Broken (The Captive #5.5)(66)
Screams resonated through the air as he leapt up the embankment in one easy bound and landed upon the smoke enshrouded street. The potent scent of blood mixed with the odors of sweat and panic. The woodsy and acrid aroma of the smoke filled the air to create something that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. He didn't care about any of it though; all he craved was death.
Arrows flew through the air but he didn't pay them any attention as he grabbed hold of two humans. He tore the throat out of one and snapped the neck of the other before carelessly dropping their bodies to the ground. The murderous frenzy churning within him made him feel like a demon, rising up from Hell to scrub the earth clean of all the human vermin that resided upon it. For the first time he felt the power of his ancestors throbbing and growing within him. Felt the connection to the original vampire that had walked this earth and he knew it was Lucifer's blood that filled his veins.
He easily slaughtered another four humans before he stopped to feed on the fifth. He tossed away the empty shell that remained. It was the first human he'd ever killed, something he'd sworn he'd never do, and yet he felt nothing for the pathetic creature as he stepped over it. They were like rats though. Everywhere he looked more of them seemed to emerge but he was driven by revenge, consumed with the emptiness inside of him, and fueled by the blood pulsing within his veins.
Moving faster after each kill, he glided seamlessly through the chaos. Rising up like a demon behind the humans he hunted, he pulled them down with him into the smoke. He brought to them, in the last seconds of their lives, the desolation that now encompassed him, before tearing them apart and tossing them aside. The screams of the ones he murdered resonated in his ears. The horror on their faces barely registered as he slaughtered one after another until the thirty or so humans that had survived the original attack on the village were nothing but piles of waste littering the ground.
Standing in the center of the road, he surveyed the carnage. Blood had seeped through his clothes to adhere the linen to his skin. The sticky liquid dripped from the soaked strands of his hair, ran down his chest in rivulets and fell upon the reddened dirt road. Carcasses of vampires and humans littered the ground around him. The flames of the spreading fire crackled and popped, waves of heat licked against his flesh as the blaze consumed the surrounding woods and huts.
The whole town was going to burn and he didn't care. He stepped over a couple of headless humans as he searched the bodies scattered across the ground. Whatever vampires had managed to survive had fled the scene; he doubted any of them would be returning.
None of them mattered though; there was only one that did. His blood in her veins had ceased calling to him, but he caught the scent of sweet asters even over the massacre surrounding him. Pulled irresistibly toward her, he felt nothing as he stepped over Arturo's motionless body and purposely continued forward.
His stride slowed when he spotted her blue tunic in the shadows of a nearby hut. Her left hand was stretched toward the embankment that was only feet away from her. She appeared to be reaching to something far beyond this world and him. The anger and revenge that had fueled him started to dissipate as he approached her. Grief swelled within him, tears burned his eyes as he knelt beside her. Her face was turned toward him; her eyes were open and unseeing. Though there was no life left within her there was a look of peace on her face that rocked him to the very center of his being.
"Genny," he breathed as he pressed tremulous fingers against her porcelain cheek.
Her flesh was already cooling beneath his hand; her beautiful black eyes were becoming opaque and showed no flicker of a reaction to his touch. The times her face had lit up and radiated her love for him flooded his mind as his fingers slid back to touch upon her silken hair. A choked cry escaped him, his shoulders hunched forward and he moved closer to her. His life crumpled around his feet as surely as the huts toppling beneath the fire eating at them. Everything he'd ever dreamed of, or hoped for, was as dead as she was. The temptation to curl up beside her, gather her into his arms and let it all go built within him.
Even as the urge hit him, his gaze landed on the arrows protruding from her body.
The fear and pain she must have experienced in her last minutes resonated within him. Fear and pain he had promised to keep her safe from. Self-hatred swamped him; his entire body began to shake from the waves of emotion crashing against him. He had failed her, he had promised to keep her safe, she had been his wife and he had failed her. He wouldn't do so again, everyone and everything that had been even partially responsible for her death was going to pay and he knew exactly who to start with.
Unable to take the sight of them, he broke the shafts off the arrows and gently rolled her over to pull them out of her beautiful body. He wasn't aware that he was crying until he closed her eyes and his tears fell down to wet her soot and dirt streaked skin. Lifting her within his arms, he clasped her against his chest and bent to press a kiss against her cheek. Her head lolled lifelessly against his chest as he walked across the road to the woods.
He carefully placed her in a secluded place within the forest before returning to the town. There was nothing that he cared about anymore, but if he was going to get his full revenge he couldn't leave things like this. Moving with rapid speed throughout the town, he gathered the remains of the dead and tossed them onto the spreading flames. There could be no proof that a vampire had been the one to kill all the humans. The humans would still be suspicious of what had caused the deaths here, but burned remains offered no evidence and there were no vampires left in this village for the people to come after anymore.