Dancing in the Dark - 15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15.

I screamed until my vocal cords were no longer capable of making sound. Adam found me like that, Miri in tow, still trying to scream. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I understood when he grabbed my arm and made me stand up. For a brief second I didn’t want to leave Viktor’s body, but the next second I couldn’t get away from it fast enough. That was not my Viktor.

I followed behind him and Miri, who was walking along just as listlessly as me. I don’t know how long we walked but we were suddenly outside, and Adam was trying to get me to understand him. I stared at him uncomprehendingly and he gave up after a few minutes, turning to Miri instead. I watched them interact dully, noticing how Miri shied away from him when he tried to touch her arm. Miri would never meet Viktor.

He did manage to get a response from her though. She lifted her head to scent the air, then took a step away from us. I turned away to look at the moon when she shifted. I never liked to watch her change into her Friesian form. I couldn’t understand how something so large was contained most of the time in her small frame. I think Viktor would have like to watch it though. He would have been fascinated with the impossibility of it.

Miri lifted her head and scented the air again, then turned and walked off. Adam started following her, then came back and dragged me with them. I didn’t know where we were going, and I didn’t care. I felt numb. Viktor was gone. He was dead, and I couldn’t die with him. I should have died with him.

We walked through the forest and I lost myself in the memories of the last few days, from the very first second I saw Viktor, to how we carved up a body getting to know each other, to that crazy fuck in the elevators as we ran from the mess we created with our search for Miri, to that slow dance in the moonlight while a pair of sirens sang for us and helped me to really connect with him.

To the way he laughed and got turned on when I did something particularly violent, or the way my body went into sensory overload when he bit me and I would cling to him. The way his multicoloured eyes had looked so calm and matter of fact when he told me we were mates, and the way he wrapped around me and wouldn’t let go even when he was unconscious during the day.

I started crying at some point, but only realised it when Adam shoved me into Scott’s car and I leaned forward to rest my face in my hands. Feeling the wetness there that wasn’t drying blood. Miri slid in beside me and stared out of her window while I stared out of mine at the rising sun. I don’t know how they found the car. I don’t even know when they had picked up Adam’s boyfriend, who sat in the front seat next to the lab technician, fiddling with the GPS.

Viktor had laughed when I programmed the GPS to get us to this parking lot, saying it wasn’t necessary because he had looked at the map, but letting me do it anyway. We should be in a bed right now. He should be holding me. But he was gone. And I was here.

***

Vanessa opened her front door when we pulled up to her driveway. Adam got out of the car and spoke to her for a moment. I don’t know what was said, but she let out a high pitched hum, and Steve and Scott came running. They took in the situation with a glance and then the sirens moved into action. Steve came over and coaxed me out of the car and I was dimly aware of Vanessa doing the same for Miri. I moved with Steve, not really understanding what was happening until I was pushed into a shower. That brought back memories of the last time I was in the shower, and the screaming started again as my magic made a renewed attempt to find Viktor. There was nowhere for it to look though, and the frantic, swirling attempts it made to find something it had lost made me sick.

I threw up in the shower, vomiting until there was nothing more coming up, and all the while Steve hummed to me, and got me clean. My mind was slowly cracking under the pressure, and I grabbed onto Steve and held onto him for a long time. Eventually, he pushed me off him, and got me out of the shower. He put me in the bed I had shared with Viktor the day before, and it still smelled like him.

I lay there breathing in his scent and trying not to scream again and eventually Miri came in and lay down next to me. She burrowed into me and cried. She cried and cried and cried, for what I don’t know, and all I could think was that I was too late to save her, and had gotten my vampire killed in the process. And she never got to meet him.

Miri stopped crying and started talking, but I couldn’t summon the will to make sense of her words. Eventually Miri took my face in her hands and forced our eyes to meet. I focussed on her and finally started listening.

“We’re going to make it better for you Mark. I promise,” she kept saying that over and over again, until I understood her.

“How?” I asked brokenly. “He’s . . . he’s g-gone Miri. V-Viktor is g-gone and . . . and . . . I can’t f-follow him,” I started crying again, and held onto Miri tightly, like she could bring him back for me if I just begged her enough.

I cried for a long time, and when it finally stopped it was because I physically couldn’t do it anymore. Not long after that Steve and Vanessa came in and helped us up. They took us into their cellar, and when I saw what they had set up, relief washed over me. It was genius.

Miri let out a strangled sound and wrapped me up in a tight hug. She kissed my forehead, whispered something I missed in my ear and left, running back upstairs. Steve and Vanessa helped me to climb into the chest freezer that was two thirds full of half frozen water.

The shock of cold knocked the breath out of me, but at the same time it was a relief. I forced myself into the water, and sank down underneath the surface quickly, curling into a ball. I was still holding my breath when the lid closed, but I was too cold to move to save myself from drowning almost instantly. My body rebelled for a few more seconds, trying to live as it always does, but I was trapped, both by cold, and my own desire to end the emptiness inside.

My last thought, before it all went black, was of Viktor and me on the deck of a pool, dancing in the dark.