Juniper had chatted with Ace for awhile while she waited for Colton to come home. She’d come immediately when he texted her telling her to come wearing clothes she didn’t care about. She had slipped on a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt that she rarely wore along with some crappy shoes she didn’t care about, thought she was sure she would take her shoes off before going to ground.
When Ace went to his room Juniper waited in the living room until Colton went back and watched as he went straight to the kitchen and then returned. She told him about her goodbye with Noah, the text she’d gotten from Dhani and telling Sabrina how to water her plants if she wasn’t back sooner rather than later and he told her he thought she was smart for doing that. She explained about the papers she’d left in case she didn’t wake up and he agreed to help her fulfill what she’d left on the papers and then he talked about her motivations for becoming a vampire again. Then they were quiet while Colton had her listen to her heartbeat for the last time.
Juniper sighed when they went outside, her eyes landing on the grave dug in the corner of the yard, but she turned instead where Colton had sat down on a chaise lounge and took her into his arms. She sat there with her back against his chest while he moved the hair from her neck, trying to concentrate on the stars as she suddenly wished that she had someone with her, someone aside from Colton. When his teeth sank into her neck, she whimpered, unable to stop herself. Juniper tried to focus on the stars, her eyes looking upward at the sky but in that moment, as the life was being drawn from her body, her thoughts went first to her mom.
Her mom who had always been the one to support her, to get her her first typewriter, to get her into plays and the theater at all. The one who she hadn’t gone to see in the hospital the day she died. Then her thoughts went to Noah. There was some weird unspoken thing between them, no matter how hard she tried to speak about it, and she knew she cared for him more than she cared for a human before, he had been her last kiss as a human and for a moment she could still feel her lips tingling from the kiss, but then she realized it was the blood loss. The stars were getting hazy, the blue sky seeming endless as she looked up at it, hazy white spots in the sky... She tried to lift a hand to touch the sky, but she found she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even blink...
Juniper could feel her body aching, it was agony and she couldn’t even whimper anymore, When Colton moved her she felt like the whole earth was moving, spinning around and around as she was laid back slightly over Colton’s lap. She was conscious enough to feel the blood running down her throat, some of it dripping down her chin a little when his arm slipped or he moved her accidentally. But when he stopped giving her blood he started taking it again, and that’s when she died.
She knew the moment it happened, and yet for someone who was dead she was sure cold and wet. Juniper tried to move but the weight of the world it felt like was pressing down on her. She started with moving her fingers, then wiggling around to give herself more room to move. Her hands were on her chest in the classic ‘sleeping vampire’ pose and she suddenly realized that was why they slept like that, to claw themselves out of the ground. And that’s what she had to do. She was blind, and yet she didn’t need to see to know which way to go. She whimpered a little and the sound seemed enormous.
After wiggling for awhile she started to dig, finally finding her way up, she dug, pushing the dirt down behind her as she moved forward until her hands could feel the surface above her, and one hand extended out of the ground, grasping for something, anything to pull herself out of the ground. When her second hand moved out of the ground she kept groping, clawing for something to hold steady to while she pulled herself out of the ground.
Why wasn’t Colton helping her? Couldn’t he see how hard this was? Couldn’t he tell how hungry she was? God the impulse hit her like a semi truck and suddenly she had never been more hungry in her life. She whined as she pulled herself a few more inches out of the ground, wanting food, but not food, she knew what she wanted, she wanted blood. The very thought made her almost shake in anticipation as she realized Colton would have blood for her. When she finally pulled herself from the dirt he was kneeling next to her grave, looking down at her with a wide grin, showing off his fangs.
And she knew then that they were connected because she could feel his excitement, his joy, and he could feel her hunger. Why else would he have bags of blood waiting for her. Her fangs were sensitive she found out as she sank them into the bag, it was an impulse, to bite things Colton told her as she drank heavily from the first bag. He had brought her enough blood to fill a full grown man and as she drank she moaned in satisfaction, not caring that she was sitting in a pile of mud that had once been her possible final resting place, nor caring that she was covered in dirt and mud, all she cared about was the insatiable thirst that drew her to the bags of blood he had laid out for her and the loyalty to her master that ran through her veins. Looking up at him while she drained the first bag she felt a wave of affection for the man crash over her and she smiled knowing he loved her.
Her first moments as something new, and she was loved. It was all she ever wanted.
