Again, please review the rating. There's some mild language here and, what could be, disturbing images.
I hoped that now, they would realize the principles we were testing here today, and would throw themselves into the experiment with enthusiasm. I was disappointed.
"You are fucking nuts!" he bellowed.
"Perhaps." I brushed his claim aside, my patience was wearing thin. "The purpose of this experiment is to test the validity of the claims you made earlier. To wit, that you love her, and your love is true." His face glared back at me as I paused to see if he understood what I was saying. "We will test this claim in the following way. You will decide amongst yourselves who is to die today. The one whom has a greater love for the other will sacrifice his or her self for that love. Do you understand?"
"Why are you doing this to us?" the girls voice. I had not noticed she had returned.
"Scientific curiosity." I answered immediately, "I seek answers to my questions and you are part of the process."
She was silent, appearing to descend into deep thought.
"No more questions? Good. I will leave you alone for a moment to discuss your future."
I left the room, the frantic whispering started even as I closed the door behind me. I went and washed. I could feel their foulness even through the gloves. I discarded them and put on a fresh pair before returning to the room. The monitors said it had been 5 minutes since I left. I entered the room again. They both were silent and still. Watching me intently as I entered.
"So was it a productive discussion?" I inquired.
His head fell, and he began to beg. "If you will just let us go, mister, we won't tell anyone about this, I swear-"
"He needs a doctor!" She seemed to have regained control of herself. The hatred in her eyes was framed by a determined set to her expression. I smiled at her. Yes, he did need a doctor, but the only one available was not interested.
"What have you decided?" I ignored his continuing attempts at negotiation.
"You can't do this!" He was starting to get loud and desperate. Once again the girl took control of the situation.
"He dies," she said simply.
I think he was as surprised by her words as I was. It shut him up anyway. "Interesting," was all I could manage to say. He spluttered and began to speak but quickly descended into silence.
"Please forgive me for this, my love." She spoke directly to him though her eyes never left mine. "He is going to kill us no matter what, you need to understand that. You can't reason with him. He is crazy. I love you. But-"
"But you want me to die?" He laughed hysterically the onset of shock winding it up to a shrill sound. I had expected this, but not her calm reasoning. She spoke over his high, cynical laughter. It seemed the debate was at risk of becoming a common domestic dispute.
"No! I don't want anyone to die. Listen! This is real! This is happening to us - as much as we don't want it to, it is happening!" She lost her control then and started sobbing again. The room was quiet except for the hum of the extractor fan and her rough breathing. She composed herself and continued. "He is offering us a choice, a sick and twisted choice, but it is the only one we have." She glanced towards him and then looked back at me. While I kept my face impassive, inwardly I was grinning. This was beautiful.
"Why me?" he sounded like a child.
"Because I love you." Her voice was gentle; she would have made someone a good mother one day.
"I don't get it." He was retreating into a child's mind state, where the responsibilities of the world were out of his hands. It was an interesting transition.
"He has said that one of us will die. He has us trapped. If it is going to happen that way - and God knows I wish it wasn't happening - then think of the one who is left behind!" He made a small sound, which I took to be an expression of confusion.
I was fascinated at the way her thinking was going. I had not considered that death would be a preferable path to surviving without love. It seemed there was more here than I had perceived. There was nothing he could say, the decision had been taken out of his hands. In retrospect I see that in a way, he made the sacrifice. By allowing the girl to dictate the terms of the final outcome of the experiment.
He died silently. I was deprived even the experience of the final light in his eyes, it was gone even before the long knife I used slid into his throat. The girl vomited as the blood gushed out over his shirt. I waited till she had finished retching and then cut her bonds.
"Hungry?" I asked. I picked her up from the floor where she fainted and carried her through the house. Then I went to the bathroom and mixed her a drink. She started awake when I touched her shoulder in the darkness. I must have seemed near formless, another shadow in a room of shadows. I handed her a full glass. Taking a moment to watch her and consider what she had done.
"Why did you decide to live?"
She set the glass down untouched, with trembling hands, the shock of the nights' events still sinking in. Her tears still flowed. I could not make out what she said.
"Snap out of it." I ordered.
She cleared her throat. "I love him."
"No. No, you do not love him. If you loved him he would be alive and you would be dead. Dead like he is. It is his blood on the floor, not yours. Why did you kill him?"
She physically cringed under from my words as if each syllable left a welt on her skin.
"I didn't! I didn't! You fucking sta-stab-stabbed him... Oh God!" She was hysterical again. I considered a slap but instead waited for her to recover.
"You chose. You said he dies. You killed him. You! I was just the weapon."
Her face was wet with tears, she looked up at me and her eyes flashed. "Fuck you!"
I hit her this time. A closed fist that startled without breaking her jaw, my preternatural strength held back. She squealed and pulled as far back into the couch as she could, her hands on her face.
"I couldn't do it! I couldn't make him live! Not like this."
I considered what she was saying. "Dying would be preferable to killing?" She looked at me, more cautiously this time, trying to read my thoughts. "You have a serious problem, you know that?" I merely grunted and sat in a nearby chair, between her and the exit. I sat in thought for a moment. "No one will sacrifice another for any other reason than their personal survival. It is unavoidable. It is a genetic trait."
"Love isn't genetics. It's feelings and emotions... and... and... magic." She trailed off into silence.
"Its neurochemistry, and unbalanced chemistry at that," I stated, pointedly.
"It's more, so much more than that. Haven't you ever been in love?"
A score of dead faces moved through my mind and I nearly purred. "Not in a way you would understand," I said finally, regaining my composure.
The human mind is a wonderfully resilient thing, outwardly she now appeared calm and composed, though her hands still gripped each other tightly and her voice quavered. "Love isn't biochemistry, it's something you learn. I didn't learn much of it from my parents..." She choked on her dead lover's name. "...Taught me a lot on how to love someone. It's about being there for someone, caring about their well-being and survival more than you care about your own. Loving them no matter what happens. They are your everything and, in turn, you are theirs."
"You could be just like me." I said in the darkness.
She flinched at that. "Never," she said.
We brooded together in the gloom for a while. "I thought he would offer his life for yours. I did not expect that you would be the one to dictate the end game."
"I had no choice. You made this...this nightmare...and forced me...us...to participate."
"So what?"
She just stared at me.
"You could have died in his place. But you did not. That was your choice, not mine."
"Some choice," she said quietly. I shrugged, a wasted gesture in the dim light.
"Maybe," I said, "But it was the choice you made."
"It had to be this way,"
"Did it?"
"Yes. I have lost the man I love. I am responsible for his death. I could never ask him to go through this kind of pain."
"How do you feel?"
She sighed deeply. "I'm tired. So very tired."
I nodded. "Drink up," I said. "It's time to go."
She picked up the glass, staring at it like a lab technician observes a new sample. "What is it?"
"Just something to make all this go away. Quickly and painlessly." I replied.
She drained it in one long choking swallow. Tapping the bottom of the glass to get the last dregs. I sat impassively as she sank back against the cushions.
"You didn't win," she said with her last breath.
I did not get to see the final light in her eyes. It was not necessary; she had already shown me so much more. I carried her back into the Playroom and a few moments later I slid both bodies into the pool.
I am the cleansing plague. I am life and death.
Fear me for my words? You should. Ask yourself the questions I stated before.
What is God? Who is God?
The answers are simple.
I am a Tzimisce, and I... am God.
Tzimisce - One of many clans of vampires. Tzimisce are considered the Fiends, one of the most feared clans. They have the ability to manipulate flesh and bone as if it was clay. That's just one of their abilities.
Depending on how this fic is taken Meuric may make a return in the next I already have written out.