The Grave: Chapter 02

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EPOV

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Out of nowhere, a light crack opens in front of me and a hand appears in thin air. Without thinking it through, running solely on instinct, I grasp the hand and yank it towards me.

That’s when it hits me like a fuckton of bricks!

The scent…a perfume like the flowers from my birthplace…

The warmth… like sun on my skin a thousand years ago…

A pair of bright blue eyes…the exact color of my beloved ocean when the first rays of the sun used to hit the tumultuous waters…

One human woman…

Two heartbeats…

And fuuuckkk is the woman Out. Of. This. World!

Absolutely, divinely, gorgeous…The blue of her eyes shines like the best cut sapphires, in sharp contrast with her wild yellow gold hair and flushed alabaster skin. Her deep golden brown eyebrows arc regally on her forehead, matched with the thick eyelashes on her almond shaped eyes. Her cherry pink lips part in a gasp. As her eyes focus on me, her pulse quickens and her pupils dilate, showing a layer of light grey concentric circles in her dark blue eyes.

There is a slight wind around that blows her hair over her face. I cup her cheeks and hold her hair back from that beautiful face. I can feel her warm breath on my neck. Her scent is all around us, pulling me in and coaxing me to jump headlong into the whirlpool of craziness it is whipping up in my head. Just a whiff of that scent alone could bring a lesser vampire to madness.

My fangs snick down with a snap!

I think they shock her because she gasps and shudders.

Is she scared?

I don’t know why but I do not want her to be. I don’t want her to run away screaming. I also do not want to hide my fangs from her, just for the fear of scaring her. In a twisted way, I want her to be not scared of scary me. This is the most complicated situation, emotion-wise, that I’ve had on my hands this month, taking into consideration the annihilation of Pam’s favorite pumps last month and her tantrum thereafter. Either way, I have this wonderful creature in my arms and scared or not, I am not letting go. Not right away at least.

Her face and neck color up. The enchanting blush spreads as far as I can see, from the tips of her hair till the neckline of her dress. But she doesn’t avert her eyes. And she doesn’t move. She just stares at my mouth, my fangs. For a moment or two hundred, I just look at her and she looks right back.

She starts to smile. That pulls a smile out of me as well. Then suddenly, she laughs out aloud.

Fucking chimes is what I hear when she laughs!

However, no sooner than she started laughing, her face contorts in a painful expression, and she sucks in a shallow breath, biting her lower lip between her teeth, as if to stop herself from crying out. Her beautiful blush darkens and her skin starts reddening as small wisps of smoke appear, rising from her hair. It is as if she is beginning to burn up, just like a vampire would in the sun. But she has a heartbeat. She breaths. She is warm like the sun. I am positive that she is no vampire. I am one. And if I don’t haul myself from the current spot, in about thirty seconds I’d be joining her in her smoking gig.

As much as I want to take cover and die for the day, I can’t leave her out here. I just… can’t. So, continuing with the theme of my night, going on instinct alone, I grab the simmering girl in one arm, open the trap door to the underground tunnel and glide in, immediately plunging us into the darkness of the passageway below.

“Hey! Let go of me! What are you doing?” She shouts and struggles but that does not affect my hold on her.

I let go of the screaming girl for two seconds to secure the trapdoor lock and she blindly scrambles away from me, sticking her back tightly against the wall. I can still clearly see her though.

And whatever was going seriously wrong with her outside, is still very wrong.  For some reason, she is clearly burning up.

She starts gasping in short breaths and wildly looks around, no doubt trying to see in the absolute dark. She looks terrified. I don’t like that look on her. To try and put her fears to rest, I try pulling her in my arms again, but she screams shrilly and tries kicking my feet and shins.

“Listen to me!” I grab her elbows, “Its ok…I won’t harm you…” I tell her but she slaps my hands away, which I let her, and does not listen to me.

There are no light fixtures in the tunnel so I hurry towards the door leading to the house, opening which would give her some kind of light to get her bearings straight.

She is still screaming. Suffices to say, I liked the laughter more. Bloody pregnant females and their protective instincts! How long will it take for her to realize that if I meant her harm, she would not have been screaming right now? And why the hell is she burning?

As I open the door at the end of the tunnel and turn towards her, she doubles up in pain and starts crying out.

“Nooooo…Not again…!” she wails.

Oh Gods no! What is happening to her?

Crying screaming women scare me. I just can’t handle them. And this one looks to be in agony.

