Before this, Eros had never truly known what it meant to be in agony. Something wicked, blades and acid, was crawling through his veins. An evil creature with glowing coals in place of eyes and every inch of its leathery skin coated in thousands of tiny razor sharp spines burning him from the inside out. His flesh tearing itself apart and knitting itself back together over and over again. The wounds from his battle with Kharon ripping wide, then sealing up and savagely shredding the golden canvas of his skin anew into different configurations of gaping red.
His teeth clattered to the ground with the high-pitched sound of scattered bones, new ones-all points and sharp edges-erupting in their place to gouge at the soft flesh of his mouth. The metallic salt of his own blood coating his tongue and running down his throat. Soothing the parched dryness as it took the acrid bitterness left behind by the ichor he’d been forced to swallow with it.
The knuckles on his hands, forces white from the stress, popped and snapped as the long talons sprouting from the tips of his fingers raked against the cavern floor. His body seized violently, juttering against the unforgiving stone with punishing force. Flopping like a fish cast from water even as he felt sure he couldn’t move from the pain.
Darkness. It came up on him intermittently, dragging him downwards just long enough for time to elude him but no where near long enough to offer any sort of relief. Reality was red. Non-reality was black. And yet regardless of the effects of which he was under, when he opened his eyes he saw nothing.
When it finally stopped his mind was sent into a tailspin, his body collapsing onto its front where he lay breathless and all but paralyzed, shaking violently as if he’d just been pulled from a frozen-over lake. But it wasn’t because of the chill cave air surrounding him or the water that had now drenched him from head to toe.
It was because his body was no longer giving off its own heat.
Lying there, wracked by terror and despair and set upon by a desperate and unholy thirst, Eros forced his eyes to remain tightly closed. If he didn’t open them, didn’t acknowledge reality for what it was, then maybe it didn’t exist. It was nothing more than a nightmare, surely. He’d wake soon to Luciella’s warm arms, be freed from it, and everything would be alright.
But that sweet denial couldn’t save him from the truth. Not when every breath brought with it scents and tastes he’d never noticed before with his weak human senses-the tang of his blood diffusing into the puddle he was still lying in, the sharp earthen scent of the stone surrounding him, the bats roosting further back in the cave-and every quiet droplet falling from the ceiling resounded in his newly sensitive ears as mortar fire from a cannon.
Unable to shelter himself away from reality’s cruelty forever, Eros slowly surrendered his refusals and allowed his eyes to slide open. The pitch black darkness no longer encumbered him, leaving his vision clear and sharp but stained in over tones of dark violent and blue. Raising his head, Eros peered down at his reflection to find the very thing he dreaded most.
Nothing was there. The surface of the puddle showing only the roof of the cave above his head and the ripples spreading slowly outwards from where his hand shattered the center of the tiny pool.
It couldn’t be! It wasn’t possible! Humans couldn’t become like them. The Dhampir didn’t have that kind of power; they could twist man into the Apelat but no further. Couldn’t take their souls away. But Lilith was beyond the Dhampir and it was she that had been the one to change him.
Tainted.
The word alone was enough to make him shrink back with a whimper, curling inwards on himself again like a lost child seeking comfort after being left to fend for himself, and as the wings now protruding from his shoulderblades bowed forwards reflexively to enclose him like a security blanket Eros knew that it was true. He’d been turned into a Vampire.
The former hunter didn’t know how long it was that he sat there curled into a ball on the floor of the cave, but when he finally did raise his head for a second time it was in search of a way out. What caught his eye instead was a surprising but very much welcome sight. Propped against the sloping wall not far away, securely in its wooden sheath, was Cenuşă. Never once before in all his life had Eros felt so relieved to see his weapon.
‘Until I die, you cannot.’ The words of the curse that she had claimed the apple would lay upon him.
‘Demons lie. Never trust anything that they would tell you. Never accept anything they offer as a gift.’ The Angel’s warning to him from so long ago.
The curse was false. It had to be. There was some way, surely, that he could escape it. And if anything would be the key to such a way it would be the holy blade before him.Dragging himself up onto his feet, he stumbled across the cavern chamber to where the sword lay against the wall and picked it up.
The metal burned when he touched it, as if the hilt had been left for hours in an open flame, but Eros grated his teeth against the urge to let go and ignored the pain as best he could. The blade came free of the sheath with a sharp hiss, the weapon’s weight familiar in his grip as he turned it on himself. Hesitating only long enough to properly align the blade with his heart, he let his body fall forwards onto it.
The next thing Eros knew, he was face down again with the hilt of the sword poking into his stomach watching as the ashes of his body reshaped themselves into their proper form; arm, hand, fingers. Curling his reformed hand into a tight fist, he slammed it against the stone beneath him with enough force to send cracks darting outwards in all directions from the point of impact and let out a wrenching scream which echoed off the walls around him.
It was only dully that the pain of his forehead colliding with the earth registered on his senses as his body gave out. Overwhelmed both physically and mentally by all that had happened to him Eros felt his mind grind to a halt and shutdown and welcomed the shadows that consumed him.
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