Without A Heartbeat
Chapter 17

Death remained elusive once more.

As Scarlett stood bathed in moonlight, her wrists began to itch. Staring down at them, she watched in disbelief as the blood flow slowed until it stopped completely and her wounds closed over until they were no more than rough patches of skin. She picked up the glass shard and tried again but the same thing happened. Repeated attempts yielded the same results. It dawned on her then that death would not be so easily found.

The Devil will not let his spawn retreat so simply.

Distraught and confused, Scarlett had no other choice but to return to the dark recesses of the well. Using her powerful hands she smashed into the bottom of one of its slick walls, through the compacted mud behind it until there was a hole deep and long enough that the water drained away. In its wake it left a thick layer of brown sludge and exposed crawling things better left hidden. Afterwards Scarlett tore at the wall above the lip until it had become a full ledge that she could sit on. Pulling herself into the alcove, she pulled her knees up to her chin and placed her fingertips to her face. Like her wrists, the self-inflicted wounds were already beginning to heal – strands of fresh skin were meshing themselves over the old wounds and sewing them together. The original injuries she had received when she had first been tossed into the well had already healed. Her ankle no longer hurt and the lump on her head was gone.

In the dark gloominess of the well, she sat and thought.

She thought about the Silver-Eyed Man and what he had done to Herbert. What he had done to her. She thought about the unspeakable act she had committed in turn, and the almost insatiable hunger that had driven her to such deeds of depravity. In her long history of reading, Scarlett had read countless horror books and Penny Dreadfuls, and many of them had included tales of creatures that stalked the night in search of human blood. One word kept repeating in her mind.

Vampire.

Scarlett did not want to believe it. After all, to do so would be to accept that all of the monsters in the horror stories she read could be real. The wailing ghosts who haunted the crypt in The Monk. The dreadful abomination made from human body parts by a mad scientist in Frankenstein. However, she could not deny that what was happening to her was real. So it had to be considered that all the creatures she read about were denziens of the Devil who had somehow become immortalized in pages.

If I am truly one of them, then God has turned his back on me.

She ripped the bloodied chain from her neck and threw it to the ground, watching as the cross slowly sank into the sludge and disappeared. He refused to come to me in my darkest hours. He chose to forsake me to the Devil. In turn I shall forsake Him.

As she sat in the silence and gloom of the well, the words of the Silver-Eyed Man came back to her. “I shall return in three days to collect you.” Scarlett began to formulate a plan. It’s been over twice that many days already. He must return soon. I can ask him all the questions that I want, so I know what I have become.

Then I will kill him.

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