a/n: maybe now isn't a good time to read a book about infectious vampires…
Disclaimer: Ha, ha, no.
Title: tasting ancient hungers
Word Count: 665
Summary: Seven futures Tana never had.
I do worship ancient hungers
& chins dribbling blood, but I
am so tired of the taste of my heart.
— Adrian C. Louis, from "Ghost Road
i.
Eighty-eight days, and there is a girl who comes back colder than before, her new immortality fizzling over her skin like starshine.
Tana licks the blood from her hands and grins at Gavriel with ruby-coloured eyes. Aiden holds her from behind, his face suffused with his recent feeding.
"We can be monsters together," she says, holding her arms out for the Thorn of Istra.
ii.
There is a girl who sees the carnage in the farmhouse and remembers how her father had killed her mother. Tana moves, almost disassociated from her body, and grabs the sharp kitchen knife from the counter as she goes back to check on Aiden struggling to break free of the ropes tying him to the bed.
They've gone through this in school: sunlight and wild roses, holy water and stakes.
Tana does not think of the boy who hours ago vied for her attention. She does not think twice about her father's haunted expression, how, the scar on her arm burns cold and the echoes of her classmates and their bodies around her. Instead, she moves in the path of a sunbeam where the makeshift blackout curtains have fallen, near the crumpled, ashy remains of a vampire by the bed, and she brings the knife down on Aiden's throat.
Later, there are reports of a girl in a stolen car. Death still follows her as the rumours grow about a girl who hunts down vampires, the girl who cannot be defeated until one day she steps too close and her blood fans the floor as her sister screams her name on a live stream.
iii.
Eighty-eight days and a human girl drags herself into a growing patch of sunlight. Tana holds the marker in a clenched hand and leaves the Coldtown. She has had enough of the night, of seeing monsters choke down blood and her own scramble for survival.
She never looks back.
iv.
There is a girl who has never seen her mother go Cold, never saw the death of her classmates, never knew of vampires.
Tana moves through life almost unnecessarily normal in all manner of things. She is not prepared when meeting for Pauline at a bar in somewhere in Eastern Europe during a semester abroad. She laughs with the locals and drinks cheap beer, unaware of how her mortality shines brightly from under her skin.
The stranger who sees her has tangled black hair and the most peculiar eyes. She stares back at him, her cheeks rosy.
His gaze lingers at her throat when she follows him down the cobbled street at night.
Death, like in every variation for Tana, greets her in a struggle. She cries out, she begs, but it's the shock of the silver cross she wears that burns his skin, leaving her infectious and monstrous as she then tears through parts of Europe with her newfound bloodlust.
He chases after her.
vi.
There is the girl who dies by her mother's feet as a vampire emerges from the dark, dank stairs of the basement.
Her dark eyes are blank in death, mouth forever frozen in the shape of her mother's name.
vii.
There is a girl who willingly stays in Coldtown. Tana works with Valentina at the store during the day, bartering with customers and searching the streets with Jameson. She sleeps in fits whenever she can, searching online on a borrowed computer and eating squirrel burritos.
At night she smears sparkly eyeshadow and bright lipstick on her face, she straps the knife to her thigh and greets Aiden and Gavriel in the ruins of a mansion. Theirs is a version of a happy ending when her life is quick and bright, like a candle's flame about to go out.
vii.
Eighty-eight days and neither girl nor monster wake up.
Perhaps it's better this way.