Trembling With the Strings

I cried out, running to his side. His eyes were closed; his chest not rising with the breaths he should have been taking. His body was pale and cold as he sprawled across the steps, entirely limp. His shirt was covered with blood, and the scent of alcohol surrounded the air around him. His neck was coated with his dried blood, telling me that he surely had been killed and dropped onto my doorstep.

My father was dead; there was no doubt in my mind. I didn’t know where my mother was, but I couldn’t help but wonder how she would take this. I'll admit I was sad. He had been a horrible man, but you only get one father. And this certainly wouldn’t make my mom feel like she should give up alcohol and commit herself to being a better person.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek, but I didn’t start sobbing or anything. I pulled myself to my feet, wiping my eyes quickly with my arm. This was not the time to be a weak little girl and run to mommy. Demetrius would be the one to take this the hardest, but he was asleep. I wouldn’t wake him for this. I grabbed an arm, tugging the body into the house. He didn’t need desecrated any more.

I went to close the door, but suddenly a pair of cold arms pulled me into a muscular chest. My body went rigid, but I forced my muscles to loosen as I held him back after ensuring that this truly was Darius. His eyes were a deep red as he looked down at me, a small smile on his face.

“Miss me?” he breathed softly, letting go of me and stepping farther into the house so he could close the door.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, wondering how long it would take him to see the body in the middle of the floor.

Darius stumbled into me, pulling me up and off of my feet. The world was spinning before I found that he was holding me close to his chest. I snuggled closer to him, ignoring the disgusting smell of blood all over his face and clothing. He kissed me roughly, making me taste the blood on his lips. I pulled back after a bit, not in the mood to taste as much blood as I had just seen.

“What?” he asked, putting me on my feet. He squinted a little before muscling past me and stepping closer to the corpse. “What the fuck did you do? How did you bite him?”

“It wasn’t me!” I argued, making a face. “Why would I kill my own father?”

“Well, then who was it?” he asked, crouching down beside the body and sniffing it.

“I don’t know. He was just there when I went outside.” I stepped closer to Dray and my dad. I absentmindedly started rubbing his shoulders, working out the knots that had surely been there his whole life. He glanced back at me, not sure if he was supposed to be comforting me or just acting normal. “I’m okay, I promise.”

Darius nodded, standing up and pushing his bangs out of his face. “Gracie, someone has a nice little grudge, it seems. No vampire would go through the trouble of finding some victim’s home just to drop the mutilated body on the front porch. I bet it was the same person that tried to poison me.” He reached out and caught my hand, pulling me closer so he could kiss me again.

He wasn’t so forceful this time. I was about to thank him, but when I opened my eyes I saw that he was staring only at my neck. I sighed, realizing what he was after. He saw my tired gaze and bit his lip, looking away and stepping back.

“Gracie, it’s just that the damned dragon blood has me feeling like shit. You don’t know how many people I had to kill just to get a little less thirsty! The stuff is like acid or something—and not the good drug kind.” He glanced over at me, sighing. “I know you hate it, but I know that your blood would do it. I mean, a human with child—a vampire child at that—has more powerful blood than a normal human.”

He had this guilty look on his face, but his eyes stayed glued on my neck. I was surprised that he hadn’t just done it already. I sighed inwardly, stepping up to him and kissing him quickly, begging him to just get it over with. His eyes actually lit up as he snaked an arm around my waist to secure me at his side. My heart was beating in my throat as he pushed my hair out of the way, exposing my neck.

“Baby, this is going to hurt like hell,” he warned me softly, an apology in his tone. I took one last breath before he plunged his fangs into a vein. It took all I had to not scream. Tears welled up in my eyes as my nails dug into the palm of my hands, the clenched fists not doing anything to take away the pain as he surely took more than enough for ten vampires.

“Get off of her!” my mother screamed suddenly, the door slamming shut behind her. “Oh my God!” She must have seen her dead husband.

And then she turned that horror to Darius. How did that look? Darius was attached to my neck as he bit me right beside the man who had died at the hands of a vampire, and my mother had always been a woman to jump to conclusions.

Darius couldn’t have killed my dad. He wouldn’t do that to me.

“You don’t know how many people I had to kill just to get a little less thirsty!”

...He wouldn't, right?