Chapter 09: To Save Her or Not
Red eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed as Lucien looked at the woman before him, his towering frame casting a long shadow across her withered body.
The stained glass overhead splashed a wash of midnight blue across his marble-pale features, accentuating the hollow planes of his cheekbones as he tilted his head, studying her with focus.
She was at death's door...
He could hear her heartbeat...
So faint it was little more than a low hum beneath the oppressive silence...
The shallow, rattling sound of her breathing scraping against his heightened senses, and the acrid scent of fear unconsciously emitted from her body as he stood over her prone form.
He noticed the trembling, the infinitesimal quivering of muscle beneath parchment-thin skin, the way the strands of her once-vibrant chestnut hair stood on end as though responding to some electrical charge between them.
Then, a thought arose in his mind, pulsing with the same rhythm as the hunger that gnawed at his core: Should I give her my blood?
At this, Lucien's eyes flared brighter, casting twin pools of crimson light onto the mahogany floor as he gazed at her, lying face-down—her back to the ceiling, the tattered blue and silver fabric of her gown clinging to the sharp relief of her spine like moss on a fallen tree.
She almost looked as though she were crawling toward him, frozen in a final, desperate attempt at salvation.
He crouched down. He observed how dry her lips had become—cracked like ancient pottery and nearly translucent—and how acutely he could hear every slowing beat of her heart, a metronome winding down, her breathing gradually weakening to mere whispers of air.
Not only her—nearly every "corpse," or rather, every person laying nearby, seemed in the same condition.
Bodies sprawled across like discarded dolls, limbs twisted at impossible angles.
It seemed, when he was unconscious and his primal body was acting, it had left a strand of hope for him—or perhaps, for them.
But she shot me.
Lucien looked at the woman before him again, his lips parting slightly, eyebrows drawn together in hesitation, a flash of memory—the impact, the burning pain, her determined expression—flickering behind his glowing eyes.
In the old, abandoned mansion—silent except for soft, faint breaths that echoed like distant whispers against the high ceiling, and dark as the night sky, with only slivers of silver moonlight from the fractured stained glass overhead illuminating the two-story space in a kaleidoscope of jeweled patterns—Lucien bent down and picked up the silver knife, a piece of ornate silverware that glinted malevolently in the colored light, its handle engraved with delicate scrollwork that seemed to writhe under his gaze.
"Ach!" he hissed, a frown creasing his forehead as he let out a grunt, his entire body tensing as though struck.
Smoke curled from between his clenched fingers, the acrid smell of burning flesh adding another layer to the room's already noxious atmosphere.
As soon as Lucien touched the silverware, it felt as though he was plugging a power adapter into an outlet, only to find another metal object nearby carrying a residual charge—causing an unexpected jolt that made his newly transformed body convulse.
That was how Lucien felt now, his wide eyes blinking in surprise, the crimson glow momentarily dimming as his pupils dilated with shock, momentarily forgetting that he was now a vampire.
But instead of a slight jolt or a tickling sensation that faded quickly, he felt a burn—a lingering, searing pain that radiated up his arm like molten metal flowing through his veins.
It wasn't like the sharp heat from touching a stove, but rather the deep, lasting ache that remains after a burn, even after washing it with water—a sensation that burrowed beneath the skin and nested there, pulsating with each unnecessary breath he took.
His unblinking red eyes fixed on his fingers, which had touched the silverware, his gaze so intense it seemed he might bore holes through his own flesh.
The skin twitched and began to peel away in translucent layers, curling back like birch bark, exposing raw tissue beneath that sizzled audibly in the vast silence of the blood-soaked foyer.
But then, as if like a wave receding in the ocean, it returned to normal—flesh knitting together with unnatural speed, the pain subsiding to a dull throb that echoed in rhythm with the faint heartbeats of the dying woman at his feet.
It's not that painful, actually, Lucien thought, narrowing his eyes as he studied his fingers, turning his hand in the fractured beams of crimson and amber light that spilled from the stained glass overhead.
He lifted his eyebrows, the marble pallor of his forehead catching the light like polished stone, wondering what would happen if he continued to hold the silverware?
So...he did.
His long fingers curled around the ornate handle once more, knuckles whitening further against his already pale skin.
The same burning sensation returned with renewed vigor, crawling up his palm like hungry insects, but after that initial flare, there was nothing—except...
The scent of his own cooking flesh filled his nostrils, strangely detached, as though it belonged to someone else entirely.
So, it's just stuck in a loop, Lucien thought, his red eyes intently watching how his vaunted vampire regeneration kept healing—or trying to heal—the burned skin.
The process was hypnotic: flesh blackening, then peeling away, then regenerating in a continuous cycle that reminded him of time-lapse footage of blooming flowers, only reversed and twisted into something macabre.
Now, which part should I tear? This time, Lucien looked at his hand, spreading his fingers wide in the kaleidoscopic light.
His shoulders hunched forward, his towering frame casting elongated shadows across the blood-slicked floor that seemed to reach toward the prone bodies surrounding him.
The veins? The skin? The palm? With one eyebrow raised and the burning sensation in his fingers gripping the silverware—a persistent, throbbing torture that he was already learning to compartmentalize—he used the sharp tip of the knife to prick or tear the tip of his opposite finger.
His fangs unconsciously extended as he inflicted self-harm, responding to the promise of blood like a pavlovian reflex.
It burned—continued to burn as he pressed on the wound with an almost clinical detachment, his fingernail digging into the small incision, preventing the regeneration from healing it.
The pain radiated in waves that caused tiny ripples of movement beneath the tattered remains of his once-fine shirt, until the flesh was exposed and then...
