Page 50 of Blood Claims
Only now I was plucked from the air, a single tremble from death. A hairsbreadth away from plummeting into the darknessbelow, instead falling into the mystery Vampire. One that had taken to stalking my dreams.
My hands landed against his chest, one that felt carved from granite beneath my shaking palms. The deep inhale was one I felt come from him this time. As if my touch had burned him. Yet the second I tried to take them from his body, his hand snatched out to keep them there. His sizable grip was unyielding, yet his touch was surprisingly warm and oddly…comforting.
Yet, the second the staircase began to shake, I screamed after being thrown forward again, my head finding itself buried against his chest. Stranger still, was that he didn’t push me away. But instead wrapped an arm around me, keeping me held securely against him. The feel of his long fingers curling around my hip made me shiver against him.
“I ran… I ran,” I panted for no particular reason, other than to remind him that I did as he asked.
“Yes… yes you did, Vanessa,”came his deep, raspy voice.
“This is just a dream… it’s… it’s not real,” I stammered out, making him grin, the whites of his fangs glinting in the moonlight, just like in that first nightmare.
“Foolish little rabbit… this is so much more than just a dream, Vanessa…” He paused long enough to lean closer to me, forcing me to bend over the rail at my back just to keep space between us. Which was when he told me in a demonic voice,
“…This is foreplay.”
17
THE SINS OF OUR PAST
“…This is foreplay.”
My gasp ended in a scream of fright when the metal at my back gave way and snapped. Once more, I would have fallen had he not reacted, spinning me from danger and telling me,
“Which is it to be? The Hell below or face your sins above?”
I swallowed hard before looking down to the dark oblivion below and then up to the next floor. It wasn’t much of a choice. So, when he held out his arm, I did exactly what he knew I would do. I ran up the stairs, doing so to the sound of him chuckling behind me.
“That’s what I thought, Little Rabbit,”I heard him mutter mockingly as I tried to get as far away as I could. As if I had a hope of running from the nightmare. The one he was forcing me to endure.
However, the second I reached the top, I found a long, large hall that just presented me with a new nightmare to navigate. Because this time, it was a wall of tall arched windows, each flooding the room with moonlight. A light that, for once, I could have done without. Especially when that bluish glow shone likea spotlight on the row of hospital gurneys. When it highlighted the dead bodies each of them held covered by stark white sheets.
“Oh god,”I whispered, my trembling hands holding my stomach as my fear increased tenfold. I even shook my head as if this would help. When, in reality, nothing could. Nothing but reaching the doors on the other side of the room.
And yes, I knew that they most likely held something even more dreadful behind them, but I was out of options. So, I started to walk, my steps quickening the second I watched body-shaped shadows snake from beneath the sheets. Silhouettes slithered up the windows, taking on the form of skeletal figures all trying to reach out and grab me. Their arms stretching out past the frames and along the walls, until I found myself running.
“NO!” I screamed as they started to merge into a pair of giant arms, reaching out once more with those clawed hands. Hundreds of them raced toward me across the floor, as if they could taste my fear and wanted to devour it whole!
I threw myself into the double doors, turning just in time to slam them shut before they could reach me. But if I thought that this was enough to stop them, then I was wrong. Because the second I let my head hang between my outstretched arms that momentarily pinned the doors closed, I saw it. Saw them emerging before I had even really had the chance to catch my breath. My face was a mask of horror as the shadows started to appear through the bottom of the door, making me shriek before backing away.
I frantically looked around me, finding myself in a concrete stairwell. I looked down at the darkness and the second I heard the Hellish cries of others rise from the bottom, I knew I only had one option.
“Fuck the Hell below, I will take my sins above, whatever they may be!” I shouted as I started running up, seeing there wasonly one more level to go. Meaning I was soon pushing open the last door, only to find myself on the roof.
Again, I slammed the door shut, the bang of metal echoing in the night. But then I turned around and, this time, it was the worst horror of all. The fears of my past I was now forced to face.
“No… please… not this… anything but this…”I pleaded as my eyes watered, instantly forming tears at the impossible sight at the center of the rooftop.
It was my childhood bedroom.
No walls, no roof, just old, shabby, partially broken furniture, and dirty sheets on a lumpy mattress. But it wasn’t the room that kept me rooted to the spot. No, it was the terrified seven-year-old girl that stood at the center of it all.
It was the knife she held in her hand.
It was the blood that dripped from the edge.
Blood that added to the stains on the carpet from the dead dog at her feet. A dog I had loved.
My only friend.
