Sweet Blasphemy

I feel Him coming before I see Him. Panickedly, I rasp out, “cheilt” and, knowing that hiding the Soul Dagger on my person is a bad idea, I thrust it out behind me into the charcoal grit of the ground, hoping that the dust settles before He reaches me. Not knowing if the evidence of my hasty disposal is visible, I tense as I see Him.
His blood-red eyes are alight with a curious fire, a fire that screams of anger and malice— two things that I have never before seen in Him. Death is moving lithely, sleek and graceful, His wings tucked inside of His black t-shirt. His red jeans lay low on His hips, and I blink as I see that He is barefoot. For an immensely idiotic moment, I wonder why His feet aren’t burning. Then I realize that this is His fucking realm, and if He wants His feet to burn, only then will they burn. Otherwise, like everything else in the rest of the realm, it will bend to His will.
“Seraphina,” He bites out, and my heart stammers to a stop. Fear. That is all I feel in this moment—pure, adrenalized fear. Death, the being that I had never previously seen even remotely frustrated or ruffled, is raging mad. He looms over me, His black hair tumbling into His face, down the curve of His neck and coming to a stop at His collarbone. I quiver in fear.
He says nothing more; He just roughly grabs onto my arm and suddenly, I find myself without any air, torn away from all solid ground. Terrified that I have somehow been sucked into an abyss of some sort, I clutch onto the only physical object I can find—Death’s body. “What- what are you doing?!?” I ask. Weeks ago, I would have been crying by this point. But now? I am far more immune to horrifying circumstances such as this. I can, at the very least, get a handle of my fear and try to think things through rationally.
Death does not answer me. I feel the ground crash up into me, and suddenly I am sprawled across His bedroom floor. Quickly, I try to sit up, but find that my world is spinning to rapidly and that the centripetal force is pinning me to the ground. Death kneels in front of me, glaring at me through His web of black hair.
“I know what you’ve been doing, Seraphina,” He hisses. “You’ve been conspiring, sneaking around, trying to escape. Visiting the seraph locked up in Desolation. You want to go back to Earth, don’t you?”
I am petrified into silence. The only times when I had seen Death lose His well-maintained composure had been when we were in bed, and He had lost Himself to His wants. But never had I seen Him angry.
He is the scariest thing that I have ever seen. Scarier than Ezra, scarier than cruel Andy. Scarier than anything in the known and unknown universe.
“Answer me, Seraphina!” He snaps, and I feel pain explode in my jaw. I realize that He never moved, yet I know for certain that my jaw has been sliced open by His will. I realize with horror that He can hurt me just with His thoughts.
He can will my pain into existence and force it onto me without a second thought.
“I-I’m sorry!” I fight the urge to burst out into tears. I muster up the strength needed to move my hand to my jaw, and when I pull it away, it is soaked in blood. I grit my chattering teeth to keep from sobbing. “Please, don’t hurt me, my-my Lord.”
I feel Him kick into my side. “It’s too late for that, now isn’t it? I’ve been so kind to you, Seraphina, as kind as my nature will allow me to, and you just don’t see it. Or, you see it, but you don’t care. I’m just a monster to you, aren’t I? Your views haven’t changed from since you were a little girl. You still think that I’m a tyrant. A monster. A horrible, wretched being.”
I feel Him kick me from off my side and onto my back, so that my stomach is up, facing Him, like a submissive dog laying down for its master. I suppose that is what I have to be in this moment, if I want to survive. If I want to convince him that I am sorry. If I want to convince Him that anything He says or does can actually make me stop trying to escape. If anything, with every blow He gives me, the more I am sure that I can escape. I will not allow myself to remain in a position so hurtful to me. I will save myself. I will.
I will not give in, but right now, I need to give the impression that I already have.
“Please, please stop, you’re-you’re scaring me,” I hear myself squeak. At the very least, I do not have to manufacture my fear, or the tears that are rising up behind my traitorous eyes. I am scared, and I am helpless. I may be deadset on escaping, but right now, I have to be trapped. Death kicks me over and over again.
“I’m sorry, Sera, but you have to understand- I am never letting you go,” He yells to me. “You are mine, Seraphina Blakeley. I have never wanted anything or anyone like I want you. You alone make me feel like I am alive. And I will not allow you to steal yourself away from me. Never, do you understand me? You will never leave this place. Never. You are mine.”
