In Love With a Vampire

Chapter Thirty

“What have I done…What have I done Lory?”

Four hours. It had been four hours since Lory had peeked through Maria’s window and watched as her husband turned into a beast. Four hours since she had quickly averted her eyes and done the sign of the cross. Four hours since she had begun stroking Maria’s hair and humming an old family lullaby.

“You did what you had to. You did what was best for this family. They would have taken her away, they would have hurt me. You did the right thing.”

Lory approached her husband cautiously with a weak, reassuring smile on her face. When she reached out to touch him, he squirmed and moved further away from her. Lory swallowed the tears that were lodged in her throat. She had only seen her husband transform into a werewolf once. It had been ugly and overwhelming, she had almost left him.

“Pete…You cannot blame yourself-"

“That’s not true. If I had handled it differently, If I had controlled the beast within me and fought them in human form…If I had asked for Donna’s help instead of sending her away…Look at them, look at how much they are suffering.”

Lory slowly dragged her eyes to the two makeshift beds in the living room. Two hours ago she had slowly come down the stairs and let out a heartfelt scream. Her house was covered with blood and dead bodies. Her porch and street were no different. She had hurled, breathed into an airbag, and hurled once more before approaching her nude, quivering husband. Lory found Pete crouching over Donna. She quickly noticed the wound in her hand. It was small, a nick really, but each time she blinked it seemed to grow bigger and well, more repugnant. She had asked,

“Why isn’t she healing?”

Pete had answered in a quaking voice,

“Because I am the monster who bit her…”

Pete had then began sobbing uncontrollably. Lory had read somewhere that a werewolf bite was fatal to vampires. She had ruled it out as a myth.

“She is going to die Lory, she can’t die. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

It was almost dawn. There were multiple bodies in the street. Her nephew was unconscious, his leg mangled. The inside of her house looked like the setting of a horror film and her husband could have just singlehandedly started a war with her brother and with the vampires. There was no way she could take Donna or Jim to the hospital without arousing suspicion. Soon, their neighbors will be up and they would be shocked by the gory scene before them. Her husband had asked a valid question, what were they going to do?

“Bodies on the streets…”

“What?”

“You have to go and take care of those bodies, Pete. If a single neighbor wakes up and stumbles on them…”

“Then we will say it is an animal attack. There has to be someone who heard something during the night. Maybe someone even peeked outside and saw me…saw me-"

Pete’s voice broke. Lory turned her head, afraid if she made eye contact with her husband that he would break further. She needed him to keep it together, for now.

“What if I had harmed you? What if you were lying here, dying? Like them?”

Lory dragged her eyes to Jim. He was in agony. Once in a while, he would scream Sarah’s name. Once in a while, he would convulse violently; they had lifted him twice now so that he would not choke to death. Lory shifted her gaze towards Donna. She could tell that Donna was also suffering. Tears cascaded down her face and once in a while, the vampire she had come to adore would mumble incoherently. At one time, Lory thought she had heard the name Sorokin.

“We need to move. It will not be long now. Your brother will come for us.”

Lory let out a sigh, she was well aware of this fact but where would they go? How were they meant to move Donna and Jim while they were in this state?

“How long until Maria and the boy come back?”

Lory glanced at her wristwatch. They had been gone for almost an hour now. Maria had regained her strength and her state of mind some time during the scuffle. The blood Donna had offered her had done wonders. By the time Lory was relaying the previous events, Pete had changed back to human form and Donna had been bit. Maria had fallen into a deep state of hysterics calling herself a disgrace to her kind. Lory had not been able to calm her and the mere sight of Pete made her extremely angry. Then the boy had appeared through the front door and Maria had gravitated towards him like a moth drawn to a flame. The boy had not spoken, not even when he saw the limbs and the head in the living room. Not even when they asked him to help carry Jim to the make-shift beds. Pete said the boy was probably fighting to believe that all of this was real. Lorry had claimed the boy was still in shock.

Maria and the boy had left to get medical supplies. They would get some from the nurse’s office at Scanton High and they could steal others from ill-guarded hospitals.

Scanton did not have many thieves.

Scanton did not have many animal attacks either.

“I am a monster Lory. I should be put down…”

“Pete no…listen, we have a plan-"

“What plan? Vampires? Do you think they will still give me that cure after what I did to their queen?”

“She is not the queen Pete…she is the daughter of the leader-"

“None of that f*****g matters! Look at us, look at them, look at our home…This is not what a man does, this is what a feral beast does. Do you think I know you are my wife when I am in that…that wretched form? One of these days I will change while you are in my vicinity and I will harm you…That day should never come.”

Lory had been staring at Jim’s quivering body throughout Pete’s speech. When she heard her husband’s voice change from fear and agony to a chilling impassiveness, she slowly turned her head.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Pete ran a hand through his hair and averted his gaze to his victims. In his head, he painted the image of his wife in one of those makeshift beds. He saw her body shaking, her features pale, her face covered with streaks of dry tears. He could not bear the thought of hurting Lory. If he cared this much about hurting a stranger and a foe, what would he do if he actually harmed the only person in the world that he loved?

“I like her you know…”

“Who?”

Pete bobbed his head towards Donna who was now loudly whispering jumbled-up words.

“She is feisty, she cares. She would have seen to it that I…that I got the cure.”

Lory weakly bobbed her head in agreement. Donna was dying and there was nothing they could do about it.

“How long does she have?”

“As the poison spreads, she will become weaker, she will be subjected to delirium, her pain will worsen. She can survive, for days even but without being able to feed and all that suffering, the only mercy we can show her is by driving the charm knife through her heart.”

Lory closed her eyes and let the tears that had been dangling on her eyelids flow down her cheeks.

“There has to be another way…a cure…something! We can’t just let her die, Pete.”

Pete placed both hands on the side of his head and pressed. He knew werewolf bites were fatal to vampires but that is where his knowledge ended. As far as he was concerned, his kind had been wiped out through the efforts of vampires and humans; he was the last werewolf in existence. He could not seek counsel from his kind, but his kind were not the only ones who would know if there was a cure, were they?

“Vampires. We have to get in touch with a vampire, a vampire who would have answers cause Maria is clearly clueless.”

“How? It’s not like we can call them…And even if we do get in touch with them, will that not endanger you? You said it yourself you bit their queen-"

“And you reminded me that she is not their queen. Either way, it does not matter. If there is a way to save this self-entitled brat, we are doing it. Now think, have they tried to communicate back home since their arrival?”

Lory bit her lower lip and stared steadily at their blood-stained floor. She recalled Donna saying that she would get in touch with her father while they were coming from the event hours earlier. Had she said that she would do so through a letter? Before Lory could complete her line of thought, three loud knocks blared through the house. Lory and Pete looked at each other before their eyes wandered to the two teenagers in their living room.

Another set of knocks sounded, this time, they were accompanied by a familiar voice.

“Sister dearest, I believe you have something or rather some things of mine.”