The Hunt

The sky was glittered with flecks of silvery moonlight, shining down upon the field with an eerie beauty. The air was cold, colder than I had ever felt, which ironically matched the state of my heart. Black hands were wrapping around the fragile organ, the hands of the Devil, and they were draining all of the lovely red and replacing it with poisonous dark blotches. I was transforming into the person that he was – a monster, all because of my traitorous heart that he held in his hands.

A breeze brushed over my shoulders and I shivered, my eyes flicking across the clearing as I searched for his familiar features. A pair of blood-red eyes met mine, but that was not the only pair. My blackened heart lurched and screamed as an anger that I had never before felt shot through me, racing through my bloodstream as though it was poison. My hands itched at my sides, clenching into tight fists, and my brown eyes dimmed slightly as salty tears threatened to spill from them.

He was smirking against her neck, toying with me through his darkened eyes. He tested me, running his tongue along her pasty white skin and pressing a kiss against her throat. The whimper of pleasure was what dragged me under, into the pits of Hell. And he knew it. He knew it because his eyes were sparkling with satisfaction and because his hands dragged her closer, pushing me to my limit.

A scream was bubbling in my throat, along with a consuming hatred. It itched to escape, it itched to tear and rip and roar until there was nothing but a bloody mass and him and I together. The thoughts terrified me and I stumbled backwards, falling to the ground with my mouth slightly ajar.

My breathing was ragged as I forced my eyes away from him, concentrating on calming myself down and gripping onto the normality that was slipping away. The knife that sat in my back pocket dug into my spine, but I embraced the pain as a distraction.

Who was I? Who had I become?

My eyes sought him out, and I noticed that he was staring at me with hooded eyes. Did I care?

A sob left my lips and the tears streamed down my face, dropping carelessly onto the ground. I wanted him to be gone; I wanted him to burn and burn but I desperately wanted to burn with him. I wanted the fire to erupt around us as he held me in his arms, and I wanted to kiss him as my insanity and the darkness were killed by the flames.

My mind was torn in half; half of it blackened by his monstrosity and half of it grasping my own sanity. But the blackened part was taking over, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. He was a monster, but I wanted him to be one with all that was in me. I was a masochist of the worst form; loving something that ensured me a certain death.

His arms were around my waist, his head resting on top of my shoulder. The position would have been quite romantic if it wasn't for the fact that a coy smile was sitting on his ruby lips and the blood that dribbled down his chin. "Are you jealous, my gem?" he purred, caressing my skin with the tip of his nose. A shiver erupted through me but I refused to answer, gripping on to the only piece of control that I hadn't handed over to him. "You know that I only love you, but she…" he stopped, pulling away from me as his eyes sought out the girl that was watching us with glazed eyes, "She is tasty, you see."

Jealousy flared in my stomach, building up like a flame. The flame grew higher, erupting all around me and burning my sanity alive. Hatred for her filled my body; hatred for how she was so weak and careless and how she was so willing to give everything up for a creature.

It didn't occur to me that she was me, and that I was in much deeper than her.

"You remember how you said you would do anything for me, Charlotte?" he whispered, his frozen lips brushing over the bottom of my chin. I nodded, caught in a trance from the emotions that were swirling through me. "She wants to steal me away from you, my gem," he breathed, and my heart stopped. "You have to get rid of her."

Get rid of her? How?

I didn't question the morality of my own maddened thoughts. Instead I thought of ways to get her out of the picture, and ways to punish her from attempting to steal my lover away from me.

Kill her.

It was the darkest of all of my thoughts, and I froze in shock at hearing it echo through my head. I wasn't a murderer. I didn't have the heart of one, nor did I have the thoughts of one. I couldn't inflict death upon someone even if it costed me my own life.

But when it came down to it, his love was worth more to me than my own life.

His mouth was on my neck, sucking, tearing, pulling. Blood of his victim was dripping down my skin, cold with the touch of death. Heat was erupting down my body, twisting my stomach into tangled knots and pulling my heart from my body, offering it to him with desperate hands. His teeth pricked my skin, his warm breath utterly enticing as it caressed my bare skin. Clouds covered my mind and all I could do was breathe and blink, and hope that he would never go away.

"You love me, don't you Charlie?" he breathed, his fangs digging into my neck. Numbly, I nodded and he grinned darkly against my skin, brushing my hair away to place a burning kiss on the nape of my neck and then curling his tongue out to lick my skin. His dark and desolate eyes looked towards where the girl was lying, her desperate eyes staring up at us, fear drenching every plain of her face. "Then kill her," he whispered.

