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My heart stops.
That voice.
That speed.
That strength.
The eyes aren’t quite right, but perhaps those colors and hues change as the years go by. And the years have gone by. A decade’s worth. I know in the pit of my soul that this is the same creature, the man who took my family away from me.
It has to be.
With a renewed sense of hatred, I swing wildly at him, not caring whether or not I have a knife or a shot in hell at defeating him. I didn’t have a chance back then. But things are different now.
“Bloody hell, you don’t give up, do you?” he asks, holding my wrists against the tree like I’m simply a squabbling toddler requiring restraint. I remember the ease with which he snapped my parents’ necks, how he drained them and dumped their bodies like they were garbage to be removed.
Does he look exactly the same? No, but childhood trauma is a funny sort of memory. It doesn’t always stay pure and true to the actual events. Sometimes it changes things, warps things, makes you remember things in ways that weren’t true to reality.
And maybe the vampire truly had black hair and amber eyes. Regardless, this is the man, this raven haired, autumn eyed vampire-gargoyle. And that means one thing: I have to kill him now.
For my parents. For my sister. For myself.
And, yet, his hold around me is absolute—like being restrained in irons.
I thrash against him, biting, clawing, and kicking. But he pins me to the tree as if I’m no more to him than a mild inconvenience.
“Easy,” he says.
But I refuse to calm down. Not when this bastard destroyed the only love I’ve ever known in my life. Not when he took everything from me. Not when he left me with nothing but hollow loneliness.
With my arms pinned, there isn’t much more I can do than pull my leg up directly between his. And even though I make contact with the hanging fruit just as I’d intended, he doesn’t go down. Instead, he winces, then pulls his head back and slams it into mine, and I’m suddenly swallowed by blackness.
I barely get the chance to watch the satisfied smile crawl across the vampire’s face.
***
The images are hazy, blurry, but they have an iron hold on me as if the figure in my dream were standing right in front of me, gripping me by the throat, ready to take my life. Ready, willing, and then, suddenly… gone.
I collapse on my stomach at the sight of my mother’s prostrate body lying a mere few yards away from where the vampire left me. I can see her oceanic blue eyes splayed open in terror. Her last moment on this earth was one of fear, of helplessness. I sob and choke on the anger, the sorrow, the feelings of hollow need.
My eyes lock on my mother, the remnants of gentle laugh lines on her lovely face. They rest on her now like divots in the side of a mountain, crags in rock or ebbs in a river. Like lines on a statue.
“Mother,” I say, choking on the word every time I try to call out to her. I reach for her hand. It’s lifeless and unmoving, but I hold on, unable to let go.
“Mother, please, no…” I beg her, but it’s fruitless. I stare at her, unable to tear my eyes away. I’m practically crushing her hand in mine, but I can’t help it. I need to hold her. To hold on. For her to hold on to me.
Please don’t go.
But she’s already gone.
There’s nothing to be done.
I close my eyes and fall to my side, banging my head on the floor, but I don’t even wince at the pain. Instead, I take solace in the darkness and beg for death. It would be mercy.
I let the blackness fill me up, but when it does, I don’t feel death. I don’t feel anything but rage, and, behind my eyes, I don’t see anything but the shadowy figure leaving my family in tattered shambles. All I hear is his voice of twisted steel. That shadowy figure, that voice of crunching bone.
And I hear him again—that voice as he held me prisoner against a tree.
There’s something different about it now. He’s the same, but somehow not. Possibly some sort of magical disguise, or perhaps even a vampire will change a bit over a decade. Or maybe it’s all my tricksy memory; what I remember of that day now is the feelings more than the images.
