Vitality (Vitality Series #1)

Chapter 22 Vitality of Blood

The sun's rays shined down on the earth outside, growing warmer as it rose higher in the sky. Inside Layton's chambers, where it was dark and cool, he lay working himself to sleep, gorging on the now free-pouring life from the girl frail between his arms. He'd been starving by the time he'd left Ava, though he hadn't realized until now it wasn't for blood. Like an addict, he longed to be back in her embrace. He craved escape from that addiction as he tightened his grip around the flesh beneath him, the need constricting his breathing and scorching through his veins to his heart, his eyes, where it all burned.

Sadness had blanketed down around Layton and Ava as he'd bent down towards her on the floor the night before, a blanket so heavy that neither of them could have stood without each other's arms. This was grief?

He'd imagined his arms wrapped around Ava tightly as her life poured into him, but the moment her arms had wrapped back, holding onto him, taking whatever life she could get from him, he had gone weak. It was unsettling how painful a gentle touch could be when you'd only known callous disregard for so long. But it was his own welcoming of it that had hazed him. It was like he had let something go to take it.

And he had. He'd let everything else go, picked her up, and carried her down the hill beside the house and the passageway to the small beach, where he'd sat her in the rocky sand so that she could breathe in fresh air — where he could attempt to breathe in air. He sat on the log near her. Not too close. He was unsure now.

When she looked up at him, her eyes pulled him into some kind of void within himself. The intensity of them made him feel as though, for a second, he was actually feeling what she was feeling, a violent storm of warm lights — spiraling; was that her or him? For that brief moment, he thought he would follow her to the ends of the earth. It almost seemed genuine; though he knew it was not. Still, he lingered in the illusion of it.

It was clear she didn't know what she possessed. Everyone else felt it. Even the animals. It was magnetic and as lunacy-provoking as the moon. She was invaluable, and Layton would find the key to unlock her.

"I'm not broken," she proclaimed adamantly, eyebrows stubbornly tight together. It was the first thing she wanted to make clear.

"Of course you're not..." He laughed inside at her stubbornness, liking the sweet aftertaste of it in spite of himself. Sometimes it reminded him of a little lioness cub trying to roar... or perhaps a swan trying to fly. It was the determination she had to light a spark of fire in the rain. He tried to keep down the corner of his lip that tugged up. "You're taped together."

She frowned up at him; she didn't realize the beauty in that, but her brows showed him she warmed up to the idea after a thought — that made him laugh inside too. Uhh...

He remembered that since long ago, people have been mesmerized by the pure of heart and the unbent or unbroken. He'd never understood that. It was the souls painted, shattered, and broken like a million stars in a galaxy that he found mesmerizing. And even more beautiful still was the quilt they managed to manufacture after it all, which wrapped it all up with the kind of softness that still produced love somehow, and in ways others didn't know how to — the strength that pulled it tight together and shone with every color in the spectrum. They were stars that still shined to us millions of years after they've burnt out.

She was magnificent.

He'd watched her break into a million pieces every time she'd gone into her room alone, shining in the dark, and then build herself back up again. And every time, she had come out to her people with a sober face, only to give them something they needed, a little life. There was an intense ever flow of crashing waves in her soul, a force as vital and vivacious as blood, blood that brings nourishment and oxygen, with the power to live and grow, create life. It was the source of life and essence of vitality. If only she knew.