Page 98 of Our Little Monster
“But hey, at least you won’t die alone.” He directed his next words to Sam. “Sam, look at me.”
She tried hard to fight his siren call but couldn’t, her tear-smeared eyes locking with his.
“Push that blade through your chest now,” he said, the command sounding like a siren’s melody that didn’t affect me, only Sam, who bristled at the words.
“No!” I screamed in anguish.
“Serina, I-I can't—I’m so sorry, I’m—I’m—” Sam choked out between sobs, her hands trembling on the hilt of the blade still buried in my flesh. Her eyes were hazy with the compulsion controlling her. “I tried to warn you, Serina, I—”
“Shh, it's okay,” I croaked out, reaching my own shaking hand to touch hers. Nothing about this was okay. Everything was wrong.
With a wrenching sob, Sam pulled the blade free, and my knees buckled beneath me. Pain flared white-hot, a wildfire raging within me, consuming everything in my mind.
But there was something else, too, a fierce determination not to let this be the end for her.
“Sam, look at me!” I pleaded, fighting through the haze of agony.
She did, her eyes haunted, the weight of her next action already crushing her spirit. She positioned the blade against her own chest, prepared to join me in death.
“No, don't you dare!” I growled, summoning the last vestiges of strength I didn't know I possessed.
With an effort that blurred the edges of my vision, I struck—the precise pressure point on her neck. Sam's eyes rolled back as she crumpled, unconscious but alive.
She would live.
The blade clattered to the floor.
BOOM.
As if on cue, the world trembled around us, a low rumble growing into a deafening roar. The explosives. Fire bloomed in the night, hungrily devouring the warehouse as timbers groaned and collapsed.
The Vampires, their senses assaulted by the flames, hissed and scattered like roaches.
I fell into a heap beside Sam, my fingers pressing feebly against the gaping wound in my stomach. Blood pulsed between them, warm and relentless. The blaze cast flickering shadows across our faces.
“Guess we’re not going out quietly after all, Sam,” I whispered, a bitter laugh bubbling up even as the darkness crept in at the edges of my sight.
I had wanted to tell them… to reveal the truth that churned within me like an untamed storm. That despite everything, they had ignited something fierce and beautiful within me. They weren't the monsters I'd been taught to hunt; they were the complicated, broken pieces of a puzzle that somehow made me feel whole.
But confessions, those sweet, painful admissions, would remain locked within me now. The irony wasn't lost on me that in seeking revenge, I had found love—only to lose it all in the space between a heartbeat and a last breath.
“Forgive me,” I whispered to nothing, hoping my words would find them somehow.
The thought of them never knowing the depth of my feelings, never understanding that they had changed me, that was the cruelest cut of all.
The pain was fading now, slipping away into a numbness that promised oblivion. I could hear the distant sound of sirens, the world beyond this fiery tomb reaching out with futile hands. I smiled faintly, the gesture achingly tender.
Whatever afterlife lay ahead of me, I hoped it was kinder than this one.
32
Bastian
Flashback…
Thelastraysofthe sun bled out across the horizon as I straightened my jacket, watching Nox and Thorne ready to leave with me.
“Looks like we're off to see the wizard,” Nox quipped, grabbing his car keys with a grimace that didn't quite reach his eyes.
