Vivienne

Darting between the myriad of snowflakes slowly tumbling to the ground, Vivienne had been making a game to see how many her little bird form could avoid or move out of her way. -Poor little birdie.-  Her blob of darkness taunted.  Flapping her dark wings harder, Vivienne internally groaned and spun her tiny form higher. -No you can’t hide.-  Trying to push the voice from her head, Vivienne spotted a tiny opening in the falling flakes and would lead her to a branch of an oak.  Beating her wings a final time, Vivienne shot through the imagined tunnel like a bullet and landed on the bough hard enough to shake the caked snow to the ground.  

How had things gotten so bad in just a few hours, Vivienne wondered as she mindlessly preened her feathers.  Wiggling her feathers back in place, Vivienne started playing the events since the group arrived at the bazaar. Casually meeting everyone, Having a fun time and then out of the blue.. -Was it really out of the blue?-  The dark voice echoed once more.

‘Of course it was out of the blue.’  Vivienne rationalized.

-You said it yourself, you’ve been slipping.-

Emitting a little squawk, the raven shuffled along the branch as though she were pacing.  Vivienne knew that her inner shadow would wrap parts of the truth in its lies. ‘Indications were that this was safe.  Typical events for a city of this size.’

-Keep telling yourself that, little birdie.-

Frustrated with her inner demon taunting her, Vivienne spread her wings and vaulted back into the air.  Circling high above the flashing blue and red lights, Vivienne let herself get mesmerized for a few seconds. ‘I couldn’t have foreseen holy water or Faye being hit with a stake.’  Air currents lifted the small black bird higher in the air, ‘Faye was perfectly safe, she had my blood to heal her wounds.’

-You failed her.  These are excuses and you know it.-  The dark voice laughed.

Vivienne felt the sting of the words bouncing in her head and her upward lift stalled.  The tiny bird plummeted down and didn’t care to stop her gravitational fall.  ‘This isn’t happening.’  Vivienne told herself as she crashed through branches and hit the ground with a heavy thud.  Numb to her situation, Vivienne didn’t feel herself change back to her human visage and create a small crater where she’d impacted like a meteor.

-Talk to me, Vivienne.  We can work this out together.-  the thing cooed. -You know the answer to all of this is just to disappear again.  Without you there, none of this would have happened.-

Vivienne reached out and squished the soft soil between her fingers and laid in the hole of her own making.  Closing her crystal blue eyes, Vivienne could see Faye’s warm smile, Faye’s nervous look on her face when they met.  Vivienne subconsciously gripped her chest. ‘What if I hadn’t gotten involved and just let her die?  What if I had just ignored Drake?’

-The sin of pride.-  The ghostly dark mimicked in French.

Vivienne sat up as though almost resurrected. ‘I would have only had that one kiss.’  Vivienne brushed the wet dirt from her dress and stood up. ‘No.  Feeling guilty doesn’t help right now.’  Sensing a few people closing in on her location, Vivienne desired the blood in their veins. ‘Blood is everything.’  She told herself.  She saw a pair of flashlights scattering their light along the trees, scanning for whatever had fallen.

“Don’t be so scared.”  a man’s voice teased.

“It is a little too dark out here, let’s just go home and wait until the power comes back on.  Whatever fell is going to still be here in a few hours.”  a second man urged.

“Chicken shit.”  The first man commented dryly.

Vivienne swiftly bolted between the trees, avoiding where the lines of light shone.  Grabbing the second man, Vivienne drilled her fangs into the frightened man’s neck, draining him in a few heavy pulls.  Blood poured down her throat squelching the flame of hunger in her throat. ‘Blood will give clarity.’  Pushing the growing anger and anguish growing inside her, Vivienne leapt on the first man and pinned him to the ground.  Before the man could utter a sound, Vivienne pressed her lips to the man’s neck sending him into a blissful catatonic state. ‘Blood provides reason.’  Vivienne said to herself as she drained the man dry.

-Killing is always your answer.-  The demonic voice kept up its pressure.

Indignation flooded within Vivienne as she angrily questioned her decisions over the last few days. ‘Why did I miss the signs?  Coffee, how did I fucking miss coffee?’  Vivienne swung out and hit a tree, splintering the trunk. ‘Damn you Franco, why did you send Drake here and start this crap?’  Vivienne finally felt the blood coursing in her body, refreshing her cognitive thoughts, bringing back rationality. ‘Inquiries such as these serve no purpose.’  Vivienne reassured herself.

