Finding Contentus

Chapter 109: Gifted Blood

My love for this world is like a red heart. It beats and bathes in the moonlight.

Her life, and the existence of her clan, her people, had always been a crime. They had been hunted by humans for being humans since they were born, they hid from human eyes for being humans with extraordinary eyes since their birth.

And, they were exterminated by humans for being...

Vampis.

In the middle of the night, she returned from the realm of inactivity, being nocturnal first and foremost. Not to say she was never active in the day, but more to say that she preferred doing things at night, in the shadows, in the dark.

After all, that was how she was raised, that's how her people lived, that's how her family lived before they, and everyone she knew, everyone she loved, was taken away from her, by the twins of Ra, in Metero.

By her.

"Take care, my lovely niece. I wish for you to find happiness and healing."

Those green eyes of emeralds, that intoxicating voice poisoned her mind, in the day, in the night, in her dreams and in her nightmares. She could not see the face behind the memory, but she remembered the memory itself like crystal clear water, like a cloudless sky.

Why did she save her? Why did she kill her mother? Why did she execute her entire clan? Why did she...

The raven-haired beauty awoke, suspended upside down from the roof of a cave like a bat in the mountains, her home, her brother's home. She slept like this. She could sleep normally like most people if she wanted to, but she found normality boring. She found humanity boring, enviable. At the same time...

She loved humanity. She loved the world, even if the world hated her, and even if humanity hated her.

She got down and landed soundlessly like a nimble and agile cat, stretching, yawning and exercising. Her hair was short, covering the left side of her lovely face. It looked glossier than the shining moon, deeper than the ocean, and blacker than the lustrous dark night. Just as she had large and lustrous, almond-shaped, crimson-red eyes and sharp vampi fangs.

She slept upside down in a sleeping bag. She walked to heat water in a rectangular bathtub, removed the sleeping bag and got in, sighing in relief.

I was born on this day. How sweet. Another year of love. She stared up at the ceiling of the cave. Much higher up, she saw bats sleeping, she loved bats, she couldn't hear them, but she found them fascinating, just as she found cats and eagles fascinating, they were her favorite animals.

At twenty years of age, Lovouta had bloomed into a voluptuous woman. Her skin was light brown like wheat, the same height as the green-eyed monster from her worst memory that Lovouta loved, enough to kill in the name of love for killing her people.

The woman... was her aunt by law, the sister of Lovouta's aunt by blood, Kamilah and Lovouta's mother, Aaravi, that she saw hanging, by the neck, and burning, to a charred remains, until there was nothing left of her, just like there was nothing left of Kesi, Lovouta's father, who left her and Ayata like they were disposable garbage—

Nine years huh? She reflected. Her other aunt had darker eyes of gardens. She was the last person she remembered from her homeland. Lovouta loved her too. She wanted to repay her aunt someday.

She looked at her hands like she was studying their strength. I could probably take all their asses at this point and they wouldn't even know what hit them. I've already been broken by Metero and Zatalia combined, what else is there to break me? Aya's right. My biggest weakness is my heart that people use as a punching bag. Fortunately for me, it's a muscular heart that drains all the hits like we drain our prey.