Chapter 2: Chapter II - Awakening
Moonlight, kind and gentle and more forgiving than any other moonlight I’d ever felt in my life, kissed my eyelids. Not touched. Not stroked. It kissed them. I knew it kissed them because they felt so loved that they fluttered open and revealed hell to me.
Hell was a small box room with blood-stained walls, bloodied carpet and two armchairs drawn up to a rickety bed. The devils sat in those chairs, one old and one young. How did I know they were devils?
Their eyes shone red. Blood-red. Everything else in hell was dark, like dried and crusty blood, but them? Those eyes. Rubies dipped in my wounds, my endlessly-bleeding neck, my…
Several realisations hit my mind at once.
Four red eyes were staring at me. My eyes were open but I couldn’t breathe. If I wasn’t dead, I was close.
Purgatory?
“Don’t panic,” the older devil said, as if that stopped my fingers clenching the blanket which was trapping me on the bed—the rickety bed which had to be meant for the dying, and dead. Which was I?
“Try to breathe,” the younger devil grinned—there wasn’t too much of an age difference between them, just some experience and stress lines in the face of the elder which marked him as wiser. Or more devilish. I couldn’t tell.
I couldn’t breathe. There was a block where my lungs should have been, something thick and concrete and there. They couldn’t move. I couldn’t drag in any of the musty air, or the dust particles lurking in it, illuminated by that kind, cruel moonlight which exposed me to this… hell. That was all it could be.
Hell, or purgatory.
“It’s difficult, but you will be able to breathe, and talk,” the older devil smiled calmly. I clenched my teeth. Shadowy memories were coming back.
The woman. The alleyway. The attack.
Were they like her? Was she a devil? I couldn’t remember those eyes being on her, though, those brilliant eyes which made them devils. Her eyes were dark. Confusing. Intelligent.
Scheming. Those eyes, and that mouth, made me… whatever I was. Dead. Dying. Trapped in some place other than Earth, other than Dreswell. Maybe hell. Maybe not. I glanced around.
Moonlight. That meant there was a moon, sending its rays of light down to cascade over the disgusting walls. Blood which should’ve been inside someone decorated old-fashioned wallpaper. It should’ve been running through someone’s veins, not sprayed across a tiny murder room.
I began to try and think.
They could’ve been humans, not devils. Some combination of drugs and twisted attacks could have stopped me talking. The eyes? Contact lenses or tattoos, or drugs again, hallucinations; everything in that room could’ve been a wild trip.
It seemed too ridiculous to be true. Ratty armchairs. A bed out of a haunted hospital. Moonlight on blood.
Devils, sat there, calm as could be. Smiling. Grinning. Trying to be friendly.
“Kid, trust me.” The elder stood up, taking a step closer to the bed. To me. I shuffled away on the hard mattress, my back hitting a wall. A horrific wall. I jerked my body forwards. “Calm down, it’s all gonna be okay.”
Gritting my teeth, I decided that insanity was just how the world worked now. Expecting nothing, I tried to breathe in, feeling the air collect in my throat. It couldn’t go any further. I was dead.
No breathing. No oxygen. No life.
“That’s good, that’s good,” the elder complimented my futile efforts, nodding his head. “Take another deep breath, just like that, try and pull in the air as hard as you can.”
Another effort. Was this a test, to allow me to come back to life? Were paramedics working on my body, or nurses and doctors? Were electric shocks about to hit my chest?
My chest. The final test. My hand drifted to where I knew a heartbeat should have been, not knowing what it would find. Cold skin, under a tattered hoodie. She’d torn me to shreds, clothes and skin.
She’d torn me to shreds. But this body, this dead body, was complete. No shreds. No blood. No tears.
There was no heartbeat in my chest.
Death embraces, sighs, and leaves
His hand was ice-cold. Both the devils were silent, the younger getting rid of his grin and replacing it with concern. Could a devil feel concerned? Could a devil be worried, or sad, or scared? I didn’t know anything, especially not how devils lived. Or died.
