that was already beginning to heal.
A third vampire was about, scavenging the dead, anxiously searching for something. Gabrielle's dress‒lilac tonight‒had smears of blood on the skirts as she crawled about on the ground, from entrails to entrails, looking.
"Where is it?" she kept muttering to herself. "One of them has to have it."
"What exactly are you searching for?" Eric called to her.
"It is none of your business."
"Really? I think it is," I replied, and in an instant I was in front of her, my fingers wrapped around her throat, lifting her from the ground. "We just risked our lives for you, and you have the gall to say it is none of our business?" My grip tightened, and her face grimaced in pain. "Now tell us, what are you looking for?"
"It is sentimental," she rasped, her hands clutching mine ‒ not fighting yet, but prepared to if it became necessary. "It is nothing important to anyone but me. A ring, from my mortal life. From my mother, before she died. That is all."
"And why would they have it?"
"I had a traitor a few years back. She took the ring from me and brought it to Damien as a token of her loyalty. I need to see if any of them has it."
"Have you checked Damien yet?" Eric asked.
"I did. I found nothing."
"Then perhaps it is wherever he went when he was not here in London. Perhaps he left it behind when he came here."
I put Gabrielle down, and she gave me a sharp glare and stretched her neck. "Perhaps. I had hoped that he might have brought it here. But it does not appear so." She glanced at her palms, which were coloured red, and idly wiped them on her skirts, adding to the bloodstains that were already there. She then looked back at the carcasses scattered on the ground. "I guess it is all over for now."
"Is it?" I inquired in a casual way.
Gabrielle kicked aside a clump of meat near her foot, and it made a wet sound as it landed on the ground a short distance away. "I gave you my word. You dispatch Damien, and I leave you alone. Our deal is done."
Everything had gone exactly according to plan. Damien had followed me out without a thought when I asked, gladly giving up safety to 'talk with a vampire who was older than him,' as he had cordially put it. He had thought he was being cordial, but he was in fact only being arrogant and foolish. He believed he was invincible, that nothing could hurt him; that he was safe in his nest. Like a tragic hero, he ignored potential danger and let his hubris carry him; and then I came, the embodiment of the gods' will, to cut him down and end his life.
And it was ended. I tore his head from his body before he was even aware that I was a threat, and fled into the dark, the mournful howls of his nest-mates following me, lifting into the night sky as they felt their leader die.
When I reached Gabrielle's, I could sense Damien's vampires hot on my trail; but Gabrielle and her vampires were prepared, and as soon as I reached them they swept out into the night, to finish what I had started. Eric was with them as well, and I knew I could not leave him alone in the battle. I knew I would join the fight.
The struggle was hot when I arrived, each vampire of almost equal strength with their opponent. Gabrielle and Eric stood in the centre of it all, both brutal in their ruthlessness; but as soon as Damien's vampires realized I was there, they congregated and set upon me. I had killed their leader, after all.
The battle did not last very long, for all its fierceness. Vampires died on both sides, more than I think Gabrielle had wished for on her side, until only she, Eric, myself, and three other vampires of Gabrielle's nest remained alive.
"It is done, then," I said to Gabrielle, gazing at the diminishing marks my fingers had left on her white throat. "I am sorry you did not find your ring."
"I will," she replied, and the hard edge to her voice made me believe that she would. After so many centuries, and she was still attached to a remnant of her mortal life. I pitied her for that.
"You will leave us alone?" Eric moved in closer to her, using his considerable height to intimidate her.
"I said I would. I keep my promises."
"You had better, Gabrielle," I warned, "because if I see you again, I will kill you."
She shrugged her shoulders, acting as if she did not care; but I knew it was no act ‒ she truly did not care. She had gotten what she wanted. She had no more use for us, and therefore no more reason to see us. "A fair bargain. You may stay in London however long you like, I will not bother you. Just do not cause any trouble, otherwise things might get...unpleasant for you both."
"You have no more strength. Your nest is gone," Eric mocked her. "You cannot threaten us."
Gabrielle let out a brusque laugh. "Oh Eric, it is hardly like that. Yes, my nest is mostly gone for now, but I will make more. Though they will be young and weak, with enough they can overpower a vampire of any age, even your precious Maker." She lifted up a finger in front of Eric's face, a distinctively portentous gesture. "Do not presume to tell me what is and what is not; and do not be an idiot, my dear Eric, or you may find yourself looking once more into my eyes far sooner than you would wish." She lowered her finger and turned her attention on me. "Godric." She gave me the tiniest hint of a curtsy. "Thank you."
And then she was gone; and I knew I would never see her again, and it made me somewhat regretful ‒ it was not often I met with a vampire near my age; and she was fascinating, to say the least.
A burst of pain spread up my arm where Eric grabbed it, and I bared my teeth at him in a hiss.
"You need to fix that arm, before it heals like that," he dictated.
I delicately touched my arm, exploring the broken bone, feeling splintered edges almost coming through the skin. Felt how the bone had begun knitting together. Damn. "It already has. I need to re-break it and set it properly."
"Let me." Eric prodded the unnatural bend of my arm with circumspect fingers. "I will be gentler than you."
"Fine, just do it quickly before it heals even more."
