Coalesce In Darkness ♡ Frerard

NINE

I like the pace Frank and Gerard's relationship  is going at. I really didn't want them to fall in love on the spot. It's more a special bond right now.

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The sound of the air whispering to Frank was as eerie as the parts of the library shrouded in darkness, appearing to slowly close in if he squinted at it. His shivering frame was draped with a soft quilt to keep the cold out and the warmth from his body in, having been handed to him by Gerard who worried for his wellbeing. His vampire guided him into one of the leather chairs settled in front of the crackling fireplace to thaw him out, perhaps get his bones to unhinge from where he stayed completely stiff and shaken to his very core. All he could see was blood, so much that he could nearly smell the metallic fragrance, and his mind swirled from the words Gerard had spoken to him as a response to his moment of anguish.

"I- I don't understand, you . . . why would you kill someone you love?" Frank whispered, frail and confused as Gerard slowly took a seat in the chair across from him, eyes turning into the fire to gaze into the orange and yellow flames creating a cloud of thick smoke going up into the chute above them. Frank watched him, not the fire, eyes still full of tears from the brokenness of his heart.

"It wasn't by choice. If I had any sort of say in it, she would be here at my side, and I wouldn't feel so detached from the world." Gerard responded. He filtered out the pain from his voice, letting it rest in his eyes which he carefully kept away from Frank's face. Frank wrapped the blanket tightly around him, unsure of whether he should ask another question. He did as such when it became too quiet, wondering if the vampire was ready to share.

"Did Lindsey make you do it?"

Gerard leaned his elbow on the armrest of the chair while drawing in a silent breath. His loosely curled first rose to his lips, fingers brushing against them as he remembered, taking himself back to a time Frank would never once doubt he'd forced himself to shove into the deepest boundaries of his memory.

"It was for the coven, as every death is." Gerard answered, strained and resentful. "And perhaps I could have been stronger. But if I didn't do it by my own hand, I know Lindsey would have torn her apart and I would never get to say goodbye to her." The more she spoke, the more his voice shook, as if real tears coated the lining of his throat. Frank knew he shed bloody tears, droplets of crimson he'd seen up at the mansion.

"Why did . . . why did you have to kill her?" Frank meekly asked. He was afraid that he would become too curious and touch a forbidden spot inside his vampire's heart, unleashing a form of angst he hadn't witnessed in him before. There were many things he didn't know, making the vampire in front of him closer to a stranger than a companion.

"She knew too much. As did the ones who followed, as do you, and death is the only penalty this coven knows unless the vampire desires to change the human."

"Why didn't you change her?" Frank's eyebrows furrowed softly.

Gerard swallowed harshly, dropping his hand away from his face. His face lined with pain, anger igniting in his eyes as powerfully as the fire dancing in the pit a few seldom feet away from them.

"It was my punishment for showing her everything. I was not given the option to keep her with me." Gerard sighed shakily. "She knew not only about me, but about all of us, and I put all of my faith into her as a fool blinded by love and beauty. I never expected her to betray us, but my beloved Charlotte . . . she was much too naïve to have done it out of spite. Unknowing of what would come to her as a consequence."

Frank captured her name in the midst of the information. A lovely name, undoubtedly belonging to a woman possessing great beauty as Gerard had stated. Frank could feel his heart tugging with the ghost of pain coming from Gerard's tone, the cold touch of forgotten loneliness caressing his cheek.