Torn Asunder

Chapter 17 Valentine

A/N: The music link to the side is the song that makes me think of this story the most. It suits the strange relationship between Dante and Valentine and hope you all like it :D

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All the trappings of mortality and morality fell away and I felt that darkling promise in my blood take control. The fear of what I was becoming vanished and I simply was all the darkness I carried inside. It felt better than I had anticipated, soothing all the hurts away and putting a healing balm on the shattered parts of me, propping me up and giving me strength where I had none on my own. I had never been a fighter, I had never been an aggressor and I had never been powerful. I was more than all three of those now and it was time to extract my pound of flesh and blood.

The vampires laughing at me didn’t know they were on borrowed time, still confident and weak as they mocked. The blonde was closest to me, eyes crinkled shut in her humour. How pathetic to take your eyes off the most dangerous creature in the room. Remembering the things she had done to me and able to imagine the things she had done to my Dante; it was easy to imagine ripping into her and through her, one obstacle between me and the door that would be bloody paste if I had my way.The fangs in my mouth ached with the need to rend her flesh but my fingers were begging for the chance to rip her apart first. If my soul was more settled into the body I wore, it would have been irresistible to go on the killing rampage I craved, but the dissonance between my spirit and the flesh was enough that I held onto my terrible rage and aimed it carefully. When the blonde vampire heaved a sigh and reached out a hand to condescendingly pet me, I uncoiled the attack she never saw coming.

My jaw locked around the meat of her hand, teeth sinking in cruelly as she instinctively tried to pull her hand free and my fingers dug into the flesh of her chest, tearing through fabric and flesh with ease. Her slight frame was nothing compared to the powerful body I piloted and I pressed her against the floor in my attack. As she squealed in pain, bone started to shatter into shards as I dug in, feeling the others react to my attack too slow, too late. With the barricade of her ribs ripped away, I could close my large hand around her cold, dead heart. Even if she didn’t need it to pump blood, when I ripped it out of her chest, there would be no coming back to life for her. Isabeau slumped to the floor, truly dead and I bite a chunk of flesh from her heart, feeling the cold juices slick down my throat and satiate some of my anger, but it remained unquenchable. Hands landed on my body, tearing me away from Isabeau to try and salvage the situation but Lucretia’s keening alerted them all that it was far, far too late.

The queen vampire could feel the true death of her Childe and I felt a lifting of some of the bonds on me as I began killing those that had taken my Dante.

And even though I knew that Lucretia’s Call would summon the other vampires to control me, my rage wasn’t so blinding that I stayed on the attack. It was a cruel, vicious monster that wanted complete retribution for all the hurts we had been inflicted with but it wanted to survive to witness it. So as I felt the echo of Lucretia’s Call go out, and her will try to wrap terror around my mind, I clawed open her face and ran past her. Now was not the time to stay and fight, though I greatly craved more fresh blood. Shoving my way through the grasping and pulling hands of the other, weak vampires in the den, none were strong enough to arrest my momentum forward and soon enough I had burst out the doors and into the steely grey of predawn.

Those that would pursue me cowered back inside, the brightening light no danger to me but a death sentence to them. The rational woman I had once been couldn’t figure out how the body was vampire but the soul wasn’t, but as we were now I couldn’t care less. I had the body that could travel without rest and nothing in the universe would stop me from reaching the half of my soul that was crying out for me. I could feel it resonating over the distance, a siren’s call that guided me with nothing more tangible than a sense of ‘this direction’ and ‘not this direction’. But it was enough to start my feet shambling forward and I knew that my quest towards it would allow me to quench my terrible Thirst. There was nothing to stop me and anything that tried I would gladly Feed upon. My fist squeezed around the heart I’d kept a hold of and I lifted it to my crimson stained lips, tearing another chunk out of to chew upon. I didn’t need more than the blood but I enjoyed the act of rending my foe into bite sized pieces. It suited my mood and added a bounce to my step as I moved.