“If you’re sorry, please stop,” I quiver, and I finally feel my tears start to spill over the rims of my eyes as I collapse inside of myself at the agony he is summoning inside of my ribcage. “Please, please. I want to go home, my Lord. Please! I want to return home, but-but if that is impossible, please, please! Please don’t hurt me! If-if you, maybe, possibly- if you treat me less like a pet, and-and more like a girl, then… then I will gladly do you bidding!”
Like someone has flipped a switch, all of my pain disappears. I know without touching it that my jaw is healed and the blood is gone. Returning to a kneeling position, Death leans over my stomach, and I feel His wings run the length of my body, brushing against me and making me shake with the ecstasy of Their powers.
“Seraphina, I don’t want to hurt you,” He says in what can only be described in a mournful voice. Even with the pain He forced onto me fresh on my mind, I still pause at His tone. He sounds like, maybe, He actually cares. I wonder, not for the first time, what I truly mean to Death. “Sera,” He murmurs against my stomach, His lips pressing against the leather of my brown corset. “I don’t want to let you go, do you understand me? I will never let you return to your old mortal life. You were meant for exquisite purposes, not a mundane life. You were meant to be my queen, to rule over every being that has ever died. You were meant to be by my side.”
“Please, please don’t take offense to this, but I need to know: how can I be meant to be your companion if I don’t want to be?” I shake, afraid of His reaction. To my surprise, He wraps His arms around me and pulls me up against Him, curling my body around His. He encompasses my body in His black velvet wings, but does not use their magic on me. He leans in over me, His beautiful face marred by an emotion that I think might be pain. His nose presses against mine, and He closes His eyes.
“Seraphina, you’ve never even tried to give me a chance,” He whispers. “How can you say that you dislike me? You never tried to feel differently. You’ve never tried to explore the reasons behind why your body likes my touch. Never even accepted the pleasure I give you. You’ve taken it unwillingly, only because your body has forced you to enjoy it. You’ve never even truly admitted to yourself that perhaps you like it when I touch you simply because you find me attractive. No, you blame it on whatever base illusion of yourself that you’ve created in your mind. The monster that you view yourself as—the exact opposite of what you truly are. You tell yourself that you’re a monster, and a whore, and that’s the only reason your body reacts the way it does. You’ve never even tried to consider that you like it because you like the way I look, like the way I feel. You like,” His lips are suddenly pressed against my temple, “the danger I offer you.”
“Lord Death, please,” I whisper.
“‘Please’ what, Seraphina?” He says. He sounds like He’s… in pain. “Seraphina, tell me what you want me to do. What do I have to be to get you to care for me?”
“Lord Death…” I say, shocked. I had never considered, even for the slightest of moments, that Death cared for me. “You can’t possibly, can’t honestly care what I think of you. Honestly. Right?”
I feel a force much like magnetism connect with my body, penetrating my skin and sinking into my skin. Then, before I know it, I am on His bed, and He is kissing me.
But it is very much different from how He usually kisses me. Usually, kissing is just a precursor to rape, but tonight, it is like He has no intent of going that far. I realize, for the first time, that His lips are soft, not just warm. With my eyes wide open in shock, I see that He is quite beautiful as He kisses me. His black eyelashes dusting His sharp cheekbones, his body lean and tough against my soft form. Slowly, like falling into a daze, my eyes close and I press into Him, accepting Him for the first time.
I do not know why. Maybe it’s because I am confused as to His feelings. Before today, I had thought that He only wanted to possess me—He had said something about wanting to make my powers as a ‘Sybil’ His? But the way He has acted, it seems like maybe He is possibly attached to me. It occurs to me that it must be lonely for Him, to be sovereign to literally every being that has and ever will walk the face of every realm. It must be lonely, to live down here with monsters and magic and demons and fear.
It must be lonely to have only fallen angels for company.
Remembering the times that I had spent feeling anything but lonely with my fallen angels before I knew what they were and what they wanted from me, I crash my lips against His.
“I don’t know what you want from me truly,” I whisper to Him, “but I know, right now, what I want from you. What I want is to pretend that I am not in Hell, that I am not to be wed to Death, that I am normal. Can you help me with that? Can you make it all disappear?” I pull away from His lips long enough to look into His blood red eyes.
He tilts His head, examining me. Finally, He asks, “how can I make you forget that you’re engaged to Death when that’s what I am?”
“Be nice to me,” I whisper. “That’s a good start.”
