The Truth in Lies: A TALE OF MANN

by Amelia Wilson

  She ducked to step away, but Easton was faster, lowering his arms and locking her in. Madison felt the shelf digging against her back and from her periphery, she could see his arms moving and caging her in.

  She tilted her chin up in defiance. “What do you want?” She hugged the book to her chest to increase the distance between their bodies.

  Easton brought a hand to her face and traced a finger across her cheek. She looked down, not being able to take the fierceness of his gaze. She should pull away, or maybe she should push him back. It would take a monumental effort to budge him, but she should try.

  She pounded his chest with a fist but instead of doing it again, she clenched his shirt in her hand. Her breathing became labored, and suddenly, the air became suffocating.

  She took a deep breath, and the scent was intoxicating.

  Is that his perfume?

  It smelled heavenly. Clean, reverent, like the fresh sea breeze. Unconsciously, she leaned closer, drawn in by his scent.

  “Madison.” His voice was raspy. Madison curled her hand on his shirt tighter, not minding that she was wrinkling it in the process.

  He lifted her chin with a finger and gazed at her eyes. She felt her breath taken away at the sight. Her pupils dilated, and her head lolled backward, resting on the books.

  Easton’s stared at the bared stretch of her neck, eyeing the two fading marks.

  Bringing his head down, he brushed his thumb over them and felt the pulse running through the veins. He gulped visibly.

  Madison’s view was full of books. The history books were dusty, and most of them were thick. They stand along the shelves in different colors and sizes.

  She felt the pressure of a finger against her neck, but she could not move to check what Easton was doing. It felt like a déjà vu.

  The marks throbbed, and she felt like scratching them, but her hand stayed still.

  Easton drew nearer and nearer until he rested on the crook of her neck. He stayed there for a moment, savoring the way she was pliant against his touch.

  Not being able to resist anymore, he flicked his tongue against the marks. When she remained unresponsive, he did it again, with more pressure.

  Madison woke up from her trance with a jolt and pushed away the man with all her might. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were wide, petrified.

  Easton met her shocked eyes, mirroring her horrified expression.

  When Madison pushed him away again, this time locking her knees strong enough, she walked away.

  Easton is a freak. A gorgeous freak who fancies licking other people’s necks but a freak nonetheless.

  Chapter-3

  Madison was resolved on evading Easton for the rest of the semester. If she had a choice, she would drop the courses they were classmates in or change professors. But the deadline was up, and regular classes have been going on for a month now; it was too late for any changes.

  Lilia rattled off the pairs, which she randomly picked. Earlier, she discussed about their first paper which was due in two weeks. They will work on the paper in pairs, which was off-putting for Madison at first since it would mean that she could not work on her own pace. For someone who was juggling university and work, it was a pain.

  Her name was called along with Easton’s and their eyes met. Of all people in the classroom, with them being almost a hundred, she was not expecting to be paired with the freak.

  Easton himself looked stupefied beyond disbelief. Since what happened a week ago, it was the first time that he went to class again after being absent for the past two meetings.

  “Okay, get up and start working on it. I’ll give you the rest of the class.” Madison glanced at her wristwatch. They still have half an hour to discuss the task with their partners.

  Hesitantly, she stood up but stopped when Easton sat at the seat beside hers. She did not see him coming, which was weird, but she shrugged it off. So far, anything about Easton seemed weird.

  No one started the conversation. It was still awkward between them, which was to be expected, given what happened.

  When the silence started to eat her away, she gave in.

  “Uhm. Do you have any topic you want to write on?” They should write about civil wars, and they were given the freedom to choose a topic.

  “North and South Korea feud?” He rubbed his neck. Madison followed his hand, and she remembered what happened in the library. Easton probably realized the same thing and dropped his hand warily.

  “That sounds great.” Her throat was drying. Something akin to desire was building, but she had no inkling why.

  “Should we meet about this later? It’s your off today right?”

  Madison nodded and did not bother to ask how the heck he knew about her day off.

  ***

  Madison decided to meet in the café across the library. Her first choice was the library but remembering what happened the last time they were there, she opted for a public place where a lot of people pass by.

  The café was crowded, but Easton saved them a seat. There was a cup of coffee in front of him, but it looked cold, untouched.

  Madison brought out her notebook and began jotting down ideas. Easton watched her without saying anything.

  “Are we going with my idea?” He skimmed through the words she wrote down, which were all related to Korea.

  She smiled sheepishly. “I honestly have no idea. History is my weakest subject.”

  His brow lifted. “We’ve been discussing about wars for the past month.”

