The hissing grew louder as the shadows pursued.
“Don’t you know what’s going on, stupid girl?” the first one snapped from a pipe above her. “Don’t you know why you’re here?”
Charlotte gaped at him. Her nerves were like live electric wires, jolting her body into numbness.
“Us?” he hissed again. “We are here for our sins. And you? You’re our last supper.” He grinned and let out a maniacal laugh as he and two others leapt like felines from the rafters to join the group on the floor.
“I don’t understand,” Charlotte cried. “Where am I?”
But they only laughed at the putrid smell of her fear. The moon had crept into the sky, glinted off each and every silvery fang as they grinned at her.
She shielded herself with her arms. One lifted his claw to the silver night before striking her with it, staining one white cheek with pulsing red that dripped to the floor. She cried out in agony as her hair fell in her face, clinging to the wound. It ran like hot water down frosted glass, and the hissing grew louder.
Another one tore off her shirt, exposing her bruised skin to the icy undercurrent. One of their talons made one long slit along the other side of her neck, tears mixed with blood seeped to the center of her chest.
One of the creatures leaned in, too close to her face and whispered so low she struggled to hear.
“Please know, Charlotte, we were never this gruesome. But if we are to be punished…then we might as well deserve it.” He turned only his head to look at the rest of them. “Drain it. All of it.”
Charlotte’s scream fused with their animal cries as they lunged at her, tearing her skin open, spilling her life. Their cold lips fixed all over her body. She opened her mouth in wretched suffering, unable to tell if she was even relinquishing a sound.
Valek sat, alone with his wild thoughts, in a separate cell all the way down the cold, stony corridor. The only thing he could see in his mind was Charlotte’s face as the guards carried her away, her big eyes fixated on him as they dragged her through the dirt. It was the same way she had first looked up at him the night they met in Prague. Alone. Afraid. He touched the side of his face, scarred, like cracked marble.
Sounds from what seemed like kilometers away bounced off the quartz protruding from the moss-encrusted brick and echoed through his ears. A bloodletting. He heard the hissing, smelled the fear and the blood. It was all too familiar. He sighed with his face in his hands. Poor, sad individual, whoever it was.
That was when he heard something that was also too familiar. Sickeningly familiar. His organs crawled up his esophagus when he heard it.
Her scream echoed down the stone hall and shattered him. Her thoughts bounced off the stalagmites into his mind, and he saw his own face reflected back to him. Her blood was the smell wafting through the thick air. Blood that was hers and only hers. Life that was hers and only hers.
Valek sprung to the edge of his cell and wrapped his hands around the frosted bars. He ripped at them, pleading with all his might for them to bend. He pulled and stretched, to no avail.
Then, he heard his name called out down the lonely passage. She wailed for him. He mirrored the action.
“Charlotte! ” He howled as painfully loud as he could — a lion’s roar back down the interminable corridor to where she was.
Her scream was his only response as he clutched the bars made of something heavier than iron. An overwhelming and unfamiliar feeling of helplessness bowled him over as big, red teardrops plummeted to the floor in front of him. He called out her name again. He pulled and pulled at those bars, suddenly remembering all too well what it was like to be so human, so weak.
Their painful screams and roars blended in an agonizing orchestration. The horror of his helplessness. His little Lottie was alone, pleading for him, yet he could do nothing inside this loathsome cage.
“Lottie,” he bellowed. “Lottie! My sweet Lottie! Please!” Valek slumped to the floor, hand outstretched between the bars. The palm of his hand stained scarlet as it ran over his cheek. A sharp sob escaped his throat as he bellowed for her again.
Silence answered him.
“Lottie….” He took a deep breath and could barely hear the voice from her thoughts anymore. So, this was how they would torture him. The silence from her mind grew louder. “I love you, Charlotte!”
Charlotte heard these last words, despite the rushing death, like a flashflood through a hollow tunnel she was submerging under quickly. She fought to keep above the surface, for if she allowed herself to sink, life would be over.
“I love you,” rang out so saliently. The rest of her dark world seemed to evanesce into hell. The hissing, the screaming, the pain — and, “I love you”. She kept hearing it over and over again, until she realized she was speaking the words. Too weak to yell it, it came out in a whisper.
“I love you.” She hoped he could hear the thing she wanted to scream to the world. “I love you,” she said for the last time, before she could not hold on any longer, melting into oblivion.
Metal bars at the front of her cell crashed inward. Thunder guards came stomping in, sending currents of electricity flying through the air. Yellow streaming bolts struck the bodies of the living dead. The Vampires immediately recoiled from Charlotte and went dashing into the back corners of the cell like rats in bright light.
“Come on, foul creatures. We have somewhere for you to be,” one guard ordered as he joyfully watched them all squirm and growl as the electricity continued to fly.
The Elves ripped some of them from the ground, throwing them over their shoulders, some plucked from the aluminum piping. One officer had to use a stake for one that tried to fight, though it only stunned him for a few seconds.
The struggle continued as Charlotte’s life pooled down in between the cracks into the marble floor. One of the guards noticed her.
“What about that one?” he asked his comrade.
“Eh, just leave her there. Maybe we can feed the leftovers to the next batch that comes in,” he said, as they finally walked out with the gaggle of screeching soul-feeders.
And as he was being dragged away, the head of the condemned clan looked back to the dungeon cell. The Vampire stopped walking, the vision of his figure blurry in Charlotte’s ebbing consciousness.
“What are you doing, leach? Keep going!” one officer prodded.
The Vampire angled his gray ear toward Charlotte. “No. No…she’s alive. You have to kill her! She is still alive!” the Vampire screeched to the air.
The guards only glanced in Charlotte’s direction to see a lifeless, bloody mess.
“This fool is out of his blasted mind,” the guard grumbled as they continued to lead him away, screaming something incoherent all the way out the heavy dungeon door.
Valek, who had been silently listening through the bars all the while, now forced himself to stand, his knees quaking beneath his weight. He had never felt so mortal. He pictured his Lottie’s eyes, wide with fear, now slowly closing. He saw the menacing creatures ripping at her soft skin. He thought about how he was one of them, responsible for the demise of so many people just like her. He hated himself and everything he was, as more garnet tears rolled down his pallid face. But he also decided that as long as he was a monster, he would not rest until every other monster responsible for this was dead. The only way Charlotte could still be alive was if by some divine magic, and Valek hardly held his breath.