Kinda fucking ridiculous, wasn’t it?
Me there with my immortal enemy – and we’re curled up companionably on the floor together upstairs while she shows me her battle scar. Yeah – the one I inflicted, no less. The one that was meant to be fatal. Shit. Some professional bloody killer I am.
More ridiculous still, something was then rattling around in my head – some stupid nursery rhyme or some such shit. But I couldn’t remember it properly, you know? – and in this dubious, dangerous moment the fucking thing was breaking my concentration.
(No. Concentrate, for fuck’s sake.)
Amelia wrapped her coat back around herself, and looked at me again, her pupils huge and dark in the dim light. What the hell was I even doing there? Those eyes watched me die once – and enjoyed it.
(Shit. How does it go? “For the greater to…”? No.)
Told myself to shake it off. Say something.
“So – what happened then? I mean – what happened after you – you, know – after I…” My words fell away awkwardly.
But she answered. And as she talked, Amelia began to look less like the crumpled child of a moment ago – more power, more poise seeping back in as she spoke and turned her head from one side to the other, very deliberately hooking back the long tumbled hair behind her ears.
(“More the pleasure to…”? What the fuck is it? Why am I even thinking of it?)
“Woke up in a freight train and across the country, Jonathon – with some concerned station worker leaning over me. Being dyed in my own blood was… a new experience, but I felt much better after a little drink. Left the carriage and the man’s body, still holding my own heart in with my hands though – crept away down a siding, past the cattle trucks, and found the nearest factory was an abattoir. Well. If one must keep both losing and needing blood, that was certainly a convenient place. Ate the stale food for some time until I felt well enough to butcher the butchers, and move on. Some months of travelling, healing – understanding.”
She leaned closer.
“Understanding you, Jonathon. You were frightened then, my love. Of course. I can be frightening. And so you did what you thought you needed to do, darling boy. It took time. A long time. But now I understand.”
Again that smile, showing the row of neat white teeth.
The phrase came to me then. The magic words. Obvious, really. How fucking ridiculous.
(“All the better to – eat you with, my dear.”)
Musings of a High School Vampire 