Page 11 of Killer of the Bells
Heat flared in Vale’s eyes, and a muscle in his elegant jaw twitched. “Do you want me to tease you?”
He drew close to me, looking me over like I was a delicious treat to be consumed. My chest grew hot, and my breath stuttered.
“Do you want me to let you go and then secretly follow you?” He whispered in my ear, close but not touching. “Do you wantme to follow you home, stalk your every waking hour, and watch you while you sleep?”
I bit my lip involuntarily. All of that sounded pretty fantastic to me, but I felt like there was a trap in his words, so I didn’t respond. My dick probably would have if I hadn’t just gotten off, so I was spared the indignity of giving Vale a one-man salute.
Vale began to circle me. I could feel his hot breath against the nape of my neck, and I shivered.
“Maybe after I got tired of the game, I would wait for you on a moonless night as you walk home. I’d make sure you knew I was there, but never show myself. Only when you felt like you were safe at home, tucked away in your little bed, would I appear. I would pin you down and fuck your tight little hole until you screamed for mercy, but I wouldn’t stop. I would take and take and take until you were nothing but quivering flesh, and then, and only then would I drain you dry, giving you the sweet release of death.”
Vale finished his circuit and stopped in front of me once more, taking my chin between two fingers and examining me coldly before saying, “Get over yourself, princess. I’m not your salvation or your escape.”
“Mean,” I whispered as hot, searing embarrassment flowed over me.
“Deal with it. Monsters are mean. We bite, we rend, we tear, we hurt, and we revel in every moment of it. Death isn’t pretty, and it isn’t sweet. It’s an ending. Only a child would think otherwise. I don’t eat kids and…” He scanned me from head to toe before sneering. “I don’t sparkle either.”
I didn’t know what to say. His cruelty cut deeper than anything I’d felt in a long time. I wanted to retort with something clever and witty. I wanted to deliver a reply as devastating as the performance he’d so easily given to me, but I had nothing.
I knew better than most how ugly and brutal death could be. I wasn’t actively seeking it out on the daily, but sometimes an urge overcame me to do something truly stupid and let the chips fall where they may.
Survival guilt, my therapist told me, can come in many forms. Coming to the woods had been a mistake. One I knew I was making as I made it. Vale’s callous words were a slap, waking me from a hazy, sparkling dream.
Did I want to die? Like, honestly, truly die? Or did I simply not want to be around anymore? There was a distinct difference between the two, and I knew it.
Sometimes I forgot and got caught up in a fog of the endless nothingness each day brought. That was when I did things like accept dates from strangers bearing red flags or go to parts of the forest where people often didn’t return from.
Even if I didn’t have trouble speaking, I still wouldn’t have had a response for Vale. Not a quote, not an echo, not even a sad little squeak.
Warm tears welled up in my eyes and began to spill down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them, and since Vale had made them appear, I didn’t try to hide them.
Vale’s cold façade faltered. It was quick, but for a second, there was a tiny twitch to one eyebrow.
Façade? I blinked up at Vale, stunned by my thought. It was true, though. The moment I realized it, everything about Vale fell into place. The way he spoke, the words he said, even the way he held himself. It was all one huge performance.
But the audience wasn’t me. It was himself.
Vale was spewing barbs and cruelty like it was his job, while all along his edges were countless fractures announcing that he was the target of all of it.
A sad smile touched my lips, and I reached up to stroke the telltale eyebrow.
“What are you doing?” Vale hissed.
I shrugged, continuing to cry, but also continuing to stroke his face. I was crying for both of us now, and I wondered if he knew it. How self-aware was Vale? Did he know what he was doing to himself? How much he hated who he was?
From my observation, most people didn’t have the first clue what they were thinking or doing at any given moment. I only had brief moments of lucidity. This was one of them, and I wanted to use it to its fullest.
“I promise I’ll keep your secret,” I said simply, giving Vale’s eyebrow one final stroke.
“What secret? That I’m a…not vampire?” Vale took a step backward.
I shook my head and, with a sad laugh, I repeated, “I promise I’ll keep your secret.”
Vale’s eyes narrowed, and I saw something happen behind them. A multitude of calculations and thoughts flew by, then blankness.
“Gareth is bringing you food,” he announced like nothing had happened. “I’ll drive.”
Before I had a chance to ask him what he meant, considering we were in the middle of the forest, he scooped me up and ran through the woods so swiftly I had to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy.
