Vitality (Vitality Series #1)

Chapter 15 Madness pt.2

Layton's throat hummed for that lightning taste. His head twitched to the sides. Eyes closed. He breathed heavily through his nose. His jaw muscles felt so tight, it was as if they were wired shut.

She had taken him off course inside the library; why did he go?

It brought on unpredictable bouts of anger. It stirred up long-forgotten memories — and more anger. She was unctuous in his grip. He hadn't been sleeping and barely eating. He could not go on anymore with it. The unforeseen consequences would break him before he could her. It was time to end this. The game was done. Another would come along.

He descended past the library where she sat on her ledge, luring her away into the dark. He had wondered if she would follow him. Even though he knew she would, he wondered. And she did. They were attracted to his darkness and death. Her more than anyone. But of course she was.

"Something wicked this way comes," he whispered out into the air as he continued forth.

In the old cemetery, there was a tomb that held stairs, leading down into his chambers. There he slept. There he fed. Those chambers led to the passage for the old manor he'd taken over before she was born, and its tower where he would see her across town in the bell tower, shining light in the dark. It was in those chambers where he could take her last breath. He sauntered ahead absolute, taking care to remember his own speed above hers.

Her breathing was heavy behind him — and so was her aroma, the enticing and vivacious life bleeding inside her, screaming to be let free, to bleed over her seams. It made her crazy. It made him crazy!

He was delirious from her. His head was with turmoil. Why even bother luring her out? Could have simply taken her.

End this!

Layton slowed, readying himself, his body as tense and hard as the stone statues surrounding them. His teeth eagerly escaped, sharp and painful, lonely against the building wind. He turned to her, though with speed undetectable to her, catching her in a moment of suspension from speed where her hair flowing in the wind fell around her shoulders, lovely as she halted. Her eyes twinkled with the moisture of the beginning rain... and something else. What was it? Layton couldn't think of it. He discerned her in a state of weightless life, of breathtaking mortality, a moment of pure exhilaration cultivated by him.

He wanted more...

Startled, he hid quickly behind a statue — he wasn't able to go through with it. He growled at himself, grinding his teeth together, and threw his head back on the cement behind him. He sifted through his thoughts, irritated about why he couldn't bring himself to forge through; she was indeed a force to be reckoned with. Anger rose in him hastily and then fell instantly as she passed, still looking for him. And he watched her. Instead, he was now intrigued, and so many things at once.

He recognized then, the turmoil in his head and his chest from long ago, before his final transcendence; they were what humans felt...

It took him a minute to ponder over that, and then it hit him, and his growl was half-spite, half-amusement. "You wicked little thing..."

This didn't belong to him anymore; he was not capable of holding it inside. Layton took another look at her, and a breath, knowing he wasn't going through with it tonight, and not knowing anything else, he disappeared from the graveyard.

In his dining hall, lit up by red-hot fires from all around the usually dark room, he walked himself through the motions, back and forth. His head was down with his mind spread far and thin, memories from long ago coming to him, flashing and slicing, painful, RAGE-inducing. He threw his head back.

Breathe in.

A life long ago. A boy. A time forgotten by the world. Her. He'd remember it, but it didn't exist in this world. His mother. He was hurting. Family and friends. His muscles were turning to sharp glass inside of him. He wasn't him. Who was he? Blood. Blood. Blood. His body tightened until it was made of only rigid rage. Red rage. Tearing flesh while still innocent. Can't hold on to self. He didn't want to feel this — not again! Can't ever go back home again. SORROW.

STOP!

"Get. OUT OF ME!" He grabbed his head and the phantoms crawling around inside it. His body felt like it was being torn to pieces. "GET OUT OF ME!" His mind erupted in a spurt, sending him thrashing through the room in a deranged fit, setting it on fire. A roar ruptured from him so loud the windows shattered, the skies thundered, and he blasted through the ceiling, leaving the pouring rain to wrestle with the fires consuming below.

He went up into the air almost like raging smoke going up into a drift of wind. Elements of his body turned to night and shadow, losing a part of himself to this world, the part that was death, amorphous, and he escaped gravity's grasp for a time to levitate. He dropped close behind the girl. Ava. But too far for her to see in the pouring rain. The ground quaked. He sensed her terror, and this stopped him like a whip to the face. She ran, and Layton followed after her, pushing himself forward so that he could tear her to shreds, while also holding himself back. End this. He was exhausted.

He stopped himself by digging his hands and feet into the cement ground and watched as a wolf came to her. It was as if she'd called for help — it listened, and it came.

"You'll pay for this," Layton warned her as she disappeared off the street. "You'll pay for all this pain."

He waited there until fresh blood passed, snatched it, and went back to the dark.