Blood—a thick, deep red that gleamed almost black in the colored moonlight, viscous as warm honey—welled up.
Lucien narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration as he watched his own blood drip from the tip of his left finger.
The droplet hung suspended for a moment, a perfect crimson sphere reflecting the kaleidoscopic light from above, which then...
SWOOSH
Burned or evaporated instantly—the blood vaporized into smoke the moment it dropped onto the silverware he was holding, hissing like water on hot coals.
He was silent, observing the aftermath.
After firmly confirming that silver affected not just his flesh but his blood as well, Lucien continued his macabre experiment.
He then positioned his bleeding fingertip above the woman below him, watching as a perfect sphere of crimson detached and fell—seeming to hang suspended in the fractured moonlight for an eternal moment—before landing onto her dry, cracked lips and gaunt, sunken face.
The drop shimmered there briefly, a vivid ruby against the ashen canvas of her skin, before being absorbed with an almost desperate thirst by her parched flesh.
The pale silver light from the ceiling's stained glass panels shone on her in shifting patterns as clouds passed over the moon outside, illuminating skin withered to a pallid, almost parchment-like hue, stretched tight around her cheekbones and fingers like a grotesque mask.
The fine tracery of blue veins beneath her nearly translucent eyelids remained motionless.
Dust motes swirled around them in the disturbed air, catching the colored light like microscopic fireflies, dancing on Lucien's exhaled breath that he didn't biologically need but couldn't stop producing.
His mind raced with the expectation that something might happen; his red eyes stared intensely downward at her, pupils contracting to thin slits as he focused with inhuman concentration on the slightest change.
But…
Ten minutes passed in crushing silence. Nothing happened—not so much as a flutter of eyelash or catch in breath.
Lucien's tense expression softened, the hard lines around his mouth easing as disappointment washed over him in a cold wave.
His shoulders, which had been hunched forward in anticipation, now slumped almost imperceptibly.
Nothing happened…perhaps there wasn't enough blood? Lucien thought.
He reached again for the silverware lying on the blood-slicked floor, and once again, the burning sensation jolted his fingers as he watched his skin try to regenerate—hesitating, almost recoiling from the silver he held. The pain was becoming familiar now, almost a companion in this strange new existence.
This time, his red eyes—glowing like hot coals in the dimness—stared at his left palm, the lines and creases illuminated in the colored moonlight, and at the silverware gripped between two fingers of that hand.
Slicing the tip, as before, would probably take too long to produce enough blood—a mere trickle.
Slicing his palm might be the same; after the blow, only two or three drops would escape before his vampire regeneration set in, sealing the wound with unnatural speed.
So, the only choice left was…
Lucien pressed his lips together, the four prominent fangs—two upper, two lower—pressing against the inside of his mouth with a dull ache that reminded him of what he had become.
His gaze darted from his right palm to the woman's dry lips.
The hand gripping the silverware—with fingers burning, the pain now radiating up his arm like lightning seeking ground—hovered over his opposite wrist, rising and falling a few times as indecision warred within him.
Finally—his jaw set with determination, fangs fully extended in anticipation of pain—he--
"Ack!" A strangled cry tore from Lucien's throat as reddening skin flushed across his face in an angry wave, thick veins protruding along his neck like twisting ropes beneath the marble surface.
His fangs fully extended involuntarily, gleaming sharp and white against his grimace as he grit his teeth, driving the silverware knife straight into his left palm with a force that sent a soft spray of blood across the polished floor.
Under squinted eyes, glowing crimson narrowed to thin slits of fire, he watched as his body's regeneration tried to heal the wound—flesh crawling toward the intrusion like living clay—but recoiled from the silverware embedded in his flesh, creating a grotesque dance of advance and retreat.
Steam rose from the contact points, carrying with it the unmistakable stench of burning meat that mingled with the copper-sweet scent of blood already thick in the chamber.
Lucien immediately brought his left palm—still pierced by the silverware, the ornate handle jutting from his flesh at an obscene angle—close to the woman's parched lips.
Half-kneeling beside her, the tattered remains of his fine trousers scraping against the blood-slicked floor, he yanked out the knife with a swift, brutal motion.
SPLASH!
The silverware made a stomach-turning sucking sound as it exited his flesh, before he quickly let the blood drip from the still-gaping wound directly into her mouth.
Blood—impossibly dark and rich, almost black in the fractured moonlight—poured from his palm in hypnotic rivulets, cascading over the curves of his hand like crimson waterfalls.
It overflowed onto both his hand and the woman's face, pooling in the hollow of her throat before seeping into the tattered collar of her once-magnificent gown.
Stained glass light—amber, midnight blue, and crimson—played across the macabre scene, turning the blood into kaleidoscopic jewels that glittered with unnatural brilliance.
The sight made Lucien suddenly grow weak; his legs buckled beneath him, the supernatural strength that had filled him moments ago draining away like water through fingers.
His towering frame swayed precariously as his mind turned slightly dizzy, the vast room tilting and swirling around him as though he were caught in the undertow of his own sacrifice.
After several seconds that stretched like hours in the oppressive silence, the wound on his palm finally closed with a peculiar tingling sensation—like a thousand needle pricks beneath the skin—and the flow of blood stopped.
The last drops fell heavily, making tiny splashing sounds as they landed on her chin.
Lucien's gaze fixed on the woman—the same one who had shot him with a silver gun—watching for her reaction to receiving not just a drop, but nearly a bucketful of his blood.
It should have a reac— Just as Lucien began to wonder, his narrow eyes widened with excitement, the crimson glow intensifying like banked coals suddenly fanned to life. Oh?!