-Temper, temper little vampy.-  The darkness chuckled. -You are nothing but a destroyer.  Look at the dust in the snow from your…meal.-

While the blood now flowing freely in her veins kept her mind rational, Vivienne knew that the anger was a hair's breadth from resurfacing. ‘Correction, I am not a destroyer.’  Vivienne looked up and smiled after seeing the beauty in the silver lining from the moon’s rays on the snow clouds. ‘I am a hunter.’

-Hunters kill, you know.-  The deep oceanic voice churned into Vivienne’s mind. -She will come to hate the huntress.  Your very nature got her killed, you took her life.-

Wanting to feel the breeze in her wings once more, Vivienne shifted back into her raven form and fluttered back into the emptiness of the sky.  Thoughts of Faye’s simple smile and warm green tigress eyes warmed Vivienne’s heart, filling her with joy. ‘My Tigerlily.’  Vivienne recalled the cute pet name she’d given to her partner. ‘I am disinclined to agree with that assessment of my partner.’  Vivienne spread her delicate black wings and with a swift stroke, climbed high enough that the city of Petersburg’s lights almost jumbled together. ‘Faye self confessed that she is more alive now than she ever was.’  Vivienne replayed the past few days and stopped with the soft light of the couple in the bathtub sharing blood. ‘Drake cast the die and paid the price.’  Vivienne once more felt the mix of love and devotion in Faye’s blood. ‘I tasted love once, I will have it again.’

-You didn’t even try to save her.  Now look at you.  Flying in circles around where you last saw her.  Weak.  Helpless. Love has weakened you.  Tiny steps toward my oblivion.-  Vivienne’s inner blackness whispered.

Swooping down towards one of the flaming trucks left behind by the Ripped, Vivienne let the feeling of the cold breeze wash away the taunts flooding her mind. ‘I admonished myself for missing the signs once.  I will not miss them again.’  

Vivienne’s mind flashed to their first real kiss and how Faye gave up almost all of her living force to do so.  Obsessed at the time with the taste of her lover’s blood and determined to preserve Faye’s life, Vivienne had missed the effort it took for Faye to move, let alone wrap her broken arms around the ancient vampire. Faye’s soft and silky lips, doused in blood.  Faye’s lips grazing across her own ashen lips, gently committing what memory and life she had left within her.  Tremulous yet beautiful, with only one purpose.  A single kiss.  With the sight of Faye’s lips partly open, Vivienne played the heavy tune, “Sex on Fire” in her mind, settling on a small stanza.

“Soft lips are open
Them knuckles are pale
Feels like you're dying
You're dying
You
Your sex is on fire
Consumed
With what's just transpired
Hot as a fever
Rattling bones
I could just taste it
Chased it..”

-Fester in your grief, Doctor.-  The dark voice echoed and laughed once more.

Vivienne landed on the roof of what appeared to be an unused office building and shifted into her voluptuous form. ‘Grief?’  She blinked her crystal blue eyes and shook her head in disbelief.  Vivienne doubled over laughing, her spirit lifted for the first time since she witnessed Faye being carted off by her enemies. “You…you helped me.”  She walked to the edge of the roof and placed her hands on her hourglass hips. “I am a doctor and I didn’t see it.”

-Did I?  Perhaps I want you to myself.-  It ominously responded before falling away to the far reaches of Vivienne’s conscience.

“Minutes instead of a millennia of torture, I think that is called help…”  Vivienne stopped talking to the air around her and felt an odd sensation much like the coffee she’d smelled in her Virginia Beach home.  Vivienne looked down and noticed that she happened to be standing on one of the buildings where a truck was burning and disabled, blocking the road. “No way this was an accident.  I know that sensation.”  Vivienne closed her entrancing blue eyes and concentrated on the prickly feeling that seemed to be bouncing from the truck below.  The ancient vampire peeled away the years of her existence and snapped her fingers. “I got it.”  Vivienne smiled wide and looked in the direction she felt Faye. “I have felt this magic before, but it was years ago.”  Vivienne snickered and kept talking aloud to herself. “Mon amour, the answer to this is in the past.  Alas, the past never rests.”  Shifting once more into her raven form Vivienne headed for Ravenstead manor.