As I'd hoped, fresh, pooling blood had been too much for Teren's starved body to ignore and he'd instinctually leapt at the chance I'd offered him. I wondered if Teren was even aware of what he was doing right now. A part of me hoped he wasn't. He would eternally hate himself for this if he was making a conscious choice to kill.
I watched the man's face as he relaxed and stopped his futile struggling. His complexion started to pale from the pink, flush look of life, to a faded, dull gray color, as Teren adjusted himself on his throat and made a deeper wound with those sharp teeth of his. I forcefully ignored the happy noises Teren was making deep in his chest, and the audible swallows as he took in liter after liter of the man's blood. I focused instead on the man's eyes, hoping that the life soon faded from them. Even though he'd been actively planning our deaths, I had no desire for the man to suffer. I wasn't cruel, either. Instantly, I was glad we'd never discovered our captor's name. This memory would be bad enough. No need to personalize it even more.
Eventually, and in reality it had been thirty seconds at the most, the man's eyes lost focus and faded into the blank stare of nothingness that Teren had given me not all that long ago. Tears stung my eyes but I immediately forced them back. This man was going to kill me. This man had tortured and injected Teren with something that had killed him. This man had destroyed any hope I had of carrying Teren's child. I refused to feel anymore pity for this man.
A few moments later, Teren sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth off on his shirt. He looked at his fingers, slightly red from the man's bloody hands, and then wiped them on his jeans repeatedly. He seemed steadier, but he still had a sunken, unhealthy look about him. He was still hungry. He sat there with his head down for a long time as he took in the dead man before him. If he hadn't been aware of his actions before, he was now. I knew him well enough to know that he was beating himself up about draining this man...something he'd promised himself he'd never do.
Cautiously, I dropped to his side and put a hand on his arm. He turned to me and I clearly saw the turmoil in his eyes. I inhaled a deep breath and prepared myself to lie...for him. "I did this, Teren. Not you." I gave him a warm smile while he frowned. "You were strong enough. You turned away from me. You turned away from him." I cupped his cheeks, as tears spilled down mine. "You were so strong...you didn't falter." His eyes flicked to the corpse and he tried to turn his head back to the man. I kept his face firmly pointing towards me. Dropping my voice, I repeated, "I did this. He attacked me and I defended myself. I had no choice but to kill him and you had no choice but to survive." I searched his eyes. "Understand?"
He silently regarded me for a few moments while my lie sunk in. So, maybe it wasn't a full-on lie. Surely if I'd given the man enough time, he would have attacked me, and I would have had to defend myself. That wasn't what happened though. He'd still been frozen in confusion when I'd struck. But I knew that if I ever told Teren that, he would blame himself for not killing the man first. In his eyes, he would always think that he'd forced me into killing for him. He hadn't. Teren had made his choice to stay pure. I had made my choice...to save him. I didn't feel like either of us deserved condemnation.
He nodded as he accepted my version of events. I didn't know if he believed me or not, but he was going to let himself accept my scenario and that was almost more important than what he actually believed. He opened his mouth, his fangs tucked safely away, and spoke in a quiet voice that ached with residual pain, "I'm still hungry."
I put my hand on his cool shoulder. "Then let's get you more to eat. I'll take you to the ranch now. I'll take you to your family."
He inclined his head in a brief nod, and with my help, stood. He wobbled a little, and I put a hand on his chest to steady him. We both paused and stared at my hand. I flattened my palm and pressed it harder against his body. Nothing. No faint pulse, no slight thumping rhythm, just...silence.
"I'm sorry, honey..." I looked back up to his light eyes, "but I think you're dead."
I gave him a crooked grin and he finally truly smiled. He laughed as he slung a weak arm around my waist and kissed my head. "Thanks to you, I'll be able to live my death without regret," he murmured. He looked back to the man's dry body and I knew he was adding in his head, too much.
His gaze returned to mine and his hand reached up to stroke my cheek. "I can't believe I almost attacked you." His voice was strained with exhaustion when he spoke again. "I can't believe I almost did it. I wanted to, so much." He looked down at the ground, avoiding any eye contact with me. "I've never wanted anything more...and...and I almost couldn't control it. I think for a moment, I stopped caring about everything...everything but quenching the thirst." He swallowed hard, and I could clearly see that the thirst was still with him.
I placed my hand over his on my cheek and he returned his eyes to me. "But you didn't attack me. You barely even touched me. Don't beat yourself up over things you didn't do." My tone implied that I wasn't just talking about him almost biting me. He seemed to understand that, as he nodded. His face was drawn and tired from his conversion, and I knew he hadn't had nearly enough blood for a full recovery. "Come on...let's go take care of you."
Supporting his weight under my shoulder, I somehow managed to get his shaking body up the stairs, out the damaged front door, and around the missing floorboards of the porch. Once we were outside on the soft dirt near where the man's rustic camper was parked, we both paused and took a deep breath, enjoying our freedom.