Life was confusing, but so was death.
His fingers wrapped themselves around my hand, tiny compared to his, moving it to my other arm. My wrist. If my chest didn’t have a pulse, what chance did my wrist have?
“Just wait,” he said, placing my fingers on an oddly pale vein.
Pale, and somewhat larger than it used to be. Thicker. Maybe I just never paid attention to my veins before. Maybe death did something to them. Maybe this was just how the body looked after it died.
I’d never seen a dead body before. Or, not any that I knew were dead. Sleep and death were close siblings.
Pulse.
My wide eyes stared down at the vein, previously still. I hadn’t imagined it. There was a pulse—there was a pulse, and I could chase it. Right up my arm. As soon as I became aware of it, it was everywhere. Ricocheting through my body. My legs. My head. My chest, just not… not the heart.
Confused, I placed my hand on my chest again, noticing the pulses everywhere but there.
“This must be very disorientating for you.” The elder spoke again, crouching down by the bed and looking up at me. “But trust me, we won’t leave you. We will help you figure everything out.”
“Keep trying to breathe,” the younger devil cut in.
“Yes, yes—Matty, please,” the elder chided him, turning his head for a moment. “One thing at a time. Deep breaths,” back to me, he smiled, “in and out. You will be able to speak, once you breathe.”
Devils made awful teachers. Breathe. What sort of command was that for someone who had a chest full of cement and a snake surging through their veins in place of their pulse? For someone who no longer had a heartbeat but could still see and think and… and, apparently, speak, after I breathed.
The only problem with breathing, of course, was that I couldn’t breathe.
But the world wasn’t logical anymore. It was insane and upside down and altered so far from reality that I only recognised the moon. Everything else was ridiculous.
Reluctantly, I attempted to force air past my throat again. The younger devil, apparently named ‘Matty’ (an incredibly stupid and infantile name for a devil, in my opinion), nodded at me with his grin. I hated his grin. I’d been dead for a few minutes and already found someone to hate.
A devil, no less.
Sparks hit my throat. The devils tricked me. My chest convulsed and my face met a blanket, coughs assaulting my insides. Not pain. Not quite. But it was a severe discomfort which made me want to punch someone.
“Stu-stu-stu-pid,” the word ripped itself off my tongue, growling through a throat thick with death, “de-vils.”
“Vampires, actually,” Matty offered helpfully, before being heavily chided by the older devil—or vampire, if devils didn’t lie. “What? She might as well know.”
“How many times,” the devil or vampire, whichever name they wanted to call themselves by, sighed, “do I have to tell you, Matty? We do not shock new-bloods. We are gentle and sensitive.”
“She’s sat there half-naked with blood all over her and you want me to be sensitive? Sweetheart.” I raised my eyes to look into his, my entire body trembling as coughs continued to wrack my chest and something slick and disgusting began to force itself through my mouth, dribbling out through the corners of my lips. “You’re a vampire. Got turned by a vampire, getting looked after by vampires. You don’t need food or water anymore, but blood’s gonna become a part of life. So’s hunting. You can run off if you like, but the sun’ll give you worse burns than a house fire. There—that sensitive enough for you?”
Bone-white splotches of phlegm appeared on the mattress. I think they fell from my mouth, but I was too busy coughing and spluttering to notice what was going on.
A vampire. One of those mythical beings, from stories and folklore. Oh, and popular books and TV shows, obviously. Which type would I be?
Beautiful and embroiled in complex romance plots, or dangerous and bloodthirsty?
“Kid, can you tell us your name?” The older devil asked patiently. “Can you remember it?”
“K-” The sound died in my throat. The last monster who asked for my name tore me to shreds, and I didn’t even answer her. Could I trust them with my name?
I didn’t want to trust anyone ever again.
But that wasn’t realistic. A person had to trust people. It was the only way to exist in the world without being miserable or lonely. Still, did vampires need to trust each other?
