I never told you what I do for a living.

Gerard POV.

The only way to healing is destruction. Before getting to a better point in life you have to go through darkness and that’s exactly what I was planning on doing.

The way Frank gurgled up his own blood made me want to die myself. If I hadn’t left, none of this would have happened. Before I walked out on him, we had a fight about him imprinting on me. I never knew how it felt and I couldn’t imagine he could imprint on me. I just simply couldn’t believe it, so I left.

But the moment I saw him lying on the cold asphalt, reaching out to me, I knew I imprinted on him. The whirlwind of emotions and visions of everything we went through together, flashed right before my eyes. Our first meeting, our first killing, and the first time he kissed me that night at the cemetery.

The nightmares that followed were the worst. The pinpoint where his eyes went foggy had clamped itself in my thoughts. I couldn’t think of anything else because the only thing I could think of was a dying Frank right in front of me.

In my nightmares, Frank begged me to make it stop. I ran and ran and ran, but I couldn’t get to him. His arm reached out to me with blood streaming out of his mouth. And the look is his eyes… oh god, how he was looking at me. His gaze full of fear and despair. His hand stretched out towards me to make him hold on to life, but I couldn’t save him.

I failed.

I couldn’t save him.

After the funeral was arranged, everything went downhill. I had no one to live for anymore. I was lost.

I searched for comfort, but the only thing that could give me comfort was the warm embrace of alcohol. And to be honest, not even that could help me from myself. I went full into self-destruction-mode, besides, what else could stop me? The one I loved was dead, and I hated myself for realising it when it was too late. I was too blind to see the signs that made it all so clear.

At one moment, even the alcohol could give me the warmth I so much needed. So I decided to try something I tried so many times before all this.

Before I even realized it, I got too far. The ice-cold, red liquid streaming out of my pale skin just dripped on the floor. I didn’t care anymore. Nothing could console me or the pain I was in. I wanted out and for me this was the only escape.

The feeling of wanting to die returned like an old friend, a shadow following me everywhere I went. And that was exactly what it was, a shadow. It was literally everywhere where I was, even at nighttime.

Nighttimeterrorized me, next to the heart-shattering nightmares I had, I was surrounded and consumed by the shadow. The old friend wasn’t so friendly anymore and it made me do the stuff where Frank would’ve hated me for. At a sudden point I ran out of tears and I could only stare into the nothingness that I called my life.

I stayed in Italy after I arranged the funeral, I just didn’t bother to return to my hometown. Hayley knew I was in Italy, and that was the only thing she needed to know. She didn’t needed to know what I wanted to do to myself and I surely didn’t want her to worry about me, because I simply wasn’t worth it.

I visited Frank’s grave every day for at least two months. I have no idea how long I watched his grave at one point. Time was creeping by so slowly I didn’t even realize it existed anymore. The cold marble from the tomb had become my home and I watched over his grave like a mother watching her child sleep peacefully. I wanted to be sure he wasn’t hurting anymore. I wanted to make right everything I’d failed to save.

After about four months I decided I had to get some food somehow. My energy was starting to run low and if I wasn’t careful I would rob the graves from their bodies just to get one drop of the substance I craved so much.

I wandered around the old streets of Rome. The streets were small and tortuous, with little shops and boutiques. I visited the bars and café’s to look out for some possible victims. I had seen a few, but they were accompanied by friends or acquaintances, so it was too risky.

When I wandered into a less crowded part of town, I saw a pamphlet for a masquerade and I decided to go. Maybe I could lure someone in to kill. Yes, that sounded like a particularly good idea.

The ball was at night, and the combination of drinking and killing sounded perfect to me. The constant craving of blood started to get the better of me because my veins were starting to scrape together like sandpaper. Besides, nighttime is my moment and these combinations were perfect for a suicidal bastard like me. Maybe the murmuring of the people around me could somehow turn the screaming voices in my head a bit down.

