Creatures Of Forever

It was three-thirty in the morning when I peeked my head into Wesley’s room. He had seemed concerned about Lilith, and I checked on him to see if he had left. But I saw his shape in the dark. He was still in his regular clothes, and curled up in a corner of his bed, asleep, holding what looked like a rectangle.

I drew closer, and saw that it was actually the picture of him and Lilith. I gently lifted the picture out of his grasp and looked at it.

“Aw, Wes,” I whispered. He really was worried about her. I didn’t know how he managed to fall asleep. If Jasper was missing, I wouldn’t be able to sit still. I could hear Wesley’s heart beating unsteadily as he slept, and it made me sad.

I set the picture down on the dresser and rushed downstairs. Jasper was seated on the larger of the two couches, sipping at his glass of blood.
He looked up at me as I stood in front of the TV.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“We gotta find Lilith.”

~~

“She’s a five thousand year old vampire, what could happen to her?” Jasper said as we walked around the streets near the house. At four in the morning, the roads were quite clear, and only once in a while would a lone car pass us by.

I grimaced. “Yeah, I know,” I replied, sticking my hands in my pockets. I was dressed in a pair of black too-skinny jeans, and a blue striped sweater.

Vampires were like their own heating systems, but for some reason a chill ran through me. I looked at Jasper and he seemed to feel the same way.

I gave him a “What do you think?” look, and he shrugged.
Lilith often wandered around for hours on end, but not at this time of day, and she would always call and tell us. I was getting more and more anxious as I felt the cold chill run down my spine again.

“Mari, you feel that right?” Jasper asked uncertainly. I nodded. “I have a bad feeling,” I whispered.

A shrill scream suddenly broke the silence. Jasper and I whipped around; the sound had come from behind us. We ran to an alley where the scream came from. I managed to get there first, and I gasped at what I saw.

Lilith sat on the ground of the alley, a man in her arms. His throat was slit, and blood was pouring from the wound and his mouth. Lilith stared at his face. Her entire body was covered in his blood.

Jasper’s POV

I grabbed Marisol’s shoulders as her body began to convulse. Even for being two-hundred years old, Mari still had problems around extreme amounts of spilled blood.

Her mouth opened and closed as if she was biting something, and her pupils turned a milky white.
“Mari, Mari, calm down!” I hissed into her ear, holding her close to me. She was breathing heavily.

“Calm the fuck down Marisol!” I shouted as she thrashed around in my arms. I wouldn’t be able to hold her much longer. I was gonna regret this later, but I managed to keep her still for a second and sink my teeth into her neck.

A vampire’s bite can be either extremely pleasurable or horribly painful. We were able to choose.
Marisol moaned slightly as I took some of her blood. She fell limp in my arms, and I knew she was unconscious.

I slowly set her down on the ground, and set my focus on Lilith. She was still seated on the hard concrete and dirt, but had let go of the dead man and begun to lick the blood off her arms and hands.

“Lilith!” I ran over to her, kneeled on the ground, and grabbed her wrists. “Stop.” She struggled for a moment, and then stopped. “Lilith, what happened? Why did you do this?”

She looked at me, then began to cry softly. “I’m sorry Jasper… They took it… I had to take it back…” she sobbed. “What? Who’s they, and what did they take?” I asked, letting go of her wrists. She fell to the ground and sobbed louder.

“My blood!” she screeched. “They took my blood!”

I pulled her upright and looked into her eyes. “Who did it?”

Her eyes were glazed over with tears. The blood ran down her face as the tears touched it. I realized she wouldn’t be able to answer my question in her current state, so I grasped her upper arm and had her stand up with me. We walked over to where Marisol was unconscious, and I picked her up.

~~

Luckily, we found Lilith not far from our house, so the trip was short.
I opened the door and Lilith collapsed on the carpet.

“Wesley!” I yelled, closing the door around Lilith’s feet. “Why do I smell a lot of blood?” he yelled back. I heard him get up and walk towards the stairs.”Get down here, now!”

He rushed downstairs, only to stop a few feet away from where Lilith fell down. Kitka followed behind him, awoken by the commotion.

“What the hell happened?!” Wesley shouted, falling to his knees at Lilith’s side. “I don’t know. I found her holding a guy with his throat cut open. She said ‘they took her blood’,” I said, laying Marisol on the black felt couch. Kitka sat next to Marisol and began to move her hair out of her face.

“What? Who took her blood?” he asked me, cradling Lilith’s face in his hands. Her skin was pasty and white as porcelain, more than usual. “I don’t know,” was my quiet answer.

“Lilith,” he said softly. Her eyes were slightly closed, and the blood on her face made her look faded. “Lilith, come on. Look at me!”

Her eyes fluttered open. “Wes…?” He smiled sadly. “Yeah, it’s me Lil.”

She slowly raised her hand to his face, gently tapping his cheek. “Don’t… call me that, dumbass…” she said, smiling faintly. I saw a glimmer of something so happy flash across Wesley’s face.

He picked her up bridal-style, and looked at me. “Come on,” he said, heading towards the stairs. I picked up Marisol and followed him.