Chapter 438: Burning and Repairing
"Being a rare vampire’s mate does not make me interesting enough?" Nedra quipped, rage fueling her words. "Surely that alone would make me more unique than you. It is not so unique to thrive on the pain and suffering of others."
"I did not claim it was," the intruder chuckled, rolling back on his heels, delighted that she was willing to volley words back to him. "It is the means with which I can provide that suffering that is unique. Have you not been listening?"
"I have been trying not to. You are insane," she hissed.
"Oh, that is disappointing," he tsked. "So unoriginal. Is sanity really the means by which you would choose to judge someone like me?"
"Yes. There are many means by which to judge you. That is but one," she spat, her fingers twitching. How was she going to take care of him? What options did she have to contain this threat?
A storm cloud rumbled its own coming threat in the distance, and her eyes snapped to the direction of the sound. It was loud. If she had heard it from within these walls, the storm was far advanced. It had likely already passed the cottage. There was no doubt in her mind that Seth would abandon August to come find her and see if she was alright. And if he came here, he would end up just like Brandt.
The dream of having that family with Seth that she had been fantasizing about on the walk here—of sharing a life with each other and the beautiful children they had created together—started to crumble just like the ruinous stone walls around this castle. Was she really going to let this maniac of a vampire steal that hope away from her?
A louder clap of thunder echoed almost directly above them this time, and she jumped. The fear of losing Seth was too strong. This whole island was going to come down around them if she didn’t get it under control. And if she was so weak that she could not withstand even the thought of losing him, how was she going to battle this creature and keep the island in one piece at the same time? She couldn’t do both.
Nedra’s forehead cleaved in despair at this realization. How could she do everything that needed to be done? If she even tried, she might collapse from just the effort of it. She had barely made it to another room in the castle after constructing a simple cage before she collapsed in exhaustion.
Why had her path led her to this point where she was facing the limits of her abilities and the peak of her weakness at the very time that she needed to be her strongest?
"Sanity is neither here nor there," the intruder waved at her dismissively, still absorbed in the conversation. The thunder was not unusual to him. He did not know the consistent weather pattern of this island in which no storm had ever come in all the time they had lived there.
"Sanity is a construct. Nothing in this universe can truly be insane, or if it is—it must be an acceptable insanity for it is the universe the allows it, is it not?" He asked, bowing slightly to offer the volley of their debate back to her.
This was a game. Clearly this was a game that he was enjoying.
When she did not answer, he rolled back on his heels again.
"Can I really be blamed for the hunger I have? Can I really be blamed for acting on it?" He asked, the delight of how correct he viewed himself dancing in his eyes.
"Yes," she swallowed. "I believe you can. You allow it to grow and thrive and flourish. You feed it and nurture it until it becomes a cancerous growth needing to consume everything around it."
"All things must be fed and nurtured," he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air around him.
"All things except those that you wish to eliminate?" She hissed, glaring up at him. "Is that not a contradiction of logic?"
"No, of course not. All things must come to an end as well," he clapped his hands together with an amused grin.
"All things except the vampires?" She asked.
"Yes, we are a bit like gods, are we not?" He grinned. "You see, my hunger and thirst are the only things that have been given to me that I can feed and nurture—that I can gain joy from watching flourish. They are what were given to me instead of life. It is quite beautiful actually."
"It is grotesque," Nedra growled. "How could you imagine that I would want to bring more of your kind into this world? Even if I were Zagan’s mate, I would never give in to it. I would never allow myself to play any kind of part in what you are describing, nor would I allow the heir to that world and that way of thinking grow inside of my belly. I would rather die a thousand deaths than create another monster like you. I would rather subject myself to whatever horrific fantasy you have in your mind about torture and pain and suffering than birth a vampire."
"You are not his mate," he hummed the realization now that her venom had injected itself into the air around them. "You were being true."
"Of course I am not his mate. Never would that be my destiny," she hissed.
"I see," he said. "Well then I suppose this has all been for nothing. I wanted to shock you with the ways I would torture your beloved—a kind of psychological torture that, while fleeting, is its own kind of satisfaction. But..." he trailed off, glancing around the room as if he were considering what to do next.
"I don’t suppose you want to hear it anyway? About the way my blood turns into a thick black sludge that curdles the hollowness within? Burning and repairing, burning and repairing the insides of the undead in a kind of backward ouroboros that never ends?" He recited, stalking back her way and allowing his height to elongate as it had before while his voice dipped to a new menacing low. He grabbed her by the jaw again and lifted her into the air while she clawed at his forearm, twisting below as her legs sought the ground.
"I wonder what I would have to do to the living to recreate the agonizing screams of the vampires I torture. It is unlikely that I could put you through enough pain without you simply dying first as a result," he snarled, squeezing her jaw and opening his mouth to mimic the "O" that she was making with hers as a result.
But his mouth kept opening, kept elongating, and Nedra froze, dangling in the air as she watched the horror of his mouth growing so large that he could nearly fit her inside of it. She drew a quick design in the air with her finger, and the monster dropped her before flying across the room and colliding with the large steel hood over the oven.
"Nedra," Seth gasped, emerging from the side door of the kitchen with August behind him. He skidded next to her on the floor, lifting her face to examine the blood smears that were there.
"Go," she cried, pushing him away. "You must go now!"
