I thrust my hand towards Chase and asked, “Do we have more holy water?” His eyes went wide like he knew I wouldn’t like his answer. Damn. I slammed by fist down on the counter. Sam was focused on holding the man down. What could I say? We were all easily startled these days. The frustration leaked out of me in a low scream that quickly turned into a moan of sadness. I wasn’t going to lose another human being. Too many had already been lost in Lilith’s attempt at world domination. I truly had no idea. “I won’t lose him. I don’t care what it takes.”
Lifting the amber bottle of silver nitrate, I plunged the needle into the metal cap and drew out a syringe full. One quarter of the bottle was now within the syringe, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use the remainder. Chase began to hand me a tourniquet but I felt like there was no time for that. This needed to be introduced into his system as quickly as I could get it in.
“Robin, you have to use the tourniquet.” This came from Sam. “You need a better vein.”
My glance shot up to her and I could feel the heat of anger rush into my face. “We don’t have time for that now. If I don’t inject this now we’ll lose him and I will not lose anyone else.”
I focused on the bend of the man’s arm as hard as I could to try to find just the right spot to inject the silver. This was why we normally used a tourniquet, but I was able to spot a neat little network of veins underneath his pale skin within seconds. I plunged the needle into the skin, rubbing his arm below the injection site to soothe him. With the first injection I didn’t see any reaction. He was just as calm as he was right before the first dose was given. This was when I knew that the whole bottle would be used tonight. That was if it would be enough.
Once filling the syringe I placed the needle against his skin again, injecting the next three doses of silver nitrate I thought it would take to cure him. For a moment nothing happened and everything went silent. This happened often these days. Not even the man’s ragged breathes could be heard. Sam’s eyes were wide. She removed her hands from his shoulders as he lay there, not daring to touch him again.
Then a low growl began to sound and it seemed like it was coming from all directions. He bolted upright and began to cry out in pain. Convulsions overtook him. It hadn’t been enough. Screams ripped from my body as his cries turned into animal howls. This was a change unlike any I had seen before. It was beyond terrifying to watch. The energy in the air changed dramatically, making the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end and my nerves to buzz. I knew Chase and Gordon could feel it because of their wide eyed expressions. Sam had felt it before the rest of us, which I felt had to be a part of the gift she had briefly spoken of before this. Beth appeared in the doorway, gripping the sides of the threshold. She knew what was happening. I realized both Beth and Chase had seen this before and that was why Chase was unwilling to help.
Within seconds the convulsions stopped and he was still, silent. Not even his chest rose and fell. I could see Gordon wanted to move towards him to make sure the cure had worked, but the rest of us knew that was a bad idea.
“No,” Beth yelled, reaching towards him. Her hand clasped his arm and yanked him away as the man sat and grasped for him.
My feet moved of their own free will, my hand reaching towards the quiver of arrows on my back and grabbing one without thinking. I wasn’t sure if he was a crawler or a vampire. I jabbed the arrow directly into the heart area, but it caused barely a reaction out of the creature. He turned and hit me, causing me to spiral against the counter on the other side of the island and fall to the ground in time to see him knock Sam unconscious against the opposite side. My ears rung and I was seeing stars. I knew I had hit the heart. That meant that he had been bitten by crawlers only. I heard scrambling above and around me, everyone yelling, but I couldn’t make out a word they said. I was on my back in time to see the newly changed crawler clambering off of the island and making his way towards me. The thirst for blood evident in his eyes and the set of his mouth. From the look on his face I gathered crawlers were just like vampires, they needed blood after rising to survive, and right now the only blood right in his line of sight was mine.
Chapter 15:
Blood on the Water
The man was on top of me trying to reach my throat, but I had my arms out and elbows locked so he was left snapping air. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold him since my arms were beginning to shake. His moans and growls sounded anguished, like he was in pain and for all I knew he could be. I had never seen a crawler right after they had turned. There was a first time for everything.
There was an animalistic tone to his voice and the look in his eyes was pure and savage. This was a look I was used to seeing as it was normally aimed at me anyways, but not in such close proximity trying to gnaw at my throat. The beast was rolling lazily inside of me, trying to awake from the Vlad induced slumber. Why couldn’t anything be easy? I couldn’t help the fear flooding my system, causing adrenaline to peak and flow and a scream to leave my throat. Then a pair of strong hands gripped his shoulders and pulled him away from me with ease. When I sat I found Gordon holding the crawler against his chest with his arm around its neck. Everything had moved so fast that he didn’t have time to grab a weapon to decapitate the creature with. I scoped the kitchen and stood, taking a large butcher knife from the block on the counter. This was going to be messy.
I closed the distance and placed the knife against the crawler’s throat, but saw something in his eyes. Fear. There was no way. He was no longer human. From what I had seen crawlers didn’t exhibit any kind of emotion besides hunger and savagery, but I was seeing pure and utter terror. I decided it didn’t matter that he was afraid. It only mattered what he was, and what he was would kill us. I started to cut at its throat in a sawing motion, cutting through muscle and sinew, feeling the snapping of the trachea through my entire arm as I cut through it. Blood was spraying in spurts onto me from the jugular. The creature was making a gurgling sound, but I knew I wasn’t done yet. I had to separate the head from the body. Only then would it die and we had already established there was no saving him.
