Blood of Eden (chapter 8)
Blood of Eden
CHAPTER EIGHT
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I gulp, the cold suddenly fading. My head hurts extremely badly. I become limp with exhaustion, unable to sit up as the warm air rushes around me. I can taste blood…My nose is bleeding. I blink, my eyes watering terribly and burning badly.
“Marian…” a voice says in the back of my mind. I jump weakly, pushing it from my mind. It had sounded concerned, but I know it was a lie.
“Marie,” Chase says in frantic worry. His voice is panicky. “Holy shit! Marie…What—are you ok?!”
“What’d you see this time?” Danique asks fearfully but curiously with sincerity.
“Help me sit up,” I gasp, reaching out weakly and taking hold of their hands. “I can’t…breathe…very well.” As I continue breathing hard, I ask them, “Please, please don’t…tell my parents…or anyone…about this.” Tears flood my eyes as I ask this.
“Alright, ok,” they say, helping me to sit up.
I catch my breath enough to talk a little better. “I-I think my visions…are getting worse…That’s three times today, but none of them were…none of them were about what I usually see…and they’ve never been…this strong.”
“It’s ok. We won’t tell anyone. If you wanna tell, you can tell. We promise—You’ve got blood all over your face, Marie,” Chase says. “Your nose started bleeding.”
So I wipe my hand across the blood to remove some of it. Crap. I can’t wipe it on my school clothes. They’re white. “Do I have any blood on my clothes? I don’t want them to see it.”
“Nah, you’re good,” Danique assures me. “It just went on your face and down your neck. Don’t worry. You don’t have to say it started bleeding because you picked your nose or something.”
“Here. Let’s go in there and ask for a restroom so you can clean up,” Chase suggests, motioning to the Antiques store just to our right.
“Ok—Help me please,” I say, wiping my eyes dry of the tears with the backs of my hands.
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Three weeks later, I prepared to go spend a couple of weeks with Danique and Chase. We went on walks often, and I’d actually gotten sort of close to the two. Even if they might seem overly intimidating, they’re both extremely nice and accepting.
I told Diana of my last vision, saying in detail what I could. She was as curious about it as I was. It was such a strange vision. Diana gave me a tape recorder so that when I have dreams or visions, I can tell about them. She told me to use it for whatever I thought need be, that perhaps, when she reviews the tapes when I’m ready to give them to her, she’ll be able to take notes and try to decipher the meanings of each. I promised her I’d also try to draw out some of what I saw. That way she could have a narrative.
I don’t believe I ever really explained everything that I saw in the vision to Danique and Chase, but they let it go when they saw that I didn’t want to talk about it right away. Danique went ahead and touched me up about her parents’ ‘story’ of how they met. Supposedly her mom was what they call a human subservient, which is sort of a possessed human, or one threatened and that had been tortured and possessed until they agreed to work with the Livier, which, I guess, is the other word for vampires, or else for a certain type or class of them, or whatever. She said some subservients are infecteds, or Livier, and they’re the ones who are vampires but hate being and try to kill themselves or resist it or kill other vampires. She said her mom knew a poor Romanian subservient named Mihalokh, or Mihai, and that he was the one they all hated more than anything. She said he was quite old, and had resisted harder and longer than any other. She said her mom told her that the Past Livier, or the demon spirits of the now-dead, once-living Livier, possessed him to make him feed…As anyone could guess, I knew who she was talking about and didn’t want to listen anymore because he’s no innocent and I have no idea as to how her mom could know Octavius and Octavius’s Romanian name for Michael, but it really pissed me off to hear her talk of him like that. My blood iced over upon even the mention of him, and I spat acidly for her to stop speaking of him, to never mention him again because I hate him—that I know him—that I thought I knew him once. Danique told me her mom was a grounds keeper, a day-watcher at the Krypts, and that she protected the secret of their whereabouts and had done so since she was fourteen.