  Madison was affronted. She was trying her best for this course, but she always drifted after reading a paragraph or a minute into the class. History and her just never jived together well.

  “Okay. I do have ideas, but I think they’re stupid.”

  “Try me.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “Let’s just go with yours. I’m familiar with it as well. I can’t handle reading on something I have no idea on at all.”

  Easton sat straight and rested his elbows on his spread knees.

  “Why do you hate History?”

  Perturbed at the sudden question, she paused writing and pursed her lips. “I don’t hate it. I hate memorizing names and dates, I guess.”

  “It’s interesting, though.”

  “It is,” she agreed. “Just, I’m not good with it, so I tend to stray away from it.”

  They were supposed to talk about their paper, their timeline and how they were to go about it but they found themselves talking about their classes. It then drifted on to a talk about her Aunt Courtney and how she hated sweeping away her cat’s fur but hugs Phoebe tightly anyway.

  She talked about how annoying it was when middle school students from the public school near her workplace played with her and changed their orders repeatedly, testing her patience.

  They conversed for long until she glanced at the wall clock, surprised that they have been there for almost two hours. Time passed rapidly without her knowledge.

  Easton was a great company. He asked her questions and laughed at her stories. He did not share his own, but he smiled and huffed at all the right times, and Madison was pleased. She could not remember the last time she had a good conversation with someone who listened.

  The sun started to set, and she knew she should go home. She still had sheets and a report to work on for next week.

  “I have to go.” She offered him a tight-lipped smile. In the past hours, the weirdness between them had dissipated, which was good. She did not fancy the idea of working with someone she was not comfortable with.

  “Let me drive you home.”

  “No need. It’s not that far.” She looked at the table. His coffee was completely untouched.

  “I’ll walk you home then.” She was about to protest, but he raised a hand to stop her. “I insist. Best I know you’re safe.”

  She did not argue further but did not back down against him when he tried to carry her bag for her. She would never let anyone do things for her
when she could do it herself.

  Ten minutes later and they were at the corner of her street. She insisted that she was alright there. There was also the unspoken truth that she did not want the neighbors to talk about a man walking her home or worse, her Aunt Courtney seeing them together. She always tried to filter what her aunt knows about her school life.

  There was a small park by that corner, with a rusty swing set and a slide with one side tilted downwards due to a missing foot. The shrubs were growing everywhere, and the whole place looked unkempt.

  “You sure you’ll be fine here?”

  She nodded. “I’m good. Thank you for walking me.” She waited for him to turn around or start walking away but he did not. Instead, he fixed his sight on her, making her insides squirm.

  “You can go ahead.”

  It was all sudden. She felt her shoulders being pushed until they were at the side of the slide, the metal creaking at the impact. There was a sharp pain on her back, and she yelped as a scrap metal dug against her skin.

  A confrontation was on the tip of her tongue, when he swooped in and captured her lips roughly. It was more like he was devouring her lips rather than kissing her. He tilted his head to the side and pressed harder, coaxing her to open her mouth. Madison resisted and struggled to free her wrists, which were locked together above her head with his hand. His other hand was wrapped around her waist as he brought their bodies closer, closing any gap that was left.

  She growled in pain when he bit her lips, and the taste of blood filled her mouth. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was pressing his lower body against her. His thighs were strong enough to keep her in place.

  As he continued to ravish her lips, the will to fight gradually drained out from her until she stopped struggling. He pulled back for a second and licked her lips. Madison’s breath hitched at the sensation.

  The next kiss was a lot less harsh than the first one. He slotted their lips together and gently pushed his tongue in and intertwined with hers. She moaned when his tongue roamed and lingered at the roof of her mouth and pressed insistently against her tongue again.

  She was getting dizzy. It was reeling and making her heady, she did not realize she already had her eyes closed tightly, feeling the meshing of their lips.

  He gulped when he detached his lips from hers and Madison opened her eyes and drowned at the pool of blackness. His eyes were black, but it was glinting against the light from the moon.

  He dropped her hands, and they swayed down lifelessly. She looked at him with lidded eyes. It felt like all the energy was sucked from her.

  He studied her face and drew in again and traced his lips from the lobe of her ear to her jaw and down the column of her neck. He dropped small, light kisses that lit up her body on fire. Her toes were curling yet she wanted more. Her body was screaming for more.

  Just like in the library, he stopped at the spot with the marks. He pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, eyes unblinking. Madison met his gaze and felt a breath escape her. His face was perfection.

