Verbane of my Existence

 TW: This story contains themes of physical and mental abuse

  I ran through the forest, following the scent I had. There was blood. My mouth was salivating, fangs pricking my lip as they unsheathed. I whipped through the trees, breaking branches as I went. Droplets of blood glistened on the forest floor. Fresh. Close. The iron heady scent filled my lungs with life. 

   I heard leaves crunch close to me and I stopped. The walking was irregular. A limp. I made my way through the closely clustered trees. Slow. Waiting. A flash of red hair passed by. I saw a ripped dress, blood spattered around the knees. I licked my fangs, imagining the taste. With a dash I was behind her, holding her against me. She struggled, hitting me. It was no use. I tilted her head back, exposing her freckled neck. I rested my lips against her veins. Her pulse was so quick. I scraped my fangs against the dip in her throat, making her whimper. “Please, no,” she begged.

   My fangs pierced her flushed skin, the heat flooding my mouth. I replaced my fangs with my tongue, lapping and drinking my fill. Her body stopped squirming, but I still held her firm against me. My throat bloomed with her warmth. Her life. Images flashed behind my eyelids. A farm. A field of flowers. I savored her memories. Sunlight filtered through trees. Sunbeams I would never be able to see or feel again. My throat itched. Burned. I let go with a gasp.

    I palmed at the pain in my throat. Blood came back on my fingertips. It burned even more. I clawed at the wound, abandoning the girl in my arms. Everywhere ached. My senses were overwhelmed. My eyesight was blurry, too fast for my mind to catch up. Blood clotted in my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but it stuck in my throat. My ears rang with a high-pitched squeal. What was this? My prey. What-where was she? I growled. She had moved away from me.

    I spun around, looking for her. She was right behind me. With a couple of words I couldn’t hear, she blew something into my face. The pain amplified and then ceased altogether.

    Water splashed my face. “Time to wake up,” a female voice said. I groaned. My body ached. My fangs wouldn’t retract. My eyelids felt heavy. I finally blinked them open and a familiar sight was crouched in front of me. Bright red hair. Piercing green eyes. Freckles covered her tanned skin.

    “You,” I growled. “What did you do to me?”

“Only a taste of your own medicine,” she said with pursed lips. I jerked forward, intending to wipe that smirk off her face, but something held and burned my wrists and ankles. Ropes? “Soaked in vervain, if you’re wondering,” she said as she stood up, done analyzing me.

The room we were in was filled with wooden stakes, various bottles, and a multitude of different weapons. “So, torture before you kill me? Interesting quality in a vampire hunter.”

           “I’m not killing you yet-” she started.

“Yeah, torture first, got it.” I interrupted.

She whipped around and glared at me. “I need information,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Ahh so I’m potentially giving you information to…what? Not be tortured? Killed faster? No thanks,” I leaned back against the chair and closed my eyes.

She sighed heavily. “I need information on your sire.” My eyes snapped to hers and I studied her more closely. She wasn’t just the helpless young maiden she had appeared as to lure me. She was older. Maybe early 30’s. Covered in scars. Her muscles showed through her tunic.

           “Why are you looking for my sire?” I asked suspiciously.

“Every vampire I’ve caught over the past several years has given me the same name. The same sire. That’s highly unusual for your kind. Usually there’s a close relationship between maker and progeny. This quantity of fledglings is a bad omen.”

I scoffed. “I’ve spent centuries breaking that fucking bond. What makes you think that I’ll sacrifice my independence and freedom to help you?” I sneered at her.

“With the information I’ve gotten, you’re the one that’s gotten away. Your sire is looking for you. Can’t get you out of their mind. You’re in just as much danger currently, as you would be helping me,” she stated. “I need you to be able to distract them, so I can weaken and kill them.”

“What makes you think that you can kill a thousand year old vampire?” I asked.

“I fooled and captured a seven hundred year old one, didn’t I?” she smirked.

           I sighed, rubbing at my now free, albeit burned, wrists. The woman held her hand out towards me. “Deal?” Her hand almost glowed with the blood contract sliced into her palm. Help her kill my sire, and gain freedom. Protect her to the best of my ability, and don’t double cross her, or suffer endlessly.

“Before I accept your marriage proposal,” I teased and gained yet another glare, “what is your name?”

“Charis. What about yours? The one that got away, but never left a name.”

“Essence,” I curtsied, lifting up my skirts in an extremely over-exaggerated movement. I finished my bow and sliced the identical rune into my palm. My palm stung where her blood touched me. Damned vervain. Damned vampire hunter.

           I sat in the middle of the deep forest. It supposedly being haunted, no humans came here. None of the usual birds and creatures came here either. I was surrounded in a giant wreath of vervain that Charis had spent the last month setting up. Our trap was almost ready under the full moon. I was the last part.

           With a quick slice of my finger, I let my blood drip into the chalice that already contained my venom and vervain extract. The dark liquid swirled and leeched into the tincture. I took a deep breath and wrinkled my nose, the scent of the wretched plants too strong. Charis was about five hundred feet away. Far enough that another vampire wouldn’t immediately smell or hear her, but close enough to advance at the planned time. Soon.

           As the moon rose into its apex, I swallowed the poison. I suppressed the immediate revulsion and urge to spit it back up. I shouldn’t be drinking any of this. But it was needed. My defenses wavered. All of the walls that I had built over centuries crumbled. I stood up shakily and leaned against a tree, trying to get my balance back. Everything was swirling and moving much worse than when I drank from a town’s drunkard out of desperation.