What could be a better opportunity to kill than a masqueraded ball, in another country and on a different continent? There was nobody to recognize me so therefore nobody who could stop me.

~

The smell of the people around me made me want to attack immediately, but I had to keep myself down. This was the longest I had gone without drinking blood, so somehow I was proud of myself for not killing anyone the moment I arrived. I tried it once, killing directly. It didn’t end well. The police caught me and after I killed every single policemen I had to flee to another state. It’s not something I’d recommend.

I made a beeline to the place where the drinks were served. It was a small table with several bottles of different brands of alcohol. The smell of cheap beer was overwhelming, so I decided to just go with it and emptied two glasses in a few minutes. The buzzed effects from the alcohol already made their way into my vision and made it blurry.

This was nice.

My legs started to walk to wherever they were feeling like going to. I took another, hell lot of a stronger drink with me and somehow I ended up with a girl on a bench on the edge of the terrain where the ball was held.

The ball was organized on a huge square in the center of the city. The sand and terracotta-colored buildings towered over it. In the air hung small lamps with bright-colored lamps. All the colors stood off against the pitch-black sky filled with bright stars. It looked absolutely amazing.

When talking with the girl, I didn’t even realize what I was saying to her or what I was talking with her about. The only thing I could hear clearly was the beating of her heart and the only thing I could focus my vision on were the veins braided under her olive skin. Every time when she flipped her hair over her shoulder, the scent of fresh and healthy blood came flowing towards me. If we were alone, I would’ve let my fangs sunk in her neck within a second.

But the only thing that stopped me, was that we weren’t alone.

Behind the walls of the buildings was a park. If I could just lure her to that park, I could have my way with her.

She started to make moves on me and she even shuffled a bit towards me. She smiled at me and I could see in her eyes that she wanted more from me than only a drink or even a kiss. This was a good sign. If I asked her if she would come with me, she would definitely say yes, so that’s a good start.

I took her hand and stood up, pulling her with me into the direction of the park. I made sure there was nobody looking for us, so I looked around and…

Wait.

On the other side of the square stood a girl with flaming orange hair.

Was that... was that Hayley? There was only one girl with flaming orange hair like hers and that could only be Hayley.

She was on the other side of the square, smiling widely. I could’ve sworn she had...

It started to dawn on me; she had fangs.

But how?

The moment I let go of the girl I was holding hands with, I started walking towards her. First slowly, then I sped up my pace. Suddenly, there were people walking in front of me and when I checked again, she was gone.

I frantically looked around me, but there was no sign of Hayley. It almost couldn’t be true that she was here in Italy. The last time I spoke to her was back in America and I kind of expected her to still be there.

I started to look through the crowd. I ran and bumped into people, but I could give less than a fuck at that moment. I scanned every face there was, but there was no one who even looked the slightest bit like Hayley.

Was I starting to go crazy? I had to. There was no other way than going crazy. I could’ve sworn it was Hayley, but it was possible that the booze was having too much of an impact on me and that my mind was playing sick tricks on me.

I had a few hallucinations since Frank died, but I hadn’t had them for a while. The first hallucination of him, was exactly one week after he passed. I was sitting in a dark forest, just trying to be alone with my thoughts, and there he was. He pleaded me to make it stop and to come and get him. I started to panic badly so I pushed the vision of Frank away as hard as I could. But the question was; what did I do to make them return this instant?

Suddenly the sounds around me started to get too loud and the faces started to become too much and I started to panic. My breathing became hitched and suddenly I wasn’t getting air anymore, so I ran.

I didn’t mind where I was going, as long as it was away from here.

As soon as I got the chance, I ran into a small alley and let myself fall against a wall. Finally, I was alone for a second.

I tried to concentrate on breathing normally because I was panting heavily, it started to stabilize. It all seemed like a bad dream.

Suddenly, in the corner of my eye I could see somebody coming towards me. The shadow came closer and closer.

“Hey there, are you okay?” the shadow spoke in poor English.

