Can I Drink Your Blood?

The clearing was way too vast than what we had began with. The wind that swept through, whistled through the distant trees, stroking our bloodied bodies silently and calmly.

"You know Seraph", we had been talking here and there for a while, it was the only thing we could do for now, "All of us have had...to fight Lady at one point or another...except June, I suppose. What I'm saying is...Lady's roughed all of us up. So when I saw how you busted her up...well, I know it's 'cause she didn't fight back. I kept thinking why...she let you have your way. It made me so angry but then I suppose...you really are special."

I listened in silence to her sad monologue. She went on, lost among the stars as we gazed at them.

"You are the last one of us. Ever since you came here...it's like you've been peeling our wounds one by one...horrible pain! Yet, you remained the most innocent one of us. It wasn't even fair, how is it that the most unfair...", she lost her words for a moment, "Hypocrites...all of them..."

I now understood she wasn't talking about me at all. She was just trying to take out her anger, I had an idea who she was talking about. I waited for a while before finally saying it.

"Deli, do you hate the Valentines?"

"I do!", she replied abruptly, "General Valentine? What a joke! They hated it...they hated the military...so much. All they wanted was power, politics...that was all they wanted. They hated him...because he...he was military. And now...those scumbags, they stole even his name and gave it to some nobody. They're liars. Its not that I can't see, it's not that I don't know, it's not that I died!"

In that vast silent clearing, in the middle of the forest where no one but me would hear her, Deli denied the code of Valhalla. She wasn't "dead". I could almost see it...the moment a Valkyrie loses its wings. She looks up at the heaven, with nothing but desperation and sorrow in her eyes. It almost made me chuckle.

"Deli...did you love him after all?"

She remained silent, almost gasping for breath, gazing at the endless array of stars spread all over us like a blanket.

"If I did, I would have saved him...don't you think? But...I'm sure, despite everything, he loved us...his family. Even if he never looked at my truth, even if he kept looking away...as if he didn't care...still he managed...to look at me...clearly. We, who were hated by humans, denied endlessly...it wasn't our fault, we were forsaken, doomed since the beginning, yet we kept struggling...Vampires are a thing to be hated, yet I was accepted by a human...despite my sins..."

"Deli...", I didn't want her to go on anymore. I didn't feel there was point in that. She had been cradling the memory of Benoit Valentine in some dark corner, trying to burn it into ash but now it had come sneering right at her face.

"Everything...I did...and yet he died. For my sake. For us. I could have saved him...if only I had truly loved him", she paused a while, swallowing the blood that was obstructing her voice, "Seraph, you asked me why I didn't drink blood. I'll tell you about it."

"Aren't you tired?"

"Just a little longer", she continued, "It's not that all vampires are undead, risen from their graves. The first vampire, Vlad, died after he became a vampire. There is a pure bloodline, the house of Vlad, that have never died. We are born. The sun doesn't burn us, blood isn't our weakness and we do not need to sleep during the day. We are strong, but not quite enough. It is said that if a pure vampire never drinks blood, they can die, one day, of natural causes. No one knows if its the truth because all pure ones choose to drink blood. It is the only way to unlock the full potential of a vampire."

"A monster as you are, you're saying this isn't your full power?", I asked casually.

She chuckled painfully, "Yeah. I have the Root within me...the beginning of us, of Vlad, and every vampire. Even though, I decided I wouldn't use it...I now think, their might come a day when I'll have to. I hope I wouldn't have to pass it on to my children. I wish only to give them a free life, even if it means I can't be with them. I know they're doing just fine...and yet...", her voice began to break, "...and yet...why is it...that I feel so broken when I think of them?"

I silently lay beside her. Was there something I could do at all? Her children were dead. Before she killed her father, he had told her and yet it was as if, all her memory was wiped clean about that event. For her, it hadn't happened at all. Even though she didn't remember, it seems the emotions she must have felt in that moment remained behind.

"Deli...aren't you tired?", I asked in a low voice.

I know she grinned, "Yeah...say Seraph, can I drink your blood? It really hurts, I might die, you know."

"Deli, you never drank blood because you hoped to prove that theory true, didn't you? You someday hope to die, don't you? Especially with the Root, you don't want to be immortal like Vlad, don't you? So you never have to pass it on to anyone...so that, when you die, it will be the end of all vampires. Isn't that right?"

"Mmm hmm...that's so, Seraph. So now, can I drink your blood?"

"Deli, you also want to live, don't you?"

"Mmm hmm...hey Seraph, can I?"

"You want to see them, don't you?"

"Mmm hmm...Seraph...please."

"Deli", I said firmly as I sat myself up through millions of pains, I looked straight at her, with firm unyielding eyes, "You can't."

She grinned, "Mmm hmm...", and tears began rolling down her face, mixing with thick blood, stinging her open wounds. She kept smirking like that, looking at me and then turning her gaze towards the sky, crying without a sound.