Page 26 of Guarded By the Nightmare

I suddenly understood so much more about her.

I solidified myself next to her, but only for her to see. “Go on,” I urged, and after a moment she took two steps forward.

“Do you remember this?” she said, plucking at the stained sweatshirt she had on.

“No. Why should I?” He cast his head up to the heavens before dropping his backpack to the ground. “Stop trying to fuck up my life—I almost lost a scholarship because of you.”

“Fuck up your life?” Mina said, her tone arcing up in disbelief, and finding strength in her anger. “And a scholarship? I lost my best friend!”

“I’m calling my lawyer, and then I’m calling the police,” the man said, pulling out his phone. “Stop stalking me, you dumb whore,” he said as an afterthought, without even looking up to see the effect his words had on her, and that was enough for me.

I snapped my fingers and the man exploded, spattering into bits in all directions, clothing and all.

Mina—now covered in gore—looked aghast at me, as she wiped the remains of her former classmate off her face with a sleeve, smearing her blue eyeshadow along with it.

“Don’t throw up,” I counseled her.

“I’m not going to—because if I open my mouth too wide I might taste him!” she hissed at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“He was insolent. And we came here to murder him, did we not?” I pressed, then sighed. “Fine.” I snapped again, assembling the man back together. He was inside the shadow of a tree, in the dark, and Mina looked at me, and herself—her white sweatshirt now free ofbloodstains, just the solitary splash of pink remaining—before running up to him, to pummel him with both her hands.

“I hate you! I hate you and you deserve this! Fuck you and fuck your scholarship and fuck your lawyers!” she shouted, loudly enough for lights in houses across the street to turn on. She didn’t notice this though, lost to her frenzy of attacking the man I’d recreated for her—and then she paused for long enough to realize that he wasn’t responding, as I came up to her side.

“What...the fuck,” she said, with a low voice, like the bottom of her stomach had just fallen out.

“I don’t have any practice putting people back together,” I said. I’d done a rather shoddy job of it, because I’d reassembled him clothing and all, so he looked like a strange doll, half meat and bones, but with threads of fabric going into him and jutting back out. I noted a dark mark on his chest, over his heart, but I couldn’t tell what it’d been before I’d shattered him. “And in any case, I cannot reanimate the dead.”

Difficult emotions flowed across her face, too quickly for me to attempt to fathom. “I wanted him to know it was me!”

“Well, you didn’t say that,” I told her. “But youwerethe last thing he saw, my queen. And theywillfind a body.” I relaxed my hold on the man’s form, and he fell into his recently created constituent bits.

“That looks like it went through a wood chipper!” Mina said, pointing at his remains with an outstretched arm. “This was not a chance for you to do a Fargo impersonation!”

I had no idea what that even meant, but I could sense she was on the verge of tearing up again. Perhaps this time from frustration—but it absolutely would not do.

I swept up a portion of the man’s blood onto my fingers, then returned to her with it, pressing them against her lips.

“What are you doing?” she whispered behind my fingertips.

“Giving you communion, Mina,” I said, making myself darker than the shadows behind me. “You’re dying in six days. Take this from me.”

I wanted what she wanted—these pathetic men dead—but I wanted her to take their deaths from them in glory.

I didn’t want her crying again until she was crying for me.

I watched her gaze harden, as she found resolve to fully follow through on this path that she had already chosen, and her lips parted, letting my fingers in to taste the blood upon them.

“Don’t throw up, my queen,” I said again, and she nodded, sucking on my fingertips as her commitment grew, and I was so tempted to let myself grow claws inside her mouth. “That’s it. Swallow. Get a taste for it. There’s so much more to come.”

20

MINA

Was I a cannibal now?

Or just a vampire?

I drove Sylas and myself home in shock—I forgot to put my headlights on until someone else on the road flashed theirs at me. I’d gotten what I wanted, but not quite the way I’d wanted it—I think I’d hoped there would be more groveling on Logan’s part, and gloating on mine? But I hadn’t told Sylas that, and I honestly wasn’t really a gloat-er.

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