Bloodline | Maknae Line (21+)

24:

Chapter 24:

That night, you curled up in bed, holding Dracula's journal tight in your hands. You needed to find out what exactly Lazarus wanted with you and how he'd gotten Jimin and Jungkook to do his bidding so easily. It was too suspicious that he would put this much effort into protecting you just because he was friends with a long dead vampire. There had to be more to this puzzle, you were sure of it.

From the dynamic between Jimin and the others, it seemed that Jimin had more to gain than he did to lose. He got irrationally angry when something happened out of his control and he always made sure that he kept the other intimidated or suppressed in order to keep them on board.

With Taehyung, he'd convinced him to stay from the conversation you'd overheard after the Rosemary incident. He seemed almost... smug that he'd managed to keep Taehyung doing his bidding even though he had nothing to gain from it. And with Jungkook, he made sure to bring up whatever Lazarus had against him.

It made you believe that Jungkook's situation was different from the other two. Lazarus appeared to have promised Taehyung Jimin something in exchange for this. But Jungkook, it appeared that he was blackmailing him or threatening him with something. You wanted to know what it was so badly, but you were sure you'd get shut down if you asked directly.

You flipped through the journal to the spot you'd left off. There were clues here, you were sure of it. You read through several entries of Dracula complaining about boredom in the manor. At this point in his life, he was in hiding so there wasn't a lot to do except read, write, and think. And Dracula did a lot of that. He wrote about anything and everything. You flipped through several poems about the endless immortal cycle and the stupidity of man.

Finally, you started reading the final entry in this journal:

I still remember the first time I felt thirsty. I still remember the day I believed I had died. The day I was cursed with immortality at the cost of drinking human blood. That day has plagued my nightmares as of late. As I begin to think of my own mortality and the threat of my imminent death because of the hunt, I am often transported back to that day, wondering how this all came to be. Was I given a second chance at life? Or had some god grown tired of the everyday doings of human life and wanted to entertain himself. Or perhaps I had been as sinful a human as I am now, and the gods simply wants to punish me for eternity.

Either way, it is unfathomable to think of how much time has passed and how much has changed. I think about if I had a chance to go back, would I redo anything? I'd like to think I would have done things a little differently, but I know that's just a fantasy. Too much time has passed. The world is an entirely new place over which I have no control. Perhaps one day, when my time finally comes, I will have the answers I so desperately crave. For now, I remain ignorant and trapped in an endless, meaningless cycle of immortal life.

You closed the journal and sighed, thinking on what you'd just read. It was true, you never thought about how exactly Dracula had become a vampire in the first place. He'd been the first vampire to every exist, according to Lazarus and to this journal, but there was never an explanation as to how. Somehow, one day he'd died and then woken up as a monster. It begged the question of whether this was a mutation or the wrath of some supernatural being.

You shook your head, banishing those thoughts. You knew if you dove into those questions, you might never come back up for air again. You sighed and placed the journal on the bedside table. You glanced at your phone and saw it was barely past midnight. You thought about Jimin, who was traveling to meet Lazarus right now. You thought about your conversation with him and if you believed that he was truly going to start being real with you now.