UntitledV- Chapter 5

         Iru jerked awake, slowly sitting up against a headboard. The bandages around his chest dispelled his initial confusion and replaced it with fear. Feeling around the nightstand for his phone and looking at the dimly lit screen made it worse.
         It had been three days since his last waking memory. Amber had been killed that day, and after that, nothing…
         Unsurprisingly, her death had reduced his control to almost nothing. The group of hunters that had attacked them accidentally killed her… and Iru had drained every last drop of blood from them. He only stopped after Crim put a hand through his chest, snapping multiple ribs and puncturing a lung.
         He opened his mouth and breathed in, planning on shrieking in frustration, and almost immediately doubled over and slid back down in the bed, on the brink of tears.
         “Oh… you’re awake.” Crim’s voice held a note of disdain he had never heard her use before.
Iru, on the other hand, had to cough for several minutes before he could speak. Talking hurt just as much as breathing.          “Wish I wasn’t.”
         “Me too. I had hoped I’d killed you.” She paused, turning to look at him. “You killed Snow.”
         “… what?” Iru stared at her, entirely lost, and began coughing again. He felt a blood clot move around in his throat.
“You broke her back, and sometime in the process, snapped her neck. That’s why I… jabbed you.
         “I spent all this time away from you because I was afraid of what I’d done. And then you do this…”
         Iru pushed himself out of the bed, stumbling a little, and made his way across the room to the door. “Don’t bother trying to follow me or anything, not that I really expect you to at this point.”

xxx

Again, divider issues... I normally use hearts ::/

         The rain was cold. Being the middle of December, it was already freezing, and the rain made it so much worse.
         Iru wasn’t standing out in the rain for no reason, though. He had with him a list of every hunter in the area remotely involved with the clan that had attacked him days ago. They were targeting not just him, but Snow, Crim, and Ash.
         His daughter’s name had been too much. He would do what was necessary to protect her.
         The wind shifted, blowing from behind him. Iru lurched into a run, charging down a hill, vaulting a fence, and crashing through a window head on. The darkened house would be alive in a matter of minutes, by his guess. Good thing he was quick.
         One male hunter, one woman, and three children. He wasn’t comfortable doing this, at all, but it had to be done. The message to the other hunters had to be clear.
         He could feel all five heartbeats, within a room or two of each other on the second floor. Maybe this could be done a little easier for his conscience. Opening his left arm with a hardened fingernail, he walked along the lower floor and then up the stairs, dragging his bleeding arm along the walls, becoming more and more lightheaded in the process.
         Finally, he slipped into the hunter’s bedroom, flipping on the light.
         A pistol was aimed at his chest, the hunter somehow a few feet away. How had he not been able to tell that? Shrieking something in French, Iru ducked and barreled forward into the man’s knees, smashing him into the floor. Catching the gun in one hand and throwing it off into a corner, he leaped up, smashing his knees into the man’s chest.
         “Judging by the look on your face, you know me.” Iru smiled, allowing his teeth to show. “And how your friends couldn’t kill me. Try, try again…” He giggled in an octave several higher than his normal voice. Sliding back and pressing his knees into the man’s stomach, he pinned his victim’s arms down, leaning down, feigning bite at the man’s throat. Instead, he straightened up, releasing the hunter’s arms for a few seconds in order to smash a fist into his chest with an echoing crack, then driving the same hand, now flattened, down into the fool’s chest.
         Gauging the wife’s horrified look, Iru guessed she didn’t even know he was a hunter. How sad. At least she wouldn’t be alive much longer to be scarred by it. He removed his hand from the chest cavity it was resting in and stood up, licking at the blood. As if nothing had happened, he turned and walked out of the room, clicking the lights off and gently closing the door. A brief flicker lit the darkened house as Iru dragged a lighter’s flame along his blood-trail.
         As he climbed out through the broken window, the fire alarms were going off.
         Across the fence, he could feel the heat.
         Mounting the hill, he could hear the family’s screams.
         Humans had a lifetime, a set time period, to do things and make amends for such things. Iru had an eternity to make mistakes, and nowhere near enough time to atone for them.
         Or rather, not enough time for him to get over it.
         The rain had stopped; now it was just cold. Iru pulled the hood of his coat up over his still-dripping hair and trudged off into the night. The moon was hiden behind the clouds completely, making the already desolate night entirely black.
         One down, sixty something to go. Iru sighed. He was in for a long, cold night.