Then, before I can reflect in horror that I just sassed Death, He is gently leaning over me, pushing my body back onto the mattress. For some reason, I laugh at this. He muffles the sound of my inexplicable laughter with a kiss, and His hands weave through my hair. “Sera, you’re beautiful,” He tells me. “I don’t know what’s going through your head right now, but I…” He cut himself off with a moan as He feels my hands run under the front of His shirt. “Seraphina….”
Before I can bring His lips back to mine again, I hear the thick wooden door slam open, and, in surprise, I jerk up and accidentally shove my boobs into Death’s face.
Wonderful.
He says nothing, just straights up, pulling His red jeans up, as they had slunk down His hips. My eyes search around the massive doorframe until they land on Andy.
I swallow hard at the expression on his face. He is livid, his blue eyes alight with barely contained anger.
“Excuse me,” Andy hisses. “But the Nightshade clan has requested a presence with the lady.”
“The Nightshade clan?” Death asks. “What do they want with her?”
Andy clenches his fist. “It hardly matters. It’s the Nightshade clan; it’d be wise not to ignore their calling.”
“Wait, what?” I sit up. “How… what are you talking about?” I accidentally meet Andy’s eyes, and then immediately avert my gaze. “Wait, why would it be dumb to ignore the Nightshades? They’re just vampires, not… I mean, you’re Death. You can control them; you’re their king. You’re Death; this is Hell, your name is literally Death so-”
“Adrian,” Death says sharply. Andy inhales loud enough for me to hear it.
“My- my lord?” He gapes at Death.
Lord Death ignores Andy, turning to me. “Adrian. Adrian Levesque. That was my name before I became Death. Death is not my name, and it never was. When I first met you, I told you that the name you probably knew me by was Death, but I never said that was my actual name. My name,” His eyes meet mine, “is Adrian.”
Wait, what?
“What? Wait, there was a you before—were you human?!?” I demand, standing up. “I thought—I guess I just assumed that you were—you were always just… this entity…?”
“My lord, I understand that the lady is curious, and that for reasons personal to you, you want to explain some things to her—but the Nightshade clan especially requested her,” Andy cuts in. I can’t even be bothered to look at Andy, because I’m too busy reeling at what Death just told me.
“I understand,” Death says lowly. “Seraphina, I’m sorry, but I have to let you leave me for now. The Nightshade clan has been around since before I came to power as Death. They’re a very powerful group of vampires, and lots of beings in this realm still see them to be their sovereigns. To deny their wishes would be… imprudent.”
I stare at Him, uncomprehending. “Wait, you were human?”
Death pulls His eyes away from me. “Sixx, take her to the coven. Tell them… that they are allowed to do whatever.” Without another look at me, Death stands up and disappears into thin air.
I stare at the place where He disappeared for about seven seconds after He vanished.
Then: “He was human?!??”
“Shut the hell up,” Andy says, his eyes flashing as he starts unlacing my corset. I don’t even bother to fight it—I can hardly think straight. What the hell? Even pushing the whole ‘Adrian’ thing aside—and trying to push aside my complete confusion about why the hell He told me—I still have so many questions buzzing around in my head. Like: why is He suddenly acting like he cares about me? Why the hell did I kiss Him?
“What the hell were you doing, making out with him like that?!?!?” Andy yells. “When the hell did you become such a—such a whore!?”
I wrench myself out of his grasp. “Isn’t that what you’ve called me since the second you dropped your friendly little guise?” I snarl, raising my eyebrows. “Come on, don’t you remember when you made me drop to my knees, naked on the bathroom floor and scream out that I’m a whore? After attacking me? Because I remember that. I remember it very clearly, Andrew. I remember it, because I fucking loved you for years, and having someone you love do that to you is something that you remember very clearly for the rest of your life. Hey, you know what? I’m not a whore. I’m not a whore, and even if no one else believes it, I know it. Because guess what? ‘Whore’ is not a real word, yeah? It’s a derogatory term used to insult, not to identify. There’s nothing wrong with liking sex—it’s kind of human nature to like sex, because if humans didn’t sexually reproduce, we’d die out. Liking sex so much that you’d do things that other people wouldn’t normally do does not make you a whore. Because whore is an insult, not a state of being. Not a lifestyle. It is not a type of person. It’s a filthy, rotten insult. And you know what? It means nothing to me.”
Andy gapes at me. Quickly, he regains his composure. He lifts my blouse up over my head and discards it. He sucks on his lip and eyes me. “Well, I think we can dress you down this time, seeing as Acheron is probably just going to strip off all your clothes anyway. Might as well make it easier for him.”
“Is that really necessary?” I give him a dull look.