With a firm grip on my wrist, he lifted up my arm. I watched him silently, preparing for the inevitable pain, but when I looked into Eric's eyes I knew he was hurting more than I was; that the thought of causing me pain was torture for him.
When he snapped my arm, he cried out for me. I made no noise, only shuddered as the agony washed through me, swelling and then slowly fading. My eyes had closed. When I opened them, Eric was staring at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly with panting breaths. He felt so much more than I did. I envied him that. Funny, considering how many centuries I had spent trying to teach him to curb his emotions, and now I envied him them.
"Thank you," I managed weakly. I could already feel the bone beginning to mend, and in a little while it would be as if it had never broken.
Eric's thigh had stopped its bleeding, the skin a raw red lesion just beginning to pale, like it was already weeks old. If he drank some of my blood, it would be gone in minutes.
"Can you believe it is already over?" Eric asked, surveying the carnage around him.
"No." I pulled down the sleeve of my shirt over my injured arm. "I never thought Gabrielle's plan would actually work, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"I never thought Damien would be so stupid as to come away with me. I thought that he would certainly see right through me and kill me. I thought for sure I would die this night."
"So you went thinking to die?"
"Yes. As did you. We are a warriors, Eric. We go into every battle prepared to die. Tonight's was no different; and Gabrielle's plan was flimsy at best. I never thought it would actually work out as it did. We were very lucky."
In the settling quiet, just an hour or so before dawn, I glanced at the ugly, abandoned buildings around us. Industrialism had begun to change many things about the world, and landscape was only one of them. I realized then that I missed the woods, missed the mountains, the rivers, the fresh air, the quiet. I missed the clean blood of farmers; I hated this soiled blood of urbanites who were being raised on coal dust and tainted water.
"I want to leave London," I declared suddenly.
Eric frowned in bewilderment. "We only just got here. You want to leave already?"
"This place, I think, is not meant for me."
"After everything we did so that we could stay here, you want to leave."
His blasé tone did nothing to hide his vexation.
"It was not by choice that we did any of it," I answered in kind. "You know we could not have run, not without having to fight still. We did what we did so we could choose; and I choose to leave London."
"I cannot believe this."
"Then you stay, Eric, and I will leave."
He stared at me, then began to laugh. "You cannot be serious."
"I am."
His laughter died out, replaced with a dark intensity. "No. I will come with you."
I sighed deeply. "I think we need to talk, Eric."
"There is nothing that needs to be talked about."
"I am afraid you are wrong."
"You know I am right. You can see it as well as I can."
"That does not mean I appreciate you giving me this...unwarranted advice."
"You need to let him go."
Gabrielle and I were sitting across the table from each other. She had come to the house after Eric had left to go hunting, supposedly to discuss the plan for Damien's demise; but somehow the topic turned to Eric.
"He is weak when he is with you," she asserted. "You have raised yourself a spaniel when he should be a wolf."
"He is hardly gentle."
"How long have you been together? Six hundred years? Seven hundred?" She eyed me over her hands, which were laced together in front of her face. "Have you known any other Maker to hold onto their child so long?"
I had not.
"That is because it was never meant to be so. The Maker releases their child when the time has come; but for some reason you have not, and your time is almost run out. You will cripple him."
I scoffed. "It is not so serious as that."
"You think not?" she asked, challenging. "You are blind to it. Your child would fight all the world to protect you; but for himself he would do nothing. He loves you so much that he does not think of himself, only you. Is that what you wanted when you made him? A loyal dog to love you unconditionally?"
"Of course not!"
"Then what? Are you afraid of being alone?"
I looked away from her, dark thoughts breeding in my mind. "I was alone for a thousand years before I made Eric," I said softly, recalling that time.
"And do you remember those years? How you felt? The isolation, the monotony...the emptiness?"
I did. I had forgotten much since then, but the emptiness...It was impossible to forget such emptiness.
"You created him out of a need to escape the loneliness, and you have grown afraid of returning to it once Eric is gone. You need him, though you show it very little. You love him more than I think he knows, perhaps more than even you are aware of. But you have also made him need you, and he has not had the benefit of a thousand years of isolation to learn how to survive on his own. He needs to learn, and in order to do so you need to release him."
Was she right? Was Eric weak because I had made him so?
"Why should I listen to you?" I demanded, my words like sharpened ice. "What do you gain from telling me this?"
Gabrielle let out a harsh laugh. "Contrary to your experiences, not all vampires are entirely selfish. Though," she added carelessly, "we usually are. But I am not selfish, not always. I have asked more than enough from you in forcing you to dispatch Damien, and I thought maybe I could give something in return. Some advice, as it is." She leaned back in her chair, which creaked just the slightest beneath her weight. "I am not telling you what to do, I do not have the power to do that; but I am trying to tell you what you should do, for the prosperity of your child. He can only grow now if you let him go, so that he may find himself on his own."
Staring at Eric, I realized that Gabrielle was right. Eric needed me too much; and I needed him too much. We had both become weak things.
Eric was still watching me, waiting for me to tell him what I had meant by such words.
Not yet, though. Soon, soon I must...
I smiled at him. "Never mind, Eric. Come, let us go home."