I am so appallingly out of my element right now! I have no clue why she is burning up and in pain and no idea about what I am supposed to do. This is absolutely not my area of expertise and I seriously don’t want to fuck up anything else by doing the wrong thing here. In addition to that, I am still fighting her scent and trying not to drain her in the process. Maybe, her cacophony is a good thing after all. For her at least.

She falls on her knees, clutching her abdomen with both hands and cries out again. I rush to her side and catch hold of her shoulders to break her fall. I kneel down in front of her, searching her face for any sign of coherence. There is none. She looks crazed. At least the small amount of light from the open door has made her stop wrestling my hands.

I cup her cheek and try catching her gaze.

“Please….please don’t cry!” I plead, yes I fucking plead, “Tell me what you need…What is happening to you?” but I don’t think she is listening to anything I am saying. She is plain out sobbing hysterically in pain. The burning hasn’t stopped and her alabaster white skin has now taken a deep red coloring.

Fuck!

Frantically thinking of a way out of this crisis, I try concentrating on her heartbeat, their heartbeats and both of them are erratic, hers racing, the second muffled one, slowing down.

I am so in over my head!

There have not been many times in my long time on this planet, when I have panicked. This is one of those times. I just don’t know what to do. Can I heal her with my blood? Barring exchanges with my maker and child, I have never shared my blood or healed a human before. But I have seen and heard of the affects.

This woman is not human. Even if I do the unthinkable and share my blood with her, would it affect her the way it affects humans?

Should I call some local hospital? 911?

Should I call Ludwig?

As my brain starts looking for solutions, my age old habit of sifting through all the available information belatedly kicks in. That’s when I realize that I don’t yet know what exactly she is.

And where the hell did she come from?

Why exactly is she in pain?

Was she attacked?

Is she escaping from something? Or someone?

And how the fuck did she jump out of thin air?

Her skin darkens and goes from red to brown, the wisps of smoke start to rise from all over her body now. My nostrils fill up with the burning fumes.

Sweet fumes.

There is something vaguely familiar about that smell…

Sugary…

Sweet burning fumes…

Sweet smelling fumes?

HOLY FUCKKKING HELL… A fairy!

That’s the smell of a burning fairy!

She is a fairy!

The damn enemy…The supposed nemesis…

That is why she looked so fucking breathtaking.

In a split second, I straighten up and take a step back, to distance myself from her burning but alluring form. She tumbles down on her knees, whispering, “Please…help me…”

God help me!

She crouches low and her head touches the concrete floor below. The sun is up and I am now feeling the pull of the dawn. I won’t have much time to ascertain what to do with her. She is now bundled up in a ball on the floor, no longer screaming, but sobbing and whispering deliriously for help. Her eyes are shut tight.

I should get rid of her. I try to leave but my feet won’t listen to me enough to turn around and walk away. I could kill the damn fairy here and now and be done with it. No one would question my reasons or hold it against me. Thinking about draining a fairy makes my fangs itch in desire. But for some reason, now my feet won’t move towards her. Fuckers!

I can feel Pam struggling with the pull of the sun too and trying to reach out to me. She must have felt my panic and frustration through the bond. My phone starts ringing and I know it is her. But I just don’t have the time right now, so I ignore it.

“please…” she whispers hoarsely again.

At the sound of her pleading whisper, all thoughts of draining her, fly right out of the nonexistent windows of the tunnel. I decide that I can’t kill her. Not in her condition and not this way.

One decision made, I start to take a step towards her and pause again, my mind going into overdrive with possibilities. What if this is some kind of trap? I mean, how many crying, pregnant, begging for help fairies have I met in my lifetime?

Yeah, none!

I know they are a devious race. I know they can hold vampires in a thrall.

I carefully but swiftly scan her writhing body and listen to her vitals again. Her pulse is off the charts now. She is still burning. I can tell she won’t hold out for long.

Maybe, I won’t have to make a choice to save her after all.

As soon as this thought crosses my mind, I immediately feel like a bigoted shit for wishing death upon a tortured woman, just because I am coward enough to risk saving her.

Then I hear that other heartbeat stuttering.

It flutters like a bird and pauses for a second, before struggling with a small flutter again. It’s going to die. The child is going to die…

An unborn innocent… Who knows nothing of the mortal enemy that stands a foot away from his unborn self, knows nothing of the probably treacherous fairy that carries him, knows nothing of the world that forced him into the fairy’s womb. Or what strife is now forcing him out of her, without even getting a chance to actually see this world.