“Well, I very well can’t have you walking around naked,” Andy snaps. He loosens my skirt, and it drops to the floor. I put my hand on my hip.
“So what am I going to wear? Your fucking jealousy all over me like a suffocating shroud?”
Andy stops dead in his tracks. “Excuse me?” he asks, his voice suddenly devoid of all emotion. I refuse to answer; I only cock my hip to the side and stare up at him, wearing almost no clothing but completely desensitized to the whole nudity thing. “What is this about this ‘jealousy’ thing? You think I’m jealous? Of who?”
“Who do you think?” I snap.
“Acheron? Death?” Andy questions. “Why the hell would I be jealous of them? Because they get you? Please. I could care less about you. Honestly, Sera, you’re turning into an egotist. I liked you better when you were a scared little thing back in the Land of the Living.”
“Really, Andy? You can’t claim that you don’t care about me at all and then say that ‘you liked me better when’ in the same monologue,” I glare at him. “You selfish bastard, I know you don’t care about me. You just fucking want what you can’t have, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Seraphina,” Andy says under his breath as he peels my second blouse off over my head. I clench my jaw as he puts one of my old bras on me. As he slides a black camisole over my head, he leans in close to me and whispers, “you shouldn’t be fucking around with Death in your free time. I didn’t give you that dagger so you could have sex with my master. I gave it to you so you could get out of here.” He leans down and pulls a pleated plaid skirt up to my hips. “Speaking of the Soul Dagger,” he mutters, “where the fuck did you put it?”
I pull away from him. “It doesn’t concern you, where I put it,” I say.
Andy yanks a cropped Ramones shirt down over my head. “You lost it,” he says under his breath, and his body shakes. “Goddamnit, Seraphina—you lost it?!?”
“Shh,” I leap up to my tiptoes and put a finger to his mouth. “Sh, I didn’t lose it. I was coming back from talking with Lavinia, and I felt Death coming all of the sudden. So I cas—” I stop speaking. Shit, can I really trust Andy enough to tell him about the spell Lavinia put on his Soul Dagger? I decide that Andy gave it to me, so I might as well tell him. “Lavinia cast a spell on the dagger, and I used it and turned it invisible and then threw it behind me. I knew he was going to grope me; I couldn’t have him feeling me up and then finding it. So I did the best that I could with the circumstances that I was given.”
Andy’s eyes are wide, and I realize that my finger is still pressed against his lips. I pull it away, blushing, and say, “sorry” for some reason.
“Sera,” he trails slowly. “That was a good idea,” he says, his eyes soft.
I blink. Then I turn away and straighten my t-shirt. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “She’s really smart, Sixx.” I wanted to say more, and I didn’t, at the same time. I wanted to brag about how good a friend Lavinia was, but I also didn’t want to tell Andy too much. “Can I have shoes, please?”
Andy glares at me, but he hands me black Toms. The sight of Toms in Hell would have made me giggle had I not been on my way to the Nightshade coven, where—as Death said—the vampires would be allowed to do “whatever they want” with me. Steeling myself for sexual assault and undoubtedly blood sucking, I slid my feet into the shoes. When I was ready, Andy took my hand and led me out of the room. He didn’t speak to me as we left the palace, nor as we traversed the monstrous terrain. When we reached the Nightshade’s coven, I was slightly relieved to observe that Acheron was not enchanting me with the siren scent as he had last time I’d visited the coven.
In the pure darkness, Andy releases me and throws me into one of the vampires. As I crash into them, terrified, I prepare myself to be wounded by fangs. Then, I feel softness, and breasts, and I realize that I’ve been shoved into Jezebel. Relief sighs through my fluttering heart, while my mind knows better than to relax in such a situation.
“My lord says that you may do whatever you wish,” Andy says shortly. “I will be leaving. It is your responsibility to bring her back to the palace when you are finished. You have until morning.” Then, although I cannot see him—or anything for that matter—I hear him leave the coven.
And, just like that, I am alone within the Nightshade coven.
I wait, petrified, for someone to attack me, and I try to ready myself to be raped. But no matter how much I cringe, nothing comes at me. Jezebel wraps her arms around me in—is that a hug? Is she hugging me?
“It’s just me,” she whispers in the darkness. “Sorry. I couldn’t tell you in front of Sixx—I had Acheron request you come here, so Death thinks all three of us are in here. But it’s just me. I told Acheron and Ezra that I wanted to be with you alone. It took a lot of threats and bribes, but it worked.”
