Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson Curse ❯ Chapter 11 ( Chapter 11 )

 

Chapter 11

 

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Vincent realized that as the days slowly passed by; getting closer to the night of the lunar-eclipse, his hunger for blood seemed to grow, going from a half-pint a night to a full-pint of blood every night. He was starting to grow nauseous and slowly losing his appetite to eat normal food, he would wake up every morning to find his sheets saturated with his blood from wounds that didn't exist; then again it didn't help that he un-naturally heals, and the dizzy-spells intensified; until the lunar-eclipse was only a week and a half away.

 

“Damn it…”, he curses, as he hung his head over his toilet, “What's wrong with me…?”, he manages to ask himself before his breakfast came back up for a visit; into the toilet. In fact, he'd been having a hard-time keeping anything down; other than blood, for the past two days.

 

“Vincent! How are you feeling, dear?”, Sherra's voice resonated through his apartment, she was checking in on him like she had been doing for the past week, ever since his strange symptoms began.

 

“I'm fine, Sherra! I can't really keep anything down still!”, he replies, before hunches over the toilet again and throws up more of his breakfast.

 

“I hope you'll feel better soon! I put more blood into your fridge, I hope you don't mind?”

 

“That's okay…!”, throws up some more.

 

“Oh, hey!”, he heard Sherra cheerfully exclaim, “He's in the bathroom…”, she says.

 

He could hear his apartment door being shut, and footsteps heading in his direction, stopping just inside the bathroom doorway.

 

“Man, you look like shit!”, Karin's voice says, as she looked in on him.

 

“You try being sick with something you don't know is causing it!”, he retorts, before he was forced to heave up bile from his empty-stomach.

 

“Can't keep anything down, huh?”, she asks.

 

Vincent could only mutely nod, having now become lethargic after emptying the contents of his stomach into his toilet.

 

“I think I might have something that you'll be able to keep down…”, she states, starting to dig around inside her bag and pulls out food-storage container, as she pulls the lid off of the container, it releasing a lot of hot-stream and aromas into the room.

 

He lifts his head up, sticking his nose into the air and inhales the scent of the food inside the container, and finds that for the first time in three days the smell of normal food wasn't making him queasy. He slowly crawls his way over to Karin and the container from which the wonderful scent came from; almost in a trance, what sat inside was a cooked steak with red juices seeping out and pooling at the bottom of the container. Without thinking, drool begins to dribble from his mouth, recognizing the juices for what they were; blood. He takes the container from Karin's hands, and removes the steak and begins to savagely tear into it; devouring the steak, then he tips the container and drinks the bloody-juices and licks his fingers clean of the juices in ecstasy.

 

“How are you feeling now?”, Karin asks, picking up the empty container from his bathroom floor.

 

“Surprisingly… Much better…”, he sighs, joyful that he wasn't feeling nauseous anymore, “What was that I just ate?”

 

“Steak, cooked extra-rare”.

 

“Extra-rare, huh?”, he mutters.

 

“Well, your display just now, did verify something for me”.

 

“Verify what?”

 

“That your strange symptoms are related to your curse…”

 

“How do you figure?”

 

“You told me that you were losing your appetite for normal food, and the only thing you could keep down was your nightly drinks of blood, right?”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Well, you just ate some normal steak that was cooked extra-rare and you're not feeling nauseous or throwing it up anymore. Extra-rare cooked steak has a lot of blood in it, so your sickness is related to your curse”, she explains, “Is there some occurrence that is coming?”

 

“The lunar-eclipse…”, he quietly replies.

 

“The lunar-eclipse…? There's nothing special about that!”

 

“This lunar-eclipse is the blood-moon, vampires become even more active the closer the night of it comes and the last time it happened was 300 years ago”, he states.

 

“Then your curse is probably responding to the eclipse's approach”.

 

“Don't you think I noticed that?”, he snaps.

 

“Well, if you had told me, I wouldn't have to state the obvious!”

 

Vincent just let's out a frustrated sigh, “Can I have some privacy to clean up, please…”, he quietly says, standing up and leans over his sink with his back to her, his head hung low.

 

“Fine…”, she fumed, angry that he was being rude but she knew he needed sometime to himself right now, `Must suck, not being able to die and being inflicted with a curse that changes your eating habits so suddenly…', she thinks, as she closes the door behind her.

 

After she left, Vincent lifts his head to look at his reflection in the mirror, his lightly sun-kissed skin had become a pale ivory; a drastic contrast compared to his mid-night black hair and deep crimson eyes, making him look sickly and half dead. Karin was right, he did look like shit.

