10 Death Is Permanent

"NOOOO!" HER SCREAM TORE THROUGH HER LIKE A GREAT SHARD OF GLASS. She felt her eyes widen and pulse quicken, her heart thudding like a rock rattling in a box. The scream came again, desperate, terrified... human. The blood drained from her face, before she was even aware of making a conscious decision, her legs were pounding furiously on the uneven muddy tracks.

"No no no no Mike please wake up!" She couldn't feel his energy anymore, his spirt. She felt nothing. She couldn't believe it. Mike laid lifeless, looking paler then normal.

Emily shook her head mutely. She'd been here an hour tops, or was this some odd, sick and twisted nightmare, a nightmare that she couldn't escape from.

Breathing became a problem, as her breath hitched inside her throat, as she struggled to gain control. To see him dead was to die herself, death is permanent, even she couldn't bring him back. Death is forever. Death is when the spark in the eyes is extinguished, yet unlike fire is utterly without smoke.

Grayson had disappear, no where to be found. Though she didn't care if he was gone because the only person she loved most was dead.

Mike is dead... she couldn't believe it, it sounded untrue, like she were living a nightmare, but his eyes were fixed and vacant for it not to be real. Emily crouched down, one hand over his chest, there was no beating heart there. He was gone.

She picked up his hand, so cold and pale, touching it to her newly wet cheek, closing her eyes for just a moment. Her brother was gone, his spirit was long gone. She placed his hand by his side as tears soaked her cheeks.

She cried until there was nothing left inside but raw emptiness that nibbles at her insides like a hungry rat. Her irises were threaded scarlet and her eyeballs hung heavy in their sockets. Her body hung limp like each limb weighed twice as much as it had before and just moving it about was a slow painful effort.

The sun had finally made an appearance as is shone in the sky, but not for her, the birds sung in bursts of melody, but not for her, for her there was no beauty left in the world. She had lost her best friend. Her brother.

"Emily..." Gabriel put his hand softly on the shoulder of his friend as a token of his sympathy, it was a comfort feeling but she didn't want to feel comfortable, not after what just happened. How was she supposed to explain this to Liz? Allison even, she will be crush, Her niece was already quite fragile never mind adding her fathers death on top of that.

"I'm so sorry..." Gabriel spoke ever so gently, his eyes showed the kind of gentle concern my father used to have. He left his hand there on her shoulder, but instead of flinching away like she always did, it soothed her.

"Don't." She spoke, rocking back and forth holding her brothers chest, as if that was going to somehow bring him back to life, in the world of the living but she knew that was a facade her mind wanted to believe, as it struggled to absorb what just happened.

"I'm always here if you need me", He spoke with such a soft voice she felt his words calming her more by the way they were said than the actual words. It felt as if she were wrapped in a blanket of his caring.

How could she not consider her actions now, now that she could see how profoundly they effected him too. She knew better than to blame him for everything, he was King and he had his reasons for everything he did, but right now she only thought of how much of this is her fault, if she didn't get herself involved with Grayson her brother would be alive. How stupid she felt right now, thinking just because she got a glimpse of his past, she knew him. She didn't and that was that.

There was absolute stillness. No air stirred the leaves that surrounded her. No clouds drifted in the sea of blue above. No water dripped or flowed. Not a sound could be heard either close at hand or in the far distance. Even her own breath seemed to die as soon sit left her mouth. It was an eerie sort of tranquility, so instead of being soothing to her senses, it heightened them.

Silence gnawed at her insides, it hung in the air like the suspended moment before a falling glass shatters on the ground. The silence was like a gaping void, needing to be filled with sounds, words, anything but yet she couldn't. She didn't even want to speak.

"I think it's time for us to head back and inform his mate of this." Gabriel knew all too well, he didn't have to inform his mate about this, she would of felt his death. But he thought it was the least he could do with everything that has happened.

DREAD SEEMED TO OWN EMILY, pushing her against an invisible gale. Dread had her stomach locked up tight, nothing getting in or out, the feeling sets her face like rigorous mortis, her teeth locked tight together. Gabriel was informing Liz of her brothers death, she didn't have the heart to tell her, it killed her inside knowing it was her fault this happened.

From the waiting area came the most hysterical crying, the screaming sobs only interrupted by the person's need to draw breath. It was a primal sound, one we're programmed not to ignore. Emily knew who it was, her sister in-law. She could feel her pain and it tore her apart inside. This wasn't supposed to happen, this was all wrong.

Her hands were frailty and caution, shaking gently on her lap, they hadn't stoped shaking since her brothers death. The feeling inside her chest was tightening, it's the way that when you open your lips, no sound came out, or the way it robs you of your senses and replaces it with something that makes your muscles contract and eyes widen in dread.

Although she wasn't afraid or fearful of anything, she couldn't help the fear that still lingered within her. 'A fear of what though?' Maybe the fact that she didn't know what to do or say, she felt the guilt within her. It's her fault it happened.

When the words wouldn't come, the tears did. The mourning was supposed to be something dignified and stoic in her family, but she cried like a child, noisily, with running snot and choking sobs and she was not ashamed, her brother had just past twenty minutes ago. But the numbness of her loos had passed, and the pain was hitting her out of nowhere, doubling her over, racking her body with sobs. 'Where are you?' She cried out in her. 'Where have you gone?' Of course, there was never any answer every time she'd ask that simple question.

With everything that had happened she couldn't ignore one thing... Grayson, hatred is all that is left. She had offered to help him only for him to take away the one things she couldn't bare to lose. She wanted him dead, all of them.

They shouldn't even exist. But her taste for seeking vengeance, was stronger than the pain she felt within herself, she wanted him dead and that's what she was intending on doing, she didn't care who he was and what he was. 'But what then?' She had no idea. She didn't care what came next, that's where she'd finish.