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As for their dad, their dad was thirteen and he had a fifteen-year old brother and anther brother and a couple of sisters. One day his whole family was attacked. He and his siblings had been playing hide-and-go-seek at night. The youngest girl was it. She was the first to be killed, and was killed right in front of where their dad had been hiding. Then his brother saw two of the others killed and they watched their parents die. The others were chased until they could run no more and were then killed as well.
She told me that her dad said that when they returned to search out any more victims possibly there, he saved his brother’s life by attacking one with a kitchen knife. He cut off their head and they died, and his brother helped him beat another’s head in until they stopped moving, and then both rode away in their parents’ vehicle and had been hunting for vampires since then, until the husband of a vampire woman they’d killed began hunting for them. Then they tried to hide out and do it in deeper secrecy.
She said her dad met her mom at the Krypts and she tried to kill him, but he almost killed her and then another vampire came, and his brother killed it. It was her master, who’d begun to plan to make the woman his wife only recently while her searched for a new day-watcher. So she told them they had to kill his family or his family would kill them. She told them the easiest way to kill a vampire was to simply behead it. She explained that their wounds heal very fast and extremely well, which, while ours might’ve been fatal, the same to them would be like getting hurt only temporarily. the harder way was to severely mutilate the body so that they bled to death and couldn’t heal in time to survive…Gruesome either way you go, if you ask me.
Danique explained that her parents stayed together and with their dad’s brother, and the two fell in love and got married. But the vampire dude tracked them down and their brother saved their lives at the cost of his own. She told me he’s still looking for them for killing his wife, and they’ve been moving around a lot since, and that it’s the ‘reason’ they moved here, was because they were almost found.
All I told her was, “Weird. So maybe my family isn’t the weirdest after all…Your parents really believe it? Both of them?”
“Yeah,” she told me. “And they enrolled us in fighting classes to be able to protect ourselves…It’s retarded. Didn’t teach us a thing, and we haven’t ever been with one of them long enough to really learn much. But somehow my aim’s way better than it should be. I’ve got an over-developed depth-distance-perception-whatever-it’s-called…And Chase, he’s just a big, loveable guy who scares the hell out of everyone without even thinking about it…What can I say? We’re born freaks, naturals, and we love it.”
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When Jamie heard that I was getting to go and the reality settled in, she became more bitter than ever and kept screwing up and making remarks and getting more time on her grounding. My school life has gotten a lot worse as well. Not only has that whole group that welcomed me treated me horribly and hazed me, all of the teachers hate me, too, and turn their backs so that they don’t see what goes on, and I get into trouble for everything I do or don’t do, mostly don’t. They totally ignore me if I have a question and send me to the office if I so much as cough, saying I was “disrupting class,” or “distracting students.” I finally quit trying and quit listening or ever paying attention to anything they teach, because they’d rather me not be in there, and they don’t teach me, they teach everyone else, excluding Chase and Danique, who they treat almost like thy treat me. I tired complaining to the principal and superintendent, but they don’t care and don’t listen. I finally told my parents after two weeks of it, and my parents raised cane over it, but nothing changed.
It turns out; Danique and Chase are sort of…really smart. They totally ignore everything and goof off quietly all class long, but yet they teach themselves the lessons at home by going through and reading and even having their parents help them. They explained that “you gotta do what you gotta do,” and that it was like that for them at every school, so they learned to get better no matter how tough it got; they learned to adapt. I had them start helping me do the same. I just have to really pay attention even when I don’t seem to be listening while doing whatever.
Danique and I began having a contest as to how many people we could flick paper wads at before getting caught, or who could hit the most people the most times in a whole hour…Needless to say, she usually wins, especially when I laugh because of someone jerking their heads around to see what hit them or who threw it. I am usually the one caught. I couldn’t keep quiet when she flicked gravel during lunch breaks. It hit people a lot harder and even hurt some. (I know it hurts because she hit me with a couple.)