The spine was the easy to get through, and I knew I had it when I heard and felt the snap of the nerves housed inside of it. I sliced through the remaining strip of meat and skin with barely any effort and the head went rolling, tumbling across the floor until finally stopping, his face looking at me with mouth wide open in a silent scream. I could hear holy water dripping from the counter of the island, landing in the blood that covered the floor. As I looked around I noticed both Gordon and I were covered in blood. I felt the need to strip my clothes and wash myself but I resisted. Sam was unconscious, slouched against the cabinets on the other side of the island behind where she had been standing. Gordon moved to kneel beside her, feeling her pulse and nodding. She was alive.
Chase was leaning on the counter on the other side, eyes wide and afraid. Beth was sitting on the floor, rubbing her cheek. . I could see a bruise sprouting on her skin. Anger inside of me, heat spreading like a wildfire and even the beast was choosing to make an appearance. Chase and Beth had seen this happen before and didn’t warn me and neither one of them realized I had put the pieces of that particular puzzle together.
I pointed at Beth and let the anger fill me. “How could you not warn us? “ Beth turned to me, her mouth open in confusion. She had no idea what I was talking about.
“What are you talking about?” she said as she stood on shaky legs. Her hand gripped the counter as she nearly slipped, but kept her footing.
“You two have seen this before and didn’t warn us it wouldn’t work. How can you be okay with hiding something like this?” The question hung in the air like a sad song had finished playing. Their heads were hung low as if they had no idea what to say next.
I wasn’t sure what to say next and was fuming with rage. Gordon was as cool as a cucumber, but I could see the anger brimming underneath his black eyes as he looked at me from his position.
The silence was deafening and it only fueled what I was feeling. I felt like they were okay with hiding information, leaving me to find it out myself. That plan wouldn’t work. I needed to be armed with everything and they were neglecting everything.
I dropped my hands to my sides and decided enough was enough. “You know what, guys. I’ll be upstairs until you decide to tell me what the Hell is going on here. Until then you are on your own.” I began to walk from the kitchen, leaving them to clean up the mess, and Chase stopped me. His voice was so low I could barely hear him, but I had heard him enough.
I stopped and turned to him. I had already learned quite a lot without their help, but there was so much I was still learning about the world that I had fought so hard to get back to. It was safe to say it wasn’t the same world I left. Not even the air felt the same anymore. I began to ask what he wanted when Gordon moved past me with Sam in his arms, her head lolling to the side. He was taking her to Chase’s room. It was obvious I couldn’t trust Chase and Beth, and I wanted to know why.
“We did know it wouldn’t work,” Chase said. This made me cross my arms, an agitated expression on my face I didn’t care to hide anymore. What was the point?
“And you didn’t feel this was pertinent information why?” I asked. Sarcasm and irritation filtered into the words. Gordon came back into the room, hanging in the background and letting me handle what I needed to handle. He knew I was on a roll.
“It’s not that we felt it wasn’t important. We truly thought that we wouldn’t run intothis situation again because of how quickly the change occurred. How quickly it spread. We had no way of knowing this would happen.”
I had to give him credit for that at least. I wanted to know how they found this out. It seemed the same situation had presented itself before and they had tried to same cure that could cure vampirism in those bitten by a diluted breed. Lilith’s ilk and the crawler’s definitely weren’t like the ones I had slain before now.
Beth stepped forward “We had been on a run for supplies when we ran into a man being chased by a pack of crawlers. He had already been bitten once. We really thought it would work. We had no idea the change would take such a strong hold on him, but we tried.” She paused, licking her lips and cleared her throat. “There was a supply of holy water, silver nitrate, and syringes in the truck just to be on the safe side. You know, just in case one of us got bitten by a crawler or a vampire. We didn’t want to bring someone back home if they turned. Well, we did what we could and he turned anyways, forcing us to destroy him. That’s how we found out that crawlers don’t turn to ash until after their first feeding.” She sat down on a bar stool, still rubbing her cheek and stated, “I hope that clears a few things up.”
. “It does a little bit.” Gordon nodded. I agreed. The story cleared up the reason Chase didn’t want to try and the reason Beth broken when we brought the man inside. But why not help me once I had gotten him inside? What was up with that?
“It does a lot.” The words just kind of spilled out of me n as I looked from Beth to Chase. They were still hiding something, but I had already pressed them enough tonight and didn’t want to push too hard. While I felt like I needed more I also understood their need for time to heal.
I hadn’t been back long and I knew they were still a little apprehensive. It was something I could feel in the air when around them. It caused my skin to prickle, the fine hairs standing on end. Or maybe that was the cold shoulder I was getting. I couldn’t shake the sensation they were both about to fall apart at the seams. I had become stronger with my time away fighting for my life and trying to come back to lay Lilith and her kind to ruin, but they had become weaker somehow. It was like this world and what they had seen took something away from them.
