Page 8 of Guardian Falling
What the fuck happened to me?
Memory tries to surface, fragmented and disjointed, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together anymore.
Jake.
His name was Jake.
At the lookout.
Making out on the hood of his car.
His hands on my skin.
His mouth on my neck.
Then…
Her.
The woman. Beautiful, terrible, and utterly brutal. Eyes that burned red in the darkness. Fangs that gleamed wetly in the moonlight. The cold of her grip was as if death itself wrapped around my wrist. Jake’s neck snapped with a sound that still echoes in my skull, sharp, final, and real.
The pain as she bit down.
The horror as she drained me.
The sickening sweetness as she made me drink.
The remembered words,‘I have plans for you, little scion.’
My hands shake violently, tremors running through fingers that suddenly seem too pale, too perfect, skin appearing as marble in the strange light. I hold them up, staring, and the details assault me with painful clarity. Every curl of my fingerprints stands out in sharp relief, every crease in my palm seems carved with precision, and the veins—God, the veins that should carry warm blood beneath skin that should be flushed with life—they’re dark, visible, threading through me like shadowy rivers that no longer flow.
I push to my feet, and again the movement comes too easily. My legs shouldn’t support me this smoothly after whatever happened. I should be weak, disoriented, struggling to find balance. Instead, I’m standing in a heartbeat, steady as stone, my body responding to commands with frightening efficiency.
Something’s broken inside me.
Something fundamental has been rewired, replaced, and remade.
The hunger hits again without warning.
One second, I’m standing here, trying to piece together what the hell happened to me. The next agony detonates in my gut with volcanic force, a yawning emptiness that eclipses every other sensation. It’s not the gentle rumble of missing a meal, not the dull ache of going too long without food. This is violent, all-consuming, a void opening up inside me that demands to befilled with something I can taste at the back of my throat, even though I don’t know what it is.
My gums ache.
Sharp and deep, a pressure that blooms along my jaw and spreads like fire beneath the skin. It pulses, tight and insistent, as if something is pushing its way forward from the inside. I whimper, the sound startled out of me, and clamp my teeth together on instinct.
The pressure doesn’t stop.
It forces its way down.
There’s a sickening slide, a sensation of movement where nothing should be moving, and my breath stutters even though I don’t need it. Panic spikes as the ache sharpens, my jaw throbbing violently, and I lift a trembling hand to my mouth, afraid of what I’ll find.
My fingers brush my teeth.
And then…Oh God, they’re there.
Long, solid points resting against my lower lip, razor-sharp beneath my touch. Not imagined, not a trick of sensation, real in a way that makes my stomach twist. They’ve descended from my gums without permission, without warning, settling into place where my canines should be.
I trace them again, my chest tight with horror and awe as the truth sinks in. These aren’t teeth meant for chewing, smiling, or pretending to be human…
