Requiem on Water [Book I]

Chapter 7

I have good hope that there is something after death.
― Plato

 

Chapter 7

The fog had been pestering Alice's mind most of the time she found herself bored. It wasn't really fun being an Immortale and having to hide from Hunters who wanted to kill you. The dreams haunted her still, but Alice couldn't bring herself to tell Arthur, she couldn't find the will to voice her fears. She knew that Anastasia was growing suspicious, and for some nonsensical reason Alice wanted to keep the fog a secret. She kept envisioning her human self in her dreams. You were meant to die Alice, not kill, she kept saying. She had no idea what it meant, Alice didn't even know if it was real – even though it felt as real as if experiencing it not only through a dream – but it frightened her; she had seen the fog more than once after all.

She was lying on the bed as the sun set behind the horizon but Alice couldn't bring herself to get up. She felt tired, the dreams exhausting her mind, draining her body. She found that she couldn't help but think about the strangeness of it all. Why she was meant to die, she had no idea, but she knew that she wanted to live; she knew that she wanted to kill. She tried pushing it from her mind, but it was impossible when you thought yourself insane. How could she possibly focus on anything other than the possibility that she might be losing her mind?

"Sweetheart, are you alright?"

Alice turned her head to look at Arthur. He stood in the doorway with a grim expression on his face. She looked at him adoringly, taking in his very presence. She loved how his dark hair fell over his shoulders, making a slight curl at its end. She got lost when she looked into his endless, coal eyes, which had more life in them than any other's eyes. He was beautiful to Alice. Arthur knew that something was bothering Alice greatly, he could feel her concern reverberate through his heart. But for some reason Alice was shutting him out and he couldn't understand why.

"Do we have to kill the humans we feed on?"

Alice had thought it through; it seemed as though the black fog appeared each time a life was about to end. She wasn't certain, of course. It had only happened when Anastasia had tried to kill the Hunter – her father – and when she had killed the man – whose name she didn't care to remember – at the homeless shelter. Arthur sat beside Alice on the bed, taking her hands into his. He had known that it would be difficult for Alice to kill. He had known it even before he had changed her. It was his only regret for changing her though. She would learn to live with it, just as he had. But Arthur didn't know that Alice was perfectly fine with taking human lives; he didn't know that Alice was actually only scared of the black fog. But how could he know when Alice didn't tell him? How could he help her when he was left in the dark?

"If we don't kill them, then they go into transition. If we do not complete the transition, they will ultimately die, and it will be most painful," he said. "I know it's hard at first—"

"It's not hard," she said, pushing herself up into a sitting position. "I was just curious."

His brow furrowed and Arthur felt a little confused because Alice's words contradicted against the emotions he felt emit from her. But Alice was smiling and appeared to be gleeful as she held onto his hand, the angst and fear wholly washed from her mind. He marvelled at how strong she was, how beautiful and intelligent. He couldn't have chosen a better human to have made his own. He could feel the connection between them, though he couldn't shake the feeling that she was somehow detached, that after her first hunt, something had altered within Alice. But he would find out what was pestering her mind; that much he promised to himself.