Okay, so Bloodbound is over. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but to be fair it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I have an alternative ending I wrote to it.
It’s dark, but no darker than the ending you got if you chose to absorb Rheya’s goddess abilities. I hope people enjoy this alternative telling. Please give me feedback if you like it or if you don’t like it. It’s just a different perspective for the story, I guess.
***
Life force drained from Rheya, her blood pouring out of her body and floating into the air like DNA helix. I stared at it, the power inside me almost intoxicating, as the life force of The First was absorbed into my veins.
“Wow,” was all I could say, sensing every heartbeat in the huge room. Adrien, Kamilah, and Lily were staring at me in horror - I could tell without even having to turn - and the cattle… the humans in the auditorium were coming out of the trance Rheya had put them under. The screaming started immediately.
“Bobbi!” Lily’s voice was suddenly all I could hear. Her hand was on my wrist, “You’re scaring me.”
“Do you know what I can do, now, Lily?” I asked, pouring sardonic contempt into my words. I could sense everything Rheya had been planning, all the good sense her aspirations to godhood represented. I felt fangs digging into my lips as I grinned.
“No, Bobbi,” Lily sounded terrified, but more upset. Saddened by what the woman she loved appeared to be turning into, “I don’t know what you can do now, and it scares me. But I know you’re still in there. The girl who cries when dogs die in movies, the girl who always tries to save everyone- urk.”
She stopped talking as my hand gripped her throat and I lifted her as though she were made of paper.
“It’s sweet that you think you know me,” I purred, pouring as much as I could into sounding seductive, knowing I was sounding like my great-et-cetera-grandmother who I’d just killed, “But you proved you didn’t two months ago, when he killed me.”
I hurled Lily across the stage, where she collided with Gaius. Both vampires crumbled to the floor in pain. Kamilah attempted to step towards me, but Rheya’s memories were in my mind now. I stopped her and Adrien with a simple thought.
“Bobbi,” Kamilah’s voice sounded hard and brittle. She’d always known what to say when I was alive, but had struggled to get through to me after I was resurrected. She didn’t know why. She was jealous of Lily for having my love, but had decided to back away gracefully, “You sound like Rheya now. You don’t want to do this…”
“Rheya was a fool,” I snarled, “She wanted a world where humans and vampires wouldn’t be a threat to each other anymore? She overlooked the obvious. I can’t do it yet…”
I turned to the auditorium. None of the humans or vampires had been able to escape, the doors would not open for them.
“I need more power…”
I heard gasps of shock, horror, disgust… Lily, Gaius, Kamilah, and Adrien had worked out what I meant at the same time. I didn’t blame them. What I had to do now sickened me. But there was no choice. I could save the world.
“I wonder if Machiavelli was a vampire,” I mused aloud, deliberately putting a childish, sing-song cadence into my voice, “The ends really do justify the means.”
I forced myself to keep my eyes open. I needed to know every death I caused. I could not absolve myself of this guilt, even if my actions were necessary. Every human in the room screamed as the blood was drawn from them, merging and vaporising into some ethereal energy which merged with my undead body, elevating my power even closer to godhood. I reached out with the psychic powers granted by my Bloodkeeper heritage.
“Not enough, yet,” I said. In an instant, I realised what needed to be done. I released the vampires in the hall from my power - the four who had accompanied me surged forwards. Lily plunged a stake into my heart. I just smiled, reached out, and booped her on the nose as the stake evaporated and I flew through the roof without blinking.
Flying was incredible. I’d reluctantly enjoyed the sensations my vampire body had given me when I’d been able to leap from building to building in single jumps, but this made that look… pedestrian.
I soared high into the air, above the peaks of New York’s skyscrapers and looked down at the city below me. The most densely populated area in the United States - more than eight million people had lived here before Gaius’ ill-thought-out war. The population hadn’t all returned, but there were still millions of humans down there.
Eyes wide open, I began to feed. For the first time since I’d become a vampire I truly enjoyed the sensation, instead of my body just lusting for more. Men, women, children. Evil as it was, I couldn’t spare anyone. The screaming reached my hyper-sensitive hearing even up here. Then it fell silent. The only heartbeats coming from the whole of New York City were from baffled vampires, reeling from the loss of their goddess and now the sudden emptiness of their home.
I reached out with my mind. It had worked. I was now psychically aware of every living being on Earth - Vampire, human, other supernatural beings - even Ferals were now in my mind, thanks to my great-umpteenth-grandfather. I clenched my fists and allowed a burst of power to soar west.
A woman in Los Angeles ran down an alleyway. Her taser hadn’t worked, the man following her had just laughed and then his teeth had grown. She was sure he was toying with her.
“You can’t run any more,” he growled, eyes glowing red. The woman, out of options, plunged the spikes of her taser into his chest again and pulled the trigger. At first, the monster seemed to shrug it off. Then his eyes went wide, fading from the red to a much more ordinary blue. His teeth retracted. He convulsed as the electricity pumped into his human body.
On an island, lost in the south Pacific, feral vampires in every form of twisted mutation, ran around in panic. One-by-one, in an east-to-west wave, they exploded into ash.
