Chapter Three

For the next few hours, I was the main attraction and entertainer. I went through all of my favorite looks, brunettes and blondes and redheads, the entire spectrum of the rainbow, relearning social skills that I’d forgotten over the years fairly quickly. Within half an hour I was back to my normal, pre-Crusader self.

The amazing part of this was, Gabriel. Just himself. He made me laugh by doing the most stupid things, things that had any other person attempted, the outcome wouldn’t have been nearly as brilliant. It was astounding in itself that he could make me smile so easily. He was just the kind of person who could walk into a room and draw every eye to him immediately. He must have been quite the charmer as a teenager, probably left a string of broken hearts behind him; and I couldn’t entirely blame him. I could easily imagine falling for this guy. The thought danced in the back of my mind as we talked, demanding my attention, and it took a lot of effort to subdue it.

Enough that it even slipped my mind there were deadly people hunting us down, monsters who wouldn’t hesitate to kill us, who would cackle maniacally over our burning bodies, dance in our ashes. And no, I wasn’t making it up, not exaggerating one detail. I’d seen them do it before. I’d witnessed Crusaders dragging newly changed children to an empty field, crucifying them and then setting them alight.

The worst part was, they did this in the middle of the night, so it didn’t kill them. The only thing guaranteed to kill my kind was direct sunlight. Those children were tortured, screaming and wailing for mercy as their flesh melted from muscle, and muscle from bone. And every time the fires died down, more torches and lighter fluid was thrown at them. I couldn’t help any of them, or I would suffer the same fate- there had to be at least fifty Crusaders in that field, and only four children. Protect my life…At all costs. So I watched from the shadows, hidden in the forest, silently sobbing my heart out. Every cry etched itself into my heart, and then, when the cries stopped, and dawn had rose, those bastards danced on their ashes.

All in the name of God.

By now, it was about noon, and though I’d only been awake for about five hours, it felt like fifty. Most likely because I had little blood in my system and I’d been talking with Gabriel almost nonstop. And I didn’t want to stop, though my body tried to tell me a different story. Floods of fatigue were attacking my head, and he noticed, much to my disappointment.

“Why don’t you get some rest, Velina,” He said softly. “I’ll keep watch.” I sighed in agreement, morphing back to the burgundy colored look he’d found me with. I basically toppled from my sitting position into one more suitable for resting, stretching out on the rock floor.

“Hey, Gabriel.”

“Hmmm?”

“Thanks.”

“What for, exactly?”

“For helping me. You didn’t have to, you know.”

“Oh, believe me,” He laughed, and then, so quiet I could have imagined it,”I really didn’t have a choice.”

A minute later and I was passed out.

I dreamt of random things that night, ancient shows I used to watch when I was little like Invader Zim and CatDog. My great grandfather was a cartoonist, and he had a love for the shows he watched when he was a kid. He took great pride in being a “90’s Kid”. Apparently back then it was a good thing to be born from 1990 to 1999, because they were the last generation with common sense. Considering how the world has gone completely to shit, I guess he was right.

Other random memories popped up from way back when- how I used to ice down my milk whenever I had cookies because it was kept colder that way, and how I always had to have milk in a glass. It’s a habit I picked up from my father. Milk just tastes better in a glass.

Dancing cookies were chasing Zim across the street to a McDonald’s, where the little robot dog thing was wreaking havoc on the place, overriding the computer system so that all the machines making food went haywire. For some reason I was a server there, even though McDonald’s switched to CPU Servers in 2046. And those robots were nowhere to be found, save for the green dog. We had such massive fun burning the place down, giggling madly the whole time.

I think Zim ate the mutant cookie things, I’m not entirely sure.

My dream took a nasty turn, and suddenly, I was in that damned field, crucified to a cross. The stench of gasoline and lighter fluid was overpowering, and I was coughing like mad, trying so hard to get free, but I was so weak… Zim towered over me, a torch in one hand, and a Bible in the other. A crowd of Crusaders was jeering behind him.

“You, accursed hellspawn, are damned to die in the hellfire from which you were born. It’s time to meet your Maker. May God have mercy on your soul,” Zim preached. The crowd behind him cheered. And then, I was burning.

The pain, the pain… It was like nothing else I had ever experienced. Complete agony. The flames licked their way up my legs, so hot I almost couldn’t feel it. I screamed for what seemed like infinity, while the Crusaders laughed, endless screeching that made my throat bleed. Such horrible pain, utter anguish, burning hotter and hotter with an intensity I didn’t even know existed. My screams were so loud I couldn’t hear them anymore. I cried out for death, begged them to kill me, because I honestly didn’t care at all anymore…

I woke up to find Gabriel gone.