Thirsty for him
15. Would love be enough

That’s the last thing my subconscious can process when I see him sprinting out of the car. If I already thought I was going crazy or insane, I am definitely getting close to it now. If I saw it right I saw him turn into a beast, not a normal beast but a white hound with yellow eyes, as if that wasn’t crazy enough his fur shined like white diamonds.

I blinked back and wanted to wipe my eyes with my hands but didn’t dare because of the makeup my sister put on which took almost forever. It seemed like Varnic was gone for a long time, at least longer than half an hour, until suddenly the back door of the car flew open again. Varnic comes and sits next to me, still smelling of the forest and with a look in his eyes as if he himself doesn’t believe what he has just done.

“What the hell are you!” I couldn’t help myself, I needed to know what kind of thing he was. After what I just witnessed. “I’m a Verling. Sorry, I’ve never shown it to anyone else outside my brothers and father. You can’t tell anyone, even my own group doesn’t know.” What is this, and why haven’t I heard of it or read about it before? I haven’t finished the book yet, but I need to read it faster now that I know there is so much more to discover in this fucked up world of ours. “Never mind, you’ll have to explain it to me later, I need to find a witch,” I say puffed up as I take a seat back in the passenger seat. Okay, I do want to know what he is, but I know I had to find Merina first to get her to stop this curse and let us be ourselves again.

At first, I did it for both of us, but now I’m so not sure. Now I just want that uninterested, already close family back. Okay, they ignored me most of the time, but I love them. I love being carefree and free and just living. Not like these monsters, just back in ignorance.

Varnic didn’t ask about what I was talking about, he was already glad I didn’t ask further about this thing he is. He gets back in the car as I do to continue our way to the party.

At the entrance to the school, a little later, we stand next to each other. Still not sure how to handle or call this between us. We love each other, but the monsters we are make it between us more difficult. Why couldn’t it just be love, instead of this obsessed love? Just the love, like kissing each other and making love. No, this love makes us want to be more. More passion more kissing more hate, just more.

He takes my hand, as we walk inside the school. We feel the time starting to count down to his death. Which will make me to a murderer.

It is an hour before midnight before the clock strikes twelve in the gym. Everyone else is dancing while I am looking for Miss Clover. You would think this gray-looking old woman who is our poetry teacher would never hurt a fly but no I have figured it out, she is Merina, and she will be gone after midnight. Gone after I complete my mission by killing my marked, varnic.

I am no longer the foolish eighteen-year-old girl who knows nothing about this curse or the world we live in. No, I know that every hundred years Merina is waiting for the next cursed one to kill the coven and make her disappear. Until one of us has another child to serve out her 100 years back. Then she will return to initiate the curse for the next generation. “Hello, Ms. Clover, how are you?” I ask her as she takes off her glasses and pretends not to notice me or Varnic. “Hello, how can I help you two young people?” She asks, looking around the room and searching before she looks again at us.

“A cure perhaps?” I ask her with a sarcastic note. Varnic looks at me like I’m crazy or getting crazier by the minute. He even squeezes my hand to make me shut up. “Do you guys want it? You guys look more than happy together.” With a smile, she said it to us and revealed her true nature like that. Varnic is dumbfounded, unable to even utter a word. His breathing is even now so slow that I’m afraid he’s not breathing.

“Come, Avery Tuborn,” Merina says as she walks away from the party. I follow her with Varnic in slow steps behind me to another room that I don’t recognize. I am standing inside, in front of me staring at the scene when Merina, stops Varnic. “Are you sure you want this Varnic Elys from the bound group Diolix?” His whitish color of hair grows paler by the moment. It’s like I could see the fur taking over his body again and making him look weird as half human, half dog, but when I blink it’s gone. “Oh, I see you are a Verling. Something that was never made before. But you’re here, and I’m stunned to know one of this species,” she says, clearly touched by this moment. Still gripping him in her hand, so he would answer her first question. “I want this to be over,” he says pleadingly with a tear in his eye. I feel so vulnerable towards him because he has hidden these feelings deep inside of him.

“You know what I can do?” We were both now standing in the room looking at her as she snapped her fingers, and we stood in one place with a circle of black stones beside us. She is standing with her white long hair half hanging in the air, whispering. In a language we don't recognize, looking into a golden book that was also covered with these special black stones. “What do you have to offer?” She asks as she turns her glowing black eyes into ours.

What do I have to offer? What does this all-powerful creature who already has everything want? Then something springs to mind. No, she doesn’t have everything.

“I offer you love.” She stares at me, puzzled by my offering. Not in the way you’d think. I thought she would laugh at me and say I’m crazy and kill Varnic and not even care anymore. She stands there silently, still pondering my sacrifice. With her hair in the air, blowing wildly through, when there is no wind at all. Varnic almost looks like he could kill me instead of her for just offering something stupid like love, but love is not stupid, and it has made me stronger in life. Even more than this monster inside me. “Are you offering love?!” Says Varnic mockingly and almost confusedly. As he now looks from me to Merina who is still staring at me without saying a word. “You are kinder than I have ever seen, child. I want to help you.”

Varnic’s mouth fell wide open. He was too stunned to even hear me ask to free us from this curse. She thinks with her finger on her pointed chin. Thinking of what to answer and, if it would be enough for her to just let me take my love to end this curse.

“I hope you realize that you, will forget your true love and give me the love you feel now?” She asks me, wanting to be sure of my decision. “Will I forget Varnic? I don’t know if I want to forget him.” I say a little more anxiously now, for the first time in my life I am indecisive. It may not have been long since we had met, but the memory of the text in the book. What will happen to our kind when we lose our soul mates?

What would happen to me if I were an ordinary person and gave up my true love? Do I really want this? Will I ever find someone else if I turn my back on love? Varnic looks at me desperately, muttering that he wants me to give her my love. It hurts to hear him say this until, for the first time, I see the pain from another side. Not my side his, he is tormented with pain.

“You will forget him, and you will have no memories of your time together or what you have been through this year. Do you want this?” I want to answer no because I don’t want to lose Varnic. Inside, I wanted to spend my whole life with him. But do I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me? I see him looking at me and I know that he will never be mine if I am selfish and only think about what I want.

“I want a moment with Varnic alone. Please, just one moment.” She looks at me in annoyance and waves me away with the words; “one minute, no more.” She turns away and lets us speak.

“Avery, please. You haven’t been this monster as long as I have. You don’t know what it feels like to be this monster day in and day out, needing blood. Or feeling like your bones are being broken, one by one. Or your blood being boiled in your own body. It’s hell, Please, Avery?”

I turn back to Merina; “Take it.”

That’s exactly what she did. I feel us both spinning in the air as she whispers magical things like some kind of song we heard in our dreams, but can’t remember the day after.

“Now you are free Avery, life free, and remember when you take back what is mine, you get back what you made yourself.” Not paying attention to her words, but subconsciously taking them in any way, I fall to the ground and then look up at the moon over the forest.

Finally, I felt my first breath as a human being. Until everything goes black, everything disappears in my head. As if they went through it with an eraser and erased everything from the last year. So yesterday would never have happened as I would never have met Varnic or turned in a Nicroat.

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