I’ve stayed at their house for about three days, now, and we have fun all the time. In fact, it seems like fun is all we have. Their parents are very nice people. Mr. Kilbourne is the cooler one, like my dad, John, and Mrs. Kilbourne is more like mymom, Jeana, though not as whack or weird. She’s got a cooler appearance and personality, too. I see from her eyes, that it’s the reason Chase’s and Danique’s are so strange. Whereas Mr. Kilbourne’s eyes are brown, her eyes are so weird. One’s sort of orange and theother is like a bright, bloody red. She has dark brown, silky hair, and is as tall as Chase and nearly as tall as Mr. Killbourne.
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One thing annoys me and yet pleases me. She says I am a very beautiful young lady, and for the annoying part, that she’d have to be careful because I might snatch her Chase from her. Chase just laughs when she says it, trying to act like it’s simply an innocent joke, though to her it might be. But I think the truth is, Chase kind of likes me, though he has a girl friend back in Washington, and he misses her a lot. I believe her name is Charice Ale.
Today, we went for another walk to the park and did our homework there for about four hours. Then we went back to their house and I got really tired and went to bed at nine o’clock. Today is Friday. I sleep on the sofa in the living room, a black and gray sofa.
With the sleep I fall to, eerie dreams arise and fall like shivers running down my spine. The last thing I remember is the room seeming to grow a little darker. In my dream, a shadowy figure emerges from the darkness around me and stands over me. I see myself as if a third view, and see that my eyes are closed and I am asleep. The figure standing over me leans over as I turn onto my back irritably, my arm sliding over the edge of the sofa and nearly toughing the floor. A pale hand reaches out to my face and he brushes my tangled hair from my face, tucking it behind my ears, and then he traces my jaws with his hand. His hair is sort of similar to Octavius’s, and he’s a rather handsome man, perhaps twenty-three years old or so, and he has blood-red eyes like Octavius’s eyes had been the last time I saw him, when he betrayed me. But this man has a different face, a dark, almost seductive aura about him. He leans closer to my ear, his mouth agape, revealing his dagger-like incisors, thus revealing he’s a vampire. But there is something about him that suggests much, much more, something even darker and more evil, though I cannot tell what, and he seems ancient. His free hand lightly takes hold of the wrist of my left arm, which is lying over my stomach.
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This stranger whispers into my ear, and I hear it clearly, as if I’m not dreaming; I feel his breath and feel his hands upon my jaw and wrist.
“Open your eyes, beautiful child, but do not wake...”
I open my eyes to a new dream and I am from my own point of view. When I open my eyes, I see him pull back just far enough to look into my eyes. I am thoughtless, fearless, dreaming a strange clouded dream, feeling as though I am in a trance. He smiles warmly and leans again to my ear, and I again feel his breath as he speaks. “Come with me...”
My soul is so calm, as if I’m in some sort of hypnosis, and I effortlessly sit up as he stands back, removing his hands and sliding the hand that had my wrist to my hand so that he may help me stand. I, dazed, never take my eyes from his as I stand. He slowly walks toward the front door, rarely taking his eyes from mine as he leads me. The front door is open and there is a light breeze blowing toward us. But he stops and his own darkness seems to deepen, and shadows gather outside the front door until all we can see is pitch black, he then turns his head back to me and smiles and steps toward this black abyss. “Come...”he whispers again to me, and we walk into that darkness.
The light returns once more as the shadows dissipate from around us a moment later. We are no longer at my friends’ house at all, nor anywhere near. There is a starry sky above and a dark forest around us. When I look at him, my heart has the faintest emotion of sudden fear and surprise, but it recedes, having come and gone almost unnoticeably. The night is calm and there is no wind whatsoever.
He has outstretched wings, hugs shadows in the nighttime darkness, and his fingernails are much like claws. “Don’t fear, young Marian. I am no immediate threat. If you prove worthy, in time you will be chosen by the king. You are very beautiful and so I am pleased with this. However, I am considering others, from my people, though none are as beautiful or unlived as you.”
My voice is faint and so calm that it is estranged to me, “Who are you? What do I dream of you?”
