“How are you alive?” he asked, surprised.
And it was now that Allison took advantage of that surprise. The Sieve was still holding onto her wrists, but his grip had significantly loosened. He was still straddling her, but he had likewise relaxed his legs, giving her some wiggle room.
Allison thrust her hips upward, pushing the Sieve several inches above her. Without missing a beat, Allison brought her right knee straight up, landing a powerful blow between the Sieve’s legs.
It was a calculated move, one she wasn’t quite sure would work. As both the Sieve and Xander had pointed out to her before, there’s no physiology textbook on vampires. However, she knew that Xander was still plenty capable of pleasure down there. Her assumption was that they would be equally capable of pain.
Allison’s assumption was spot-on. The moment her knee slammed into the Sieve’s groin, he let out a terrible wail, and she felt the muscles in his body buckle. He lost his grip on her wrists, and she yanked both hands free. Before the Sieve could collapse on her, Allison reached up and clamped her own hands around his neck.
And she squeezed!
Allison wasn’t sure if it was the drugs from her IV or the adrenaline in her system, but she felt more powerful than ever. The Sieve still had a weight advantage over her, keeping her pinned to the bed, but that didn’t stop her from taking full advantage of her newfound strength from a supine position.
It took a moment for the Sieve to recover from the pain of her blow to his groin, and he struggled to gasp for air. This made Allison squeeze even harder. She wasn’t sure if it was even possible to choke a vampire to death, but she was planning to find out.
The Sieve’s fangs had grown to full length, and he tried to bite her, but the angle of her arms under his neck made that impossible. Scrambling to get control, the Sieve’s flopping hands finally landed on Allison’s neck.
He squeezed her throat with incredible force. It may not have been as strong as he could squeeze, but it was enough to make Allison’s neck throb in pain. She couldn’t breathe, and she could feel her head get woozy from the constriction of blood to her brain.
They were locked in a stalemate. The one to last the longest would win, and Allison feared she would not be able to endure. As an extra attack, she shifted her hands slightly and dug her thumbs into the flesh of the Sieve’s neck. There was a moment of resistance, and then her thumbs slid smoothly under his flesh. She could feel the slow throbbing of his own heart through the artery walls. Black blood welled up from the wounds in his neck, flowing down her wrists.
Allison knew she would die right there, but she made peace with that if she could take the Sieve with her. And she would do so as she stared deep into his eyes.
This ends tonight! she wanted to scream but could only think the words as her throat was being crushed into oblivion. Still, she could tell by the look in the Sieve’s eyes that he heard her.
Allison could see the life fading from the Sieve’s eyes, and she could feel her own consciousness fade as well. However, she was determined to hold on as long as she could.
And suddenly she heard a great crash from across the room. A spray of small glass pellets showered her hospital bed, and a sharp gust of wind blasted in the room.
A dark figure swooped into the room and landed on the back of the Sieve. Allison blinked her eyes and recognized Xander, climbing on the Sieve’s back. She felt his steel-hard fingers fall upon hers, digging deep into the Sieve’s flesh.
The Sieve tried to scream as he felt them both pulling at his neck. Xander planted his feet on either side of them and pulled upwards. Allison managed to clamp her legs around the Sieve’s torso and hold him against the bed.
Xander screamed as he pulled away from Allison, and the Sieve matched the scream.
But soon one of the screams stopped, and the Sieve’s head tore away from his body. Xander flung it across the room like Frisbee. It smashed into the wall, making a noticeable dent.
The Sieve’s body collapsed on Allison as dark blood poured from the open neck. She pushed it away as quickly as she could in disgust. The lifeless hands of the Sieve released her neck, and she coughed reflexively, gasping for breath.
Xander came over to her, wiping the Sieve’s blood off of her with the bed sheet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Allison coughed again and shook her head.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice shaking.
Allison nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she managed to say, her voice raspy and strained, but surprisingly calm.
Xander stepped back and grabbed the Sieve’s body in one arm, then cradled his severed head in his other hand.
“Just one more thing to do,” he said, and leaped out of the broken window into the night sky.
CHAPTER 35
Georgia Bennett sat on the hood of her car in the middle of a clearing of the woods in Cuyahoga Valley, watching the night sky. She saw Xander Reese appearing to dance over the trees, fluttering through the sky like a bat. He was carrying something large, almost the size of himself, and this made Georgia smile.
She knew that this meant he was successful in killing the Sieve.