I could see a face forming in the shadow. It was a man from around 50 years old with a wrinkled face and dark brown eyes. His hair already started to turn gray at his temples. He actually looked quite old for his age.

Before I realized it, I launched myself at the man and pinned him down. I looked him in the eye before I bit him. His look was a mix between terror and astonishment but to be completely honest, I couldn’t care less.

The blood was streaming into my mouth and it was the most amazing feeling in the world. It had been such a long time ago for me to finally drink. I was a withered desert and this was the oh-so-needed rainfall. My scrunched up veins started to feel alive again and I felt the power I once had return into my body.

Suddenly I heard somebody jumping over the roofs. I heard an object flying over my head and I could see it from the corner of my eye. I had no idea what was going on but I decided to just get back to the square where the masquerade was held. If something was about to go down, I would be among people and hopefully nobody would notice me.

When I started to walk, I could see the figure jumping over my head again. It wasn’t only jumping, it was also giggling. I decided to run, this just couldn’t end well.

After I arrived at the square again, I decided to go up into the crowd. I didn’t trust that jumping figure. I knew that if it wanted to fight me, I would win. The square was even more crowded then when I left earlier. People were dancing along the tunes of the music

When I was back at the ball and the party was still going, I heard a loud scream. I hastily looked up to see where it came from, but the only thing I could hear was a lot of commotion in the center of the square. When I walked through the crowd that was slowly gathering around where the yelling came from, I saw a glimpse of that flaming orange hair again.

This wasn’t happening right now. I could not believe my own eyes.

I slowly walked forward, not realizing my legs were still walking. On the ground, there was Hayley, drinking blood from some human-girl’s neck. It was total silence for a moment, but suddenly, everyone started to scream and run to get out of this place. My feet were frozen to the ground while everyone was running and trying to get the hell out of here.

Hayley couldn’t scare me, not even if she tried for a thousand years. She has always been such a kind and sweet girl, you cannot tell me that she would change much, even if she was a... a vampire.

I slowly started to walk towards her when she finished her meal. She looked up to me with a broad smile.

“Hayley?...” I asked with disbelief.

“Hi Gerard. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she answered me, in the typical friendly and genuine way she always did. If I was right, she hadn’t changed much indeed. The situation was a bit awkward but not unpleasant, in spite of the situation we were in.

“We’re quite she same now, aren’t we?” she asked timidly.

I grinned.

“Yeah, we are. Sort of.” I answered her.

We looked at each other for a few moments, me trying to get used to her new appearance.

She softly smiled at me. I could see that she found it hard to make eye contact with me. Her eyes turned into a dark crimson in contrast to her normally green eyes. Her once rosy cheeks made place for a skin of porcelain and when she smiled, the well-known fangs appeared.

“Who did this to you?” I hesitantly asked her.

“If you want the answer to that, I think you should look around.”

I didn’t understand what she was telling me. Who could have done this to her? The reason I never drank her blood was because I could see she was too good to be taken away from this world, so what kind of monster could have done this to her?

She slowly stood up, looking up at me as if she wanted to show me something beautiful and amazing. She softly placed her hand on my arm to make me turn around to see.

At first I couldn’t understand where I had to look, but then it hit me.

There was a figure standing a few meters away from me. Everyone was frantically running and yelling to get away, but the only thing I could see was him. It was like a flashlight flicked on in a dark room. He pulled me to him like a moth to a burning candle.

The figure slowly started to take of his mask as the corners of his mouth slightly curled up, showing off his pearl-white fangs.

There he was, like a light in the darkness.

It was Frank.

Notes

So. This is, kind of, the last chapter.

I am planning on making a sequel on this, so don't worry :) I don't think I will upload the sequel very soon because I am writing a story at the moment that is totally unrelated to MCR, so I am giving that one a bit more priority to be honest.

Thank you very much for reading my story, I really appreciate it. Please don't hesitate to send me a private message with eventual suggestions for the sequel, I appreciate all feedback and ideas.

Love.
SonicVixen.