           I almost gave in to the vertigo when a gentle hand caught me. “My essence,” an all too familiar voice hummed. My skin prickled against their touch. My flight response was alarming for the first time in half a millennium.

“Syn,” I murmured. My sire was here. The bait worked. My presence was enough to call them.

“Where have you been, my beloved?” they purred, circling around me, a hand constantly supporting me, trapping me.

“Everyone goes through a rebellious phase, don’t they?” I slurred. “But I need you,” I reached out for them, grazing the lace on their sleeve. Syn was a phantom in the moonlight. Stark white braids framed their deep umber skin. Black eyes tinged with only the slightest of burgundy met mine as they stood in front of me. A hand with long sharpened nails ran up the back of my neck and through my hair.

“You cut all of your hair off… the waves are beautiful though, my beloved essence.” Their hand gripped my hair and pulled me to my knees. “Do you know what I’ve done to find you?” Syn hissed, their pleased face turning into anger. “I followed your scent for decades. Tried to connect with your mind again. Started making more just to have eyes out for you. They were never enough. Never could replace you. My essence.” Syn’s possessive grip turned painful. I cried out.

           “And now you come to me out of nowhere, reeking of vervain. What trick is this?”

“I needed to find myself again. To learn what the world was like,” I stuttered out. Syn’s grip on my hair lessened. “I thought of you every day, but needed to not rely on you. But the world is cold and lonely. I am alone without you, my sire. So alone,” I pleaded with them. Tears streamed from my eyes. “I didn’t know how else to contact you.”

           Syn practically purred with the praise and submission. “It will take much to earn my trust back, pet, but all is forgiven. Come, let us go-” their sentence was cut off with a wet squelch. Charis was now behind them, holding a wooden stake in their back. Chaos ensued within just two seconds. I pushed Charis hard enough to get her away from Syn. Syn bellowed a horrendous howl and swiped behind them while also throwing me into the nearest tree.

           I desperately tried to catch my breath as soon as I collided with the bark. “Charis?!” I called out. That brought Syn to me.

“You dare say her name? Check on her while I am bleeding?” This was the Syn I was all too familiar with. “I will make sure you never speak another’s name again.” I was shoved back against the tree, both of Syn’s hands wrapped around my throat. I dug my nails into their wrists, bleeding them further. The scent of their blood grew stronger. Their wounds weren’t closing. Siring so many had weakened them.

           “I’m not yours anymore,” I choked out. I needed Syn’s attention solely on me.

They laughed and drew me down into their face. “You really think you will escape again, Essence? You won’t be able to break my thrall.” My head was wrenched back and Syn tore my throat open with their teeth. I wined at the pain. With the vervain in my system, I wouldn’t heal fast enough. “Hush, I’ll make it all better.” Syn sliced open their palm. My body flailed, panicking. I didn’t want their blood again. But with their mouth to my throat, and their palm to my mouth, I drank with my sire.

           I floated in the memories emerging. Syn was ripping out every single thought not involved with them. I was stuck in an endless void of their making. Cold enveloped my limbs. I couldn’t feel anything. All was lost. My body was giving up.

In the distance, something itched. Tingled? The feeling was intensifying… burning. The heat in my palm drew me out of the trance Syn had me in. Charis was standing over us, vervain garrote in one hand and a braided wooden stake in the other. I slowly reached my hand out while choking down Syn’s blood, asking for one of the weapons. Without hesitation, she handed me the garrote.

           I blinked slowly at her, ready. Charis plunged the stake as deep as she could into Syn’s ribs. As soon as Syn gasped and turned, I wrapped the poisonous plant around their throat. With all of the speed and strength they had just given me with their blood, I pulled on the wire. All of my rage went into pulling the string through my sire’s neck. For what seemed like hours the weapon didn’t go through. With a final growl, the wire cut and sliced through. I stumbled backwards, the wire caught on Syn’s braids.

           I crashed onto my ass, Syn’s head falling into my lap. Their body still stood between Charis and I. Silence stretched on.

“W-we did it?” I asked, not believing it. I tossed Syn’s head away and stood up, dusting myself off. Ash was starting to come off . I kicked over Syn’s disintegrating body. “Charis, thank y-” I cut myself off. Syn’s arm was in Charis’s chest. Blood was dripping out of her mouth.

“NO!” I screamed and ran towards her. I caught her just as her legs gave out. “No no no,” I murmured as she coughed up more blood. It looked like Syn had gone through her ribs and crushed one if her lungs. She was getting blood in her airway.

           “I’m..not…ready,” Charis stuttered between gulps of wet air. A thought crossed my mind. All of the vervain seemed to be out of my system. Shouldn’t it work? I’d never done this before. My palm burned again. The contract was still in place. Calling. Demanding. I could still protect her?

“Please…Ess…” she trailed off. Her chest stopped moving, and I rushed into action. I tore at my wrist, just below the rune inscribed on my palm. I bit her wrist in the same spot and bled her as I fed her my blood. I had to make sure the vampire blood wasn’t diluted, right? That it was enough to heal?

Dawn was threatening to come. Hours passed. Blood filled the time. I could feel too much, but Charis still wasn’t breathing. I dragged my heavy body off of the ground and moved to pick her up. I wouldn’t leave her out in the woods. I’d at least take her to her hut and bury her there.

           I was flipped onto my back with a flash of red hair. Piercing green eyes loomed above me. As I watched, red bloomed across her pupils. She yawned, and her canines extended into fangs. She glanced towards the dawning sun, then back to me.

“Time to sleep now, hmm?”