“I…” I have no idea what to say. Several days ago, she had approached me, as an ally. She had given me a map, a map that had proved incredibly useful. She’d told me to come to her if I needed her—but I really had no desire to walk into the coven and get attacked by her brothers. “You—?”
“Once you’d walked away, I realized that there was no way you’d come to the coven of your own accord,” Jezebel explains. “My brother scares you way too much for that. So, I had Acheron arrange this. My brothers think I’m feeding from you or something, but I’m not going to do anything like that. I called you in here so that I can help. Also, I got you out of a night with Death. Did you notice that? I’m allowed to have you until morning.” She lights a match, and purple-blue fire that I’d only seen once before—when Andy had brought it to the coven—dances on the tip of the match. She walks over to the torches on the coven wall and lights each torch with the fire. She sees me watching and says, “it’s Starfire. Normal light is uncomfortable for vampires, but Starfire doesn’t hurt us at all. I needed light to show you some stuff. I think it’ll help you.”
“Okay…?” I am rooted to my spot in the middle of the room.
Jezebel rolls her eyes at me. “Come over here,” she says, motioning for me to join her under the torchlight. I obey, and she takes my wrist gently and pulls me over to a bookshelf in the corner of the room.
I eye it dubiously. I hadn’t exactly pegged Nightshade vampires as the ‘studious’ type. But the shelf was huge, filled with tons of books. Jezebel sees me squinting at the shelf.
She laughs. “They’re all mine. Acheron and Ezra aren’t really the ‘reading’ type,” she says. She pulls a book down from the top shelf and hands it to me. I look down at the cover. It reads: Seraphim.
“Hey, I’ve heard—Jinxx called my friend Lavinia a seraph,” I say. I cinch my brow. “Is ‘seraphim’ the plural of ‘seraph?’ It sounds like the plural form.”
Jezebel nods. “Yeah. Seraphim are angels. I’m sure you’ve seen Lavinia’s wings during your visits. She’s a seraph. As she probably told you, it’s really bad for her to be down here for even a minute, and she’s been trapped here for days. I’ve cloaked myself and gone over there. I checked her out. She must’ve told you this already, but she really doesn’t have a lot of time left. That’s why I took matters into my own hands and decided to help you.” She points at the book. “That,” she says, “should answer some of your questions about the other realm. Heaven.”
“Heaven,” I say faintly.
“Yeah,” she says.
I open the book and flip through the pages. I see pictures etched in ink on the old, worn parchment. Images of pure, unadulterated paradise jump out at me. I want to dive into the book and never come back out. “Why couldn’t I have been kidnapped and taken to Heaven?”
Jezebel snorts. “Heaven is Hell,” she says, “just a modified version of it, and vice versa. While mortals think that they’re direct opposites, they’re really more similar than they are different. Same goes for Death and Phoenix. Oh—there’s no God, there’s just Ph—”
“Phoenix,” I say. Jezebel blinks. “That’s right, right? Phoenix is the leader of Heaven. They don’t call him Life, they call him that instead.”
Jezebel tilts her head. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “But how do you know that?”
I don’t want to get CC in trouble. “I, uh, somebody told me,” I say.
Jezebel looks at me. “Huh,” she says. “Right, so. You can’t take that book out of here; it’s too risky. So you’re going to have to read it in here.” I swallow as I look at its massiveness. “Don’t worry, I’ll point out what parts you should read and which parts are total bullshit. I have other books for you to skim through,” she adds. She pulls about seven more books down from the shelf, and I am oddly reminded of school. “A couple mention Heaven, but most are about Hell. Most importantly,” she grins, “how to escape it.”
“Thank you,” I say. I stare at her, but she doesn’t notice, she is too busy rifling through her bookshelf for something. “Uh, Je-Jezebel?” I ask hesitantly. She looks back at me.
“Yeah?” She asks.
“I, uh. I don’t mean to be…rude…but, um, why are you helping me?” I ask timidly.
“I told you,” she says, seeming surprised, “I don’t like that you’re in so much pain. You don’t belong down here. You belong up where people are alive. I just want to help.”
I have no words. She smiles at me, and then goes back to sorting through her books. She pulls out something, something small that is not a book.
“Here,” she says, and she puts it in my hand.
I open my hand and stare down at it. It’s… it looks like…a mechanical bug?
“What is this?” I ask her.
“It’s a little thing I invented a while back,” Jezebel explains. “I don’t have a name for it, but it’s a little thing designed to look like a bug. If you need to contact me, say my name to it and it’ll fly off and get me. It’ll have your location programmed into it, and I’ll be able to find you. For emergencies.”
