The pain is lessening, replaced by a growing numbness. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline disrupting my nerves or something else entirely, but I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. Each swipe of the blade against my skin is nothing more than a tickle.
My head is spinning wildly, and I can feel my vision begin to go dark.
“Violet!” Frankie screams again, face pale. The monster on his left backhands him across the face.
“Shut the fuck up, you fat freak.”
Blinding, incandescent fury rushes through me at his words, settling in my stomach like a ball of light. I want to grip it with both hands and give it a pull, but I don’t. I can’t.
After what feels like an eternity, the giant releases me and pushes me onto the ground. The ghoul stands over me, a cocky smile dancing on his lips. He leans forward to spit on me before straightening, scrubbing a hand down his chest.
“Remember this moment, vampire scum. Remember how hated you are. Of how hated you all are. Do us all a favor and go fall on a wooden stake.” He kicks at my stomach before nodding towards his friends, who reluctantly release Frankie. He wastes no time crawling towards me, tears blurring his eyes. His hand hovers above me, as if he wants to touch me but isn’t sure where.
“Violet! Fuck, Violet. We need to get you home, okay? You’ll be okay.”
Almost mechanically, I nod my head, but my eyes are fixated on the once-smooth skin of my arm.
My head swarms with indignation as I read the words now carved into my porcelain skin.
Vampire Whore
We’re both silent as we walk back to my dorm, Frankie’s coat once more draped over my shoulders. I’m trembling erratically, and my hand fumbles as I attempt to open the door.
“Let me,” Frankie murmurs, pushing it open and helping me inside.
My room looks the exact fucking same, so why does everything feel so…different? Maybe the room hasn’t changed, but I have. In a matter of minutes, I have grown years in age. Centuries, even. I’m no longer that scared little girl who wandered through life carelessly.
What I’ve been through…
That changes people inherently. It warps their very genetic makeup.
I drop Frankie’s jacket onto the ground, immediately staring down at my distorted skin. Those words glare back at me like an ominous promise and a reminder. It was so easy to forget that I was the most hated monster in the universe. That my father had a thousand more enemies than friends. Now, it all comes rushing back to me, like a bomb that has just been detonated.
I don’t cry. I think I used up all my tears in that alleyway, when a little sliver of my innocence was shattered into unfixable pieces. I feel like a ghost gliding through life, never being able to actually stop and smell the roses. Instead, I’m an apparition. A presence that lurks and never participates. I’m…nothing.
Well, nothing but a vampire whore.
“I have a potion that can make this disappear,” Frankie whispers hoarsely. He hasn’t moved from the doorframe, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. “I’ll start on it tonight, and it should be ready in the next few days.”
“No.” I shake my head once, and then again, more vehemently. “Not tonight.”
Still wearing my short black dress, I crawl onto the bed and underneath the covers.
“Violet?” Frankie takes one step closer as I extend a hand, pulling back the blankets.
“Stay with me?” My voice is a plea, nothing but a hushed murmur.
Without hesitation, Frankie crawls beneath the covers beside me and spoons me from behind. His scent surrounds me, comforts me, and somehow, tames the monsters in my head.
Still in his arms, I turn on the bed until I’m facing him, our noses touching.
“I’m so sorry, Vi,” he murmurs brokenly. It’s almost as if he can’t bring himself to speak above a whisper. As if the silence is a fine slate of glass already cracked and moments away from shattering. There’s something tranquil and serene about silence, though. It’s the secrets we carry, the demons we banish, the fears we hide. But it’s also the joy of a first love and the long nights buried beneath the covers, wrapped in someone’s arms.
“It’s not your fault,” I promise, lifting my hand to comb back his tangled curls. I haven’t even realized I’ve used my scarred arm until he pulls it towards his lips and kisses a path down the words. It stopped bleeding back in the alleyway—due to my vampire healing—but the scar will remain. Even if Frankie can make something to erase it, it can’t rectify the pain inflicted on my very soul.
“I promise you, Violet, that no one will ever harm you again,” he murmurs as his lips touch the final “e” of “vampire.”
I want to tell him not to make promises he can’t keep. I want to reassure him that I’m stronger than he believes.
But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I nuzzle his neck with my nose and whisper, “Hold me.”
Maybe with Frankie by my side, the nightmares will be kept at bay.
Chapter 20
Jack
I peer through Hux’s—my—eyes as he moves swiftly through the grocery store. He’s humming beneath his breath as he pushes the metal cart down the various aisleways.
This is so stupid, I deadpan as my rather cheerful brother stops in front of a chocolate display. He begins to grab items at random, dumping them into his already overflowing cart.
“The Google says this is the key to a girl’s heart,” he replies out loud, garnering the attention of a couple standing nearby.
Last night, Hux discovered that Violet was going on a date with Frankie, and now, he’s insistent he needs to go on his own date with the blonde bombshell. He did extensive research on—what he likes to call—”the Google” on how to ask a girl out. The website suggested flowers and chocolates.
Thus, we now have over fifty-five boxes of chocolates and three-hundred flowers of all types and colors in our shopping cart.
Dude, that’s enough! I exclaim as he adds another box of chocolate to the cart.
“We never know when my precious treasure is going to experience her Great Period and require chocolate for survival,” he dismisses. “Unless you want me to start cutting up body parts…”
No! We talked about this. No body parts. No maiming. No murder in the name of love.
“A little murder in the name of love is okay,” Hux murmurs absently as he continues to pore over the shelves.
We talked about this…
“No murder,” he sighs disappointedly. When he spins on his heel, I see an older woman staring at us with wide eyes, one hand clutching her cross necklace and the other raised to defend herself.
Hux smiles disarmingly at her before nodding his head subserviently.
“The great and powerful Google told me that chocolate and flowers were the key to a woman’s heart. Would you agree?” he asks, his smoky accent curling around her. She backs away a step, looking rightfully shell-shocked, before turning on her heel and waddling away. “That was rude,” Hux tells me. “The Google told me that it’s polite to say thank you for starting a conversation.”
For the love of…
It’s Google, not “the Google,” I correct, mentally face-palming myself. And you can’t just talk to humans like you would a monster. They’re far more…delicate than us. They require easing into.