Chapter 71 - FLASHBACK. The Descent

Christina had been my fledgling for four full years when her hostile instincts awakened. Despite that, she was reluctant to leave my side, to the point where she hid that fact from me. Tried to, at least.

No matter how strong-willed and stubborn Christina was, the instinct is irresistible. She did a great job hiding her inner fight until she couldn't anymore. It was the first time she attacked me.

It was such a normal day, too. One minute I was telling her some story from my past, and another she lunged for my throat. I easily subdued her with no harm done, but it became clear that Christina was long past the point where she should've left this nest.

I told her so. Oh, how she disagreed! She wept and pleaded, and then she screamed and attacked me again. In that moment, I knew I should've left her much, much earlier. She would've survived and thrived as a vampire with only barest of explanations. I didn't have to teach her personally.

In doing so, I realised I brought Christina to this. Her love made her yearn for me, but her vampire instincts made her wish to kill me. It was a recipe for madness, and it brought me pain to think that I was the one to make Christina this way.

So when she refused to leave me, I did what I had to and left her instead.

I hoped she would carve her own place in the world and don't search for me, but rationally I knew Christina was too stubborn and love-sick for that. To be sure that we won't ever meet again, at least until she had years, decades, or even better, centuries to get over her love, I avoided France ever since then, and didn't stay in one place for long.

Though, I didn't stay in one place for long, even before that.

Seven years later, she found me anyway. The world is a small place, and Europe is even smaller, but even so, I didn't expect Christina to reach me. I didn't expect her to wish to, not after so long.

She was a smart woman. I had hope that she would understand that seeking me would only harm both of us. I guess that it's true that love makes people blind, deaf and stupid. Makes me all the gladder to be spared that sickness. It was hard to watch Christina's downfall as it was. I can't imagine the torture I'd feel if I loved her as much as she did me.

Christina pleaded with me again, and I refused her—again. It gave me several more years without her until Christina traced me once more.

This time she didn't waste words talking with me. Instead, she ambushed me with seduction. She appeared so normal then, so sane, and I couldn't resist the temptation of returning to the time when everything was alright with her.

The illusion didn't last the night. In the throes of passion Christina's control over her urges must've weakened, because this was when she attacked me again. It was an unpleasant surprise, but she calmed down again when I overpowered her, and…

Ah, I'm just a man, too. There never before was a lover in my bed as ferocious, eager and unpredictable as Christina as she was then. She would touch me tenderly one moment and bite the next. But for me, it was what made it all the more exciting, so much that I couldn't resist, couldn't go away before tasting that poisonous apple.

I did leave after. Unwilling to give Christina the temptation, I travelled further away. I went to Turkey, India, China and all the smaller countries between. Often I would have to travel with an entourage of servants because there weren't human settlements in days and I had to feed. I was sure that Christina won't find me there, and as years passed without a sign of her, she became just a memory, another—if deep—notch in my long life.

Just then, she found me again. Like the last time, she tried to seduce me, but this time it was easier for me to resist her. Years… weren't kind on Christina. Oh, physically she was doing great—it was her mental state that saddened me.

If it wasn't obvious before, it was now. What she felt wasn't love anymore—Christina became obsessed with me. A feeling powerful enough that there was no way to eradicate it. I knew then that there was no way to fix Christina, not anymore. I had turned her into a madwoman.

I should've killed her then. It would've been a mercy. But I couldn't bring myself to. Nor, I found out, could I resist her dangerous charms entirely.

We played that sick game of cat and mouse for the rest of the century and then some more. She would try to seduce or kill me, and I would hide and fight and in the end, succumb. Even as Christina became less and less discriminate about whom she destroyed on her way to me.

I kept searching for a way to stop Christina from falling into her obsession and myself from falling into her arms. I sought other lovers, even amongst my kind, but never there was a mix of emotion that tempted me more.

It was like a drug. A slippery slope, too. I knew on experience how easily overindulging can turn one into a person they won't recognise, and I fought the best I could from indulging at all.

My wandering feet had brought me to Russia in one of its most turbulent times, when Christina's madness went too far. The thing she did was, though, the push that I needed to steel myself to kill finally her once and for all.

I am still angry now, as I remember it. And I never suspected, too. I grew used to the idea that no matter how her instincts urged Christina to kill me, her love wouldn't let her. Some mangling never was a problem for vampires—we are too hard to kill and too quick to heal for it to matter. This is also why our fights are often so brutal.

I never thought about all the things Christina might want to do with me that might be worse than death.