Beyond The Fangs

Chapter 6

JAEGER

Rather than taking the child, Raya, back to Izzy, I decided to let her run off into her village. A wicked smirk played on my lips. I knew Izzy would stay in the forest for a little longer searching for Raya, thinking she was dead the entire time. 

I didn't take Raya to save her, that hadn't been my intention, but it just ended up that way and since I didn't end up getting to use her to get to Izzy, I decided I'd let Izzy suffer by leaving her to think the child was dead when she was actually safe and sound in the village. 

I didn't linger for long after letting Raya go though, but made my way to the village Tergisus right after. There was an empty cabin near there, on the outskirts of the village. I wasn't going to go do another 12 km just go back to a tree. Despite all the activity that had taken place, I found myself less tired than before and couldn't fall asleep no matter how long I kept my eyes closed. 

I could never fall asleep when I had something to think about, and I couldn't stop thinking of what Raya had said when she'd told me about how Izzy wanted to end the war. I didn't know why, but that phrase kept repeating in my head.

End the war... end the war...

It was really starting to get on my nerves, but after what felt like hours, I finally fell asleep, and my mind took me back 11 years, to one of my worst memories, the reason I was the way I was. The day my mother died.

My lungs were full of smoke again, and I coughed with every breath I took. I was fully aware this was a dream, but I still couldn't handle it. I wanted to get out, needed to get out. I could feel myself moving around in the real world, but I wasn't waking up.

"My sweet son," my mother called me as the flames grew and grew.

The whole scene played out just as I remembered, word for word. She told me to go, and I told her I had nowhere to go, that she was the only one I had.

I focused on getting out of my dream rather than on my dream, desperate to stop reliving this nightmare. 

"You were born for a reason," she said.

That reason was to get rid of the threats to humanity. Humans and Vampires. I figured that out a long time ago.

"You, my son, need to make sure something like this doesn't happen to anybody else, not humans, not vampires," she said.

That phrase sounded familiar. Too familiar that it chilled me. Suddenly, I remembered what Raya had said, about how Izzy didn't want anyone to go through what she or Raya had gone through.

"You need to treat them all the same," my mother said. "You need to end—" 

And that was when the roof had crumbled down, the noise overpowering her voice and she beckoned for me to leave after I made her that promise.

I finished that sentence off a long time ago, she said she wanted me to end their lives, I knew that. To get rid of them all because they were all a threat. But for some reason, a chilling thought lingered at the back of my head, a thought that no matter how hard I tried to dismiss, it kept coming back. 

The thought that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong. Maybe my mom wasn't going to say that. Maybe that wasn't what she wanted to tell me. Maybe the motto I lived according to all my life wasn't correct. I was grieving and held a grudge against anyone and everyone, so maybe I heard what I wanted to hear, not what she actually said. Maybe...

I realised the roof hadn't crumbled down yet in my dream, my mother was still looking at me, earnestly. "My son," she started, "you need to end..."

The words that I read on her lips made my heart sink as the roof crumbled around us. 

All I had been living for was a lie. All of it was a lie. 

But this was a dream so how could that be true? But why did this dream feel so real, like my memory had been contorted? But if it was true then... I had become the one thing I feared as a child, I became like the villagers. 

Heartless, ruthless, a murderer. 

I thought they were monsters, all of them,  just like how they thought I was a monster. They acted out of fear, they thought I would kill them all once I got older, and I did. I was. I was killing them all. They had been right, which was why they had been trying to get rid of me. They were only trying to protect themselves and their villages from what I would become. But they failed, and I became a monster. I became the thing they feared.

The thing they fear.

My mother hadn't told me to kill all of them, I just convinced myself that was what she said. My own anger and pain and rage made me hear what I wanted to hear. This wasn't a dream. This was a memory, one I had unknowingly tampered with. One I had unknowingly locked away at the back of my mind. 

I woke up, panting, sweating, panicking. I held my head, trying to make sense of what I just learned. My fingers shook uncontrollably, and I shut my eyes tight in hopes to keep the thoughts out, but it was a futile act. No matter what I did, the thoughts kept coming. Taunting me.

I had been wrong. 

I just heard what I wanted to. My mother didn't tell me to end their lives, she told me to end the conflict... 

To end the war.