Chapter Twenty-Three

With An Empty Heart

"No," I cried, watching D.J. reach for me hungrily. "No, no, no, not you." I continued to just sit there, until D.J. was slowly starting to give up trying to reach me. I couldn't believe that Katha would do this to me. I couldn't believe that she'd hunted down D.J. just to turn him into a vampire and starve him. It was so cruel that it broke my heart. I continued to just cry, furious at all vampires for what they did to my life and my friends. First Kyler, and now D.J. They didn't deserve this. I wished I had died at that concert, and none of this would've happened.

"Don't cry," D.J. said, no longer sounding like himself, but like that monster in him, "Just come over to your little friend and let him give you a nice hug. I'll make you feel better. Come on over here, Hail. I gave you a bracelet, the least you could do is give me a hug. Come over here, beautiful. You know I wouldn't hurt you. I love you, remember? Remember the kiss? I love you. Come here. COME HERE!" I didn't move from where I was, now covering my face with my hands and sobbing.

What do I do? What could I do? I couldn't just leave D.J. here to starve to death, now able to live longer with the starvation because of his vampirism. I could let Katha continue to torture him. But I couldn't just set him free. He'd go crazy. Not only by killing me, but by going out and killing others. The D.J. I knew would hate to be a killer. He would hate it. And I couldn't stand that. So what do I do?

"Come here," D.J. suddenly said, but this time it crept into my mind and tried to grab ahold on my thoughts. I twitched a bit, but the thought didn't hold long enough to actually put me in danger. Still, he could figure it out, and that scared me enough to come up with a decision. I got up and started to walk away. "Where are you going?! Hailence, please don't leave me! Please don't let me die down here!" I could suddenly hear the real D.J. in him, but I continued to walk back up the stairs, moving up the other stairs until I was on the second floor. Remembering where the stairs were, I headed towards Evanen's room.

Once I entered the room, I recalled what Evanen had said. '...if you wanted to do it manually, you'd have to use solid silver to the heart or head...' I'd need solid silver for that. 'Got a good, silver dagger myself in one of my drawers upstairs... it's the third one down on the left of the maple dresser..' I headed for the maple dresser and opened it to find a silver dagger under the clothing. It was extremely sharp, which was good, and with an empty heart, I headed back for the stairs. It didn't seem too long before I was back in the dungeon, but at the heavy doors I looked around to find the keys hanging on a nail on the side wall. I headed down the hall of cages, concealing the dagger under my shirt, until I found D.J. back in the farthest corner of his cage.

"Go away," D.J. said, "Go away, Hail, before I kill you. Worse than kill you."

"Don't be silly, D.J.," I responded, and I started on the lock. D.J. didn't say anything else, but kept to the place he was. I unlocked the lock, and bent down to crawl towards D.J. My heart was pounding, but something told me he would be pretty weak for a vampire, that I'd be able to do it. "I just want to give you one last hug before I leave you here, D.J." The wound on my hand was reopened by the crawling, and D.J. started to look wild again. So instead of telling me to go, he moved towards me.

"Okay, just a nice long hug," D.J. agreed, and he was sharply in front of me. I opened my arms, and he entered my hug, holding me tightly against him so that I felt his stone hard, cold skin. While he reached around me, moving my hair from my neck slowly so as to not warn me of his intentions, I pulled the dagger from under my shirt and reached around his back to position it just above his skin where I knew his heart would be.

"I'm sorry, D.J.," I said sadly, and just before he bit down on my neck, I thrusted the dagger as far as I could into his flesh. It was easier to do than I thought, probably because the solid silver made his skin as soft as paper. The sudden screech that erupted from his mouth scared me, but while he tried to get away from me, I held tighter and gained more strength to pull the dagger further in him until I felt the hilt touch his skin. And he was suddenly quiet. I let go then, moving away from him a bit, and watched as his skin softened a bit to show that his real corpse was only about a week old. I grabbed the dagger, and left the cage, not even bothering to lock it shut. He was dead. He wasn't going anywhere. I looked at the dagger to see that there wasn't even any blood on it. It probably burned off.

I moved up the stairs, and started up the second set of stairs. Just before I could reach the second floor, Evanen appeared out of thin air in front of me. I could imagine his first sight of me; my walk of death, mud smeared all over my pants and hands, along with the nice gash on the palms of my hands, his dagger hanging beside me limply, my hair probably an after effect of a tornado, and the tears starting to build in my already red eyes. For a moment, he stood there in front of me in half spring, as though he had been prepared to fly down the stairs, and he fixed his eyes on the silver dagger.

