Blood Lust

Chapter 7

Eleanor woke up to Selene coming into her room, her armor in her hand. "You may go now, I'm not going to stop you." She left her armor in a heap at the foot of Eleanor's bed, preparing to leave the room.

Eleanor rubbed her eyes, convinced she was hallucinating again, but when she reached forward and found the armor to be real, she grew confused. "You– I– what?!"

Selene stopped at the door, and shrugged. "I told you I was sorry. And I can't say that I'm sorry, and force you to stay here. I'm going to leave the country, and you're going to go home." She left the room then, giving Eleanor time to change.

When Eleanor stepped out of the room, her armor heavy on her back after Gods know how long she'd been without it, she saw Eleanor sitting in the main chamber.

"Come on now." The vampire said, leading the blonde to the mouth of the cave.

Out in the sun, with Selene standing beside her under an umbrella, she finally got a good look at her. She had a warm, wholesome beauty, about her, truly alluring if it weren't for the haunted look in her eyes. She was wearing the same velvet dress she had been wearing the day Eleanor entered the cave, as if that dress was the bookends to their interaction. Selene had something in her hand that Eleanor hadn't noticed before. Reaching into this container, she pulled out a handful of powder that looked a lot like the potion that Eleanor came in with.

Cupping the powder in her hands, Selene murmured a few words, (latin?) and then blew, and the powder morphed into a faint red glow that travelled across the kingdom as far as Eleanor's eyes could see, followed by a burst of white light.

"That's it?"

"That's it." The vampire confirmed. "Everyone is free to live, or not live, and have their happily ever after."

"Wow." Eleanor was dumbfounded. "Alright, let's go."

"No."

"What do you mean no?"

"I'm not leaving with you, Eleanor. I'm leaving the country, as I said."

"But you broke the curse!"

Selene snorted. "There was never a curse. I'm a vampire. I feed off of living beings. But even if I stop,
undoing the misery I caused doesn't make me a hero. I'm still the bitter exiled Queen I was from centuries ago, and nothing I do can change that."

"Fine." Eleanor turned to leave.

"Wait." Eleanor stopped in her tracks, hoping Selene had changed her mind. "It'll take you days if you walk all the way back to your house." She waved her hand, and a bridge formed from the rocks from the side of the cliff, spanning over the tops of the trees of the forest she had passed through all those weeks ago. "You'll be home in an hour."

Eleanor gave Selene a tight-lipped smile. "Thanks. For everything I guess."

"Oh, one more thing."

"Hmm?" Eleanor turned around, and her eyes locked with Selene's, which ended up being a mistake.

The vampire raised her hand, and Eleanor fell into somewhat of a trance. "You'll remember me as a bitter, hideous monster from whom you barely escaped. But you defeated me, and you won. You'll never come back here. You'll find happiness and live a normal life, free of the threat of my immortality. Have a good life, Eleanor Schafer."

Selene lowered her hand, and Eleanor blinked a couple times as if she was waking up from a dream. And then she turned on her heel, and she ran away, across the bridge that Selene had built just for her. And she just kept running. If Eleanor had turned around, she would have seen that there were two, small tears that trickled down the woman's cheek. One was for herself and the other, was for the sweet human, Eleanor Schafer.