Warning: 18+ readers only; this blog is dark and full of terrors!
Norra lets out her terrifying laugh, her mouth seeming to stretch over her entire face like something from a feverish nightmare.
"I'll never..." I manage to splutter through the blood pouring from my lips. "Never love you. Ever."
She stares at me, her grin still a horrific gaping hole on her face. "Oh, Kaleb... Love doesn't have an awful lot to do with it in the end." She grounds herself, her gown floating around her like feathers in a warm breeze. "You see, romantic love will fade over time... With Johann, you would've had a hundred, maybe two hundred years together before he'd grow tired of you, or you of him. And this mortal boy, well," Norra says with a cruel laugh, "he won't last another night, let alone a few years." Suddenly, her face humanises again, and her smile is angelic, beautiful. "But I'll love you forever. Nothing will stop that. Not even death."
"Stop," I utter, the pain in my bones still crippling me to the floor. "You can't... keep doing this. You can't keep hurting everyone I love."
"I can, and I will." Norra steps closer, kneeling in front of me and tenderly strokes my face. "I made many Locusts over the years to try and replace you, but none of them made me feel love like you do. So they had to die." She smiles so sweetly, so innocently, that it almost makes me forget that she's a rabid monster. "I really thought Elias would live up to my expectations... I was so sure of it."
I gawk at her, squinting through the burning of my crippled body. "Elias..?"
"Yes... he was a good little boy while I had him. He did an excellent job of planting a few seeds in Nathaniel's mind, a few doubts, a few... apples. His camera work was also rather convenient." She strokes my hair. "But in the end, he was still just a gutless malingerer and refused to kill that little angel you adore so much, so I dug him up just before sunrise and let him burn to death until he was nothing but a pile of ashes."
I stare at her, dumbfounded, not sure what kind of turmoil brews inside. I wouldn't say I liked Elias as much as I could have, but to wish him a death so horrific was far from my intention. "You... killed him? Why?!"
"He was of no use to me, silly," Norra chuckles, still stroking my hair lovingly. "But now I'm starting to think... maybe you're not much use to me either." I watch her eyes as they begin to change, slowly turning that blood-red I've seen so many times now. She snarls and grabs my head, yanking it back to snap my neck, and I'm too weak to fight her.
I gaze into those red, slimy orbs, feeling dazed. I'm withering slowly, and I try to fight it. I need to save Nathaniel somehow, but I can feel it, that gradual release of pain as she keeps pulling, keeps bending my neck, spine cracking under the tension, and I hear a loud ringing in my ears. Black fills my eyes, and I blink slowly as the ringing fades. Just blinking... blinking...
Through the hazy sound, a muffled cry.
Nathaniel... I want to save you... but she's too strong for me...
Another smothered whimper tears my mind from the brink of nothingness.
Kaleb, get your shit together, you pathetic excuse for a goddamn Locust! Don't let her take him away from you!
The muted wail suddenly cuts through the blackness.
Abruptly, I fall forward, my head now free from Norra's iron grip, my bones snapping back into place. Finally, I feel my body healing gently but not exactly quick, no longer under that all-consuming burden crumpling me into the ground. I use every ounce of vitae to crawl towards Nathaniel like a bag of rocks, grabbing at his torn and bloody shirt, his body no longer under the murderous spell. I glance over to Norra in her chaotic state, the sound of a baby crying assaulting my ears.
The moment seems to last forever, but at the same time, only a second, before Norra brings down her fury from the air above us, no longer distracted by the ethereal mewling. The room is no match for her violence and bitterness and her preternatural strength.
Norra turns to me and shrieks as I'm forcefully torn away from Nathaniel once more and thrown into the wall.
"No, your petty tricks won't work!" She screeches into the ceiling before eerily hovering towards Nathaniel's unconscious body. I watch in horror as she lifts him from the ground and brings him to her lips.
"Norra, stop! Stop!" I scream at her, the pressure of her anger pushing on me harder. "Stop it!" The feeling gets stronger and stronger as I cry, watching her drain him of life.
Every memory of Nathaniel flashes through my mind. The first time I saw him on that winter morning, his smile a sunrise I longed to see again; the first time he saw me, his face filled with anguish and concern; our first kiss, the movie theatre, and the night we spent together; and the last time he'd seen me, so hurt and confused by what I'd done to him. I want to take it back, take it all back, so he never gets hurt, never learns what dark things lurk in the shadows at night. Make him forget everything we ever had together. I sob, feeling every emotion I could ever feel, watching Norra as she tries to kill the only innocent thing in my life.
I let out one last protest for Norra to stop as I feel an incredible rush of sorrow. It consumes me entirely, and I cry out as the power ejects from my body.