“Awesome,” I say.
“Thanks,” Jezebel says, and I see that she’s blushing a bit. I feel myself start to smile. “Alright,” she says, plopping down on the floor with her pile of books. I do the same, still clutching the Seraphim book. “Let’s get started, here. The night is only so long. We have three books entirely on Hell, two on Death, one on Heaven—that’s the one you have there, and four on vampires.”
I raise my eyebrow at her. “Uhm, not that I don’t really appreciate your help and stuff, I think maybe focusing on Hell is more—”
“Vampire magic, to be more specific,” she says, cutting me off. “Vampire magic’s your only shot to get out,” she says. “I mean, if Lavinia was older and at full strength, she could get you out with her power. And if you were trained as a Sybil, you’d be able to get yourself out as well. But Lavinia’s trapped, and you have no idea how to use your powers. So you’re going to have to rely on me. Okay?” I nod. “Alright, so here’s where you should start in Seraphim…”

Hours later, I am sprawled across the stone floor, my brain pounding with information. I’m pretty sure that Jezebel has taught me more in the last couple of hours than I’d learned in my entire school career.
Apparently, vampires were older than Death. That’s why they were undead—they were around before dying was even a concept. Being older than Death, they have the power to undermine some of his powers.
“I still don’t understand,” I say, after trying to sooth my temples with a massage. “If you guys can overrun Death with the power of just one vampire, why do you let Him rule?”
Jezebel sighs. “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself all eternity,” she groans. She flops on her belly and rests her head on my tummy. “We don’t do anything, because we don’t want to,” she says, her voice muffled. “I’m weird—I’m the only vampire that has sympathy. I don’t know why, or how, but ever since I was born, I’ve been different. For the first few years of my life, I refused to take blood from others. I didn’t want to hurt them.” She lets out a breath. “Ugh, so Acheron got pissed at me and beat the shit out of me. And although from then on, I figured out that I should act like my brothers to blend in, that pretty much solidified my differentness. If that’s a word. Being beaten by your family isn’t uncommon in the vamp world, but something about the way Acheron hit me has stuck with me. I was already a little strange before that, but once I realized that it emotionally hurt me that he’d hit me, I knew I was really something else.
“I’ve been waiting all this time to find a cause worth fighting for. All the other girls Death has kidnapped have fallen in love with Him. I know, it’s weird, and I can’t imagine it either, but they have. So I didn’t think it was worth fighting to help them, seeing as they didn’t want to help themselves. There’s only so much you can do, you know? To help someone? If they won’t help themselves, you can’t save them. So I couldn’t do anything. But everything changed when you came along. When you insulted Death as a kid, believe me, we all heard about it. He was incredibly pissed, and then incredibly amused. I knew, right then, that the little girl who’d managed to piss off Death was going to be my chance. My chance to do something, to fight for something worth fighting for.
“And then, Andy brought you into the coven, and you were completely not what I expected. I knew that you were pretty. Death is superficial—he wouldn’t want you if you weren’t. But when I saw you, you were so beautiful. You looked so…so human, so mortal. My brothers wanted you, and I wanted to steal you from them, keep them from hurting you. But once I touched you, something happened. I’ve never cared so much about another being. I feel this general empathy for all things, but I genuinely cared about you. And the closest things I’ve ever felt to that caring in strength were bloodlust and pure lust. So I didn’t know what to do. I did what I always do—I covered the bizarreness of my not-so-vampiric feelings with some very vampiric actions. I’m sorry I bit you. You smelled really good.”
For some reason, I found that really funny. After all of her soul-bearing, Jezebel decided to tack on, at the very end, that I smell good. “Thanks,” I laugh.
“Anytime,” Jezebel grins.
I am sitting in a vampire coven in the middle of hell, and somehow, I’m smiling.

Notes

GUYS I AM SO FUCKING SORRY

I AM SO SORRY



SOOOOOOOOO SORRY

I know I've been REALLY SHITTY! I'm really sorry! I've been having serious family issues! People in my family are dying left and right, and my brother was in the mental hospital, and my best friend and I are fighting, and a whole lot of shit.... I know that I still suck, but at least now you have an idea why.

SORRY!

*title cred: "Bruises and Bitemarks" by Good With Grenades*

If y'all really respond and I know that y'all haven't forgotten me and stuff, I'll post a new chapter real soon. I'm working on it now