"Drop it," he suddenly snarled threateningly, as though I had it to his neck in preparation to kill him. I didn't even hesitate. I let it fall from my hands, not particularly attached to the object I'd used to kill a guy who I'd known for over a year... a guy who'd saved my life... who had liked me not as food but as a real person... I suddenly couldn't hold it in, and I stepped forward towards Evanen, burrying my face into his chest, and started sobbing. At some point, I attempted to explain what had happened, but it sounded something like "I-I-I-aaaaaa..." It was pitiful. Evanen merely tapped my shoulder awkwardly before herding me back to his room where I could spill my tears on the bedsheets rather than on his shirt. He left, this time making sure the door was locked, but arrived not long later with the silver dagger wrapped in a cloth. I wasn't paying attention to him, so I didn't know where he put it this time. It didn't matter. I wasn't planning on going anywhere soon.

Once my sobs had ceased to be so violent and I'd moved into the stage of hyperventilation, Evanen slide onto the bed beside me, placing himself back as my outer surface. "You want to explain what happened," he asked, trying to sound sincere in his concerned voice, but only making himself sound more inconsiderate. He didn't understand why people cried. He didn't understand normal emotions; the natural feelings that comes with different actions and words. Instead of trying to give me time, he merely wanted to know why I had disobeyed him and left the room while he was gone. He had to know that I'd killed someone obviously important to me, but he didn't understand why a person would be sad about killing someone... probably because he thought if you killed someone, they obviously weren't important to you. Death never was an issue with him. Someone dies... they're dead. No need to worry over it. But even though I knew all this, it still enraged me.

"Leave me alone," I snapped, digging my face into the soaked pillow even further.

"I leave, expecting you to be safely hidden from harm in this room, and I come back to find you looking as though you'd nearly been killed, with my silver dagger in your hands, a weird expression on your face, and a dead vampire toy down in the dungeon," Evanen stated, as though I didn't know all that already. The expression 'vampire toy' hurt, though. "Tell me why you were about killing vampires and crying about it."

"Leave me alone," I raged.

"You know that Katha is throwing a fit about this, right," Evanen moved closer to me, "That vampire was her toy, and you killed him. Now she won't shut up about it. She's after your head. Why couldn't you just leave things alone? Do you have a problem with staying out of trouble?" He didn't sound annoyed or anything. He sounded neutral in the whole subject, merely a computer wanting the facts to be processed. But the fact that he expected me to feel what I did was wrong merely because it affected Katha's fun set the bomb off. I shoved myself up, looking towards Evanen with a killer look. He just looked at me, waiting for a response.

"Stop. Calling. Him. A. Toy," I snarled, the rage flowing through me in waves of heat that hurt my head, "His name was D.J.! And I don't give a fuck what Katha thinks. She tricked him here. She got him here because he was my friend. She turned him so he'd live longer while he STARVED! And you expect me to be worried about some TROUBLE I'm in?! He's dead! Not long ago he was listening to music with me, and now I've killed him... and you... and you... you!" I swung at his face with all my might, and he moved his head back easily before I could touch him -- which was probably a good thing because there's no telling how much that would've hurt me and not him. "I hate you!" I wanted to do more. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to attempt to kill him. I wanted to do anything... so that he wouldn't keep me here anymore. But he wouldn't do anything even if I tried. He wouldn't end my life because he would just assume I was just being weird in that human way.

I shoved my face back into the pillow and moaned, "Just kill me already. You've done it to the rest of them. You've experimented on me. And not touching me is just as sufferable as ripping me to peices, so kill me already." He didn't say anything. Instead, he moved his finger over the back of my hand, and I pulled it away sharply. Then he laid down, resting his head so that he could stare at me as I tried to suffocate myself unsuccessfully.

"I'm not going to kill you, Hailence," he said quietly, but I ignored him. Eventually, my body got the hint that things in the conscious world wasn't doing too well, and it numbed the pain by darkening everything until there was nothing but the black darkness of an unrestful sleep.

