Page 90 of House of Crimson Kisses
She never did.
What kind of mother abandons her daughter?
Eventually, she disappeared. She formed the Montague territory and turned enough vampires to carry on her legacy. Her true origins never surfaced. No one ever discovered what I’d done. I decided to create history the way I saw fit.
Her story became a myth, she became a god.
And I became a monster.
Chapter25
RED
The liquid tastes like shit. But I mean, of course it does. It’s thousand-year-old god blood, what did I expect?
I lie down on the stone bed, or I think I do. Only I still seem to be sitting upright, so weird.
The atrium blurs, mist rising from the ground until it’s thick enough I can’t see in front of me. I swirl my arms through it, shout for Octavia, but she doesn’t reach out to me.
The air cools and then warms until finally the mist clears, and I’m in a pasture full of daisies and poppies.
If this is the extent of the trial, I’m going to boss this. What was everyone worried about?
I get up off the stone bed, which disappears the minute I stand. I’m about to walk, but a black, amorphous shape appears a little way in front of me.
The blackness resolves into a strange creature. Almost demonic with it’s unusual height and shroud so large when I try to catch its face, there’s nothing but pitch black. It makes me think there is no head. Just a hollow void straight to the depths of hell.
It sends a shiver down my arms, goosebumps tracking over my skin.
“The fuck are you?” I breathe.
But it doesn’t answer, instead it floats—though that seems like too gentle of a description. It’s gracefully charging towards me, a gnarled arm leering out at me.
“Listen bitch, why don’t we calm down, yeah?” I say.
I take a step back, except I don’t move. Panic prickles its way up my arm. My stomach turns raw. I struggle against whatever the fuck invisible force is holding me in place. By the time shroud-thing reaches me, I’m fists clenched, ready to go out swinging.
But then, a force pins my arms in place. Its hand stretches out and plunges into my chest.
…I scream
and scream
and
scream,
and then I’m falling backwards into darkness.
When I wake, I find myself somewhere achingly familiar.
I’m in my childhood home. In the kitchen. A fire burns low in the hearth. On the sideboard are the remnants of cookie ingredients. It makes my chest ache.
“Mama?” I call.
I stand up and brush my arms down. Flour sprinkles dust the red tallies on my arm. I’ve always worn those tallies with pride, killing the monsters, taking power from those who wield too much of it. Those who use it to hurt the weak.
But here, in my empty childhood kitchen, the tallies take on a different feeling. My skin crawls, the tallies itch, and I’m no longer sure what they mean. They vanish, dissolving one by one as my entire being shrinks.
