Forever (Fallen 3)

“I changed my mind! I changed my mind!” I screamed through clenched teeth. “I want to stay human! Make it stop! Please!”

I felt a hand brush my forehead and assumed it must be Jonathon. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed and felt his hand fall away. “I hate you!” I spat, still not opening my eyes.

I couldn’t believe he’d done this to me. How could you put someone you loved, through this amount of pain?

“Patrick?” I heard Jonathon ask.

“Ignore her. It’s the venom. Surly you remember your own transformation? You sounded just like her and I do believe that you said that you hated me during the process,” said Patrick and I screamed at his words. How dare he talk about me like I couldn’t hear him!

The pain was unbearable. I hadn’t thought my veins could get hotter but they did. I was sure the pain was about to split me apart and my body was going to shatter into millions of pieces.

And Gabriel had been right. I was on fire but I was cold too. My limbs shook uncontrollably in violent tremors. I screamed and hissed and cussed and clawed at anything I could get my hands on.

The burning was all consuming. It was all I could think about. I couldn’t even conjure up the image of my son. I hadn’t even had a chance to see my second son. But right now they didn’t matter. In fact, with the venom coursing through my veins, I hated them too. If I hadn’t been dead set on having a baby I could have stayed human. I shook my head and screamed again. Even without them I had made my choice to be by Jonathon’s side forever.

This had to stop eventually but it felt like it was never going to stop. I didn’t see how hell could be worse than this.

The pain radiated from every limb and every pore. It was everywhere and therefore I couldn’t escape it.

“Kill me! Please! I don’t want this! It hurts! It burns! Kill me!” I begged them but my words fell upon deaf ears.

They stopped talking after that. I heard the door open and close and I knew that Patrick had left.

“I’m so sorry,” said Jonathon. I could hear the agony in his voice and for just a moment the burning stopped. I was hurting him. I was always hurting him. When would it stop? I didn’t deserve him. Not at all. I was hateful and resentful where he was kind and forgiving. I resolved to not speak anymore but I couldn’t control my screams.

Hours, or maybe days, later he spoke again. “Principessa, we’re going to have to move you. We have to get you home. Dr. Crane was supposed to deliver the baby—babies—at home but there wasn’t enough time. We can’t risk you attacking an innocent.”

I screamed. They were going to move me! I squished my eyes tighter shut as I felt his arms wrap around me. My heart was beating so fast that it hurt my ears.

“Don’t worry it’ll be over soon,” he whispered. I didn’t believe him.

I heard Joseph and Patrick come into the room.

“How are we going to get her out of here?” Joseph asked.

“I don’t know,” growled Jonathon and the vibrations sent me screaming again. My skin was so sensitive to their touch that the pain was increasing.

“The stairs are clear,” sounded the high soprano voice of Diana. I screamed again. “You’re going to have to shut her up though.”

“Really?” asked Jonathon sarcastically.

I felt one of the vampires grab my ankles and another my arms so that I was held immobile and then a hand clamped down on my mouth. It stifled my screams.

They tried to hold me as still as they could but every jostle felt like hundreds of needles being jabbed into me. I continued to scream despite my best efforts to stop. Finally, they pulled me into a car but kept their hold on

me so that I couldn’t get loose.

I finally opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn’t. My eyes were ready to burst and my sight was already changing. I could tell that I was getting closer to being a vampire than a human. Everything was so bright, but blurry somehow, like a film still covered them. I felt like throwing up. I closed my eyes again and decided to not open them again until the whole process was over.

When the car stopped I screamed again and then when they pulled me from the car I thrashed, trying to get away.

They finally laid me down on a bed, I didn’t know where, and I didn’t care. I clenched my teeth and screamed again. I heard the scraping of a chair against the floor and the sound of someone sitting down. I assumed it was Jonathon.

Violent bright pulsing flames consumed my body. The fire danced behind my closed eye lids and I screamed and clawed at my own face. Eventually, as the flames shook me, I cried. I wanted it to end but I knew it never would. I was damned now. I clenched my teeth as I burned. Idly, in the back of my mind I thought of the Salem witch trials and how they were burned at the stake. I was jealous of them. The flames consumed them and they died where as my internal fire raged on and on and on.

Hours passed and I continued to scream and thrash. Everything hurt. And then, as the venom made its way through my body, I could feel my pelvis bone knitting back together. I screamed the loudest then. I wanted to cry, but already my tear ducts were dried up.

I would have welcomed death at any time. Any reprieve from the burning. But death didn’t come. Just as it never would. I was joining the life of horror stories. I was becoming a myth, a monster.