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“You sought power,” she crooned maliciously, “like a dog chasing a car. Ever figure out what you were going to do if the car stopped?”
Melissa moved between Eve and her prey. She was as confused as hell as to what had transpired that night, but there was one thing for certain: kill a United States Senator who technically hadn’t violated the law in any way, and you were going to jail or worse.
“Sadie!” she shouted, trying to overcome her own terror. The woman she had known as Sadie was giving off vibes that were crashing against her fragile shores. “Please stop! You’re hurting me!”
“Get out of my way,” Eve hissed. “I will not allow Solomon to tear the world apart again. I can stop it by drinking him dry.” Her eyes were burning white now, and it looked like she could eat him alive with that gaze.
“Don’t do it,” Mel said.
Eve screeched to the sky . “He wants to know what being a vampire is like? He has no idea –” Eve stepped forward but Melissa didn’t budge. Much to her chagrin, she had wet herself with fear. She had never done that before, even as a little girl. But when she was a little girl, her parents had convinced her that the monsters weren’t real. As an adult, she realized that her parents had lied. Her face was even whiter than usual and her skin was shivering. She wasn’t sure there was anything left of Sadie in there. But Eve stopped short, her bloody dress just inches away from from Melissa.
“Look at me,” Eve said, running her hands just centimeters off of Mel’s clothes, tracing the contours of her body until she reached her face, where she caressed that delicate chin with one blood-encrusted finger. Melissa knew that this woman . . . this creature . . . could snap her neck with those delicate steel fingers. “I would never hurt you,” the ancient vampire said, her voice now laced with sorrow. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. Now, you know what I am. Who I am.”
“No, I don’t,” Mel whimpered. She was still scared, and more than a little bit humiliated. “Sadie would never have made me do this.” She glanced downward, seeing the stain on her pants. “You killed those men. You just ripped them apart.”
“They would have done the same to me. Solomon will try to kill me if he cannot have me, and he knows now that I will never again want his touch.”
“His touch? He’s your brother!” Melissa stopped. “He isn’t your brother is he? You spoke about him like he was –”
“A lover?” Eve replied, that sorrow in her voice growing. “He was. He was my first.” The vampire actually seemed choked up when she said it.
Senator Trefauld, who was lying on the ground behind Melissa, finally found his voice. “But the Provenance says –”
“The Provenance is a Lie,” she replied, looking down at her would-be victim with more pity than anger now. “Solomon is not my brother. In the ways of my race, he is my son. He was the first human ever Turned, and that made him powerful. You have made a deal with a great evil Senator. Your constituents may forgive you if you can convince them that you fell for Solomon’s illusion. I promise you, it was an illusion, for that is Solomon’s power. It was his power before he entered the darkworld, and it simply grew after that. He makes promises, but you never know what you will truly be getting.” She looked around the cowering mob. “All of you, go home. There will be no Turnings this night. Any who try will suffer my wrath.” With that, she looked at the remains of the Blood Brood that she had torn asunder. “You do not want my wrath, I promise you.”
Her eyes fell on the Senator again. “She stopped me from killing you,” she said, glancing at Melissa. “Someday, you might want to thank her for that. Now go back to Washington and undo the damage you were planning. Or do I need to tell you what will happen if you don’t?”
The Senator stared at the mangled vampire guard nearby. “No, I don’t think you do.”
The police grew braver the longer Eve went without killing anyone. A few of them came forward with guns drawn. One of them said, “You, drop the weapon and step away from the woman and the Senator.”
Melissa spun around. She needed to yell at someone, if for no other reason that to help her retrieve some of her dignity. “This was a vampiric contest of dominance between Eve and the Blood Saint. By vampire law, those two men that attacked her broke the rules of the contest and could be punishable by death. This is beyond human law.”
The officer’s look unconvinced, but none of them wanted to fuck with Eve. No one wanted to come near her. “We still can’t let her kill the Senator,” another one replied.
Eve spoke. “The Senator will not be harmed this night, at least not by me.” She wrapped her ams around Melissa’s waist and chest from behind. “Now I have some explaining to do to my daughter.” With that, her wings flapped and Eve carried Mel into the night sky.
Mel was scared again, but this was much more reasonable and mundane kind of fear. She was hurtling through the darkness with the buffeting of those wide, leathery wings. They shot up over the houses of West End and towards the forest on the edge of Gravestones. Eve was going home . . . Sadie’s home.
After a few minutes, some of Mel’s fear began to melt away. She could remember Solomon and Frost and what Eve had done to the Blood Brood, but it seemed not so important for now. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Eve’s face. ‘No,’ she thought, ‘that looks more like Sadie’s face again.’ There was an odd joy bordering on relief playing across those features.
“I haven’t flown free in so long,” Sadie said, her voice sounded more like what Mel was used to.
“This is why you flew for the Army isn’t it?”
Melissa nodded, her eyes brimming with tears of joy. “Ever since I saw the Wright brothers that first time it Kitty Hawk, I knew I could fly again and not have to hide it.”NôvelDrama.Org holds this content.
“Why couldn’t you fly? With your wings I mean?”
“Because they would know I was still alive,” she whispered. “I won’t give this up again.”
She swooped and dove, and soon Melissa saw it more of a ride than something to inspire terror. Her vampire mother was coated in blood and Mel had pissed herself earlier in fear, but it was all forgotten in those few moments where even the wind envied them.
She approached the open area next to her house, noticing a large number of motorcycles and cars littered the area around her house. And she saw police lights shining up at her like fireflies. When her feet touched soil, she saw her old friend Frankenstein and his biker gang kicking back on her redwood deck. She saw Devlin and Fitzpatrick and Captain Grom and Vlad, and Vlad had brought all the available werewolves again. It was like she had an army there, and she wasn’t sure who’s side they were on.
Everyone just stared at her, and Eve had never felt more like a freak. She couldn’t imagine what they were thinking . . . how betrayed they must feel. She had lied to all of them.
“Good God,” Frankie muttered. “You . . . those are . . . when they hell did you get wings?”
Eve looked at the ground. “Over seven thousand years ago.”
Vlad was shaking his head. “It’s true then. After you left . . . hell, apparently almost before you left the ceremony, there were people talking to cops and news crews, with everyone saying that the devil herself walks the earth. Is that true? Who the hell are you?”
Eve shook, but now with sorrow rather than rage. There were many ways she had wanted Vladimir Koloff to look at her, but not like this.
Melissa made a choice. Her friend had not told her the whole truth, but she had otherwise never lied. She had saved Mel and introduced her to Mary. She would stand by her now. Melissa slipped an arm around Eve’s waist, letting her mother pull those wings around them both.
At that moment, Mary appeared in a blue halo of light, her face still echoing a feeling of almost drunken bliss. She looked at Melissa and Mary and expressed no jealousy. She had been a vampire once, and even after her second death she could feel that old blood calling to her.
“Are you all right my sweet?” she asked, that initial “s” drawing out like a serpent’s sigh. “I cannot stay long, and am only hear because there are so many of us to feed and only so many seats at the table. Even for a bounty such as this.”
“That’s true too?” Devlin asked, his eyes wide. When Eve nodded, he continued with, “That doesn’t make sense. If the Provenance was true, then the wraiths should be allied with Solomon.”
Everyone looked at him. No one had stopped to think about that.
Grom looked over Eve. “So do we call you Eve or Sadie or what?”