Page 89 of House of Crimson Kisses
My stomach screams, hunger consuming me. She took everything from me. Hot, putrid fury seeps into my chest. She needs to pay for what she’s done.
I grab her neck and yank her to me and sink my teeth into the fleshy pulp of her throat.
As my teeth graze her skin, they sharpen and sink into her flesh. Her screams rend the air as the first drops of her blood kiss my tongue.
Sweet, sweet blood flows down my throat, and that is when everything changes.
The stars wink to life, as time stands still. The wind silences, the rustling of leaves and plants ceases.
There is nothing but the slowing beat of the witch’s heart and the wet slurps of my tongue lapping against her neck. Blood pours down my dress, splattering and staining my chin, my jaw, my chest.
But with every gulp I swallow, my body relaxes a little more. The agony coursing through my body loosens. The itching in my veins ceases. Cold settles. No longer a burning ache, but a cooling peace that wraps my heart into a new rhythm.
Power floods my system as my muscles reform and reshape themselves. My eyes sting like they’re pinching and sharpening.
I am becoming something else.
The witch weakens. She sags in my arms. She’s a full-grown woman, but I find her weight to be that of a feather in my arms. That’s when I glance down and notice her tummy is rounded.
The soft paunch of post birth.
I startle as I lay her down. She is not long for this world. I have drained her of almost all her blood. She will not survive the hour.
She glances up at me. “Please,” she begs. Her voice is barely above a whisper and yet it is loud. It’s like she shouts at me. “Don’t hurt her.”
“Hurt who?” I ask.
“Octavia.” It’s the last word she says.
I glance up at the kitchen door, and there, beyond the entrance, is a crib. I step over her body and make my way to it.
Cradled in a yellow blanket is a baby. It can’t be more than a couple of days old. It cries, its eyes opening as it screams.
I gasp. It’s the most beautiful and wretched thing I’ve ever seen. Staring back at me are crimson eyes unlike anything I’ve seen before. No human has eyes like this. And I realise that this was the witch’s penance. Curses require dark magic. If she was pregnant when she cursed me, it was her baby who paid the price.
A curse made of blood.
A baby born of a curse.
This creature is like me. That she hungers for the same blood I do.
I cradle her to my chest. “It’s okay, sweet thing. I will look after you, Octavia,” I say. “Mother has you now.”
I take her from the cottage and leave the body of her birth mother bleeding what little remained in her body onto the kitchen’s stone slabs. Her lips mutter prayers to her gods. Her body is already pale and growing paler and more contorted as death consumes her. I don’t wait around. What’s the point? I’ve consumed her life force. Despite never turning around, the sting of her eyes boring into me as I stole her baby away still torments me a thousand years later. I step into the night, the fluttering and stuttering of her heartbeat slowing until it’s faint and weak. Her fate sealed.
She had wrought hell upon me; I sent her to hell in kind.
Or so I thought.
It wasn’t until many weeks later that I discovered she hadn’t died. While I never had confirmation, I am certain that it was her. There were too many rumours that a monster ran through the woods of the territory on the western side of the city.
Too many bodies bled dry. And at that point, I hadn’t worked out that I could turn others to become like us. That took another few years and happened by accident. There were no others, only Octavia and me. And it wasn’t me bleeding the humans.
I loathed myself for years for not paying attention to the witch as her skin paled and her body morphed. I thought it was death coming for her. Not the hand of her gods saving her. And how would I find her now? I fear she wouldn’t look as she did.
I don’t know what magic the gods cast to save her life. But she became like me.
I spent weeks in fear that she would come for Octavia. My Octavia, who stole my heart.
