She ran through the night.
She was moving faster than she ever had before. Always fit, she had exulted in using her speed, her strength, in pushing the limits of her body and in exceeding what she thought was the furthest she could reach. Now she was going far beyond anything she'd imagined, covering ground with an absurd ease that made her past abilities seem like nothing.
And she hated it.
The way the nightscape flowed smoothly past her, the way her legs pumped without ache, without the building sensation of effort, the way her eyes could pick out in the darkness every curve and dip of the earth, every place where she might put a foot wrong, all of it. They weren't accomplishments, they were symptoms. Symbols of the plague that had afflicted her. Of the curse that had severed her forever from humanity.
No, there was no more of the clean ache of muscles pushed, stretched, stressed from good, hard effort. Now her body responded effortlessly to her impulses without hesitation.
But it had other pains.
Her throat burned.
Her heart pounded.
She could sense it. The surge of the blood coursing her veins. She could feel its emptiness, its need. It was incomplete, needed something to be whole.
And what it needed was right in front of her.
She could smell it, oh, so sweetly, from the girl before her. The girl who was staring at her, rapt with worry and fear. She cared, too. This girl was precious to her, a friend, a comrade, a sister of the heart.
Which only made the need all the stronger.
"What's wrong?" the girl said. "You look…you look so strange, and your eyes…"
"I…I need…"
How could she say it? How could she confess it? Put into words what had been growing within her, what she'd been feeling ever since that first, awful moment.
The girl was afraid. The fear was growing. She was afraid for her.
She should have been afraid of her.
And that knowledge only made it all the worse.
Trembling, she dropped to one knee. It was taking all of her strength, all of her will, to fight off the urge. There was nothing left over for her to function.
Which, of course, just played into the hands of the damned curse.
The girl cried out her name, fearful, panicked. Of course she would be worried. Her sweetness, her caring heart, what else would it feel? She rushed to her, bending, grasping her shoulders.
"Are you all right? Can I help? What can I do?"
Her closeness, her touch, it was all too much. The Blood surged, rising, possessing.
You can do this.
She lunged up, grasping the girl firmly, mouth finding her bare throat, fangs piercing the soft, sweet-tasting skin, and the red heat of her spilled across her tongue.
What more was there to say, to do? She'd tried to fight it. She'd even thought that she could use the Blood, the strength that it offered, to help her. But she had been wrong. It was a false strength, a trap, a lure, for the more she used it, the more it demanded to feed, to restore it. Even worse, like called to like, and the Blood spilled by slain fiends gravitated to her, following its call and just making that within her burn all the more fiercely.
Burn until it was a fire out of control.
Oh, the girl had forgiven her, held her close, claimed to understand. That was the work of a generous heart, its fundamental nature. She saw only that there was a need, and even though it was unnatural and frightening accepted that she could fill it. It was an offering of loving kindness, tinged with misplaced guilt.
But she didn't understand. She didn't comprehend the true horror. It wasn't the specific acts, as perverse as they were. It was the corruption of the self, the way in which the Blood took her over, forced her to do things that horrified her, that she didn't want.
No, that wasn't even the worst, she corrected herself, as she remembered the sweetness of the girl's blood in her mouth, the fulfillment that pulsed deep within as it trickled down her throat. Not that it makes me do things I don't want.
It was that it made her want them.
The Night was inside her, gnawing away at her soul, bringing to the surface everything that she'd hidden away, turning vague imaginings into monstrous needs, wiping away her very humanity.
She couldn't lie to herself any longer. She couldn't hope any longer. Wishing wouldn't let her hide from the truth.
No, the only true hope lay in action. In pursuing a genuine chance rather than in dreaming.,
The moon rose high and swollen in the sky. To her eyes, it was as bright as any sun. The black tower rose against it, a defiant sword lifted up against the moon's face, against that symbol of the eternal Night,
A fanciful thought, but to one in her straits there was a dreadful seriousness to it. It was right there, the promise she sought, the sole, slender thread that it represented. She rushed towards it, feeling as fast as the wind.
Then, the night itself tore open in front of her, and she was hurled backwards, crashing to the ground.
"Ahh, my poor, sweet fallen angel."
The voice tinkled like wind-chimes, an unholy serenade.
"To have come so far, pursued a hope so purely and defiantly. And all for nothing."
Her senses were on fire. Her awareness of the Blue Blood, of its effects and creations, had only grown in the long days since her first succumbing, and what hovered before her now, lambent with aqueous green like she was at the bottom of the sea, made that awareness scream.
She was still new to these senses, but even so, she knew there was only one thing it could be.
A pureblood demon.
These beings were not things corrupted by the Blood the way fiends were, or even people who became ordinary demons. Purebloods arose from the Blood itself, spawned whole from the essence of the Night.
She snorted like an animal at the demon. Fear was uppermost, the threat posed by the monster overwhelming, drowning the rational side of her mind, sweeping aside the tattered fragments of sanity and conscience she still clung to.
Flight would have been her best chance. To run, to escape, to fly from the demon and hope it lost interest. But she had never lacked courage or dedication, and the Blood answered to who she was.
Her urge was to fight.
The Blood answered, shaping itself into fantastically clawed and flanged gauntlets that came up her arms past her elbows.
Roaring, she pounced, less a fighter than a raging beast.
A glittering green shield appeared in mid-air. Her hurtling body crashed into it and energy blasted through her, knocking her onto her back.
"I should be insulted by that," the demon said, as if musing over a curiosity, "but I doubt that you're thinking clearly now, are you? Struggling so desperately is hard, isn't it? Why, look at you. You're shaking."
She was, she realized with a hot pulse of shame. Shaking not with terror or rage—no, those would have been honest enough. But shaking with the effort to keep herself from flinging her body at the demon like a feral animal. She knew she would just crash helplessly into the shield again and again, and yet it took so much effort to keep herself from doing it that she was left trembling.
A smile curved the demon's lips. Her limbs snaked out along the ground, reaching out.
"There's nothing here for you, you know. No magic, no wish come true."
Now the demon's voice was sad, even gentle, though there was a faint thread of mockery in it.
"Liar! I was brought here by—"
"I know what brought you here."
Tentacle-like coils circled her, pinning her.
"You came in search of a dream, because a dream is all that's left. As I knew you would, not for your own sake, but for hers. It's such a beautiful thing, a human soul desperately following a path they know goes nowhere, but telling themselves it does not because to admit the truth would be to abandon what they carry in their hearts."
She had no doubt that the demon knew, then, the exact moment that she accepted the truth, and realized that now, for her, the only respite to be found was in the chance her despair could be drowned in the endless silence of the Night.