¹ DEATHLESS ─ the originals

[ 001 ] never was a girl with a wicked mind

NOW: 2011

THERE ARE STARS IN THE SKY TONIGHT. Millions of specks in the endless tapestry of the night blinking down at them, which makes Alessia wonder why it is that vampires can't walk in sunlight without their daylight rings, but they're free to do so in the night, even if the sky is clear enough for the shimmering caress of starlight. Leaning against the doorway to the rooftop entrance of Blueridge Psychiatric Hospital, sharp eyes tracing patterns in the stars, Alessia tries to recall her high school astrophysics knowledge. Almost every star in the sky is a burning, fist-like fusion of elements, so bright and so magnificent its light reaches the Earth even solar systems and light years away. After all, the sun is also just a star. What makes it different from the rest?

A cool breeze picks up, sneaking a cold hand up the hem of her black mini skirt. Alessia smoothes her skirt down over her thighs.

Alessia sighs, pushing down her rampant thoughts. It is somewhere close to the crack of dawn, and nothing even remotely interesting has happened. The only reason she'd left the house was because she was bored, and Tyra had made this mission out to be something exciting. If only she'd known how much time she would be wasting, how the boredom was smothering her now, she would've just stayed home with Sonja.

They'd been on this roof for hours, waiting for so long that Alessia could hear the clock ticking, had watched the clouds dissolve as the night cleared and the moon climbed to its crest. Just waiting. It seems like this was all they ever did. Wait and wait and wait.

Ten years ago, eternity was something Alessia could only dream about—not that she ever wondered about it, nor cared about living forever—and now time seemed to be the only thing she had plenty of. And what could she do with it? She'd joined a band that had many names over the past ten years, and perhaps more before. She'd learnt how to play guitar and bass, how to write songs, how to unstitch the chords and thread her own heart into the music. It'd taken her a morbidly long time.

When she was in college, she'd been a music psychology major, but cheer had consumed most of her time. Back then, she'd been living off of the thrill that cheer shot into her veins, back then, it was stunt and stunt and stunt, tumbling until the world was a blur and her muscles were numb. Back then, she bruised easy. Back then, joining a rock band was the last thing on her mind.

Now, she was supposed to be thirty, but her body retained her twenty-year-old self, preserved like a Triassic bug in Baltic amber. Now, all she can think about is the heat of the stage lights, the grit in Tyra's guitar, the fierce beat of the drum. They hadn't played in ages. Not since Charlotte, their former lead guitarist got staked in the heart by some vampire hunters when they played a show in Virginia and died for a second time. No resurrections this time.

Now, here they were in Ohio standing on top of a mental hospital, looking for a new member to fill in the open spot, the inclusion criteria being that she had to be a final girl. Someone with fight, someone who could walk out of the bloodbath with the knife in their teeth. Tyra likes the poetry of it, Alessia supposes. Why Ohio, specifically, Alessia isn't sure. Tyra had a witch friend who owed her a favour, and divined that a massacre was about to happen here. Somehow, that'd led them to Blueridge, a seemingly arbitrary location for something so monumental to transpire.

It is Hungry Ghost month, Alessia thinks, as the screams of the patients within the psychiatric hospital's walls grate against her ears like nails on a chalkboard, death is on our doorstep. Death is everywhere.

Snaking a hand under the strap of her red tank top and pressing her palm against her chest, Alessia tries to imagine warm skin, a heartbeat, the biting chill of the evening breeze. Nothing. No pulse rises to brush her fingers, no violent shudder from the feeling of phantom cobwebs crawling over her skin, and though her skin is cold all over, she feels nothing. Instead, all she can feel is the panic, a cresting crescendo inside the building, can smell the fear, and all that blood—good God, all that blood. Pain pricks at her bottom lip as her fangs slide out from her gums, seeking a vein and the rapture of warm skin.