~...~

I no longer felt the urge to leave the bedroom anymore. I didn't find the idea of actually seeing Katha very desirable, so the only time I left the bedroom was when Evanen was asleep. And then I'd slip into Mikel's room, who seemed to be getting worse in his guilt day after day. The only thing we did lately was lay against each other and sleep. I'd suggest each time for him to go back to how he used to be, and how he was starting to worry me. He would say he'd get over it... that he was just not feeling much himself lately, but it'd end soon enough. But he was starting to look a bit like D.J. had down in the dungeons.. only cleaner. Plus, he didn't feel the need to attack me. It was strange. I never thought guilt would eat away at a vampire as much as it was Mikel. But I'd never known a vampire actually, so what could I know? Cecilian didn't seem to be too bothered by it after I explained my thoughts on it. Then again, I hadn't seen her seeing as I've isolated myself. Evanen didn't talk about him, either, but Evanen hates Mikel anyway. He's probably enjoying Mikel's continuing disappearance.

Evanen didn't mention the D.J. incident after that one night, so I didn't know if Katha got any rise out of anyone. The only thing Evanen did was appear into the room with food every once in a while. Plus, he'd become enamored of my hair, which was an object of my body that I was becoming less enamored of as I noticed the ends splitting due to lack of care. Not to mention the layers that now seemed at even lengths and my foul bangs that were becoming longer along with the rest of my hair. I was in the process of convincing Evanen to allow me to express myself by at least trimming my hair and turning it back to normal, but at the moment he denied that pleasure for he "liked how wild and long it was becoming" because apparently vampire hair doesn't ever become damaged. Though I didn't see anything interesting in damaging hair, Evanen did, which gave me more of a reason to want to rid myself of its attraction to Evanen. As for what Mikel thought... well, his thoughts were becoming less and less sensable, seeing as he was becoming less and less of himself.

When I believed I was alone, I laid on my back on the end of the bed, where there were no pillows to prop my head up. I allowed my repulsive hair to be splayed around my head, and breathed in slowly and deliberately. It was a moment I was having where I questioned my past, present, and future. Mainly my present because I was never sure if I was actually existing. Especially when it was dead quite like such times as this, and I had to reassure myself that I wasn't dead. This was living. Surviving, at least. Besides that fear, I enjoyed being spread out like this. It made me feel as though I could actually become aware of each square inch of my presence. I felt exposed; free in an open space of emptiness. That or I was becoming more insane than originally. Isolation can't be good for the soul.

Evanen was suddenly next to me so rapidly that it was almost as if he'd been there for hours. In fact, I hadn't heard the door open or close, nor felt any pressure on the bed, to indicate that he had come back from his hunting. He was just suddenly there, his face more alive with a glint in his eyes that usually told me he got a good catch. I preferred not to think about those things, and so when I finally registered that he hadn't been there the whole time... that he'd used his super vampire-ness in order to suddenly appear next to me... I continued to stare at the ceiling and concentrate on breathing.

This wasn't one of those times when Evanen just wanted to stare at me, twirl his fingers in my hair, and breathe in my very essence as though devouring my soul. No, this was a time when Evanen had something on his mind that he wanted to share. And usually when Evanen is the one with the topic, it isn't one that I enjoy talking about. Sure enough, he said, "I just had a very interesting kill not too long ago.." A topic I avoid purposely because it has to do with him killing someone. Not something that brings along good sleep, seeing as I sleep next to him. And I wasn't afraid to mention this fact to him in order to avoid damage to my mental health.

"I prefer not to think about such subjects, thank you," I informed Evanen before he could go further into his details. Then I took the time to actually look at him. His electric blue eyes were scary in their sharp movements, and ability to focus on certain points so hard that it was as though he'd look right through them. I wondered what he saw when he looked into people's eyes. His bleach blonde hair was sticking out in odd ends, along with his snake bites and tongue ring, to fit in with the punked style. It was creepy how smooth his skin was spread over his body, tense on all ends in that way that said he could snap me in half a second. But all the these aspects that would strike fear in a person were canceled out by the expression on his face, which always was a morbid "come-here-and-hug-me-because-I'm-damaged" expression. Except at the moment, he was leaving that front alone, and was back to an odd, placid look on his face that came off to show the in-human part of him, but he also had his mouth parted, eyes widened a bit, and a curious arch of his eyebrow that told me something had occured to him.

"How can you go about asking all these questions about vampirism, and never want to know about the one thing that dominates a vampire's living arrangement," Evanen asked, and in a flash, he was arched over me in such a way that his face was just above mine but not one surface of his body was touching me, each of his hands on opposite sides of my head, but not touching my hair. Normally, I'd feel the sudden trespass into my personal bubble, but Evanen had no understanding of that term or feeling. And so I'd become accustomed to this.

"I assume you use some sort of magic trick, coax some poor person into your arms, and smother their screams by ripping their throats out with pleasure that pulses throughout you," I stated, a bit of sarcasm here and there. "And so I'm not so curious about it." Evanen smiled, and I knew that this time he wasn't going to allow this conversation to go my way. I was just about sure that he was going to feed my nightmares with death.

