by Emma Mills
the rotten door and nudging her into the shadowy room.
‘No way! Are you crazy? You can’t leave me here alone,’ Genevieve said, running to the door.
Naturally he was quicker and easily blocked her path.
‘Trust me, no harm will come to you. Stay here and be silent. If you leave, you’ll be on your own. Now go and sit in that far corner,’ he commanded. ‘I won’t be long.’
She turned her head to look at the dark shadowy corner he pointed to and looked back. He was gone. She took a step towards the door and hesitated briefly, giving her head a quick shake before darting the remainder of the way. She pulled the door back a little and looked outside, but there was no sign of Sebastian and the alley seemed deserted. Twisting her head back and forth, she glanced between the shady corner where her mother had laid and the alley outside. The sky was dark now and she knew she could run for it and keep following the river, away from Paris, away from the towns. She would be quicker without her mother, but she would be totally alone and she had no idea how she would survive. She probably wouldn’t. A cold wind blew through the doorway and she shivered and closed the door, retreating to the far corner, where she sat nervously twisting a long dark curl of hair around her fingers, whilst she waited for the man she had put her trust in.
She didn’t have to wait long and presently she strained her ears, unable to believe the noises she thought she could hear from outside. He couldn’t have! He’d told her to trust him, and she had trusted him. Angry tears filled her eyes and the colour from her face drained as the door was pushed open and held wide. The faces of four of the murderous peasants peered around the door frame, their eyes flashing with hatred, their mouths smirking with delight.
‘So, do we have a deal then?’ Sebastian said, nudging all four into the cramped cottage.
‘A deal? You gave them me to ensure your own safety? You said I could trust you?’ Genevieve screamed, cowering against the wall as two of the men began to walk towards her.
‘I said do you agree? You leave me alone and you get the girl,’ he said calmly, his eyes hard and icy, ignoring Genevieve’s plea.
The woman nodded and joined the two men who were stalking Genevieve, backing her further into a corner.
Sebastian kicked the door hard and it slammed into its rotten frame, blocking out the weak light that had been supplementing the single oil lamp, so that the shadows danced around the crumbling walls in time to the flickering flame.
‘What d‘ya do tha…’ the fourth man began, turning back to face Sebastian, but he didn’t get time to finish his question.
Sebastian moved too fast for Genevieve to follow. One second he was standing by the door, the next he was holding the man’s head in his hands. With a quick twist, a sickening snap interrupted the silence, drawing the attention of the three remaining peasants. They all turned round in shock, just in time to see Sebastian drop the man’s limp body like a discarded ragdoll and smile coolly at them, his dark eyes smouldering.
‘What the…’ but again the sentence was left unfinished, and by the time the third peasant had drawn a long metal blade from his jacket, his friend was dead, his eyes glazed over and protruding slightly as dark, vicious finger prints adorned his neck, showing where his throat had been squeezed, his airway crushed.
‘You’ll regret tha…’ the third man growled. He was the stockiest of the three men and whereas he matched Sebastian’s stature, he easily outweighed him pound for pound, not that any of that mattered, nor did the sharp blade the man wielded as he flung himself at the vampire.
‘As the woman began to shriek, Genevieve scrambled to her feet, unable to compute the scene before her. Sebastian had turned the blade around on the man and it was now protruding from his belly, a dark reddish stain creeping across his cotton shirt and trousers, his mouth wide open in a shocked O, his eyes already dead. Seconds later Sebastian had dropped the man and grabbed the woman, holding her against him, like a python slowly crushing its prey. He paused then and closed his eyes as if in pain.
‘This Evie, this is what you’ll become. This is what you will be capable of. This is how you will look when you kill.’
She looked at him, terrified. He had developed long fangs which occasionally caught the flickering lamp light, his face transformed from that of a gentleman to that of a monster. His eyes burned into her as he held his face as far away from the woman as could manage.
Genevieve looked at her and felt no remorse. She was the same woman who had hacked off her mother’s hair with a rusty knife and fought over her clothes. The woman had laughed, when the peasant man with the knife now protruding from his gut, had suggested raping her mother, and yet tears formed in Genevieve’s eyes all the same. Sebastian looked across at the young girl, whispering ‘Enough, enough now,’ before flinging the woman at the stone wall so hard that her head splintered like a coconut, before slumping to the floor.