He turns, again taking my hand, and he kisses the back of it as his eyes refuse to leave mine. “I am his majesty. My name is Leviath Jeremiah. You may answer your own second question in time. This will not be the last you see of me. It is only the first.”
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I can feel a hint of his lust, but fear evades my immediate grasp. I know I should fear and I want to, but it is a hallow emotion and I cannot reach it. He steps closer to me, lifting his hand to again brush the hair from my eyes. I manage to choke thickly, yet calmly, “Please take me back—“
I cannot pull away as he leans to kiss me, his hand stopping beneath my chin. Somehow, though, I am able to turn my head after a moment, making his light kiss both interrupted and brief. I do not return my eyes to his, and I repeat myself emotionlessly, “Please take me back. I do not wish to dream of you, nor any other.”
His patience is evident, and he smiles lightly and brushes the hair form my neck, revealing my bite scar. He traces his fingers across it and I am reactionless. His voice is as calm as ever, “I am searching for the Blood of Eden. Oreima said to me that she is a powerful seer, more powerful than Oreima was, and that by biting her and giving her my mark and making her my wife, I could attain her power of sight and the power to open the arcways to Eradesh permanently. I don’t know who is the Blood of Eden. It could be you, or it could be one of my own people…I will take you back. We will see in time to come.”
Leviath tightens his hold upon my wrist and tells me, “Hold onto my arm tightly. I should not want to drop you.” There is a slight sneer upon his lips as he says this, and I hypnotically do as I am told. The nerves in my arm tell me there is pain and that his grip is too tight, but my body is numb, and I barely know of this.
Before he has the chance to take flight with his wings of darkness, the life suddenly seems to be sucked out of me, and my eyes roll back into my head as I collapse. The last I know is him jumping in a startled manner to gracefully catch me in his arms and then standing in slight effort with my unconscious body lying limp and fragile as he holds me. There is confusion upon his face as everything turns black.
I am again watching from the third view and the front door is shut, but as if someone were turning the knob and opening it quietly, the door noiselessly swings open, stopping slowly. Then he enters a moment later, carrying my unconscious body, and he returns me to lying upon my back upon the couch.
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Time freezes when he begins to stand, and new visions flash before my eyes. I see both—the dream with my eyes and the visions in my mind—at once. But the dream is frozen in time and seems to hang there, suspended in Eternity. Eternity seems to pass, yet at the same time, it seems as if no time elapses at all.
A faint voice calls out questioningly, begging me to answer. Not only do I shrink form the liar, I can’t have replied if I’d have wanted to. His inquiry is cut off abruptly, as if my feeling his false emotion of concern, by the new wave of visions…
I am again the strange woman, Aidenn. It is daytime, and a few weeks have passed, weeks, which have turned and twisted my fate beyond apprehension. I have escaped the Akrie and even nearly killed their prince, Matthias Khor. I instead, however, was knocked unconscious, and I woke in the peaceful lands of Blood Haven. I journeyed the long distance home and turned myself over to the soldiers when I realized that I should not try to avoid the soldiers and officers on my way back to Edoras, the capital city of the Pyr Kingdom. I was beaten and bound and brought to Edoras as a prisoner, especially because I told them I was the Ungifted, whom every Pyrae citizen knows about and loathes. Everyone knew what had happened, except the lone survivor who’d witnessed my agreeing to go with the Akrie didn’t know it wasn’t really because I wanted to, that I’d never betray my people. He saw it as an accepting act of treason and betrayal, and so, when he returned, he told what he knew. In consequence, all who already hate me, hate me more. I have been put to trial and found guilty of some of the charges, but not the others. My sentence is most cruel and severe.
I have already been beaten to the point of near-death. I am now tied down on a slanted, wooden platform with my wrists strapped to the boards and my feet also strapped to the boards. They give me the salt to wake my senses and sharpen my nerves to pain.