"Is that what I did to you? Rip your throat out," he asked absently. I didn't respond, knowing that that wasn't exactly the case. "You only think you're not curious about it because you're human. I think you'd be the most intrigued vampire..." I suddenly felt uncomfortable under him. He merely continued to watch me for a moment before continuing, "Do you find me attractive?" There wasn't a smirk on his face to see if this was a joke. The first thing that went through my head was 'extremely', but then I wasn't going to spit that out. He might take that as an opening to ask me to marry him or something, and I prefer not to feed his obsession over me. I'm taken... but then he doesn't know that.

"I refuse to feed your ego," I responded shortly and finalized the response by turning away. At least with my head because I wasn't going anywhere. It was a mistake, for Evanen bent down slowly to rest his mouth just above my now revealed neck, and he breathed in hungrily. I was suddenly rigid. It was scary how continuously blood-thirsty Evanen was. He suddenly blew lightly on my skin, trailing up to my jaw before gently kissing my jaw just below my earlobe. I felt an involuntary chill, and he chuckled triumphantly.

"I knew it," He said moving back a bit so that I could return to glare at him. "See, as I was hunting today, I took care in noting everything I do in order to inform you of every aspect so that it'd be another vampire topic I could feed your curiousity with."

"I don't want to--," I started, but was interupted by his finger to my lips.

"I started out by figuring just what brought my food to me," He just totally flung the word 'food' out there... eh, "And it turned out that I never do anything to convince them to me. I just walk around, and once I focus on them, they start to focus on me. I think it's some sort of chemical we can release that can target certain ones. And I think that mainly it's just physical attractions that drops their guard and tempts them toward me. Unlike with you, though, for you just followed along without me even targeting you. I think it might be because of that too curious personality you have..." I closed my eyes, not looking forward to this talk.

"Usually, I like to find out a bit about my food, and this time it was a 16 year old girl named Ashley, but she renamed herself Viola for some reason. She liked medium-rare steaks, the show 'Scars', black, The Beatles oddly, and peanut butter. She hated pink, bubblegum, Hip Hop, American Idol, and her parents, who abused her as a child before she was left to an orphanage. She was in therapy for attempted suicides, but wished nothing more but for her life to be ended," Evanen stated, before smirking, "I love those types."

"Okay, I get it, you killed her, now please shut up and leave me alone," I suddenly pleaded, reaching up to cover my ears before Evanen lightly pulled them away and to my sides. He was frowning, obviously wondering what he was doing wrong again. That was the thing with Evanen. He never knew what was the right thing to talk about. I asked about vampires, and he felt he needed to tell me every aspect of it when a topic came to him that had to do with my taste. He lacked the ability to think of death as a bad thing, as it was thought of by humans. Especially murderous death.

"Fine, I'll stopped talking about one kill specifically," Evanen suddenly said, deciding on a good way to continue while resolving my discomfort in the subject. Not the way I meant to go, but it was an improvement. "What about fangs? Do you want to know about fangs?" I nearly said no, but then hesitated. Now that I'd thought about it, fangs seemed like an interesting subject. Evanen caught the sudden interest, so he settled on a subject, happy he had come up with one to my taste. "Okay," he moved off of me, pulling me up to sitting position, but still as close as ever, "Watch this, but don't be afraid because I'm not going to hurt you."

He moved his hands to his mouth, raising his upper lip above his seemingly normal teeth. I felt suddenly nervous, but I kept myself composed. Suddenly, in slow movement, I saw a thick film lower from his gums just above his canines/cuspids. I was suddenly very intrigued, and actually moved closer for a better look as the film of an outer covering for the teeth moved further and further down to cover the cuspids so that they were no longer the normal, slightly sharped cuspids, but now extremely sharp, dangerous fangs. I always had assumed either an extra tooth moved into the rows of normal teeth or that the cuspids just spontaneous went under chemical change and were suddenly sharper. But it was almost as if an extra sharp layer enveloped the original tooth.

"Cooool," I said, but automatically wished to take that comment back, "But not cool enough for me to actually want a pair." Evanen let go of his lip, allowing his teeth to go back to human form, and smiled at me. Vampires were so odd in how they had so many kinks in order to stay hidden from the human's alert radar system. They seemed innocent at first, but once they decided to reveal themselves, it was over. I thought of how even Mikel still refused to allow his fangs to appear in front of me, as though they taunted him to use them. It was strange how this didn't seem to affect Evanen.

