Chapter 21

Blood for Blood

When I come back to the misery of my trapped reality. Too sick to take responsibility that my own stupidity, chivalry, and humanity rooted my life in these porous walls of a sadistic reality.

I am staring at myself in the reflection of the gilded mirror with its elegant gold border of spirals and floral motifs sitting in my room, when really it looks like I am a set of an opera. The gold inlay is too bright for my eyes. I cannot hold my gaze, with only one look, a quick peek, like a flash of a camera, I see my eyes are red. My hands shake and I am swarmed with flies of guilt, as my life is that of a corpse plant after all.

I am the only stench of aliveness in this rot of a room, everything is an illusion here. I am sure that behind the stone walls and polished floors there are corpses piled high upon one another. Towers of bodies, skeletons of a feast.

I rest my head in my arms and massage my throbbing head willing those topaz eyes of the werecub out of my memories; knowing they are a gaze that will stare at me for the rest of my life, haunting me.

"You never forget your first," my mother said to me with a misty glint, like that of a seer, when I first got my period.

Now, I know what she was talking about, I trace my fingers against my chapped lips, tasting dried blood, I must have bitten them when I fainted…alas, the humour.

"Blood for Blood," I murmur, thinking of the small child who was a cub not yet a wolf. A creature who can transform and run. A beast surrounded by a pack of loyalty. Not a coven of power who traps, kills, manipulates, loves…there it is, the sensuality of these demons charms me. The same poison I am made from, the same poison surrounding me every second within these walls. The poison I am inside, the curse I carry inside of me.

One thing vampires know how to do is love… "and they do it well," my inner demon murmurs.

I can feel it licking its lips with languid lust as the words fall over my body and my back arches as I release an intoxicated sigh of a bloody cursed orgasm.

I feel my toes wiggle against the marble stone under my feet and frown…remembering I had shoes on.

"I undressed you," a voice breathes with poetic sultriness, like watching the skin of an apple shining in early morning light, an apple from a fairy tale that is so detailed in description the listener of the tale, deems it important somehow. Or perhaps, maybe, the author really likes apples. It isn't until two pages later the truth is revealed, to the reader, or listener, that very same apple, the innocent orb in the beginning has now poisoned the princess, foreshadowing, am I right? If only I could see the foreshadowing of my tale, oh, the dramatic irony…

I jump and can feel the spider of surprise travel up my back and see Athendora emerge from a shadowed corner like a Halloween haunt.

Why does everything they do have to be so creepy…I mean seriously…you couldn't just I don't know state your presence with care.

"Where would the fun be in that?" my inner demon whispers.

"Anywhere but here," I murmur and wince when I feel Athendora's stare of intrigue.

"Caius mentioned you were mumbling to yourself," she breathes in an awed voice of discovery.

"Yes, they are infinite conversations, you know the ones that you have in solitude when there is no one around you left alive, you wouldn't know would you…considering the company you keep," I bite back with a tone of venom…how dare they have the audacity to study me or question me.

"You're fascinating," she hisses with animalistic notes.

In this shadowed light I see her for the beast she is, I feel my knees knob themselves together like an intruder jostling a door, "Let me go," I plead, "I proved my loyalty…"

She slams her hands on the mahogany vanity I am sitting at and her face reveals itself to me; all of her beauty, and hunger, painted like a Vermeer, show their mastery to me in the flickering light, I can feel her answer before she speaks with a snarl, "No!"

"Why?"

"You're interesting."

Tell me something I don't know, I think as I roll my eyes.

With a seductive finger she grabs my chin and brings my forehead to her lips, "I always wanted a daughter," she whispers.

Oh the flood, my poor heart absorbs like a sponge in a drought. There is only one problem, well actually several, however, one is rather pressing. My heart is still processing the murderer I am, and now, now I have to feel this matronly remorse too! This deep deep mourning of a desire not met…angel asses, I think as a tear flows down my cheek. A tear that holds a thousand emotions in a single drop.

I turn my gaze to stare at anything else but the hungry mother beside me and in the reflection of the cursed glass topaz eyes follow me sealing me in my fate.

I can't back down, not from this fight, "I already have a mother."

"True. True, however I like make-believe Hazel," she whispers as she walks around my chair like it is a ring of flowers she is too beautiful for, the sharp nails of her hand never leave my shoulders, they dig in deeper and deeper with every word, "Do you ever imagine…"

"Not being here, more than I did yesterday. I'm not here to play house," I reply.

She laughs a titter that is too light, the sound enters my ears like urine, I know she is pissed.

"Then why are you here?"

I look up at her with my classic smirk of wickedness, my monster is out to play, unleashed, and free, I can feel my red eyes glitter with ripeness, "Blood for Blood."