Suddenly, time continues and Leviath stands and begins to turn. I see my eyes fling open wide as the visions continue, and my breathing quickens. Leviath hears me as I whimper, echoing the whimper of pain the woman in the vision has—
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The man who’s just finished beating me has taken his break, and he takes a jagged, metal stake, nearly red-hot, in his hands—
Suddenly the front door slams shut, causing Leviath to jump. He glances at me and then about him as he backs away quickly. The shadows stir within the room, coming alive, and he dissipates quickly into them as they settle again.
My vision continues, and I see myself upon the couch, tense and shivering, breathless and wide-eyed, though not seeing as my eyes are rolled back in my head.
The man laughs cruelly and then presses the dull point against the palm of my left hand while others old my hand open. The burning is so intense that I let out a cry of pain and try as hard as I can to clench my hand and pull my hand away. My struggle is useless—
I see my hand try to ball up into a tight fist, but it’s as if my hand is being kept open. It seems almost as if my hand is clutching onto some invisible object. Burn marks appear in the palm of my hand.
Suddenly light floods the room and I look away from the personage of me lying upon the couch in the horrid trance, and I see Mr. and Mrs. Kilbourne rushing toward the couch and entranced me. From where I stand in this strange dream, they pass right through me, and it shocks the hell out of me, though I continue to watch. Danique and Chase rush in as well. All of them panic when they see me, and they try to speak to me and realize I’m not responding.
The man is handed a heavy sledge and he rests the end upon the leveled end of the jagged, spiked stake. Tears are welling in my eyes from the burn, though they refuse to fall yet. Then the man sneers and lifts the hammer and swings it. It slams against the stake, which pierces my hand and crushes bone and tears skin and muscle alike.
Unbearable pain forces a bloody scream out of my mouth, from every inch of my soul. Blood streams from the wound and my scream turns to ragged gasping and crying. Another blow drives the sharp, hot metal deeper, and I again scream bloody murder, pulling at the straps with every ounce of strength I own in my already weak state of being. Again, the scream turns into loud cries of pain. This time it’s just pierced the backside of my hand and has barely splintered the wood upon contact. Blood runs down the wood, dripping from my fingers and wrist and even from my elbow, where it runs down my arm to—
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The moment the stake is first struck in the vision and driven into my hand, I am suddenly myself again, and I feel the intense pain and scream with her. But another voice, a far, faint one, is added to ours…For a moment, I forget the betrayal. Blood trickles down from the right side of my mouth and my nose starts to bleed as I scream, tensing all the more, though seemingly being held down by an invisible force. Still, I cannot clench my hand, and still, I see.
But I feel Octavius’s pain as well and realize he is going through the same thing. He holds his now-wounded left hand clutched in his right, and it’s all he can do to endure it. I feel his pain as he feels my more intense pain. We both cry out with the second blow, more loudly than the first.
The man begins to laugh and takes hold of the stake tightly and begins to jerk it side to side. My cries grow louder with it. I shall never be able to use that hand again.
He turns to the pleased crowd and holds up one finger high above his head. “Want more?” he asks in a loud voice, for everyone to hear. The question is directed to me, though.
“No…No more…” I weep.
“We can’t hear you,” he yells cruelly with a smile on his face as he takes hold of the stake and jerks it in the other direction.
My voice yells, “No—I said no more!”
He laughs, letting go of it. “That isn’t up to you. We have three left.”
I hear so many pleased voices, even mocking laughter as they echo his last two words.
He takes another and sets it to burn upon my palm. I cry loudly, trying to clench my hand and pull it away…
“Octavius…” I choke, trying to pull from this as I gasp, trembling violently.
I catch a faint glimpse of the Kilbournes and of my surroundings and look directly into Mr. Kilbourne’s eyes. “Help me—” I sputter as I see his bewildered, horrified look so full of fear. I am cut off by another blow, driving the second unseen metal stake into my right hand as I try to again say Octavius’s name, “Octav—“ My own blood-curdling scream penetrates my soul with terror. Blood immediately begins to trickle down, dripping to the floor…I’m on the floor, I realize, and I’m on my back, arms seemingly pulled out into the same position the woman’s is in. Something invisible holds me so that I can’t move.
