[Today for you, tomorrow for me]: 256.Alexi and Anyka.Chap. 2 Anyka

Anyka

     Vampires have no souls.That was the first coherent thought that made it through the chaos of my mind brought on soul-deadening pain that seemed to manifest within my very spirit. Now matter what I did, I hurt, and it seemed more than pain. It felt like . . . Death. My blood seemed to be carrying shattered glass through my veins instead of oxygen. Every muscle, every bone in my body felt as though it was overworked or broken. It felt as if I been jumped by a gang in some big city. It felt as though I should have been dead, but wasn’t. I knew what was happening, and I was horrified. My body and soul were dying. The fire in my veins was the vampire poison working its way through my blood to feed off the life there, and then convert the lifeless cells into another energy-consuming force. It was working to kill my body and replace it with another. Another that could not sustain itself. Another that would die if I did not stop the process by feeding the deteriorating cells with the life-energy of another. And all this caused by the poison in me, by this vampire poison. 
  I tried to move myself so I could do something, anything to stop the pain that scattered my thoughts like gunshots scattered a heard of cattle. I tried to think, but the ruthless throbbing wrapped itself around my brain and deprived me of life. I took a jagged breath, only to regret the action not a moment later. I had just taken a breath, conversely the action made me feel as though the air had been knocked out of me. I took another tentative breath only to have the same feeling, only not as powerful and then I realized what was wrong.
   The dead don’t need to breathe . . . I reflected and then quickly pushed the thought out of my mind. I was not dead . . . Or undead . . . Yet. I still had time. I shook my aching head, trying to clear it, only to have my vision blur over in a tidal wave of garnet. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anything as it was, so they clearly weren’t helping. I held my breath and realized I was laying down, on a soft, familiar surface . . . I groaned slightly at the ever present pain and tried to extend my senses beyond the bed where I lay, writhing in agony.
  I smelt candle wax and fresh linen and . . . Something faint, not really a fragrance more like . . . A presence, something between the senses, dark and foreboding, tasting faintly metallic and poisonous on my tongue, but I could smell and hear and feel it as well. It seemed to live and breathe as I did. It smelled musky, a strange scent I have long since recognized. I heard and felt it rush around the room seeking . . . Release, perhaps? Now that it had gotten what it came for, there was no need for it to stay, or perhaps it was biding its time to wait for my soul: two prizes in one sitting, body and soul. Alexi told me later that is had been my first taste of an aura, my first experience with the sixth sense I gained when this life was forced upon me. It was an aura . . . Of death, my own. The death of my body, the creation of another monster. The creation of myself into the very abomination I had hunted night and day for centuries.
  I lay there for an undetermined amount of time, for , to me, it felt like many millennia had passed, but when one is confined to a bed and is in singularly tortured anguish I expect seconds could feel like centuries. Then the pain seemed to dull and intensify at the same time. I could move, I realized, though, by now I was consumed by a desire so fierce I could hardly stand for the shuddering. When I stood, the first thing I noticed was how I moved. Naturally clumsy in life, I had never know what it was to be graceful, but now . . . Now I seem to float over the ground, as if my feet did not touch it at all. I also noticed the length and color of my hair - naturally a line-straight, bright copper red that fell to my mid-back - which now fell to my waist in crimson tresses of a silky, wavy quality I had only once dreamed of.
   The last change I faced I dreaded the most, I sighed as I ran my tongue lightly over my teeth and was revolted by the half -grown fangs that had replaced my canines and now bit lightly into my lower lip.
  A sigh escaped me again and my head snapped up as a familiar scent reached my nose. Normally, the scent would have repulsed me, but now the scent ran over my tongue with such longing that I had never before or since known. I turned my head and bit my lip . . . Carnal desires are below you, I told myself, for they always had been.If you don’t you’ll die, my own voice screamed at me. Then let me, I lost, I deserve that fate that awaits me.
  The thought startled me. I lost? Lost what? That was when I saw the quickly healing cuts and the fresh bruises. Yes, I had obviously lost . . . I deserve my fate..