Call out to the Dead

Torment was the only thing -in my experience with her- I’d ever seen her take any pleasure in. This was the type of bitch that was going t o rip you apart with the biggest grin on her face. I could just imagine it, her face coated in blood and all of her features still reading pure joy, the blood pooling in the lines caused by her expression, turning her into the cruelest caricature the world had ever seen.

I came back to the current moment where her face was still perfect, not smudge on her. Still looking like the perfect villain though.

“I take it you’re imagining all the ways I could choose to kill you?” She spoke with the joy ringing musically through her voice. Is this at all how everybody else died? With someone elated to just be ending them looking them in the face like they’re trying to ingrain this moment into their memory.

I didn’t have anything to say to that. A snarky comment -which obviously I’ve already made too many of- wouldn’t do me any good. Plus the snarky doesn’t flow quite the same when you’re facing the certainty of a gruesome sort of end.

My eyes fell on the counter, I could see the little green bundle of beads. I wished I was even fast enough to compete with her. She would have to be really distracted for me to have a chance.

Something was working in my head, something from that book on vampires. I wish I had the insane memory like Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds. Figuring out what was shimmering into my mind would work much better that way.

Salt, it was used to purify things, in the book it was said to ward them off! Bath salts have some salt qualities right? Maybe there could be a distraction made yet.

There was only one shot at it though. It had to be at just the right moment. If it was normal salt maybe I would try to wait her out but I didn’t trust this idea much at all in truth.

“Quit eyeballing the rosary, babe. You’re not going to make it all the way over here before I rip you to shreds.” She spoke venomously pulling her body off the wall and taking a few deliberate steps toward me. “God, I bet the actual chase, this anticipation, will make your blood taste sweeter than anything I’ve had in a decade.”

So, pretty much, the last conversation you want to have has nothing to do with the taste of your blood. Just sayin’.

I couldn’t just sit there anymore. I lunged up out of the tub keeping my arms out and rigid, thrusting my hands out splashing as much water in her face as possible. She’d rushed toward the tub as she realized I was moving so she was right at the edge so tons of my salty, soapy water hit her right in the face.

Her hands flew to her eyes and she hissed in pain. Maybe this really worked.

I was basically jumping over Erica in my rush to escape from her grasp. I fumbled on the tile as my slick foot came to its first contact with it. My right knee hit the ground sending pain in a wave through me but I couldn’t stop. I tried to get back up but an iron grip caught my ankle.

“Fucking bitch!” She growled as her hand captured my leg.

Then I was only more desperate kicking and digging my nails into the tile trying to drag myself toward the counter. I reached for it, fingertips brushing the edge, as her fangs dug into my calf.

I spit out some string of swears in agony. Instinctively my left foot rose up and launched straight for her face.

It knocked her back but that wasn’t all good as her fangs slid through my leg a bit farther before she was off of me.

“I’m so fucking sick of you bitch!” She said not loosening her grip on my ankle. She twisted it, flipping me over and pulling me closer.

I saw her face, blood dripping down her chin covered looking much like the night I saw her in the ally fighting Michael. There was one big daunting difference though, that night her eyes just glowed gold, now they were bright fucking red. They matched her fucking hair! I was not okay with that even a little bit.

I just had to fight, slow her down, one of the guys has to be here has to have heard something right?

She clamped back down on what she assumed would be a more stable place, her fangs sunk into the flesh of my stomach only an inch from my left hip bone.

I screamed. Someone had to hear this! Anyone! My modesty was cast aside I didn’t care who the hell came in here and dragged this woman off me even if I was naked. Living outranked my modesty.

“Cuntbagwhoreface!” Obviously my battle cry.

I dug my fingers into her eyes with as much force as I could muster. There was a mental block you had to get by when you feel your fingers digging into that soft but jarringly resistant tissue. When struggling for your life you learn to cope.

She didn’t bother shouting anything in return as her head flew back and her hand caught my left arm and she bit down.

I feel as though I state the obvious when I say again I screamed. As I was being exsanguinated I was starting to lose a little gusto. My fighting wasn’t nearly as effective anymore. I still tried and my thrashing kept her tearing into me more and more. None of these wounds would look like their typical fang mark.

“Michael fucking Vampire you promised I’d be safe! You better not give up on me now!” That was all I had left just shouting out only hoping he could hear me. I was calling out to the dead yet again, only hoping that this time I got who I called for.

My head fell back to the tile. All I had left was hope, though that was fading fast.

The next sequence of events happened so fast that they were hard for me to follow with the way my head had started swimming.

The crack of the door splintering hit my ears at almost the same time as I felt Erika lifted the fuck off me and a man shouting. It was all beyond me really. I just dazed eyes focusing and blurring as I stared at the ceiling.

I’d lived another day. I’d survived another batch of impossible odds. For once I’d survived based on perseverance, at least to some degree.

I don’t know how long I laid there like that.

“Eliza?” Michael’s voice sounded sincerely worried for the first time. I heard his boots striding across the tile. He knew I was alive. What sort a vampire couldn’t spot a living human?

I was too drained to make any effort to respond.

He knelt down next to me. My eyes flicked over to him. His face was very serious and his hand very slowly, reverently I suppose, moved to lightly brush my cheek.