With two strides he was by Genevieve’s side, and as she cowered away from him against the wall he simply picked her up and carried her out of the cottage, tears streaming down her pale face as she surveyed the death surrounding them.
‘I can walk,’ she stammered, as Sebastian pulled the door to behind them.
‘No. We must get away from here now, without anyone seeing us,’ he insisted, leaping with her in his arms onto the roof. Keeping to the darkest side of the roof he swiftly navigated the lanes until they were at the edge of town once more.
By the time he placed her on the ground, outside his house, she was still shaking and fresh tears were streaming down her face.
‘Evie, I’m so sorry if I’ve scared you, but it was something you needed to understand. I will happily protect you as a human girl, as that was my original plan,’ Sebastian said quietly once they were safely indoors.
Genevieve brushed the tears from her cheeks angrily.
‘I’m not scared, Sebastian… well I was, it was terrifying, but that’s not it. That’s not why I’m crying.
Sebastian stood still and watched her, a frown creasing his brow.
‘What then?’ he asked.
‘What do you think? You did it for me. You stole my revenge. I wanted to kill them and I wanted them to know why. I wanted them as terrified as my mother had been… and you took that away from me!’ Genevieve stormed up the stairs into the main living rooms, Sebastian at her heels.
‘Evie, you couldn’t have managed it. Not in their lifetime anyway. I am hundreds of years old and even I found it torturous toward the end. You don’t understand yet. The scent of their blood, the adrenalin running through your veins, every bit of instinct within you is primed to kill, to feed, to tear out their jugular and drain every last drop. The only way we can survive as a species is to go undetected, which is why for the first fifty years you will be tied to me and I will be responsible for your actions.’
‘You could have helped me. We could have done it together,’ Genevieve said quietly.
‘Maybe I could, but revenge is not a reason to become one of us. How long did it take me to kill them all? Three minutes? Less? And then it’s over and you will spend eternity like this. I will change you Evie, but only with you knowing the full story, and not for revenge.
‘But there is still one woman left, one you didn’t kill,’ Genevieve said quietly.
‘I couldn’t find her,’ Sebastian said frowning.
‘I will,’ Genevieve smiled, before turning and walking towards the bedroom, Sebastian following.
‘What are you doing?’ Sebastian growled, pausing in the doorway, watching her as she began to tug at the peasant clothes she was still wearing.
‘You said I will die and it will take a couple of days for me to come round, yes? Well, when I do I want to be dressed in something nice. Something beautiful, something soft; but something I can move in; fight in. No more ridiculous petticoats and panniers; maybe some satin breeches, a silk corset and ruffled blouse. Something I was forbidden from wearing before.’
‘Evie I cannot l
et you…’
‘But you will, I know you will,’ she said as she removed her last garment and stood facing him, naked… and defiant.
Sebastian sucked in the air around him. She was beautiful, more beautiful than he had imagined. Her recent hunger had hollowed her stomach a little, but she had grown from an awkward fourteen year old into a beautiful woman. A woman he could resist no longer.
He darted across the room, so fast Genevieve started slightly as he took her in his arms and pushed her back towards the bed.
‘Sorry my love,’ he whispered in her ear, so close her body ignited and her breath quickened. Her skin burned where his hands caressed her and he pushed her slowly back onto the mattress, holding himself above her.
‘Are you sure?’ he said, his voice gruff with desire.
‘I’m already dead. I began to die when I watched my best friend dragged by her hair through the streets. I died in that alleyway this morning, watching what they did to my mother. I’m so cold Sebastian; I’m dead already. You can save me. I want you to bring me to life again; make me feel, make me burn,’ she said as she took one last look into his smouldering eyes, before she closed her own.
His mouth was on her throat, his soft cool lips sending shivers up and down her spine as he trailed his tongue across the dip in her collarbone. Fire and ice simultaneously shot through her system as his full weight suddenly pressed down
