“I don’t… know. It feels… different. Maybe she got… my heart… a little or…something.”
Arwen looked down and noticed that Iro’s left hand was turning the same blue that Cassia had just turned.
“Iro, no,” she said as tears fell down her cheeks. “Baby, please.”
Iro followed her gaze and saw her hand.
“She’s dead, Iro. She’s already dead.”
Iro nodded and said, “I don’t want to die. I just found you.”
When Arwen shifted the woman over to Iro as close as she could get her, Iro took the woman’s wrist in her hands and bit into the flesh. Arwen watched her drink. She didn’t know much about biology and what happened to the human body after death, but this woman had only been dead for a few minutes, so maybe not much was different. She stared at Iro’s left hand and waited for it to go back to normal as her tears fell to the floor.
Soon, Iro moved slowly but ended up half on top of the woman and bit down into her neck instead. She growled, and Arwen watched her hand. It started to go back to normal, and she watched as a few of the wounds on Iro’s back began to heal very slowly, almost imperceptibly. Finally, Iro rolled off, and Arwen held Iro’s hand in her hands, trying not to think about the smell of human blood that was all over the room now.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I need darkness. The windows don’t block out all of the sun.”
“I’ll carry you. Do you need… more? I can find someone and bring them here.”
“No. Just get me everything in the fridge. I’ll be okay. I… I drained her. I’m ashamed, but I did.”
“You had to. And Cassia was the one who killed her.” Arwen moved to stand, and having no idea how much she could lift, she was very surprised when she picked Iro up and carried her with ease into one of her hidden rooms. “I’ll be right back.”
She laid Iro down and left the room, trying to finally catch her breath and get her thoughts together. There was a dead vampireanda dead human in the foyer. Her vampire girlfriend was in a hidden room because she was near death. Arwen was a vampire herself now, as well as her best friend, who was also in love with her. She had just killed someone, and yes, it was Cassia, a vampire, but Arwen had still shot her before she hadstabbed her straight in the heart, remembering what Iro had told her before about how silver to the heart killed them.
She’d known exactly what she was doing when she had aimed and pulled that trigger. She’d known it even more when she had plunged that knife into Cassia’s heart. She’d known that Cassia would die the moment the knife hit her heart, or, at least, shortly after, and she hadn’t cared. She understood that part of that lack of care about Cassia was because she’d been trying to kill Iro and had threatened to do the same to her, but the other part probably had to do more with the fact that she was a vampire now. Arwen was a predator who, like Iro had mentioned, had killing in their nature. She’d have to deal with the fact that she had enjoyed stabbing Cassia later, though, because Iro was in pain, a lot of it, and might even still be dying.
Arwen hurried to the hidden refrigerator and pulled out four of the ten containers, thinking this would be enough for now and she would come back to get the rest should Iro need more. As she stacked the containers two by two and carried them to Iro, she breathed in the smell of blood and felt her fangs. She was hungry, but this food was all for Iro.
“I’ll call the butcher and get more, but start with this. I’ll bring in the others in a second. I need to get Cassia and that woman away from the windows. People could see them, and I’m not sure if anyone saw what was happening while the door was open. I want to check outside.”
“Don’t go outside,” Iro warned and opened a container. “Cassia has friends.”
“I’ll just look out, then. I’ll be right back.” She kissed Iro on the forehead. “I love you.”
“Arwen, I mean it. Don’t do anything–”
Arwen held the container to Iro’s lips instead and said, “Drink. You need this now. I’ll be right back.”
She left the room, making sure the door closed securely behind her, and made her way out to the foyer, where she saw a very dead Cassia and a human on the floor in front of her, with blood surrounding her. Arwen’s fangs emerged again, and she shook her head. She would not give in. She needed to make sure Iro was okay first. She needed to protect them because Iro couldn’t right now.
Quickly, she pulled the poor woman through the foyer and into the living room, where she placed her arms over her chest and found a throw blanket to lay over her respectfully. Returning to Cassia’s body, she wasn’t as respectful, but she pulled her into the kitchen and left her there out of view from the outside. Then, she went to the front door, peered through the window, and noticed a purse that probably belonged to the woman Cassia had killed on the sidewalk. Arwen didn’t think it should just sit out there, looking suspicious, so she opened the door and went outside to pick it up.
That was when two women who looked somewhat familiar to her emerged from a car that had just parked in front of Iro’s building.
“Arwen?” one of them said.
Well, she hadn’t listened to Iro, and now, she was about to deal with the consequences. She didn’t think that either of them would try to kill her right out here, in broad daylight, but she couldn’t be sure. She needed to get back to the knife she had left somewhere, or at least, inside quickly enough to slam the door in their faces before she tried to find another weapon. She wasn’t sure she was fast enough to beat them up the stairs, to the door, and inside, though.
“It’s okay, Arwen. We’re not here to hurt you. My name is Alexia. This is Sarah.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Cassia left. She told us to come here with her to kill you and Iro, but we didn’t. We defied her, which was a risk, but we don’t want to kill anyone. We stayed, but we realized that that wasn’t much better than coming with her,” Alexia said.
“We didn’t think you or Iro deserved to die. We came to stop her. Are we too late? Did she–”