A malformed tree in the centre of the island spontaneously ignited and inside the spirit of Demetrius was finally freed. He smiled sadly, but accepted the end of his days.
“Well done, grand-daughter,” he said, as he dissolved into the aether.
The four survivors of Japan’s vampire council were gathered around in their cyberpunk nightclub, watching whatever news was coming out of New York in horror. Kano, the young, gifted psychic was there, unusually. He screamed and dropped to his knees.
“I can’t believe she’s done that,” was all he whimpered to himself, as his heartbeat slowly accelerated back to normal human levels.
Three of the four felt their bodies warming, returning to the humanity they’d lost so many years ago. They didn’t notice much, though, because the screams coming from The Evolved drowned out every thought. Her once-again human body was rejecting the mechanical augmentation she’d put herself through. There was no chance to save her now.
In Outer Mongolia, a vampire was running as fast as he could. Dusk was coming and he’d had to abandon his hiding place early.. Suddenly he felt dizzy, tripping and falling. He screamed in terror as the light of the sun shone down on his body but, to his surprise, it just felt warm.
He stood up, blinking in the unaccustomed light. He tried to flex his muscles but no longer had the unlimited strength he was used to. In a moment, he realised. He wasn’t a vampire. The sunlight wouldn’t kill him anymore. Now he just had to get back to civilisation…
Three of Dracula’s brides, imprisoned in the dungeons of his castle, dropped to their knees. The irresistible compulsion to seek out the blood of the living had passed from them. They clutched each other, weeping tears of mixed regret, relief, and horror, as they finally understood their lives were human again.
Across Berlin, Paris, and London, dozens of vampires who had been trying to work out how to live in a world without The Order suddenly felt their supernatural powers fading. A world without The Order had suddenly become a world without vampires.
In the opera house below the blazing goddess, Kamilah, Lily, and Adrien held each other closely, gazing up in horror at the shape of what had once been their friend. Gaius screamed in pain - when they turned to look, the mortal wounds that Rheya had inflicted on him started bleeding again.
Lily realised first.
“I can’t smell his blood,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face, “Why can’t I smell his blood?”
All three of them tried to draw on their senses. The terrific truth dawned on them with awe.
“She didn’t,” Adrien said, quietly, realising that his teeth were now immobile, “Surely, she couldn’t…”
Simultaneously around the world every former vampire heard a psychic scream, the last utterance of the vampire goddess. Bobbi. The last Bloodkeeper.
“I am become Death. The creator of worlds…”
At Rheya’s mansion outside the city, the last example of the tree of blood caught fire, burning into ash. The sap flared like burning oil, evaporating and removing any chance of a vampiric bloodline being reborn.
I gasped as the power withdrew from me. I had felt every moment. Every vampire who had died because they weren’t safe when they lost their abilities, their pain was my pain. Every sensation of rage at becoming human again, I knew. Every feeling of relief, mostly from older vampires who had learned the price of immortality, was a mild balm.
Gravity reasserted its authority over me. It would have been interesting to say that I hadn’t thought of this part. But it would also have been a lie. The small part of the dead goddess that had still been me knew I’d be returning to my human life more than two thousand feet above the ground.
I had accepted it. Even without the mind-perverting influence of the power I had absorbed, I felt I had done the right thing, but that didn’t change the fact that I had just become the most prolific mass-murderer in history.
I hugged myself closely and closed my eyes. I sacrificed an entire city, to save a world. I had made a world where humans and vampires would never threaten each other again. I assumed I would never know if it had been worth the appalling cost.
The sun was rising over New York. Kamilah, Adrien, and Lily blinked owlishly as they stepped out into the eerily silent streets. Drawn by some sense they didn’t understand, all three stumbled through the daylight towards Fifth Avenue.
Lily began to sob uncontrollably as they saw the crater. Just in front of the Empire State Building lay a crumpled heap that no-one would have been able to identify, if they hadn’t instinctively known who it was.
“Why did she do that?” Adrien asked, aghast, “She could have landed before relinquishing the power.”
The thought on all their minds went unspoken - why had she killed so many and then cured the vampires?
“She hated being a vampire,” the voice was Serafine’s, but it sounded hazy, “When she knocked me out, our minds met for a moment…”
Kamilah caught Lily clumsily - she had thrown herself forwards with hatred in her eyes, hands extended to punch the psychic woman who had just arrived on the scene.
“Why would you lie about that, now?” Lily screamed, struggling against Kailah’s grip. Both women were unused to the weakness in their muscles without vampiric blood, “She didn’t hate it, she would have said!”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Lily,” Serafine replied, calmly, although tears were running down her face, “The past three months, she’s loathed herself. Every second of life as a vampire. Every drop of blood she had to drink. Every tale from a vampire elder about how they regretted their elongated lives…”
At that last line, Serafine made eye-contact with Kamilah who trembled. Sadness was writ large on every face.