What is their will? Was it their humanity? Was it their strength? I wasn’t sure yet, but something was different and the only way to know was to ask. I needed to know what she had seen and done while I was away. I needed a play by play of the events that turned the world I knew into this new, scary monster of a thing. The world I once knew was a writhing and hungry beast that devoured everything good and spit it back out once only dry bones were left, clattering on the broken streets only to land ay my feet.
The major difference I noticed? Humanity had been stripped away; it wasn’t lost to the darkness. With my first run in with crawlers I had seen a mother and a child, letting me know that humanity was still holding on strong and it could come back from the brink. But I wasn’t sure how far all of this reached. Was it only my shiny hometown of Los Angeles or did it reach much farther? Was it worldwide? If so that would be harder to come back from, but once Lilith was destroyed we could grow into what we once were. Yes, it would take quite a lot of time, but time would be in excess once she was gone with barely a care in the world besides the residual creatures that I would be here to slay them as would our child. I had no doubt that our child would be born with the same talents with a few added extras from their father.
I knew I was right the moment the tendrils of whispers began to spread through my mind, still unintelligible but growing stronger each day. If only I knew the fate of our child, but I did have a feeling that he or she could bring this world back from the brink. Gordon and I were fire and ice. Complete opposites in all aspects. Would our child embody one or the other, or both?
Chapter 16:
If You Only Knew
Beth had skulked away to her bedroom with an ice pack on her cheek while Gordon and Chase went to work cleaning our mess of a kitchen. Sam would be out for a while. I stood there, arms crossed, wondering what to do with the body of the man I had learned the lesson; crawlers couldn’t be saved; Now I couldn’t get his change out of my mind. Images of a holy water mist followed by convulsions and bloodshed. Would that be my life? I was beginning to believe so. I wasn’t thrilled by this revelation.
Gordon’s shirt was covered in drying blood. Chase had removed his shirt to avoid staining it. We didn’t have a lot of clothes these days, but Gordon didn’t really care. It wasn’t like we couldn’t pick up more when we went on a run for supplies and the like. In all reality, we weren’t sure how much longer we had in our protective bubble so who actually knew how long we would be stuck in the house and need more supplies stock piled for the future? I knew she was hiding something. Well, a lot of somethings. I knew Beth had been through a lot, but I needed more information than she was willing to give me. Our world had become a ghost town and I wanted to know what it would take to get our world back. I left the men to their dirty work and marched upstairs to her bedroom, knocking on the door.
“Who is it?” I heard her voice as my chance to crack it open. We would need to WD-40 the hinges to quiet them. I stuck my head in to find her sitting at the bottom of her bed with the ice pack on her cheek her eyes closed like she was working to calm herself.
“It’s me.” I paused, waiting on my cue to come in. When she didn’t say anything I asked, “Can I come in?” With eyes still closed she muttered an okay and I slipped in through the small crack in the door, shutting it quietly behind me. I wasn’t sure if I was welcome to sit down next to her on the bed so I did the safe thing and stood, resting against the edge of her dresser, unsure of whether to wait for her to speak or if I should go ahead and start. I decided I would start with the obvious question. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes snapped open and narrowed into slits as she took in my appearance. I hadn’t been the one to strike her, but she definitely blamed me. “Nothing time won’t heal,” she stated as she pulled the ice pack away from her face. Her cheek was a nasty mass of deep purples and greens. Slightly swollen and outlined with red from the ice.
I felt the intense urge to apologize even though I had not hit her and I knew I shouldn’t, but it slipped from my mouth regardless, spilling from me in a jumbled disarray of words.
“There’s no need for you to be sorry,” she muttered as she raised her hand to stop me. “I would’ve done the same thing, to be honest. I’
m not sure why I tried to hold him back.” She shook her head like she was trying to shake the memory from her mind. I couldn’t blame her. With everything that had happened I wanted to do the same, leaving those awful memories to rot in the darkness. I couldn’t take my eyes off Beth as she sat there. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and for the longest time we sat in silence. It would be now or never if I wanted to know everything. For some reason I couldn’t force the words. We truly had no idea when this eclipse would take place. I made the decision that, no matter how bad it sounded, I needed to make my purpose for my visit known.
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about any of it, but I need to know what happened while I was gone.” She looked up to me, annoyed. I let out an exasperated sigh and continued, “Look, it’s our destiny to take Lilith down. I can do it with or without you, but either way I need to know anything and everything that happened. This isn’t just about your fight to survive anymore. Now that I’m back it’s about saving the rest of humanity before it’s too late.” I let the words sink in, the silence stretching so far I almost lost sight of its purpose. Pushing myself away from her dresser I made my way to the door, my arm outstretched to take the knob in my hand. I didn’t expect her to help me. I just needed her to.
As soon as my skin touched the cold, slick metal Beth cried, “No, don’t go. Please.” I froze for a few seconds, not wanting to look at her. I spun towards her I could see tears filling her impossibly blue eyes, shining in the lamplight and threatening to spill over. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve kept a lot from you, and I know I shouldn’t. It’s all so hard to think about.” She rubbed her arms and I noticed her suppress a shiver of anxiety as she sat there.
Follow the Bloodshed (The Executioner Trilogy Book 3) Page 9
