Elizabeth
I remembered when I was little waking up to the ringing bells of the Notre Dame Cathedral, the sounds of the moving chariots, the horseshoes clicking on the ground, and a wave of walking humans below the bedroom windows of my home.
My parents were beyond rich. We were old aristocrats and pureblood vampires. The world was ours to hold, to conquer, and to enjoy.
Marie always knew when I was awake. She crawled on my bed and stared at me, waiting for me to open my eyes. Sometimes, I just ignored her and didn't open them, making her feel impatient.
“Come on, Beth! It's daytime already!” she complained in her sweet girly voice as she tickled me until I was fully awake.
I loved my sister. We were almost the same age—which was really rare among purebloods. Usually, vampires don't have babies so close to one another. We felt much more intimate than most vampire siblings, who had one hundred to two hundred years between them. We were not just sisters; we were best friends. We acted like twins, dressing alike, finishing one another’s sentences. I missed those days of growing up happily, still unaware of all the evil and cruelty in the world. But worse than that, I missed Marie. I felt like my soul had been ripped apart and that I could never be happy again if I lost her forever.
Vampires grow up knowing that they have a soulmate. Someone who is meant to complete you, take care of you, and love you forever—at least until you get killed. A mate-bond is what many supernaturals long for and treasure. For more than two hundred years, I wished and prayed to the gods for mine. As did my sister. We had hoped they were kind, sensible, funny, and understanding. We pictured them in our minds and made a bet on which of us would find him first. We didn’t have evil intentions with the stake, we both wanted to be happy. Even after finding our soulmates, we wanted to be inseparable. We were sisters and best friends, and for what we understood back then, love was also what we felt for each other. Finding our soulmate wouldn't break us apart, it would allow us to raise a family together.
For more than two hundred years, we waited, we cried, we flirted, and we grew up. We witnessed the world change, evolve, become this amazing place to live. Humans developed books, films, computers, the internet, cars, spaceships, democracy, and a longing for peace between all races.
For more than two hundred years, we were mateless.
All that changed three years ago. After so long without finding a mate among our own kind, we thought it was time to look elsewhere. Vampires were more open; mating with other species was no longer a crime punished by death or exile. So we started to go to nightclubs and huge parties in the supernatural community. We were in the US for at least twenty years, and we couldn't have felt happier and freer than we did then, away from our conservative family's grasp.
We thought we were away from cruelty and death, but we were wrong. Terrorists crashed one of the hybrids' parties and, using a potent chemical weapon, killed everyone in attendance. My sister and I were the sole survivors, just because we were pureblood vampires. We were just lucky because the weapon wasn't invented to kill our kind.
What could be seen as a fluke of chance was, in fact, the beginning of the worst nightmare I've ever lived. When the terrorists found us and understood what we were, they didn't kill us because their leader—the tall, evil, green-eyed pureblood vampire—was Marie's mate.
It could have been a beautiful and happy dream for Marie. I felt how happy she became, despite the carnage we had just witnessed courtesy of the blond vampire. Marie had always been a hopeless romantic, a sucker for the belief that the mate bond was the strongest and happiest thing she would have in her immortal existence. If I had been a god, I would have spared her the horrible truth. I would have chosen her another mate, a truly good one, a romantic one, and not a monster.
I was fooled by his smile, even if I could sense the darkness that surrounded him. Then I noticed it wasn't a happy smile, but a sarcastic smirk.
In my heart, I knew Marie. She was beautiful, inside and out. She's my sister, so we look a bit alike, but I always envied her emerald eyes and perfect, delicate nose. I always knew she was more beautiful than me. I knew it, but I didn't care. Our mates wouldn't compare us. They would love and treasure only us. So I got really pissed off when he scorned her.
“So, it's you ... I thought you would look prettier and more … I don't know, fearless. Instead, they mated me with a pathetic, scared, and dull hybrid lover.”
My eyes changed color, and my fangs came out because he didn't seem pleased to find her.
Marie's heart must have stopped as mine did. I could see her eyes shining with unshed tears. She babbled something while he stepped closer to her. His fingers grasped her delicate face as his eyes became scarily red. Blood raced through my veins as I balled my hands into fists. “Bloodlust,” “madness,” “corrupted soul” were the words that came to my mind. If he had ever been kind, he no longer was.
“You don't deserve the air you breathe,” he muttered, making her shriek in pain when he gripped her harder. Tears welled up in her eyes, stirring my heart with grief and rage.
“Marie,” I whispered. I knew he could hear me, but I couldn’t just stay quiet and let him hurt her. “Run!” I jumped on him. He had no right to insult my sister.
Of course, I wasn't able to hurt him. He was stronger and faster. He hit me so hard that I flew across the room and into the wall. The plaster cracked on impact. I didn't faint, but the pain was excruciating. I could hear Marie screaming my name and sobbing. She didn't run like I had told her to.
Maybe she couldn't have run fast enough. Perhaps one of his men would have caught her, but I wanted to give her an opportunity to save herself. I knew deep inside that we were both doomed. But, I guessed, she was as confused by her mate's behavior as I was.
“Kill them both,” he ordered, dismissively waving his hand and turning his back on us as if we were no longer significant.
I felt helpless when one of his vampires approached my sister and thrust a sharp sword through her stomach. The blade emerged out the other side, just beside her spine. Marie screamed in pain, stirring rage inside of me. I found the strength to get up and face the dark-eyed vampires in front of me. I needed to help her.
“Not so fast, honey. We still want to play with you before we drink you dry,” one of them said with a wicked smile.
The threat of being raped by them was nowhere as frightening as the thought of my sister's death. I was not much of a fighter, but I was a pureblood, and those idiots were just plain, changed humans with the virus of vampirism.
Only thinking about saving my sister, I jumped on them and killed them coldly, effortlessly. I killed them so fast that when I got to Marie, the vampire was still removing the sword from her body after his first blow and was swinging it to take her head off.
“Stop!” The blond vampire ordered before the henchman could kill her.
We all obeyed as if he had put some powerful spell over us. It was then that I saw the blood stain on his back. He turned to face us, hands folded on the wound of his stomach. He had an injury precisely like Marie’s.
“Master!” the vampire who’d hurt Marie yelled. He dropped the sword and sped to his master's side. “Who hurt you?”
The creature's red eyes searched for Marie's figure, blinking in what I assumed to be confusion. I was also confused, but I was able to move and grab my sister before she fell to the ground. She had bloody hands and smeared makeup on her face.
“He wants to kill me,” she mumbled, her terrified eyes catching mine.
“You should have run.” I pressed my hands over her wound, glimpsing to see what was going on with Marie's mate.
“Fucking witch!” he growled with blood on his lips and scary red eyes as if he had understood something about this weird occurrence.
“Why are you bleeding, master?”
“That witch cursed me! She had the nerve to curse me!”
His minion frowned. “I don't understand.”
“I'm bonded to the girl. Can't you see, Vincent? If you hurt her, you hurt me.”
“What will we do then?”
“Just bring them!” he ordered as he stared at us.
Marie's mate had no kindness in him, and I knew then like I know now that he would hurt her terribly and turn our existence into a living hell.