Then a tremor ran through Teren's body, so I started moving us forward again. I wasn't sure how far away the ranch was, but I was pretty sure we'd never make it walking. We shuffled up to the camper, the glow from Teren's eyes on this moonless, cloudless starry night leading the way. I helped Teren sit on the ground by one of the tires, and he looked up at me, confused. "I need to get the keys," I explained. He nodded, laid his head back on the vehicle, and shut his eyes, resting. I leaned over and kissed his cool forehead, making him smile. "I'll be right back," I said.
I carefully walked back into the shamble of a home, wondering where a madman might have thrown his car keys. Realizing that the man wouldn't have just casually dropped them somewhere while he had victims tied up below, I made my way back down the wooden steps to reenter the cell that had changed Teren's life. And my own, I suppose.
I cautiously stepped up to the man. As I expected, he was still lying where we'd left him. My stomach lurked at the sight of his pale body, and I swallowed to keep back the bile. His throat was clearly torn open. It kind of looked like an animal attack. And even though I knew he didn't have an ounce of blood left in him, it didn't stop me from thinking that the man was going to spring to life at any moment and finish what he'd started.
Rolling my eyes, I pushed that fear aside, dropped down to a knee, and began rummaging through his pockets. Honestly, I had nothing to worry about. This man was very dead, and that fact wasn't changing. Apparently I had seen too many horror movies. I was switching to romantic comedies from now on.
I found the keys almost instantly. As I sat up, I noticed the bloody bar on the ground. I also watched a lot of cop shows with my sister-she was obsessed-and while his throat might look like an animal attack, the blood on the bar was a dead giveaway. I grabbed it and wiped away any fingerprints with my shirt. Some horrible fate had befallen this man, and even though we'd only defended ourselves, I didn't need Teren examined too closely by a group of curious policemen.
I looked around for anything else Teren and I might have touched, but besides our belts, which I picked up and looped around my hand, there really wasn't anything. I kicked at Teren's blood in the dirt, hoping to mask it, but not sure if I was doing a good job or not. I regarded the blood on the man's jacket, but didn't think I could remove the coat from the large man by myself, and Teren was still too weak to come back down here and help me. There was a lot of the man's own blood on it as well so I hoped it covered Teren's. Disheartened that I couldn't do more, I wiped off every door knob on the way out of the house, and then I turned my back on it and the horrid memories inside of it.
Teren's glow indicated where he was still waiting for me. Letting go of the residual fear of that house and everything that had happened there, I sprinted back to him. He was already looking my way and the glow of his eyes enveloped me. I relaxed into that tranquil gaze, then noticed that he was wiping his mouth on his shirt again. Curious, I glanced at the ground beside him and saw a couple of dead animals, including one that sort of looked like a rabbit.
My lips twitched into a smile as I pointed at them. "Did that help?"
He smiled briefly and then frowned. "No, not really. I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside out."
Now I frowned. I offered him my hand and he let me help him stand. Leaning back on the camper, he took a deep, steadying breath. His eyes closed, plunging us both into darkness. "Emma...you need to put me in the back." He said it so softly, I almost didn't hear him.
"What? No, I want to watch over you..."
His eyes reopened and the predatory look was back...along with his fangs. "I can't be in a small space with you right now." His eyes fluttered and the light shifted in and out. A low growl escaped his throat. "You smell too good. Don't tempt me, please..."
I swallowed and stopped my body from shaking again. "Okay...okay, Teren."
I left him against the side of the camper while I went around to the back. It was unlocked and opened easily. I turned around to go get him but he was right there behind me. I hadn't even heard him approach. He eyed me up and down, his fangs still fully extended, and then he slowly bent forward.
His breath increased as he came closer and I found mine increasing as well. He paused when he was almost within striking distance and with clear strain on his face, he retracted his fangs. Once normal, he finished his descent, moving to my lips instead of my jugular. I gave him a tender kiss while I marveled that we'd made it this far together, marveled that his cool breath and lips seemed to make mine even hotter...
A low growl escaped his lips and he yanked himself away from me. He stopped the noise and, lightly chuckling, said, "You really need to get away from me, Emma." I could see him raise an eyebrow as he studied me. "I'll have you in more ways than one if you stick around."
I flushed and he watched the color fill my skin with a small sigh of longing. Shaking his head, he forced himself to enter the camper. When he was at the top and about to shut the door behind him, I stopped him. "Teren, wait." He paused in shutting the door and his glowing eyes looked down at me with curiosity. I shrugged. "I don't know where I am." Sighing as I admitted that I was clueless, I rolled my eyes and asked, "Where's the ranch from here?"
He crooked a grin and pointed to where he could sense his family. "Find a road that heads that direction. When you find the main highway, you'll know where you are. If you get lost, just come back and ask me again." He frowned then. "Just don't let me get too hungry..."
"Right...no problem. Will you be okay for the trip there?"