Page 38 of Night Fall
Mya called out her brother’s name, but Greg threw her a sharp glare before turning back to Francois. “Agreed.”
The moment they walked out of the meeting hall, Mya grabbed Greg’s arm. “Why did you do that for me?”
“I don’t believe Erik’s dead,” Greg said, ripping his arm from her grasp and marching down the street on furious steps.
His words shocked her, and for a moment she stood still staring at his back, then raced after him.
“He is dead,” she whispered at first, but then the raw emotion overwhelmed her and she screamed, “He’s gone! Why would you want to investigate his death? Don’t you get it? He left. He left me!”
Greg’s eyes narrowed, hardened. “And what would you like me to do? Let you die over a possibility?”
“Yes! I would rather be dead. At least then I could be with him!”
His eyes flashed red, and darkness flew at them at such high speed that the wind chilled her. “I will never let that happen,” he hissed.
“I wish you would!” Tears clouded her vision and rolled down her cheeks. She looked down at her trembling hands, saw Erik’s metal ring, and her heart broke and bled until it was as dead as Erik. “There’s nothing for me here. Nothing,” she whispered.
Greg didn’t say another word.
Days and months and years went by, and Mya did nothing.
She spent most of her time in a catatonic state where she simply stared outside and watched as the sun rose and set. She watched as time went by, as people laughed, ate, grew, fell in love, and died. She watched it all because Erik couldn’t, and she knew he’d never see another day beside her.
Greg reminded her to eat. Luke did too, but it was Greg who would force blood down her throat when she got a little too close to the edge of starvation, and it was Greg who took the brunt of her anger every time he made her eat. He also took her anger, her rage and sorrow, every time he stopped her from killing herself.
She tried, by the gods how she’d tried. Her accursed power made it so most things that would at least weaken other vampires did nothing to her. She could go months without blood, direct wounds healed in an instant, and her body rejected poison. Mya tried to hang herself, but the rope broke most of the time, and on the few blessed occasions where it didn’t Greg always found her and cut her down. She tried to drown herself; he saved her. She tried to shoot herself; when he realized she owned a gun he removed all the bullets without telling her, and then he removed anything she could use as a weapon until she had no choice but to sit in her misery and endure it.
One day, she watched from her window as someone threw out a hoe. Mya’s sunken eyes widened at the chance. She raced downstairs and moved to open the door, only to find her brother. He had the same look on his face as always, a grim glare with a frown at his mouth, as if his disappointment in her was etched onto his skin. Without a word he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder.
“Let me go!” she screamed, but he remained silent as he carried her upstairs. She pounded on his back, shouted and cried and cursed at him, and yet he still didn’t say a word.
He sat her down firmly in her chair before turning to leave.
She yelled so loudly, lost and manic, “Why won’t you let me die? Why won’t you let me have peace? Why are you being so selfish—”
He laughed, a bitter chuckle that seemed to come from deep inside him, then he turned around to face her with so much fire in her eyes that she drew back for a moment.
“Selfish? I’m selfish? I’m not the one fucking dreaming of killing themselves to try and reunite with a man who might not even be dead!”
Mya rose from her seat. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say that! He’s gone, and the fact that you can’t accept that—”
“If that isn’t rich coming from you. I can accept that he’s gone. I accept it every day that I wake up and breathe this air and have to come to this house to see if today is the day I will find my sister’s lifeless body,” Greg growled.
Mya threw her arms out as she screamed, “I didn’t ask you to take care of me!”
Greg’s eyes narrowed. “You’re right. You didn’t ask me to take care of you, but that’s what family does. You may have forgotten we exist in all your grief and pain. You may believe there’s nothing left for you here. None of us may matter to you, but I’m not going to give up on you. Hate me all you want, but that will never happen, Mya.”
Her eyes stung and his form became blurry under the trail of hot tears as the monster of chaos within her surged to the height of a rogue tidal wave. “Greg—”
He shook his head. With an exasperated sigh, he turned to leave.
“I don’t hate you!” she choked, reaching out to him even though she stood stuck, unable to make herself embrace him.
Greg froze.
“I don’t hate you,” she whispered, “but I have nothing here.”
“You have a family, Mya!” Greg shouted so loudly that she swore the whole house shook. “You have a brother and a cousin that love and adore you and want to help protect and save you with every fiber of their beings, but you won’t let us! For years all you cared about was Erik!”