“I am sorry Eliza.” His eyes drifted toward the wound on my wrist. He very gently grabbed my hand. “So sorry.” He kissed my hand in the old world fashion before turning it even more gingerly and kissing my palm. He planted a few more soft, feather light kisses before reaching the wound. He glanced up to me, eyes glowing as they did, looking cautious. Tilting his head back toward the wound his eyes sliding shut slowly as he started lapping up the blood.

Not necessarily the best sensation you can imagine. A few moments after though the tear started to numb. Then my brain started interpreting the messages from those nerve endings almost the same as the light kisses he’d been placing on my skin.

Once that spot was clear of blood he placed one last kiss over the wound then started up my arm. I’d never had someone kiss me so many times without ever touching my lips. He kissed me so softly at the perfect intervals it made my heart flutter… Well it was either that or the blood loss making me feel light and wonky.

He crossed my collarbone slowly then started slowly down the center of my chest, similar to the path his hand traveled in that dream. He was avoiding the areas he may have wanted to go for the most as a man. I think he was just trying to make me feel better, not fuck me when I’m almost dead.

As the light movements of his lips went father down my torso the fluttering in my stomach increased. Not at all like butterflies, more like bats flapping about in the pit of my stomach. I felt the ache in my chest of my heart pumping faster but it just made me more lightheaded due to the lack of blood in my system.

I looked down at him, part of me thinking about asking him to stop, I looked at the bite on my arm it looked like it was already healing. Stopping him seemed like a bad idea.

His lips arrived to the second bite, the one near my hip, and the first time his tongue ran over it I groaned in pain. He gently put his hand on my right side and rubbed soothingly. It was hard to imagine a vampire being so gentle, so eager to keep you from pain. That wound numbed just like the other and every time his tongue touched my skin removing the blood the knots those bats were twisting up got twisted a little bit tighter.

This was so entirely different than anything I’d ever experienced. Something so overtly sexual without any actual sex. I learned then that experience, centuries of it I presume, really made quite the difference. These horny small town teenagers were just all about hitting the home run to buffer their numbers.

I’m pretty sure numbers weren’t on Michael’s list of concerns.

Michael finished with the blood in that spot and much like the one before it he kissed it and moved on. He kissed across to my other hip then worked his way down to my knee. The minor scrape from my fall when I tried to escape. He stopped there looking at it for a moment he moved, keeping a hand on my leg so he wouldn’t fully brake contact and sat at my right side pulling my leg over his lap knee bent keeping it close to his face. He kissed it again.

“You are so strong Eliza.” He leaned his face against my knee without hitting the injured spot to look up to me. “So many humans just cower, cry, and succumb to the reality of their death. Even the fighters will sense their demise and feel no hope to fight. You’re stronger than you know.”

I smiled up at him grateful for his words but still not feeling up to talking yet.

He then went back to his mission and went on with that and the worst wound, the one near my ankle. The one at my knee seemed so superficial that he may have healed it with just that first run of his tongue. I had to ask him about this whole thing.

That last one though he spent the most time on as it was still bleeding pretty well. After he finished up with that one he stood up and scooped me up in his arms effortlessly. He carried me into my room and put me under the covers of my bed. He left my side but was back with his vampire speed and sat my rosary on the nightstand next to me within arms’ length.

“Don’t touch it yet. I’ll be right back.” He said before just disappearing again.

I turned my head to watch my French doors readying myself to go for my rosary if anything else with eyes glowing red came bursting in.

Michael returned with a first aid kit I wasn’t aware that I even owned. Sometimes the strangest things pop up out of nowhere here.

He sat it next to the rosary and sat himself next to me pulling out the gauze. He wrapped my wrist and ankle first before making a square of it and adding the tape in there on the sides for my hip. He only lifted the blanket enough to put the bandage where it needed to be.

He stood once more to close the bathroom door and turn on the heater. He came back and climbed into the bed lying beside me on the outside of the blankets.

“How did she get in here?” I spoke in the softest voice.

“Quietly.” He said with stiffness in his voice that spoke volumes of how angry it had made him. “Aaron and I went hunting right as the sun set. Phil and DJ figured you had your rosary on, they weren’t worried. They tend to assume Jo’s the one in more danger.”

“Didn’t they hear me screaming?”

“Vampires can absorb the sounds of screams. One of our oddest gifts but definitely one of the most useful.” He spoke softly. This was another moment I couldn’t read him. “When you called out to me we were heading back. I… I got here as fast as I could.”

“How good is your hearing?” I had to know.

“Even better when I hear my name just like yours.” He kept it vague.

“How did you make the gouges in my skin feel so much better?” I fumbled with my words for the whole scene in the bathroom. I’m sure I would have flushed if my body had the blood to spare.

He smiled lightly trying not to let wickedness come into his good deed but I could see in his head he was thinking something along the lines of, ‘Of course she’s still thinking about my lips on her body.’

“Our saliva has healing and numbing agents in it. Our blood even more so. I would give you my blood if you weren’t so drained. It’s too risky.” Then he tossed his leg over my body and wrapped an arm around me as well letting the devilish look take its place. “You are delish by the way.”