Chapter 5
962 Words
Catherine’s pov.
The rain didn’t wash me clean; it felt like it was trying to erase me.
I was hovering in that terrifying grey space between a heartbeat and the void. I could feel the rough, biting texture of the mud as I was dragged through the brush. I heard the grunt of my father, Victor, his breath heavy and labored—devoid of a single tremor of grief.
"Hurry up, Andrian," Victor hissed, his voice cutting through the thunder. "The current is rising. If the mud swallows her by morning, there’s no body, no crime."
"I'm trying," Andrian snapped. I felt a sharp, sickening jolt as my shoulder the one that had been draped in silk hours ago, hit a jagged rock. "She’s heavier than she looks. Just grab her feet."
“Stop complaining,” my father says.
“Watch it,” Andrian mutters. “You’re dragging her wrong.”
“Then grab her feet,” my father replies.
I’m sorry I’m an inconvenience to carry, I thought, a bitter, dying spark of consciousness flickering in my mind. I’ll try to be lighter next time you kill me.
Then came the fall.
A moment of weightlessness, followed by a bone-deep thud as I hit the bottom of the ditch. Water rushed into my nose and mouth, but I didn’t gag. I didn’t struggle. My body was a broken machine, the power cord severed, waiting for the dark.
I heard their footsteps retreating.
Then Andrian exhales. “We’re done?”
“We’re done,” my father replies.
The slam of a car door and the roar of an engine fading into the distance.
They were gone… My father and my fiancé had left me in the dirt like a secret they intended to forget.
Something tightens in my chest, or maybe it’s just memory trying to hold onto something that’s already slipping away.
My father…. Adrian, Gone!!! Like I never mattered, Like I never existed.
The darkness presses closer now, not sudden. Just… steady, Like something closing in from all sides.
My thoughts slow with each one harder to hold than the last. This is it…. I’m slipping away!!! This is how death feels. The idea doesn’t scare me the way it should. The darkness started to close in, real and final but then, the air changed.
The smell of wet earth and rotting leaves was suddenly pierced by something else, something sharp, cold, and intoxicating. It smelled like ancient forests and expensive leather.
A shadow fell over me, darker than the night itself.
"Not again," a voice whispered.
It was a beautiful voice , deep, resonant, and carrying a weight of sorrow that seemed to vibrate through the very ground I lay on.
A pair of hands reached into the muck. They didn't grab me like trash. They slid beneath my neck and knees with a reverence so intense it made my fading soul ache. I was lifted, pulled against a chest that felt like solid granite and just as cold.
"I told myself I would let you go this time," the man murmured, his breath ghosting over my blue lips. "I promised the universe I would let your soul finally find the peace it deserves."
He walked through the woods, his pace steady, never stumbling once in the pitch black.
"But they threw you away," he growled, and for a second, the ground beneath us seemed to tremble with his suppressed rage. "They treated a queen like refuse. And for that... I will never forgive them."
I felt us move into a space that was suddenly warm and dry. The scent of ozone and incense filled the air. He laid me down on something soft—crimson velvet.
I forced my eyes to crack open just a sliver.
Through the haze of death, I saw him. Pale skin, hair the color of midnight, and eyes... eyes that were a piercing, glowing silver, swimming with a thousand years of loneliness and a terrifying, possessive hunger.
“I watched you die,” he continues quietly, his voice closer now, right above me. “Again and again. Different faces, different lives and always with the same ending.”
My thoughts try to catch up. Die… again?
It doesn’t make sense, Nothing makes sense.
“I thought if I stayed away…” he says, his tone shifting, frustration slipping through, “if I didn’t interfere, you would finally be free.”
His hold on me tightens slightly.
“But they always find you.” There’s anger there now “Men like them,” he adds under his breath.
"Who..." I tried to whisper, but only a bubble of bloody water escaped my lips.
“Stay with me,” he says softly.
His hand moves to my face, brushing something away… blood , maybe. His touch is careful, almost… gentle.
He leaned down, his face inches from mine. "My name is Lucien D’Arcy," he whispered. "And I am the man who has spent centuries watching you die, Catherine but this time... I’m keeping you."
“You should hate me for this,” he murmurs.
My vision blurs again
“You will,” he adds quietly. “When you eventually remember everything.”
He tilted his head, and I saw the flash of elongated white fangs.
"It will hurt," he said, a single tear clear and cold falling from his eye onto my cheek. "But I promise you... you will never be weak again. You will remember everything and then, we will watch them burn together."
He leaned into my neck, his cold lips finding the pulse that was about to stop forever.
"This time, Catherine, you are mine."
Then, his teeth sank into my throat, and the world exploded into a beautiful, agonizing crimson fire.
- Writer