"Getting fangs to appear is almost an unconscious thought. It's like clutching your hand into a fist. When you become angry or about to get in a fight, you prepare subconsciously by tightening into a fist. When we're about to feed, they grow out without actually having to think about it. But then there is a difference because you can ball your hand into a fist randomly for no reason without an effect," Evanen lectured slowly, "But for most vampires, when they let their fangs appear, it's as though it releases some sort of chemical to the brain that makes them want to use it. The body assumes you have it out for a reason, and so it deepens the thirst to fulfill the purpose. Only experienced vampires can control it with ease... and apparently someone who has always been a vampire." I suddenly found my question to Mikel's relunctance answered.

"Does it hurt," I asked curiously.

Evanen frowned in thought, "I don't know. I'd have to ask someone else here... Cecilian or Katha most likely. But it never bothered me. There might be a difference with newborn vampires; them not being so used to it. The thing is, you'd have to think about how being a vampire seems to erase most things that would cause pain. So simple things, like cuts or anything, don't really hurt anymore. Only things that could kill us seem to hurt, like the sun, silver, and things of that sort. But then it seemed to hurt them when I would drain them, so I wouldn't know if fangs were involved with that." I apparently brought up new thinking material. I suddenly found myself gripping my cuspids between my fingers, imagining how weird it would be if they were cut-throat sharp. Evanen watched me for a moment before saying, "I think you'd look beautiful with fangs." I stopped messing with my teeth immediately.

"I think not," I responded curtly. And to avoid any further talk of the subject, I moved away from him, laying on my stomach and facing away from him. For a moment, there wasn't any motion from Evanen. Then he suddenly couldn't stand the distance and moved towards me. He lightly started to move my hair away from my face so that he could see me, and I flicked at his hands to no prevail. He bent down until his lips were above my ear.

"Hailence, you make me feel strange," Evanen stated, and his voice sounded so confused that it suddenly caused a skip in my heart beat. "I never usually feel anything, actually, and so the fact that you make me feel something is strange. I have an urge to protect you, but I can't help but keep you in danger because I can't stay away from you." He paused, and I felt so weird considering I thought I had already heard something like this.. from Mikel. "I never felt the need to preservate someone in all my life, especially a human. And you entertain me in such a way... it was confusing. But I think I know what this is... even though I didn't know that this could happened to me." I held my breath. Here it comes.

"I'm in love with you," Evanen finished suddenly, and I closed my eyes before groaning. There was only one way to put this straight. I shoved myself up to sitting position so that I could face him straightforwardly. But before I could do anything, Evanen was suddenly gripping my head lightly, and pressing his cold lips over my moist lips. I raised my hands in shock, keeping my lips clamped shut in surprise. He let go, looking a bit confused.

"Well," I said, smacking my lips together over and over as though I had just tried a new type of chili and was thinking over how exactly it tasted for judgement. That or you could consider it my way to make sure my lips were going to work properly. "Thanks for that and all, but no." There was a very large, awkward silence. Well, awkward in my part, seeing as Evanen probably never experienced that feeling either. He seemed to just be calculating my answer.

"You mean no as in--," He started.

"As in no," I responded, "No, you do not love me. You're just a bit confused."

He smiled coyly, "I'm not confused, Hailence."

I sighed, "You don't love me." Maybe if I say it enough, he'll believe it.

"I do, too." I suddenly felt like I was arguing with a child.

"You don't."

"I do."

"Well, I don't love you," I broke the chain that would last forever, silently completely the sentence in my head 'I love Mikel.' Evanen peered at me thoughtfully, as though he didn't quite believe my response. Believe it, though. It was true. What reason had Evanen given me to fall for him? He hadn't killed me yet? Oh, wow. He told me my dad wasn't dead? Who's fault would it be if he did die? He gave me my notebook? He took away my life. He gave me Kyler's hair pin? He killed Kyler.

Evanen suddenly raised himself up, heading towards the door. I sighed in relief, glad that that was over. Then he turned, "If you don't love me now, you will. You'll see." And he left. Okay, so it wasn't over. That didn't leave me the least bit happier than I had been previously. So how did I solve this problem? Easy. I laid on my back to stare at the ceiling and put my mind on other things. Such as every memory I had with D.J. besides the part when I killed him. At least before, when I was taken here for forever, I knew he was alive. There could've been a chance that we would've met again. But now that illusion was finished. Now D.J. was with Kyler... never to be seen again. I started to cry again.