The knife that sat in my back pocket felt as though it was weighing me down, and I was more aware of the prickle of its blade digging into my spine. His breathless words echoed around in my mind, over and over until they were all that I knew and all I could concentrate on. His hands on my hips were pulling me away from the real world, and thrusting me into a world where all that mattered was the fog that clouded my being when I was around him.

I could feel his smile against my neck, and he slowly placed feverish kisses along the curve of my neck. My heart was spinning out of control, flipping and churning as it fought to get more affection. Tingles were running rampant through my body; reaching the ends of my fingertips and setting my body alight with a passionate flame of desire and content. And that's when I realised that I would do anything to stay in that position forever.

I think that a part of me knew that nothing would ever be the same after this, and that there was no way that both he and I could be living on the earth at once. But my mind was disconnected from all rationality in the world, and instead relied on his touch and his flame to keep me burning and alive.

"Kill her," he whispered, curling his tongue around my ear in a way that almost made the words sound seductive. "She's been bad, Charlotte. You can't let her get away with that."

No. No, I couldn't. She had to die.

My hands grabbed at the knife that was sitting in my pocket, and I felt him smile against my neck as he began to pull away. He uncurled his arms from around me, and became just a shadow behind me as I allowed the hatred and anger to consume me.

Kill her.

I stepped forwards, toying with the knife in my hand. My heart was thumping but his words wouldn't leave, and suddenly, I was itching for blood. It was as though I had become the very creature that he was, and that the blood would be my only saviour and lifeline. And it had to be hers. She had to be dead at my feet.

She began to back away as I approached her. I think that she sensed the blood thirst in my eyes, and although it amused me that she hadn't seen it in the real monster it made my heart thump uncontrollably.

She didn't speak. The split second she turned to run I dived forwards, the knife clenched in my hands and outstretched towards her in a fervent haze. A scream echoed from her lips but my expressions didn't change, and I heard his laughter like a mantra around me.

Bringing the knife down, I dug it into her stomach, curling it at the end and shivering at the scream that left her mouth. Blood was falling out of the gaping wound and I dug it deeper, so deep that she could no longer scream. The green grass below had been tainted with a deep scarlet colour, all of the liquid falling from her body as her eyes began to roll back into her head.

"More." It was a whisper spoken into an empty clearing, falling upon ears deafened by a bloody haze. It was a promise, an order, a demand for more pain and for more blood. He spoke it with finality, with excitement and with a fleck of insanity. He was everything to fear in that moment but I couldn't be scared because I was too terrified of myself.

I obeyed. He knew that I would; he knew that every word he spoke would echo around my mind as though it was the voice of my God. He knew that I couldn't disobey him, and that the madness he had planted inside of me when we first met had spread until it filled every part of my body. And so I pulled the knife out and plunged it in again, my face stoic with both fear for myself and for not completing the task he had given me. All that I knew was that I had to prove my love for him, and that the only way how was to watch her die beneath my bloody hands.

"Stop." I did. He walked until he was beside me, a sneer on his lips as he looked down at the quivering woman. Pride filled my heart at the look on his face, pride because I had done what he had asked and pride because he could no longer love her when she was this mangled. But he still brought his head down and lapped at the blood around her stomach, before screwing his nose up at the taste. "She's dying," he exclaimed, standing back up with blood dribbling down his chin.

Holding out his hand for the knife, I reluctantly placed it in his hands, my body heaving with my ragged breaths. Blood matted my hair, covered my clothes and painted my skin. I was a creature of the damned because I had lost my sanity, and the only place that could hold me now was the confines of Hell.

Bringing the knife down, he turned her face so that her neck was exposed to him and brought the knife down on her flesh. She was still alive but her heart was barely beating, and as he dug the knife into her skin she flinched in pain.

When he pulled the knife away I stared in terrified awe. A six-sided star was engraved into her neck, the same one that had been drawn on me in blood weeks before. "What does it mean?" I asked quietly, my voice a croaky whisper.

Turning to look at me, I stood shocked at how much of an animal he looked like in that moment. "It's the sign of The Devil," he said roughly, bringing the knife to his lips and licking the blood off of it. "And from now on you are to carve it into everyone that you kill."

The word 'everyone' fell shy on my ears, and I prodded on in guilty interest. "Why?" I whispered, wondering what significance it could have to make him so desperate to leave his mark.

He paused, looking at me through darkened blood-red eyes that were tinged with his own craze. "Because, my gem, it is the only way that we can ensure that their spirit goes to hell."

I was barely aware of the thumping of my heart in my chest, and like every other thing he had ever spoken his words claimed every fold of my mind. "Why do we want to do that?" I felt like an ignorant child asking all of these questions, but he didn't sneer. Instead, he grinned.

"The Devil is making an army," he whispered, as though it was a secret, "and we, my dear Charlotte, are sending him his men."