With red eyes focused solely on my deranged sire, I want for her to feel that gut-wrenching misery, the agony, the catastrophic desolation that she's caused so many times. I want her body to contort and crumble, bones dislocating from their sockets, plasma oozing from every orifice, organs rupturing in a gratifying display of sanguine mess. As I'm overcome with this vision, Norra pauses, dropping Nathaniel to the floor.
She lets out a sudden guttural moan as her body deforms and her neck snaps, her head twisting, the bones cracking under the tremendous pressure. The rest of her body slowly turns, the sound of her bones crunching almost deafening. I watch on as Norra mutates, deforming into the whims of my sorrow-addled fantasies, her eyes rolling around in her head mindlessly until they finally land on me.
Her mouth opens as another dismal sound leaves her throat. "Kaleb... please..."
With one final surge of my hatred, Norra's body combusts into fragments in a grand vision of carnage, her blood and flesh splattering the walls of the church in a fine mist of particles.
It takes a few seconds for the horror of the moment to sink in, and I hear another voice from the doorframe.
"Kaleb!" Breathless, turbulent, doleful.
My heart stops, as does time passing around us. My eyes lock immediately with that painfully familiar lilac-grey; the colour of my soul, my love, and every memory of which I can think. Johann stares back at me, a similar look on his still beautiful face, his mind filling with the same memories, the same emotion. I breathe gently, the air moving throughout the room with deliberate slowness, almost bringing me to tears again. Why couldn't I read his mind back then like I'm reading it so clearly now? Why couldn't I see the real reason he left me? I'd believed every word he'd said, but now, emotions flood into mine like a river to the ocean. I can see everything: his fear for my life; his hate for Norra; his love for me, then.
"I wanted to help you... but I couldn't get in. Her power was too strong for me."
I gawk at him, soundlessly calling out to him in the disarray of the moment, feeling a sudden and consuming need for him, and I hear his soothing voice through the bloodshed.
"We have later. But now we need to save your Liebling."
I drag myself painfully along the ground towards Nathaniel; he's still alive, but barely, his breathing faint, his body almost completely shattered. I hold him gently, cradling him like the precious thing he is, trying to will him back together again.
"Was that me?" I say, my voice and nerves frayed, my body shaking. "Did I do that? To Norra?"
"Yes, you did -"
"Is she gone? Or is it another illusion?" My throat is drier than it's ever been, cracking like the blood-soaked walls around us.
"Kaleb, we need to help Nathaniel. You need to help him." Johann reaches for me.
I stare intently at Nathaniel as if looking away would make him disappear, and nod my head, my whole body trembling. "Please show me how..."
I look up at him, his face a mask of frustration and grief, his mind guiding me through the magic of Creation. Behind my eyes, I see Johann; panicked and passionate, urging Norra into the undeath of the damned, to save her, keep her, bringing her back to life; blood mingling together like a potion of eternal youth.
Stroking Nathaniel's hair softly, I take a deep breath. I stare at his pale, mangled body on the ground in front of me, his lovely face bruised and grazed from whatever horrors Norra inflicted on him, dried blood still decorating his lips and I meet Johann's gaze once more. I'm weak, reeling from the internal battle with that monster and trembling so hard I think I'll fall through the floor.
Johann's eyes bore into mine intensely, any colour on his face no longer visible in my depleted state. "Kaleb, please... please think back to when it was us. When you wished you'd saved me, and it consumed you every day since. You need to find the strength."
The tears fall again, using what little lifeforce I have left in me. Johann holds my hand, reminding me of what it felt like to think he'd died because I hadn't been there to protect him. The pain that haunted me for so long and turned out to be a loveless deception.
He grabs a piece of fallen glass and holds into my shaking wrist. I watch in sick fascination, barely feeling the sting as the shard slices through my transparent skin, spilling thick black liquid from the open veins. It pours onto Nathaniel's parted lips, but the flow stops much too quickly.
Johann looks at me, frustration welling inside him. "Is that all you can do?"
I feel my eyes closing, nodding slowly. "I... I can't..."
Johann curses as my head falls into my hands, reading my mind instantly. He leans over Nathaniel, caressing his face. I see the weak chest rise and fall softly under the tattered white shirt. "You'd rather I did it? A stranger?" Johann asks, his voice quiet, soft as if trying to coax some stamina from inside me. But every part of me is empty, save for the overwhelming love I feel for Nathaniel and how badly I need to help him.
"I want to... but I can't."
Johann nods, a sad smile exposing white fangs. "Go now. Rest."
I stand, still shaking, my power declining faster now, as I sense sunrise coming soon. "I'm sorry."
I walk towards the hole where the door once was. I take one last look behind me in time to see Johann bringing his bleeding wrist to Nathaniel's mouth. A shot of envy cleaves through me, and I disappear out of the church and towards my summoning grave.
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