As Georgia waited for Xander to reach her, she reflected upon the past few days. She had known Allison Pratt for years, and they had run into some pretty dangerous people together. However, this was one of the weirdest experiences she had ever had with the woman. Georgia knew they were dealing with the fantastic now, and a world of normalcy was far behind them. Xander had told her the very basics of what was happening when he dropped Allison off at the emergency room. Xander had called Georgia to look after Allison during the day since he had to disappear for safety reasons. It was the least she could do for Allison. And learning that Allison was going through something as fantastic as Georgia was herself made her realize that as friends they needed to stick together even more now.
Georgia heard a rustling to her left and looked out to the tree line. There, she saw a figure standing in the foliage under the trees. Max. She smiled and waved at him.
Poor guy gets so protective, she thought. Then she sent a look his way letting him know everything was okay. Georgia knew that Max didn’t entirely trust Xander, and Xander was aware of that as well. However, Max would respect her wishes and stay at arm’s length. He was there to protect her, not interfere.
A moment later, Xander landed in the clearing a few yards from Georgia’s car. He dropped two things next to him: a body, and it’s head.
Georgia looked uneasy.
“Yeesh,” she said. “How’s Allison.”
Xander picked up the body and dragged it farther into the clearing. “She’s fine,” he said, then paused to think for a moment. “I’m pretty sure she’s fine.”
Georgia hopped off the car and popped the trunk. She grabbed a shovel and handed it to Xander. “Allison’s a strong girl. She’ll be good.”
Xander nodded and started digging a hole large enough for the body. He moved quickly and powerfully, digging to a depth of three feet in just a matter of minutes. Then he walked ten yards away and dug a hole big enough for the head.
“Is this the end of him?” Georgia asked. “Is this the end of the Sieve?”
“God, I hope so,” Xander said, dropping the Sieve’s head into the second hole.
Georgia grabbed a small jug of gasoline from her trunk and poured it on both the body and the head. Xander stepped back as she lit a match and dropped it onto the Sieve’s body. The ground erupted in flames, and Georgia casually walked over to the other hole and did the same thing there.
Georgia stood next to Xander in silence, watching the smoke billow up from the makeshift graves, obscuring the bright light of the full moon. It took longer than she expected for them to burn, but Xander wouldn’t let her put the fire out.
“I want to make sure it’s burned into nothing but ash,” Xander said.
After another minute of sil
ence, Georgia reached out and grabbed Xander’s hand. He flinched suddenly and then let her take it. Georgia noticed how cool to the touch it was.
“Thank you, Xander,” she said.
“For what?” he asked.
“For taking care of Allison. For being there for her. For being as loyal as you are, beyond the forces of the natural world.”
Xander sighed. He had never opened up much to her, even when he was alive. Xander was the strong, silent type, and Allison had somehow tamed him. She knew he had a good heart, but he always confounded her. To Georgia, she and Allison were like cat people and dog people when it came to relationships. Georgia liked them a little more warm and cuddly. But Georgia knew that even with his dark, somber demeanor, Xander was a good match for Allison. They were perfect for each other.
When the last flames licked up from the graves, Xander walked to Georgia’s trunk and grabbed two large plastic bags of rock salt. He opened them and poured them over the ashes in the graves. When they were thoroughly covered, Xander used the shovel to cover them up with the fresh earth.
After he was done, he handed the shovel back to Georgia.
“That ought to do it, huh?” she asked.
Xander nodded. She could tell he was anxious to get back to Allison.
“Thank you,” Xander said quietly, looking Georgia in the eye.
“For what?”
“For being her friend. For taking care of her. And for not judging her.”
Georgia smiled. “It’s my pleasure, hon.”
“Honestly, not everyone would understand this kind of situation,” Xander said. “Thank you for that.”
And with that, Xander leapt into the sky, dancing across the stars, and heading back to the hospital to be with the woman he loves.
Georgia looked over to the tree line. Max stepped into the moonlight.
“Oh please,” Georgia said as if Xander could still hear her. “You have no idea how much I understand.”
CHAPTER 36
Allison sat on her hospital bed, nervously tapping and bouncing her knee. Xander had been gone for quite a while. It was enough time for her to clean up the mess that was left from the death of the Sieve and the broken window. In fact, the Sieve helped her out in that respect. The entire floor still seemed to be under his influence to ignore what happened in this room. She was easily able to clean up the blood and take the soiled linens down to the laundry. Likewise, no one noticed her bringing a mop and bucket back with her to wash down the floor. And once she took care of that, it only seemed logical for her to get a broom to sweep up all the broken glass from when Xander burst in the window.
It wasn’t until she had put the cleaning supplies away, changed the bed sheets, gotten into a new hospital gown, and sat down on the bed to wait for Xander that Allison realized something was wrong.