“She’s been harbouring resentment since the moment she woke in that coffin,” Serafine continued, slowly walking up to the pulverised mass in the street. Her breath caught as she saw the extent of the damage, then she swept off her scarf and covered Bobbi’s remains as best she could, “Her hatred of becoming one of us twisted and perverted Rheya’s goal. She wanted to make a world where humans and vampires wouldn’t threaten each other any more. I guess she managed…”
“Has she killed all the humans?” Adrien asked, his voice croaking, “I can’t hear anything in the city…”
“There’s news coming from outside…” Lily said, robotically looking at her ‘phone, “I think it was just New York… but… she killed every man, woman, and child in the city…”
“Good god,” Adrien sat on the hood of an abandoned taxi, dropping his head into his hands, “What did we create?”
“Why didn’t she tell us she was unhappy?” Kamilah asked, stalking in paces out of habit, “Why didn’t she say that this was hurting her?”
“She… ah…” Serafine suddenly looked nervous and stepped away from Lily again, “She didn’t want to hurt Lily. Since Lily admitted she Turned Bobbi, Bobbi had been lying to her. I saw… painful amounts of sadness and hatred. She couldn’t forgive your Turning her, but she couldn’t admit that because the love she’d once felt meant she couldn’t hurt you either.”
Former vampires were coming out into the sunlight. There had been a few hundred left after Gaius and Rheya’s purges. Lulu had been following Serafine. Kamilah realised just in time and caught the little girl in an awkward hug before she could see the mess in the crater.
Adrien managed to rally some assistance to remove Bobbi. Kamilah reverted to type and began to wrangle the survivors into bands to find all the former vampires left in the city.
Lily and Serafine remained at the crater’s edge, not talking. Instinctively, people left them alone. It was almost midday before Lily finally spoke.
“So…” her voice was firm, despite the tears still flowing down her cheeks, “Bobbi told you all that in the moments she knocked you out?”
Serafine smiled enigmatically.
“Even though she didn’t know that she could absorb Rheya’s power before it happened?” Lily glared at Serafine, accusingly. Serafine chuckled sadly.
“I knew you’d work it out,” she said, running a hand through her hair, “Serafine was the only psychic nearby. She was the only one who could help me. Let her link minds with you? I need to say goodbye.”
Lily gasped as the world blurred into an ethereal mindscape. She looked around and her imagined breath caught when she realised that the projections of Serafine and herself had been joined by a projection of me. Still, she wouldn’t be Lily Spencer if she didn’t have a facetious comment.
“So, is this like Doctor Strange?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, “Astral projecting?”
“Just telepathy,” I said, smiling sadly. I turned to the projection of Serafine, who looked shell-shocked and a little angry, “I’m sorry Serafine. I will be gone soon. I needed to explain why I did it…”
“What did you do?” Lily asked, drawing back a little, “We’re trying to look, but there don’t seem to be any humans left…”
“I…” I closed my eyes. Admitting this to myself had been easier than admitting it to the woman I’d once loved, “The whole city… I needed the power to make sure there was never a chance of vampires coming back… I know I’ve become a monster. Everything we were fighting against. But I wanted to make sure you could all have true lives, lives you deserve.”
“Why did you get to make that decision for me?” Lily snapped.
“The same reason you made the decision to Turn me and start all this in motion,” I said, and quickly continued before she could bring up her perfectly valid objection, “The same reason that I asked Adrien to Turn you last year. Because I love you.”
“Don’t tell me you committed genocide because you love me,” Lily recoiled, in horror, “You do realise that’s not a good thing, right?”
“I know. But, for a moment, I knew everything any vampire knew,” I closed my ethereal eyes, but could still sense every molecule of Lily’s astral projection, “All the older ones were unhappy. Eternal life is not a gift. The powers you all had were not repayment enough for the suffering you would eventually experience. Just ask Kamilah. She told me once, how only the memories she made while she was a human felt truly hers. I wanted to give that back to her. I didn’t want you to suffer the way she did. The way Takeshi did. The way even Gaius did.”
“I loved being a vampire,” Lily groused, but there was a tone to her voice, a sensation of understanding, “You killed children to take it away.”
“Lily, if there had been any other way, I would have done it,” I admitted, honestly. I realised that I was being one-hundred per cent truthful, “When I was a vampire I couldn’t love you anymore. Why do you think we never made love? I didn’t sleep with anyone else either. But, when the tree burned, and I became human again… I could feel the love. I wish we could have had more time. But I need to let Serafine have her body back.”
Finally, Lily stepped towards me. We reached out and held hands for the last time.
“You have the chance for a normal life now,” I said, feeling phantom tears stream down my face, “You, Kamilah, Serafine you could all have children if you wanted. Adrien can eventually rejoin his family.”
“Without condoning, or condemning, I understand,” Lily quoted to me, reaching up and brushing the tears away, although they were streaming down her face now, “I will miss you, Bobbi. I love you, even now…”
“Please, promise me…” I choked on the words, knowing this would be the last time I ever spoke to Lily in this life, “Take my ashes and spread them in Greece. Go to those beautiful ruins, see them in daylight. I wanted nothing more than to go back there with you one day.”
“I promise,” she said. I felt a lightness in my heart, although it would never efface the guilt I deservedly felt.
“I love you, Lily.” I said, leaning forwards to kiss her. Then my soul dissipated as I truly died.