The Infernalia Chronicles: chapter 2
Chapter 2/13
Haven’t read the first chapter?! Head on back there!
The bathroom window burst inward, and CJ instinctively ducked. She covered her head with her arms as the crystalline shards showered down upon her like a razorblade rain. The broken glass sliced her forearms open, stinging as the pieces bounced off and bit into her flesh. None of the wounds were deep, but more blood seeping from her body after the epic nosebleed was less than ideal.
She quickly checked herself for other wounds, distantly wondering if she’d been shot. She didn’t hear any gunfire, but there were ways to make a gunshot almost imperceptible.
Lifting her head so most of the glass slid from her frame and onto the floor, CJ looked up to see that there was a man halfway through her window. What had been her window, anyway. It wasn’t the dark-haired man she’d spotted at the kitchen table, but something about his shaggy blond hair seemed familiar.
With the barrier of glass between them removed, his body ached as the tantalizing scent intensified. The brightly colored bathroom tiles and his keen predator night-vision made the darkened room easy enough to navigate. A deep inhalation filled his lungs with the intoxicating aroma, the cloying sweetness of fresh blood setting his nerve endings aflame. Crimson eyes rolled back in ecstasy, a shiver wracking his slender frame.
“Careful, Ruin…” he murmured to himself, the urge to swallow the soul of the source of that scent at war with his conscience. Ruin gazed down at his prey, eyes glowing beneath the concealing shadow of his hair.
“Are you ready to run?” The words crawled slowly from his lips, worming their way into CJ’s ears. Full lips curled back to expose long fangs, his fingers extended and ready for his first move. Could he have simply pinned her down and taken what he wanted? Without question.
But where was the fun in that?
He gave her a lopsided grin that simultaneously did two things: sped her pulse so her heart fluttered rapidly in her chest like a trapped bird and made her so violently angry that her vision blurred for a moment.
“Ready to run?” she countered quietly in return, blue-green eyes catching the moonlight from the shattered aperture behind him, a dangerous glint in them. Unlike the intruder, Carmelia Jianni Sarvino was not amused. It was a shame, because the man would have been hot as hell under different circumstances. “Are you ready to die?!”
Not waiting for his answer, she grabbed the soap dish shaped like a fat green dragon off the counter and chucked it at him with all the force she could muster. The ceramic crashed into his temple and burst into pieces with a cloud of pottery dust. She scrambled out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut in his face and half falling down the stairs as she sprinted to the kitchen. CJ needed a weapon to defend herself once he came after her again.
The kitchen knife that could have doubled as a short sword seemed like it would work nicely. Extracting it from the butcher block with a satisfying sound, she stood in the center of the kitchen with both hands wrapped around the handle. She didn’t want to be boxed in, and she plotted an avenue of escape in every direction as the seconds ticked by like hours.
Could she call the cops? Sure. Should she? Probably. Did she…? Hell, no. By the time they’d arrive, if they did at all, she’d already be dead.
Her hands trembled as she waited in the gloom of the kitchen, her panicked breaths loud in her ears. She flinched as the intruder knocked on the bathroom door several times, biting back a scream as he tore it from the hinges, and it crashed to the floor. She was thankful she didn’t have any neighbors in the duplex, but at the same time…
“You bastard! How am I supposed to get my security deposit back, now?!” CJ tried to distract herself from the unreal danger of what could only be an actual vampire in her home.
The intruder poked his head around the corner. “Landlords are crooks, and you wouldn’t have gotten it back, anyway.” His tone was snarky and his eyebrows rose as he gazed at the weapon clutched in her hands.
“Your hands are shaking, scrumptious. Are you planning to rattle me to death?” A wicked grin twisted his features and he took several slow, calculated steps towards her.
Seeing his fangs on full display again, CJ was suddenly frozen with fear. This couldn’t be real. She had to be dreaming, right?
His movements became a blur her eyes couldn’t track, and he was invading her space like the annoying mouth-breather kid who stalked the pretty girls in middle school. Before she could even attempt to raise the knife against him, her hands were trapped beneath his.