She should have never been able to do that. Not with six broken bones.
Allison was tempted to blame it on the painkillers and her IV, but she had removed that when she decided to clean up and carry the bed sheets down the hall to the laundry.
In fact, it was then that Allison realized that she really wasn’t in any pain at all. She didn’t feel like she had any broken bones, and a cursory examination found no cuts, bruises, or swelling. Even her neck, where the Sieve had been choking her, felt untouched.
In fact, she was completely fine.
But she shouldn’t be.
And waiting for Xander, she didn’t have an explanation.
Soon, she heard the telltale thwap thwap thwap of him flitting through the night air. She looked out the open window to see Xander coming towards the hospital. A moment later, he was in the room and in her arms.
Allison immediately hugged him.
“I’m never letting you go again,” she said.
Xander hugged her back and leaned down to kiss her. “Don’t worry. I’m never letting you go again, either.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Is he gone?”
“I certainly hope so,” Xander said. “Separated his head from his body, buried them in separate graves, burned then to ash, and then salted the earth. I don’t know how I could be more thorough.”
Allison nodded and continued to look into Xander’s eyes.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
Allison sighed and stepped away. She sat down carefully in the chair that Georgia had been sleeping in earlier.
“Am I dead?” she asked.
Xander smiled and came over to her.
“No,” he said with tears welling up in his eyes. “You are not dead. You are alive, my love. You are so very much alive.”
“But...” Allison started to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she looked down at her body and held out her arms as if to ask the question.
Xander took her hands.
“Something happened to you,” he said. “I knew it the moment I came in your room earlier tonight.”
“I thought I had turned...” she said.
“No,” he said. “If that had happened, the sunlight from today would have certainly destroyed you. No, you have become something different entirely.”
“What am I?”
“I don’t even know what to call it,” Xander said. “Like I said, we don’t come with an instruction manual.”
“But I have changed, right?”
Xander paused for several seconds. Then he said, “Yes.”
Upon Allison’s shocked reaction, Xander quickly continued: “I’ve heard stories of this happening, but I’ve never encountered a real case like this. You see, there must have still been the tiniest amount of my blood in your system tonight,” Xander said. “And you lost so much blood at the house. You were given a blood transfusion, and that kept you alive. But my blood in your system started to take over when you almost died in the hospital. You didn’t actually die, but you came damn close. And as a result, you got some effects of being a vampire in the process.”
“Effects?” she asked.
“Yes,” Xander said. “You’re healing at an accelerated rate. And you’ve got incredible strength, which allowed you to survive the attack from the Sieve.”
Allison looked up at Xander with disbelief. “You mean you knew this had happened?” she asked, suddenly sounding a little angry.
“Yes,” Xander said. “I noticed it immediately. But you hadn’t. And that gave us the perfect opportunity to catch the Sieve.”
“I was bait...” Allison said.
“Don’t make it sound so cruel. I knew that the Sieve would come after you, even before he came after me. And I knew that you would have the strength to hold him off until I could get here. I had to hide out far enough away that he wouldn’t sense me.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“He would have known. He would have sensed it before he even stepped foot in this place. And if he suspected that you were different, he might have gone into hiding for years. This was the only way to lure him in. He eventually figured it out, but by then, it was too late.”
Allison folded her arms and crossed her legs, then looked away from Xander.
“Please don’t be mad,” Xander said.
“And Georgia was in on it?” she asked, still not looking at him.
“Yes,” Xander said softly. “Well, she didn’t know everything, but she knew I needed to lure the Sieve here first.”
Allison finally looked at Xander again. He grinned sheepishly.
“This is the last time,” Allison said.
“For what?”
“This is the last time you use me as bait, Xander.”
He grinned and knelt in front of her. “Definitely,” he replied.
“I mean it!” Allison said, stomping her foot and standing up.
“I promise,” Xander said.
Allison then grinned. She had no idea what their future together would be like. Hell, she had no idea what her future would be like at all and to what
extent she was different than she was before. But for the first time in this whole ordeal, she felt confident that she and Xander would find out together.
Then she stood and grabbed Xander by the lapels of his coat. She pushed him backwards so he landed on the hospital bed, then climbed on top of him and kissed him.
As she started to unbutton his shirt, Xander said, “Aren’t you afraid someone will come in here?”
Allison thought about how the staff on the floor were still under the influence to ignore what happened in this room. She then winked at Xander.
“Scream all you want,” she said, then tore his shirt open.
THE END
Love In Death Page 18
