There are times in life when the mind chooses ignorance. Not because the truth is hidden, but because it hurts far too much to seek.
Bring me blood…
The words echoed in her head, which felt like it was splitting in two. Gwen flinched, confused by the sudden intrusion, and wondered where they came from and why they felt so important. It doesn't matter. She thought.
Nothing matters. I'm happy here.
Gwen turned back to a beckoning brightness and saw her mother and father smiling at her happily.
For a moment, she felt completely at peace with this.
The moment was so small she hardly noticed it pass.
In seconds, the tranquil facade began to crack and fade. Dark shadows crept from the edges of her vision, swallowing up the blinding bright light, and as the shadow was cast over her parents, her smiling parents-
No, that's wrong.
Their peaceful smiles morphed into ones of unbearable pain, and blood began to pour out from their eyes. Their voices became more and more distorted, their screams echoed a tortured elegy in the black void until they were completely engulfed by the darkness.
They died in pain, because of me…
The shadows began to thicken and coalesced into a swirling storm, blotting out every inch of her vision, and finally, the darkness swallowed her too.
She opened her eyes, blinking away the recesses of her vivid dream.
"I'm alive?" She croaked. The weariness in her eyes gradually cleared, giving way to the sight of the forest around her.
Silent tears streamed down her cheek, trailing a path through the ash and blood coating her face and landing softly on the dirt below. She tasted copper in the back of her throat. Blood. A voice called. Bring me blood.
She slowly rose, and her hands subconsciously drifted to her neck, searching for a wound that wasn't there. Her pounding head was piecing together vague memories of the moments leading up to her supposed death, and it all came rushing back when she remembered James.
She swiftly leapt to her feet, but cursed when her vision blurred and her head started to swim all at once. Not too quickly.
She calmed down and steadied herself, leaning against a nearby tree. Somehow, the bark felt less rough than the pounding of her head and the aching of her body, and yet somehow she was still here. Somehow, she was still breathing.
"God, I feel like shit." She wheezed. Her breath rasped in her throat, the acrid scent of smoke, ash and soot in the air was more lively than the sound of her parched voice. She coughed and spat up pieces of muscular flesh and a small mass of blood. "What the f*ck..."
Bring me blood... The distant voice in her head repeated. Louder now, and growing still. A gnawing feeling in her chest that she couldn't shake.
The blob of flesh suddenly wriggled and writhed in her hand, pulsating as if awakened, and she yelped and stomped on it. "F*ck, I have no time for this."
Once her head stopped spinning, with trepidation, she began to walk. She wasn't too far from their campsite as far as she could tell, but she shouldn't have been able to go anywhere in the condition she was in. How did I get here?
Her hands slowly touched her neck once more. How the hell am I still alive?
She was still in a deep part of the forest, where every step had to be carefully measured between thorned plants and poisonous ones. Densely packed trees surrounded her, blocking out the midnight moonlight, warranting the 'Dark' in Dark Blood forest.
After just a minute or two of walking, she began to approach a clearing and as she finally stumbled upon the campsite, the scene before her stunned her into silence.
Half of the forest seemed to have been mowed down, and the campsite looked like the blast zone of an explosion. There was a smouldering crater in the middle of the clearing, and fire was rampaging through the forest ahead with reckless abandon, engulfing everything with an unnatural speed.
Seeing this scene, the inexplicable compulsion in the back of her mind grew stronger, exploding up from a nagging feeling into an obsession.
Bring me blood...
Gwen barely managed to wrestle her mind under control as the feeling faded again into the background, although significantly stronger than before. I have to find James. She resolved.
Tentatively, she explored the campsite, barely able to distinguish dirt from charred and fleshy remains.
Everything was in tatters. Molten flesh and viscera were strewn about the clearing, dripping from what was left of the trees and painting the ashen ground an unsightly colour.
Gwen wasn't sure what exactly had occurred, and perhaps that was for the best; however, she could tell that whatever had happened here, James and likely any other hunter in her group had most certainly not survived.
This truth had only begun to fill her with despair when she caught sight of an intact body.
Well, 'intact' was a rather inexact word to describe its condition, but compared to the rest, it was in far superior shape. Gwen allowed a ray of hopeless hope to light in her heart, and she ran towards the source of it, only for it to be squashed when she came upon the ruined face of the dastardly Dio Brando.
Although everything around her pointed to the opposite, somehow, she could tell he was still alive. He wasn't breathing, had a hole in his chest, his whole body was seared and discoloured as a result, and his clothes were beyond a state of disrepair, yet something inside her screamed he was alive.
Her anger flared, and she felt her heart begin to well up with immense hatred. A loathing built upon grief, an abhorrence so intense it couldn't be accurately put into words.
She stood over him for a moment, seething as his actions replayed in her mind. How he'd slit her throat in her sleep. How he'd done the same to the rest of her comrades. How she'd watched James lie beside her and die before she felt herself begin to slip away. She was so aware, too aware of the evil in the man before her, the man she had protected.
The nagging in her subconscious, as if sensing her killing intent, suddenly became irresistible, and her resistance broke. She clenched her fists as she tried to fight it. Her fists? She looked down at her hands and realised there was something in them. Some sort of canine animal, a jackal or a coyote, maybe.
What? But when did I- Hazy memories of a bloodthirsty frenzy surged through Gwen's mind. Memories of razor-sharp fangs, rending flesh and consuming blood like a starved animal. Memories of a hunger so deep it had felt like a void. Memories of her.