He gripped her wrists and gave her hands a flick without letting go of them, the weapon wrenched from her hands and landing in the sink with a startling metallic clang. His skin against hers was cold as the grave. She tried to struggle and learned that this lanky rail of a man was an immovable concrete pillar. She was half a foot shorter than him, but they probably weighed nearly the same amount. CJ was in pretty decent shape, and a competent enough fighter from working in bars, so how in the hell--?
“You asked if I was ready to die, but I’ve already done that once. You should have listened when I told you to run…” His words were an unsettling, icy purr against her throat, but she felt her body go slack in his arms, fully enthralled.
“How is this even happening?” Her voice was quiet, and the urge to struggle waned.
Ruin paused, lips and fangs hovering a hair’s breadth above her skin and the rhythmic thump of her enticing pulse. So close he could nearly taste her, and yet… Did this woman not know that vampires were real? Had humans sheltered themselves so thoroughly with their electricity and concrete walls that they’d forgotten the monsters from their nightmares weren’t just pure fantasy?
He loosened his control on her just enough to keep her from slumping to the floor as he turned her to face him. Long slender fingers gripped her shoulders, and she looked up into eyes that radiated a crimson glow.
"Use your eyes and that mass of gelatin inside your skull, human. Do you really believe this is just another dream?"
CJ cocked her head sideways, squinting a bit at his mouth as he talked. "What are you lo—?"
Anything Ruin might have said died on his tongue as CJ reached up and experimentally poked at one of his fangs with a fingertip. "Ooh," she said, her voice breathy and exhilarated. "That is sharp."
The vampire held her back at arm's length, his arms being longer than hers, and she pouted as she flailed and kept trying to reach for his mouth. "Quit trying to grab my fangs, you weirdo!"
Carmelia snorted, clarity of mind becoming more apparent in her eyes as Ruin's hold on her slipped and shattered. "I'm the weirdo?! You jumped through my window, and ripped down my door, all trying to have a little human sippy-sip! But I'm the weirdo? The balls on you, man."
They stood there silently for a few moments, staring at each other in the darkness. Ruin looked just as confused and lost as CJ felt. She finally broke the oppressive quiet, her voice soft and unsure. "Did the smell of my blood… Are you seriously a vampire?"
He responded slowly, his tone similarly respectful and low. "I am. My name is Ruin."
Now that the rush was starting to wear off, she had that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach from the unused adrenaline now poisoning her system and making her muscles feel like jelly.
"My name is Carmelia, but you can call me CJ. And you're not lying," she said simply. A statement, no longer question. "I'd ask you how, but I'm assuming you were either born one or turned into one… That's how most of the lore goes."
She sighed and let her head drop into her hands, and she rubbed tiredly at her eyes. "Are you going to tell me that the closet monster and the boogie man are real too, Ruin?"
Not really wanting to know the answer to that, she went on. "I take it you're hungry or you wouldn't have just barged in here, so…" She held her wrist out with a strange feeling of acceptance, not tinged with fear anymore. "I'd rather have it be me than some random asshole who has no idea what's happening to them. Don't want you to make some poor bastard need therapy for the rest of their life."
Ruin let out a laugh and took a step back. It was his turn to sound nervous. "I don't need your blood. I'm not about to just make it from someone. This whole breaking and entering thing was just a fluke."
CJ rolled her eyes, fixing him with a steady blue-green gaze. "You do need blood, genius. Otherwise, you wouldn't have busted through my window because you smelled my nosebleed."
She sighed. "The invitation thing must be more of a formality than some actual magical rule, yeah? And you're not stealing my blood. I'm offering it to you."
Against my better judgment… She added mentally. Clearly, he was strong enough and fast enough to take her down into seconds. Even with her brawling skills and training, she was nowhere near match for the man before her. She had always had a thing for strays, though. Her father never let her hear the end of it.
She waved her wrist at him, urging him on with the taunt. "Your bite isn't infectious, is it? I don't want to become a vampire. You're hungry and I have the solution for you, so you don't become dangerous and lose your head enough to actually attack someone."