The flutter pauses again. For two seconds this time…The fairy is on the verge of passing out. She is still beautiful, despite the tears, the burns, the wisps of smoke.

I roar in frustration and am instantly on my knees again. My hand automatically reaches out to the fairy’s slightly swollen belly. The little heart struggles and clenches. It pauses again.

“C’mon little one…Don’t give up…” I whisper.

At this point I can’t even be sure that my blood will save the little one, or perhaps the mother too. I fear that they are too far gone now. If I feed her my blood, do I risk changing the offspring inside her?

I look at the fairy’s contorted face, just as she opens her eyes, in a small moment of clarity. She locks her gaze with mine and just looks at me, this time, not crying or screaming. She just looks at me. Defeated. Lost. That look touches a nerve inside me that her tears or cries for help did not.

The little fluttering heart clenches but does not complete the cycle of the beat.

“Fight damn it!” I shout out in angrily, as if I can glamor the unborn one into getting his heart beating again.

It doesn’t. The fairy’s eyes droop for half a second and then focus on me again. Her hand clutches mine, on top of her small baby bump.

That small fluttering sound, or rather, the absence of that fluttering sound, snaps something inside me.

“Oh fuck it!” I say to no one in particular and then, not taking my eyes off the pained blues of the fairy, I bring my wrist to my mouth and bite deeply into it. I lift her head with my other hand, a little off the ground, and put my bleeding wrist on her mouth.

“Drink!” I command. I hope she does because this is really the only thing that I can do for her at this moment. If she doesn’t take my blood right now, her child and she, are most certainly going to die. Maybe my blood will save them after all. I just cannot afford to think more about it now.

She is still looking at me with blank eyes and thankfully does not question my orders. She starts sucking on my wounds. One mouthful. Two mouthfuls…My wounds start to close and I bite into my wrist again before pressing it to her mouth. She closes her eyes and sucks again, swallowing quickly. For two tortured seconds, I don’t hear anything from the child. Then as my blood reaches out to spread within her veins, I hear a muffled thrumming beat again.

Praise the Gods!

That small beat makes me as foolishly happy and relieved as a new father feels at the birth of their child. It’s certainly a strange feeling. I had forgotten how this emotion used to feet, seeing as it has been more than a thousand years since I waited with baited breath and worry for my human children to be born and survive the excruciating process. So many things went wrong in those times. If he or she did survive against the odds, a healthy infant used to be considered a true blessing from the gods.

I am brought out of my musing as my wrist closes again and the fairy starts licking my wrist, hungrily catching all stray drops that she missed earlier. Her eyes are still closed and she is making small sounds of appreciation.

Some sight that is!

Unfortunately, the sun has been up since a while and I can feel my body aching to shut down. I don’t want to leave the fairy in this dark tunnel and I am leery of taking her with me to my locked resting chambers. One, even if I saved her, I cannot trust her. Two, my resting place is reinforced with iron. I am quite sure this little fairy will not get the rest she needs in an iron encased room. Who’s to say she won’t start burning up again and I seriously don’t have the time to care for her again. The same holds true for Pam’s room as well.

After a moment of deliberation, I pick her up again, cradling her like a child, even as her skin and hair start healing as the burning stops, and take her upstairs into the main house. Her brown skin turns to red and the red starts lightening up. I reach the most secure windowless bedroom on the first floor of the house, and carry her to the bed. I am sluggish and ready to drop dead, but I take care in placing her gently in between the covers. She opens her eyes as I lay her down and smiles faintly.

“You made the pain go away. Thank you…” she whispers.

I smooth back her hair and kiss her forehead. “Don’t mention it. Now rest well. When the sun sets, we will talk more of it.”

She nods and closes her divine eyes to curl up under the covers. Even though a part of me doesn’t want to leave just yet, I force myself to stand and move towards the door. She must have been exhausted, because by the time I turn at the door to look at her, she is already asleep. I shut the door and lock it securely. She would not know how to open the locks, but that’s good right? I text the were guards outside to be on high alert and to let anyone enter or leave the premises. I now she won’t wake but this is a precaution I am willing to take till the time I can ascertain the risk from her and for her. This bedroom is warded and no one can leave or enter if I don’t accompany them. I hope the wards would be enough for now. I’ll deal with the rest in the evening.

I hurry over to my basement room, quickly texting more instructions to my day people and…that’s all I remember from that day.