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I again catch another glimpse of the Kilbournes. Mr. Kilbourne is on the phone, frantically trying to tell my mother or Father what’s happening to me, though she barely has the words to tell.
Another blow drives it on through, piercing the back side of my right hand. My scream is growing hoarse. The man laughs.
Octavius’s eyes are flooded with tears as are my own. My face is smothered in tears. My teeth seem as though they might shatter when I grit my teeth and try to suppress another cry. Then my teeth begin to hurt as if they’re being ripped out.
Only when I open my mouth to gasp, do I truly know something is wrong with me. I know that Octavius’s incisors lengthen because he’s a vampire. Mr. Kilbourne jumps aback as terror grips him, and his eyes seem to fill not only with fear, but hatred as well, and he begins to shake his head in disbelief. He glances to Mrs. Kilbourne and tries to not let his eyes leave me for even a moment.
“Marie!” Octavius yells to me. “Marian, answer me! Please, damn it, answer me!”
Yet I hear laughter. I cry out as dizziness reaches me, “Stop it. Stop it please!...No more...” He begins to speak, but I scream, “Leave me alone!”
I suddenly cannot breathe and begin to choke. I suddenly can see nothing for a moment, but then my sight returns, and Danique and Chase are trying to convince their parents that there’s nothing to fear from me. I am able to move again and I roll onto my side, pulling my hands close as if to clasp them and pray. There are gaping wounds in my palms.
I feel the pain as Octavius escapes possibly being seen, as the wings tear out his back, and he takes to the skies immediately, with an indescribable speed. I know that all his so-called ‘worry’ is simply nothing more than lies and deceivance, yet I want to believe so much, that he is innocent...He truly is convincing, except I still hear the laughter, and I even feel it, mocking and taunting me, imaginatively dancing around my confusion to play tricks upon me.
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“Don’t you dare go near her!” Mrs. Kilbourne yells, pulling back her son.
“Let me go!” Danique yells. “She’s my friend! She’s not a freaking vampire—“
“Stop it!” Mr. Kilbourne yells at her. “Don’t you know what she can do to you?!!!”
All through their screaming, I hear their voices only barely. Thousands of images of death and blood, and vampires and fire, and cold and burning and ice; all floods my mind. I see dead bodies; Ashley and Janice; Octavius coming for me...Too much. I see what’s here, only barely so, and I somehow manage to crawl to my feet, though stumbling as I cry. I have to get away from here! He’s coming! I can’t let him find me...
I struggle to reach the door, dizzy and almost falling as I stumble. The door opens by itself, to which I jump back and fall upon my back. My head seems to be spinning and being pulled down to the floor. I see no one at the door, but it’s raining hard. A cold draft enters the doorway and blows past me as I try to stand.
The darkness...
I struggle without the use of my hands, and the darkness seems to beckon dangerously, but I obey, knowing that if I stay, Octavius will find me...I feel he’s much closer now. I even see some of the black trees below. I feel his mockery...No! I have to leave this place!
I glance back at the Kilbournes and turn and run, tears streaming down my face. Instantly, the cold of the rain takes my breath away, but I go on, slipping, but not stopping. In my own confusion of what’s real and what’s not, I can’t tell where I’m going. I can’t even see clearly through the haze. Still, though, I run, splashing through the cold. In only a few short moments I am soaked and my clothes are heavy and are clinging at me as if to pull me down or stop me...
In my mind, I see a vision of Octavius reaching the Kilbournes’s house, landing upon the ground. I gasp painfully. Danique and Chase have escaped their parents. They still see me...It’s all so unclear...I hear Chase and Danique yell after me and I turn my head to look back at them in the distance. Because of this, I fall, and I roll over the ground and hurt my hands worse...
Blood of Eden Chapters
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