#forrrr the record because I hate leaving things on a bad note- Hero is not to blame in this situation even though Villain is making her feel

[amethystpath-writes]

No, No, No

NOT A PR0MPT

I present to you /*…a vampire snippet. Yippee! Tough themes: character death, a little bit of blood- not descriptive, possessive and manipulative villain. Arguably not the worst, but worth mentioning :p

******

“Hero, we need to-” Lover’s voice was cut off with a loud bang. Hero would have screamed if her ears hadn’t rang out first, but the sound was so loud that any and all processors went out the window.

In a daze, she looked behind her. What happened? What was that sound? Was it really Lover’s voice she heard? Where was he? Hero held her head to settle the swaying of her vision.

“I warned him.” The footsteps entering her room was what drew her attention to Lover.

A shrill gasp filled her ears. It was her. Her gasp. Lover’s body. Her tears. On his red chest.

She found him, and oh, how she wished she hadn’t.

“No,” she heard herself say. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“He could have left. I gave him the opportunity to, but oh no. Poor. Hero.”

Hero couldn’t stop the no’s from spilling. She tripped over them, mumbled and groaned and cried, rocked back on her heels and rested her knees against Lover’s back. “Say something. Lover, stay with me, please.”

She hadn’t paid attention as to where the steps came from, where they were going, or even where they stopped. If she had been paying attention, she would know the footsteps stopped where Lover’s head lay, where she was crying and shaking her partner’s body. So much hope, and what for?

“Come on, up you get.”

Hero wasn’t sure of the words leaving her mouth. All she knew was that she was screaming so hard that her voice could no longer be heard. Not by herself, not by the man hefting her over a shoulder, and certainly not by Lover, who Hero now realized was in a pool of something glistening.

The moonlight filtered through so perfectly through Hero’s room at night. It only brightened her room after 3am, so she didn’t get to bask in it often. Had the circumstances been different tonight, Hero would have ran to her window and watched the moon until she could hardly keep her eyes open. The light was bright enough to lull her to sleep, and dim enough that it barely reminded her of what she was as it touched her skin.

“You can’t leave him! You can’t leave!” The pool, she finally realized, was blood. Lover was bleeding out. Of course, his chest was red earlier, when she pressed her head aside it, but Hero thought…well, Hero was in shock. She didn’t think anything.

“The money is in bringing you back alive. No matter for anything else.”

The word ‘money’ did not register in Hero’s brain. This man was being paid to kidnap her by any means necessary, including killing Lover and leaving him to rot on the floor of their bedroom.

She swung her legs into her captor’s legs, trying to aim higher or lower- wherever his more sensitive spots were. She felt disoriented, but she punched and kicked and kneed and-

“You keep doing that and you’re not going to like the consequences.”

But Hero wasn’t good at listening, especially when it came down to large, burly men carrying her over a shoulder. She screamed, “Put me down!” until there was a rasp in her voice.

The man obliged, bouncing his shoulder so that Hero’s body became unhooked from his own. However, he kept hold of her legs so that they acted as a fulcrum. Hero’s body fell back and she had only a moment to realize that she was about to hit the ground.

In the next moment, Hero was opening her eyes against weights on her lashes. She was tired- so tired.

“You look unwell. Go back to sleep, doll.”

Her eyes were already half-closed by the time the voice spoke. She easily agreed with it. She didn’t feel well, as much as she was sure she looked unwell.

But then again, her eyes were opened, and though she was unsure whether it was the same moment, or another undetermined amount of time, she wasn’t susceptible to suggestion.

A groan escaped her lips as she drearily blinked. All she could focus on was the intense throbbing at the back of her head. Hero touched a finger to it. She gasped, not at the pain which erupted at her own touch, but at the fact that everything she thought she remembered, every hazy detail, was real. “Lover.”

“Not quite.”

Her head snapped up, taking in the room she sat in for the first time. And not just the room. Villain.

“Where am I?” she demanded, though her voice shook.

The room was grey, and Hero could only tell by the hand-width slit in the wall, which allowed for one beam of sunlight to come through. Aside from Villain standing across the beam of light, the room was empty.

“You’re home, with me,” Villain said. When Hero didn’t respond, he continued, “I heard you put up quite the fight.”

Why wouldn’t she? Large men walking into her room after her partner just…“Where is he?”

Villain returned her question with a smile. With just the barest daylight seeping through, Hero could only slightly see the wicked teeth that scared her away so long ago, the ones she found her tongue rubbing against in her own mouth. She recoiled from herself.

“You think Lover was your friend?”

“He was my partner.”

He began stepping forward, slowly, as if preparing to comfort Hero. “He was hindering you, my sweet, from your full potential.”

Her gums were throbbing, something that hadn’t happened since she and Lover became an item. Even when the man broke in, Hero felt more confused than fearful or defensive.

“You cannot change what you are.”

“I wouldn’t even be this if it wasn’t for you,” she bit back. Her gums hurt badly enough that a short whine escaped her.

“Do you know why it hurts?” Villain asked. “Your head, your gums, Lover’s death?”

Death? No, he wasn’t dead. Sure, he was injured, and badly at that, but no, Lover wasn’t dead; he couldn’t be.

“It’s because you ran, Hero. I was willing to help you adjust, to grow into what you are, but you refuse to embrace it. You want that pain to go away, don’t you?”

Her pain had nothing to do with her running. If anything, she should have run away so much sooner. In fact, never knowing Villain would have been the best. He was a predator, a killing machine. And now, Hero was just the same- or would be, if she didn’t choose to control her urges.

“I’ve dealt with the pain for long enough.” And it was true, she had. “I don’t need to conform to it, or whatever it is you’re trying to convince me to do. I don’t need this,” she said. “I don’t need you.”

“You love me,” the villain said. “And I know you do because I can feel your heart beating from here.” Here, being two feet away from her. Still, it was a distance that no regular human would sense a heartbeat from.

“I am terrorized by you. I am horrified and I’m scared.” She didn’t want to give him the upper hand or any advantage of the situation, but what didn’t Villain already have? He was suave and he got his way with anyone. He was strong- mentally and physically, and it wasn’t just because of his theory of ‘leaning into vampirism.’ He killed Lover- no, not killed. He hurt Lover, and Hero was going to get him back.

“You’re still thinking of the mortal.”

“Get out of my head.”

“You can come back to me, Hero. That- that temptation is gone, and I’m here for you. I’ll help you adjust.”

“Stay away from me,” she blurted as Villain took a step towards her. “Stay away from me. I don’t want you. I will never love you, Villain. Never.”

Now this…this stopped Villain in his tracks. While his emotions were known for being hidden, now they were ever clear. Anger. Disgust. Vengeance.

“You’ll learn,” he said. “You’ll learn that you need me more than the very blood in your veins. When you’re starved- because you don’t have that little blood bag you called Lover- you will beg me to love you like I did. You’ll beg me to give you another chance. And because I won’t bow to you, bow to you like I did the moment I turned you, you’ll stand in that window until you burn.”

Hero felt the heat of him, the anger pulsating against the beating of her heart. Whether she liked it or not, the two of them were synced.

“When you fall, it will be no one’s fault but your own. I offered my love. You denied it.”

With this, Villain left, and Hero cried in his wake.