Each other. I’d betrayed myself already. That is, if I really wanted to deny what I had apparently become. A devil. A monster. A vampire.
“Kassidy.” I gave in. Trust was precious and fleeting. If I could find it, I would cling onto it and use it as a guiding light through my new… life. Or death.
When my lungs were still recovering from being filled with something and my pulse had become a wriggling snake, or slug, it was difficult to not be cynical.
“Welcome to the Hardy bloodline, Kassidy,” the older devil, vampire, monster or whatever he happened to be said, “my name is Sebastian. I am the leader of our bloodline, and the sire of your sire.”
“Like your granddad,” Matty smirked, before Sebastian sent him a withering look. “Or grandsire?”
“Be quiet,” he shook his head and put one hand on my shoulder. “I apologise for Matthew. He is my second-in-command—not too far your elder in mortal years, either. I am of fifteenth generation, while Matty is of twenty-first.”
“What… what am I?” I asked tentatively, peering into his serious, dark red eyes.
“I would rather leave the explanations to your sire—”
“Half-sire,” Matty said, grinning at me. “You’re special, you know.”
“Matty,” he chided, removing his hand from my shoulder, “this is not for us to explain. Teddy will return soon,” he looked back at me, smiling diplomatically. “I sent him hunting to keep his mind off you. A sire’s bond to their childe is a powerful thing.”
“Even a half-sire.” This time, Sebastian stood up and grabbed Matty by the arm, hauling him towards the door. “What? It’s true!”
“Be quiet, before I demote you and make Skye my second-in-command,” Sebastian sighed, opening the door. “Teddy will explain what is going on when he returns. He is my childe, and I taught him well.”
“Modest.”
“Out!” Shoving Matty out of the room, Sebastian offered me a final smile before the door clicked shut and I was left alone.
To wait and weep in darkness, hoping
The devils left me in a room called hell. I called it hell, anyway, because I’d paced the blood-stained carpet too many times to count. All the stains, marks and scrapes were old to me. It looked like a room which was battered, escaped from, and used as a prison cell frequently.
There again, that may not have been fair. Was I imprisoned? I was left, but there had been no key turning in the lock—the door did have one, but it was unused at that moment. There were no threats or stern words, except for Sebastian’s telling off of Matty.
It seemed like I could walk out at any moment. But walking in itself was a bit of a challenge. With everything that had happened to me, I felt woozy and weak. My eyes kept flashing about when I didn’t want them to. My stomach decided to start training to be a gymnast, beginning with the summersault.
Holding onto the bed with one hand, I steadied myself. It was only a small room: a box room. I could manage my existence in this tiny space, even if I couldn’t really come to terms with what was going on.
Vampires. Monsters. Devils. Blood red eyes and jokes about a ‘sire’ and ‘childe’. Jokes. How could that ‘second-in-command’, that Matty, just joke about what was going on? Here I was, potentially not a human anymore, or not alive anymore, or some mix of the two, and he joked. He made fun of the life—or death—that she had catapulted me into.
Her face still haunted my thoughts. No one told me if I could sleep or not, as one of these vampires, but I didn’t want to even if I could. I knew she’d be in my nightmares.
A few hours ago, I was a human. An alive, cold, hungry, tired human. I didn’t mind the negative parts. I just wanted to feel my heart beat again and know that I was a living, breathing human being.
The stillness of my lungs was chilling.
Letting go of the bed, I began to pace again. My bare feet sank into the carpet. Matty was right. I was a bloody, half-naked mess. She’d reduced me to nothing when I thought I couldn’t get any lower in life.
I’d never forgive her.
Right there and then, in that prison cell which wasn’t a prison cell, I knew I had one goal left in life. One last quest in death. No matter what happened to me from that point on, I would not stop until I did one thing.
I would find that woman, and I would make her pay for what she turned me into.
On top of that, I also decided, as I sat down on the bed, that I very much wanted to understand what was going on.
As if on cue, someone knocked on the door.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone