A War on Death

Chapter Eight: Hunting or Trapped

Verena POV

The grass is warm, the soil holding me in its gentle embrace as the birds whispered amongst themselves. How silly they must think the mortal, playing with fire and begging to be burned. I wonder if they think him a masochist. An idiot. A lamb. Following the wolf to her den in order to feel the heat of life. Taste the passion of death. Dance with depths of deprivation.

His breathing has evened out, the kind breeze coaxing the sweat from his skin with lingering caresses. I lay in his arms, my wings slid into place behind my back, tucking around our legs like a blanket.

I haven't felt this small in a long while. Not since Erebus carried me to the well that night.

Do mortals still dream? Do they hope and wish while they sleep as their subconscious plays with their psyche, twisting it the way it wishes? I wonder if they realize it is a trivial thing to think you can change your fate. Travesty will always track you down, even if you stand downwind.

I relax farther, my heart calmed from the rush of pleasure this man caused. I didn't tell him he was my first. I didn't tell him when it hurt, only biting down on his shoulder to muffle my whimper. I didn't tell him how my heart throbbed in pain when he made me feel good; equal parts haunted and dreaming.

My tongue tasted the cosmos between moans. He created new constellations by the simple act of touch and I don't know if I can ever recover.

I had wanted a man like him when I was younger. I had wanted to reject my forced gift and run away to the human world. I had tried to. The mountains that protect me now had caged me in, my wounds never yet healing from the cold that I had braved. I remember having pawed at the mountain, as if to tunnel through it. The stones chewed at my fingertips in searing bites that left me bleeding rivers down the mountainside. Blood loss had tricked me. Had suffocated me until I stopped fighting it. Melting into the stone.

I don't remember how I got from the mountain to my bed, my subconscious believing the shadows had whispered to my side and carried me, limp, to my sheets.

Trying to scale mountains when you were born to fly is like trying to shove a square stick into a round hole— it will only end in splinters.

I don't know where Erebus went after I shut him out. He may still be hidden in the shadows, watching the souls mix their potions on the bed of the earth, praying that the stars don't fall until they're done. Hoping for a moment of clarity in the insanity of life.

Rage simmered in my gut for the past hour, the want to extinguish it within me great but my bloodlust greater. I needed death. I needed purpose. The human in me— the dear, sweet naive girl who wanted to nest in this man's arms and let him shelter us. Let us be weak. Be happy. For that is the only way to achieve pure bliss: ignorance. She wanted to disappear into his abyss and let us never resurface.

If I were to lay here, it would be to hollow out my heart and behave as though I was robbed of a brain. For deaths sake, I was a champion of mortals. I had a purpose. I had a reason.

My limbs, aching with preparation, pulled me to my feet, my magic keeping the mortal under sleeps soft monotony. The breeze was thick and dewy against my skin, lining the pale fabric with a sheet of glitter. Rain was coming, and with it, hunting season.

My feet carried me toward the storm— toward the town. My fangs elongated, drawing blood from my lips and causing me to leave my lips slightly parted. A ghost of a smile christened my tongue before I licked the blood clean. My pupils dilated, the red darkening. I drew my cloak a top my head and intertwined my fingers with the moonlight.

I dragged out its cosmos, elongated its heartbeat. My mother had chosen me through the moon herself. She used to sing to me of the night and the moon. The counterparts of the stars. Without one, the other would fall. They were the creators of the magic realm we now know.