============================PAGE 88============================
I can see Octavius barely in my mind, and I can hardly hear him. He is angry, and the Kilbournes are cowering beneath his enraged gaze. His wings had vanished into the darkness when he’d landed, but his teeth are still protruding in a deadly threat. “Where’s Marie!” he screams.
They are speechless, terror flinging itself into their very souls, and in their fear, they’ve turned deathly pale. Mr. Kilbourne, gasping and stuttering, manages to say in a choked voice, “Y-you’re both one of them—“
“What?” Octavius questions with a sneer and a frown.
“You’re both vampires—“
Octavius grits his teeth in hatred as he hisses, “Marie is NOT a vampire!” As he asserts this fact, it is clear to me that it is an insult to him, not me, which would be a compliment in his twisted mind. He steps forward absent-mindedly and threateningly as he asserts his statement.
Mrs. Kilbourne seizes a knife from nearby, who knows why it was there, and she holds it ready for attack as she screams, “Stay away from us!”
He stops at a halt abruptly and then yells, “I don’t give a damn about you people! Where’s Marie?!!!!”
“What do you want with her—“ Mr. Kilbourne starts to say...
All of this happens in only moments, and I scramble to my feet and run harder and faster than I’ve ever run, except this summer when I had the so-called vision of the church and the blood and bodies. I run until I can’t run anymore, and I still run, coming closer to a timber line toward the edge of town and the unfamiliar neighborhoods.
“I HAVE to find her—“ he yells.
Just then, as I reach a couple of bushy, low-branched pine trees, a sharp pain stabs my left foot and I scream, seeing an image become strong enough to be clear as I fall in agony in between the trees, falling into one’s sharp branches. I try to stop myself from falling, but the branches jab at my wounded hands and cause even worse pain. The vision is a minute flash of being the woman again...the third stake. My voice is hoarse as I yell as I land upon the muddy ground.
============================PAGE 89============================
“Marie!” a couple of voices call from far away. It’s Danique and Chase. They know which direction I went, but they can’t see me.
I bite my tongue as the wound is pounded deeper, and I’m pretty sure it nearly bit all the way through. I weep silent enough that they cannot hear me as I curl, shivering, into a ball, the needled branches poking me. They are coming closer, but have lost their sense of where I may be.
Another painful blow. It takes more to finish my left foot...
I can hear Octavius’s mental laughter. He enjoys the pain, even though he has fallen to the floor to cause the foot. Now he’s trying to heal the wounds a little.
At the same time that his head jerks to the side, I feel a blow to my face that knocks my head sideways. My nose starts bleeding again. Blood comes out his mouth...yet I hear laughter...still...still the haunting, echoing laughter...
Then he fades along with his surroundings as I realize mine a little more for a moment. My head is pounding and feels as if it might explode from the throbbing pain. The raindrops fall harder now, and water runs down my face. It’s so cold. I try to curl tighter but can’t black out the cold.
I am then jerked back to him.
“I have to find her. I can’t let her get away. Do you know what would happen?!” He manages to stand as his wounds begin to heal slightly, and he yells, “Damn it, where is she? Tell me! Where did she go?!”
“We don’t know!” the Kilbournes cry.
One more blow is driven into my foot purposely, and I scream, it being the most painful yet.
He takes a deep breath as he clenches his teeth and manages to say through enraged fury in a slightly calmed, quivering voice full of hatred, “My people have searched for her for years and years. She’s a damned seer—the seer—that they’ve been trying to find! She’s the key to the archway. She’s one of the two souls...I’m not letting her get away for anyone else to get her!!!”
He has a thought of attacking them, but then he sees me, and he shakes his head in rage and runs out the door, knowing where I am now.
============================PAGE 90============================
I can no longer hear Danique and Chase very well. But I know I have to run. I have to get away from him. He’ll probably kill me...or worse!
“Marian...” a voice calls. It’s his. It’s echoed and taunting. Only a moment later, a louder voice, his voice still, yells into my mind, “Marie!”
I manage to somehow get to my feet and flee. The pain in my foot is terrible, but I still use my foot and the pain becomes an unending throb, an almost unendurable, indescribable sort. I cover the ground slower than he does. On one note, he’ll sound haunting and mocking, another, he’ll be calling frantically, or as if fearing for me and trying to help me and find me to save me. But it’s only for confusion, to torture me...and his laughing...Deep and dark, of an evil nature that penetrates me more than anything. The illusions become deeper, and the tricks cause me to stumble more, lessening my sight of what’s really around me as more visions of fear and death flood before me...So many dead now because of this—
“Come join the games...” he says with a smile in his soul. “No need to run—“
“Marie!” his voice interrupts the thought.
I’ve come to a deep gorge, a valley with an extremely deep descent. There are train tracks at the bottom far below, over which, a train badly rumbles through the darkness, the lighted windows dimly lighting the dark around as it passes out at high speeds.
I feel the deep rumbling in the air as I stop abruptly at the edge of a large boulder. I almost fall over the edge and start rolling down the steep hill, over the rocks and shrubs, and the trees being definite danger.
I jump back and fall, and then I painfully scramble to my feet and start backing away from the edge to run. Suddenly I hit something...and then it grabs me.
I scream pure terror and claw at him and kick and elbow him to try to get him to release me. “Let me go! Don’t touch me!” I cry, managing to wrench away, backing away from him quickly. He lunges and grabs my wrists as I suddenly start to fall, losing my balance at the edge, and he yells, “Marie!” And despite my still trying to wrench away, he manages to pull me from the edge. Suddenly, a blow is driven to my right foot. The moment I start to fall forward, his hands suddenly shove me back...I scream as I feel my feet slip off the edge.
============================PAGE 91============================
“MARIE!” he screams.
The breath is knocked out of me after what seems an eternity, and as my life seems to flash before my eyes, along with ten thousand other lives; pain severs my consciousness and everything turns black...
I remember falling to a slow halt at the base of the valley, twenty feet from the tracks. The last I hear is uncontained laughter...
Then his presence is gone and I remember no more as the blood streams down my face form the gash in my head, just above the temple. My lungs seem to collapse and my body seems so numb and so cold, yet so very in pain...
Nothingness.
Blood of Eden Chapters
