Divine Descent

Chapter Eleven

I slam the door closed, enough to rattle the door hinges.

My body sinks down to the floor, my arms slinking around myself. Head spinning, I try to center myself without clear vision, unable to block all the voices out.

The vampires have been released to spread the word with the threat of the consequences if the instructions are ignored. I will need to be ready to punish those that do. I'm sure there will be many—many that didn't appreciate what I just did to their fellowmen and women.

I won't have to do this forever.

Eventually, they will expect I'm watching and it will keep them from betraying me.

But for now, I must be a killer. I must dictate and rule them.

Oddly enough, as I hyperventilate on my own solitude, I can't get the image of the sign hanging above Joe's Diner out of my mind. It was an insignificant sign, but large enough that he'd have me go out when the seasons would change and decorate it. Snowflakes hanging in Christmas, Crispy colorful leaves in fall, even baseballs in spring to pay ridiculous homage to the New Yorker's love for America's favorite pastime.

I'd stand on a rickety ladder that he had the money to replace but never would, in an apron with the logo ironed on the middle. The noisy traffic would blare around me. Children would scream at their parents in the distance, and I'd get lost in watching the mother's console them.

And then I'd go back inside to serve tuna melts and bland coffee to strangers. I'd tally the register, clean the kitchen, the tables. I'd sweep the place before closing because Joe never picked up a broom in his life. I'd go home to an empty apartment, or on my worse days, home with some man who had no idea what I had in mind for him that night. I always knew how to pick the ones that would arouse to violence.

At the time I didn't know why it was easy for me, now I do.

I thought I was a normal, unlucky woman. I thought my life was meaningless, an insignificant blip on the rest of the world. I became content with that notion. 

I never wanted any of this. I knew I had a dark soul, even as a human, but as this... it's all I am. I pull myself up off the ground, despite how badly I need to stay down.

There is too much to do.

Too much to see and know.

Racing outside, a vampire is hopping into a taxi, a phone to their ear, their mind frantic. There's another one packing up their room, hoping to disappear tonight, somewhere far. Dozens are fleeing for their lives, thinking they can outrun me. Thinking there is a place in this world where they are safe from me.

I must remind them that isn't so. I must make others of their kind aware too.

I am inescapable.

For Elijah, I must be. He'd never forgive me if I let this happen, if the mortal world truly came to an end simply because I couldn't live without him.

If I have to eradicate every single betrayer from existence, if I have to cut down the vampire's to half a size, I will. I will find the strength to do it.

Fate be damned.

Before any of them can expose themselves, an irreversible act, I close my eyes and with that blink, know that they are gone. The taxi driver is alone, coasting down the dark frantic streets, soon to discover an empty backseat. The suitcase is left open on the mattress just a few rooms away from this one.

For their inability to listen, for their greed to get what they want, I plucked them out of the world. It's as if they vanished. Their friends and family will wonder what happened to them.