CJ lifted the massive knife from the sink and let the flat of the blade rest on her wrist, the sheer weight of it pressing against the artery there. "I'll make this irresistible to you, if I have to." She added, determination apparent in her eyes.
"Don't be an idiot," he murmured, on her and taking the blade away with yet another display of inhuman speed. "That thing will kill you. I won't."
He lifted her onto the kitchen counter with his hands around her waist, a startled and embarrassing squeak squirming from her lips as he moved her the same way she would pick up a cat. If this was how strong a vampire was when they were hungry, what feats were they capable of at full strength?
For some reason, that thought scared her more than when his fangs had been at her throat. His demeanor had changed, and she knew his hunger was to blame. His breathing was becoming heavier, almost desperate.
Ruin lifted her hand in his, the other hand wrapping firmly around her forearm. She shivered at the sensation of his icy skin pressed against hers, and his fingers around her arm tightened briefly.
“Is it going to hurt?” CJ asked softly, afraid that loud words would cause him to lose what little composure he was clinging to.
“No,” he breathed, swallowing hard to keep from drooling at her thrumming pulse so close to his mouth again. “Could I make it hurt? Certainly. But for you, scrumptious… I’ll play nice.”
She wanted to ask him what that meant, but frigid lips parted and he sank his fangs into her wrist, pulling back just enough to wrap his mouth firmly around the wound. She felt a sharp and intense flash of pain, washed away by the movement of his tongue and lips on her skin as he swallowed her blood down.
His freezing hands were a total contrast to the sudden wash of fire that coursed through her veins. She gripped hard at the edge of the counter with her free hand, an intimate pleasure so powerful that it obliterated all thought forcing her to bite back a moan as it crashed into her.
It felt like his mouth was much further south than her wrist. Judging from the way he looked up at her with heavy lidded ruby eyes and a mouthful of her flesh, the idea of devouring her in more ways than one wasn’t something he was opposed to.
“Fuck,” she murmured. She closed her eyes and just let herself feel it. That sort of eye contact was way too damned intense to be having with a man who’d been ready to murder her a few seconds ago.
Panting and trembling after moments that seemed to stretch on for eternity, CJ was beginning to feel weak, her vision becoming spotty at the edges. “Ruin…” His name was a hushed prayer that she wanted to kick herself for.
She pushed shakily at his head with her other arm, attempting to speak and having her voice come out is nothing but a breathy squeak. She licked her lips and cleared her throat, fighting to keep her eyes open and shoving harder as she said with more conviction, “Enough.”
It took him a moment to respond to her rejection, and the pleasure that wrapped itself around her like the arms of a trusted lover almost made her not care. Her entire body tried to slump backwards, and he caught her before her head could smack the tiles, fingers pressed over the twin wounds in her wrist as he gently laid her down.
He pulled the bottom cabinet drawer open with his boot, relieved to see a first aid kit lurking unused within it. He grabbed it with his free hand, noticing how fuzzy and floaty CJ’s mood had gotten.
“Snap out of it, scrumptious.” He swabbed her wrist with a cold alcohol wipe before bandaging it.
She met Ruin’s eyes, her own glassy and exhausted. “Feeling better, I hope…?” He asked.
Her entire body was flooded with warmth. His touch was fire anywhere their skin connected. If it weren’t for the chill of the counter tiles beneath her, she’d have been a puddle. She managed to pull herself to a sitting position, with his help.
“Yes. But also… No.”
Carmelia Jianni Sarvino promptly lost consciousness in the arms of a vampire named Ruin.
With an affected sigh, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to what he assumed was her bedroom. He gently laid her on top of the blankets, watching her head loll to the side. She was so vulnerable, lost in slumber. He had a brief stab of sadness, almost envy. Ruin had never experienced sleep before.
He sat on the bed beside her, taking her hand lightly and his. He ticked his thumb back and forth across the back of her hand, their flesh now the same temperature. As the power of her blood coursed through his own dead veins, he asked the sleeping woman: “What are you, Carmelia?”