 

“Just when I think I have my curse figured out, something new gets added to fuck me up…”, he angrily growls, turning the hot-water faucet on and cups his hands to collect the water, despite the fact that the water was scalding hot and splashes it onto his face, ignoring the pain as the water burned his skin, only for him to feel his un-natural healing-ability repair the damage and cool the skin. When he looks at his reflection again, he sees that his skin has taken on it's natural lightly sun-kissed tone, “I guess all I really need is to eat something…”, he mutters, as he dabs the remain water from his face with a towel, “I wonder if Karin brought more steak with her?”, he wonder, as he walks out of his bathroom.

 

When he entered his living-room, he finds Karin sitting crossed-legged on his couch with a opened book in her hands; reading it as she waited, then she suddenly flops the book into her lap and rolls her eyes, “Just great…”, she moans.

 

“What book are you reading?”, Vincent asks.

 

“It's `Look for Me by Moonlight' by. Mary Downing Hahn, and I have to read it for English class…”, she groans, putting a bookmark into the page she was reading.

 

“So, what's wrong?”

 

“The story is about 16 year old girl named; Cynda, and she goes to Maine to spend winter with her father, his second wife, and younger half-brother, while her mom and her second husband went to Italy. But while there she meets mysterious guest staying at her father's inn, the guy is really a 500 year old vampire…”, she trails off.

 

“And, that is a problem, how?”

 

“The vampire's name is Morthanos, Vincent Morthanos…”, she bluntly states, “Now I can't read the story without seeing your face in my mind…”

 

(A/N: The book is real! In fact I have it right here beside me on my desk!)

 

“Are me and that character that similar?”, he chuckles.

 

“No, his personality is colder than yours, but he does have pale skin, like when I first saw you just a few minutes ago and… I think black hair…”, she trails off to re-open her book to the page she left off on, to check, “Well, dark colored hair, like you”, she continued, closing her book again.

 

“So you're saying I'm more human, even though I'm immortal?”, he jokingly accuses.

 

“Hey, you eat and drink like a normal person; except for the fact you can't die and need to drink blood every night to preserve your sanity part, you're as human as I am!”

 

“Thanks, I needed to hear that…”, he mutters, “Then again, if anybody else knew about my curse, they'd disagree with you…”

 

“You think? Only a few people even know vampires truly exist! They'd throw you into a padded-room for thinking you're immortal and that vampires are real!”, she shrugs, knowing that what she was saying was true, then she suddenly shudders.

 

“What's wrong?”

 

“I just got a chill down my spine…”, she says.

 

“From what?”

 

“Thinking about Morthanos's personality… It's a lot like Sephiroth's…”, she replies.

 

“Speaking of him, how have your dreams been?”

 

“I don't know, I can't remember having any…”

 

“I see…”

 

“So, how are you been feeling?”

 

“Much better, why?”, Vincent questions.

 

“Feel up to hunting down a few vampires today, the weather-man said it is going to be cloudy all day again”, she answers, putting her book away inside her bag and stands up, “I mean, we haven't killed any vampires in a week, since we visited my grandmother's grave…”

 

“Sure… Some exercise would do me some good…”

 

“Great! I'll just make some more extra-rare steak for you, so you'll have your strength”, she smiles, vanishing into his kitchen, “You just need to get dressed…”, she adds, poking her head through the doorway and winks at him, before vanishing into the kitchen again.

 

“Huh…?”, he gasps, looking down at his current attire. He was standing in just a plain white t-shirt, house slippers, and his silk red boxers with silver paw-prints; a gift from Sherra, a blush quickly enflames his cheeks, quite embarrassed that Karin saw him dressed like this.

 

 

 

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A Few Hours Later…

 

 

 

 

“You have got to be shitting me!”, Karin curses, as she walks down the sidewalk followed by Vincent, “It's cloudy out and there isn't a vampire in sight, no matter where we search!”

 

“Karin, you need to calm down. There is no need to get angry… Hunting takes time to find the kill…”, Vincent says, trying to get the hot-headed young woman to cool down.

 

“Just because you've been doing this longer than I have doesn't give you the right to tell me to calm down!”, she spat, beginning to stomp away from him.

 

“Is she on her period or something…?”, he mutters to himself, “So how is your friend; Cloud?”, he asks, hoping to change the subject.

 

“He returned to school yesterday, but he was in a daze the whole day…”, she replies, falling for his clever exchange and calming down, “But I guess it can't be helped, he is still recovering from getting a concussion…”

 

“Just keep a close eye on Cloud…”, he states.

 

“Huh?”, she stops and turns to face him.

 

“Just watch his recovery process, sometimes people have a relapse and suddenly slip into a coma… Be on the look out for signs that he's mental functions are diminishing”, he warns, walking past her.

 

“Sure…”, she says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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