When did I do this? H-he turned me into a monster…
BRING ME BLOOD!
The voice roared, stripping Gwen of what little control she had, and as if possessed, her body began to move against her will, leaving her no choice but to spectate as it acted.
Forced into the backseat within her own mind, she watched as her body trekked through the forest, picking up corpses one by one, and leaving them by her master's side. All animals of all sizes, so long as they had blood, were all selected.
She continued, digging a small ditch with her bare hands and carefully lowering her master into it. Internally, Gwen scowled as she did so.
She watched as each animal she found had its blood drained into the ditch and was dumped beside her master.
Only then did the roaring voice begin to settle down, and she felt control slowly return to her.
She didn't move at first, as the blood in the ditch was exhausted by her master, who lay underneath. Within mere seconds, it was consumed, and the small pile of bodies before her began to rustle.
With considerable effort, a pale hand emerged, then a second, then a handsome little head touched with blonde.
"Dio!" She hissed.
***
Dio groaned as he heaved himself out of the corpses that had been piled on top of him. His body was feeling rather worse for wear, but he felt he had recovered from his more serious injuries.
I was foolish and arrogant. He concluded. Ioverstepped my limits. I'm repeating the same mistakes as in my previous life.
He felt a piercing gaze on the back of his head and turned to find a familiar face seething with anger, now healed from her fatal injury.
"Gwen, was it?"
"You don't get to call me that!" She snarled. Her eyes screamed vengeance, and Dio felt mildly surprised when he sensed her bloodlust.
"Kneel." He commanded, satisfied when she finally struggled to her knees. Her mind is quite resilient. It'll be dangerous to keep her alive if she can resist my orders. I've learnt, at the very least, by now, not to keep my enemies alive.
"Though I would've liked to keep you around for longer, I would also be a fool to allow someone with such an intense desire to see my head on a stake to accompany me, so how would you like to die?"
Gwen glared at him, but inwardly she felt scared.
At this moment, there was no one in the world that Guinevere Nightbane hated more than Dio Brando.
The cunning, cruel, vampire bastard who had murdered all of her close hunter friends in cold blood. Them and James; someone… whose place in her heart had not yet been decided. He robbed her of that choice. Robbed her of that happiness. Death was too kind for such scum.
Despite her hatred, she was scared. Not for herself, but for who she was leaving behind. Someone she needed to take care of.
An ear-piercing howl broke through the tension between the two, and Dio recognised it as the Lycans from earlier. He realised that all the wolfsbane the hunters kept at camp had likely burnt up in his laser-eyed rampage.
There was nothing standing between him and the feral werewolves that had been on his tail since the vampire cave. It wouldn't be long before they realised that.
Dio stumbled to his feet and was consumed by fatigue. The sun-powered beam had sucked everything out of him, and it took all he had just to stand. His expression darkened.
He turned to Gwen. "Carry me." He said.
"You shameless basta-"
Dio's eyes narrowed. "Carry me." He repeated, and she finally began to move. This woman must die. He thought.
Gwen wordlessly picked him up, but in her mind, she was grumbling countless curses. This won't be how my life ends. Caught in the clutches of a vicious vampire? No. I'll kill him. No matter what it takes, I'll kill this f*cking vampire.
Various thoughts like that swirled in her head as she carried the man behind the silent slaughter of her friends through the Dark Blood forest.
Why am I the one who's still alive? She finally thought. I've only got one person. One person in this world who still needs me, and he hates me. They all had families. Creel had children!
The only sound that seemed to register was her footsteps, the distant crackling of flames, and Dio's heavy breathing.
Each heavy footfall was the only thing that kept her grounded, but the rise and fall of Dio's chest on her back only intensified her hatred. His breath tickled the nape of her neck. Each inhale was a reminder, and each exhale felt like an insult, but after her first outburst, thoughts of rebellion were trampled by the voice in her subconscious, so she hung her head low and continued to walk.
Gwen walked for hours without pause, with the vampire lazily resting on her back. Her disdain for him only increased as she walked on.
As she walked, the soles of one of her boots finally gave in, and she tossed the shoe in frustration. Dio chuckled at her misfortune, and she felt the sudden urge to toss him, too, before it was subdued.
The voice in her head faded into the background as she submitted to her task. She realised it was in her best interest to just comply with the vampire's orders and figured she'd rather be in control of her own body while she did so.
Eventually, she was able to catch a few glimpses of the morning sun.
If one could see any direct rays of sunlight, that usually meant they were towards the edge of the forest, where the trees thinned out, excluding clearings such as the location of their previous encampment.
Gwen could almost muster the thinnest of smiles, for the first time in hours, and as they were about to exit the forest, Dio muttered a command.
She halted just before the trees began to thin and watched Dio drop down from her back. It was rather awkward to carry him, considering he was almost a foot taller than her, but she had managed.
Dio stood tall, his face shrouded in darkness as he stood at the edge of the treeline. He turned back to face her, as if he expected her to say something, but simply turned away when she remained firm in her silence. What's that bastard doing now?
Gwen watched Dio approach the edge of the dense treeline, the light of the sun at his feet. One step away from his supposed weakness. She watched as Dio tentatively reached a hand out, his fingertips gently brushing the divine rays. Her jaw dropped in shock as he stepped out of the darkness and into the light.