  He breathed in deeply and smiled, or so she thought until she saw fangs in his mouth. A scream lodged in her throat. She froze at the spot and was not able to protest when he went down and sank his fangs on her neck, piercing through the skin and flesh, the blood oozing out from the punctures.

  Madison’s mouth opened in a silent scream. The pain was agonizing, something she had never felt before. It was not just the wounds, it’s the effect the wounds were giving her as she stood there, helpless, letting Easton suck the life away from her.

  It felt like hours but after a few minutes, she could feel herself blacking out. Too weak to support herself, she slid down to the ground. She felt a cry of anguish before everything got black.

  Chapter-4

  She tapped her pen against the table, not noticing that Lilia had stopped talking.

  “Would you mind stopping that tapping sound, Ms. Blake?” Her eyes were narrowed into slits, and Madison stopped instantly, feeling her face crimsoning with the attention.

  She lowered her head in shame and as if on reflex, reached to her neck and traced the healing wounds.

  It had been a month since then. Easton was a no-show in school while she had to stay in her bed for a week before she could muster the energy to walk on her own.

  The doctor prescribed her medicine and vitamins to recuperate. The whole time, her aunt stayed beside her, looking at the wounds warily but never pried on what happened.

  Whenever there was a sound outside her room, she would flinch and hold on to her pillows for dear life. When there was rustle, she immediately scrambled off her bed, deeming the floor safer. Her aunt had come running to her whenever she screamed in her sleep, shook her hard until she was awoken from the nightmare.

  It had been a month since Easton sucked the life out of her, literally.

  She did not know what exactly happened, but when she woke up, she was in a hospital room, and blood was being transferred into her body. Her aunt told her that she had been out for days with the lack of blood and that if she lost even a bit more, she could have died.

  That left Madison perplexed. She was sure she would be dead. She was so sure she would never wake up again. But here she was, attending her classes like nothing have happened. Fortunately, her professors excused from the requirements and decided to just omit those she missed in the computation for her final grades, including the paper she was supposed to do with Easton.

  Thinking about the what ifs and what could have been up to the whys was taxing. It had her head reeling from all the possibilities that sometimes, she wished Easton was there so she could demand answers.

  Answers as to why did he leave her alive? Why would he risk letting someone who knew about him live? Is he really a vampire or just a psycho who run around biting people for fun? If he’s a vampire, then why was she spared? It was an endless cycle.

  ***

  Madison was walking along the campus when she caught sight of Easton. She followed him back to the building of the library. What she was doing was stupid. She was trailing after a possible vampire who may kill her anytime he wanted to. But that was what boggled her. He could have killed her, but he did not. Madison held on to that.

  When he reached a secluded corner, beneath the shade of the trees, he stopped and abruptly turned around, catching Madison. She stood up straight, feeling foolish for crouching down.

  He smirked, though his eyes looked forlorn. “You’re pretty brave. What, are you planning a revenge against me? Bury a stake through my chest?” He chuckled dryly. He did not look so intimidating anymore with his shoulders drooped and eyes downcast.

  “So you’re really a vampire?”

  He scoffed. “Get away from me. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? Do you want to be dead?” He glared at her, but she persisted.

  “For the record, you were the one who followed me. I tried to put some distance, remember?” She raised her voice, feeling the surge of courage. His eyes softened.

  “Indeed.”

  “You haven’t answered me.”

  “Yes.”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat, feeling the braveness fading away.

  “Before, I had strange dreams. Twice. He looked like you, the vampire in my dreams.” She observed his reaction. His lips curled into a smile.

  “Those weren’t dreams. I put you in a trance but everything indeed happened.” One mystery solved.

  “But the first time it happened, we haven’t met yet. Are you telling me you have known me from way back?”

  “Are you not scared?”

  “Answer me!” She shouted. She was not going to let him divert the topic.

  His shoulders sagged. He gestured at the dilapidated bench nearby and motioned for her to sit.

  Hesitantly, she complied, maintaining a good distance between them. She gave him time as he curled his hands until his knuckles were white.

  “I’m a vampire. That first time, that was the
first night I smelled you.” He drew in a deep breath and released it loudly. “Your scent drew me in. I was lurking aimlessly, trying to find a homeless guy or maybe a dead animal when your scent became apparent.”

  “When I found you, I tried to bite you. But...you blinked so I got scared.”

  “It was just a blink.” She huffed, not getting his apprehension.

  “Madison, when a vampire uses their hypnotic powers on a human, you cannot even move a finger, or twitch your eyes. You were not supposed to blink.”