Chapter 24 - No Turning Back

WARNING: This chapter contains some strong language and brief sexual content (picture included).

The pains began the next day around 3 in the afternoon. Allanna was preparing a snack for Linley when she suddenly felt dizzy. She collapsed onto the kitchen floor, dropping a metal pan with a clang. She clutched her stomach and cried out Xavier’s name in agony.

Xavier, who had been playing with Linley in the nursery, was at her side in a matter of seconds.

“What is it?” he asked with concern.

“It hurts!” Allanna shrieked as Xavier knelt down next to her, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “I feel like I’m on fire!”

Xavier didn’t say it out loud, but he knew what was wrong. He’d seen several transitioning vampires in his time. Allanna’s body was trying to fight the transformation, and because she had wolf genes, it was fighting even harder. Her body was literally in a battle. How ironic, despite all their best efforts, the vampire and werewolf war persisted, even if it took place inside Allanna herself.

The worst part was that there was nothing Xavier could do. Allanna’s body had to run its course with this metamorphosis, and there would be no turning back.

“Help me,” she begged weakly. Xavier picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. He put her on the bed, where she began to thrash around, fighting against the pain.

“I don’t want this,” she whimpered. “I don’t want to be a vampire. I won’t be able to be a wolf anymore! I’ll have to drink blood! I won’t even be able to go outside during the day! Please, make it stop!”

“I can’t make it stop,” Xavier said with regret. “There’s nothing that can be done.”

“How long does this shit take? I’m dying!”

“Don’t fight the pain. Go with it, it’ll help.”

“How would you know? You were born this way!”

“I’ve seen several transformations over the years. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

“Just…don’t leave me. And take care of Linley.”

“I promise.”

Xavier climbed into the bed next to Allanna and held her tightly. He hated Mortius now more than ever. He wished he could kill him a thousand more times and bask in the glory of his demise. What he did to Allanna was unforgiveable. She was in physical and mental anguish and he could only sit back and watch.

Worse yet, because Allanna hadn’t been born a vampire, she’d have eternal life, unless of course some sorry asshole killed her. Xavier himself aged slowly, but eventually he would also die. He’d thought about that before, how he’d outlive Allanna because werewolves aged like humans. But now, it didn’t matter because either way, they wouldn’t be able to live together forever.

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The transformation completed in three days. Allanna had to hold a pillow over her face to keep from startling the neighbors with her strangled cries of pain. Xavier kept his promise and never left her side, and though he didn’t tell her, he could see the physical changes in her. Her skin got paler and her eyes began to glow. Her wolf scent disappeared and was replaced with one similar to his own.

Though he blamed Mortius for this twisted turn of events, he also blamed himself. Mortius had controlled his mind and forced him to bite Allanna for the third and final time. If he hadn’t bitten her on their anniversary when they’d made love, maybe things would have been different. He kept trying to tell himself that wouldn’t have mattered, since Mortius would have made him bite her until she had a total of three bites. But that didn’t make the events any easier to deal with.

On that third day, as the sun began to set, Xavier was sitting on the floor with his back to the bed. As promised, he hadn't left his wife's side since the beginning of this hellish nightmare. His only exception was to tend to Linley, and he'd changed his clothes right there in the room. Allanna was sleeping soundly and he had his head buried in his hands. Suddenly, he felt a delicate brush against his fingers. He looked up and saw Allanna staring at him, fully transformed. Their fingers intertwined as he gazed at her newfound beauty.

“Allanna,” Xavier said as he sat on the bed. “Are you all right?”

Allanna looked around. As a werewolf, her senses would already be heightened, but as a vampire, they might be heightened slightly differently. Either that, or she was trying to figure out where in the world she was.

She looked back down at Xavier and said softly, “I think so.”

Her voice hadn’t changed, except it might have gotten a little softer. Her grip tightened on Xavier’s hands, and her skin still felt soft and delicate as a flower, though much stronger than before. A werewolf’s teeth were strong enough to rip apart vampire flesh, but their physical strength wasn’t always perfectly matched. Some werewolves were stronger than others, just like some vampires were stronger than others.

Allanna finally sat up and looked down at herself. Physically, she didn’t look all that different. But Xavier could tell that she was wondering how much of her appearance had been altered.

“Here,” Xavier said, offering his wife his hand. She took it and he pulled her up off the bed. “See for yourself. You’re still beautiful to me, and I swear to you, I’ll take care of you.”

Allanna allowed her husband to lead her to the mirror. It turns out that mirrors were a myth when it came to vampires – they could see their reflection just like anyone else. Allanna had her eyes closed, but with Xavier’s encouragement, she opened them up again. And when she saw what was looking back at her, she almost fainted.

She didn’t faint, but she did lose her balance. Xavier carried her back to the bed and sat down next to her. “This isn’t me,” she said glumly. “I don’t want this. I won’t be able to do anything anymore. I don’t want to live like this!”

“Ssshh, it’s okay,” Xavier consoled her. “You’ll be fine.”

“No, I won’t. Everything I’ve ever known in life, everything about me…it’s gone. I won’t even be able to go for runs anymore, and I’ll have to stay inside during the day, and…the worst part…”

“Allanna, you don’t have to drink human blood. Now granted, animal blood won’t completely cure your thirst, but it’s better than nothing. You’ve hunted animals before, only now you don’t need their flesh.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to make it easier for you. But you think you can’t go running? My dear, I have to say, you haven’t experienced running until you’ve run as a vampire.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know how fast we are. Imagine being able to run freely at night, so fast that no one would see you, and not have to worry about hunters.”

Allanna hadn’t considered that. She’d seen Xavier’s lightning fast speed several times and had guiltily been perplexed by it.

“What do you say we have a little vampire study session?” Xavier suggested. Allanna nodded, knowing that she’d have to learn to adapt to this life sooner or later. She’d rather it be now.

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Allanna adapted to her new life as a vampire pretty quickly. Xavier taught her how to hunt (and she did insist on animal blood, even if she wouldn’t be as strong, because there was no way she’d make humans into a meal or steal from a blood bank), run, read minds and turn off her ability for other vampires to read hers (except if there was an elder vampire in their midst, which there shouldn’t be with Mortius’s death), and even love making.

Allanna had thought the experience had been good as a wolf. But as a vampire, she was more attuned to Xavier’s body, and that made for even steamier nights together. Her senses were heightened like before, but somehow, they felt almost like an addition to what she already had. Nothing like Linley would have of course, but good enough that the apartment’s landlord kept calling their room about noise complaints from the neighbors even when she and Xavier were at their most quiet.

Allanna still missed a lot about being a wolf, but she was grateful that she was alive and still had her husband and daughter with her. But as for Linley, she was growing pretty quickly, and Allanna didn’t want to procrastinate her first transformation.

“We can’t stay in Bridgeport,” she explained to Xavier one day. “We’re right in town and there are a lot of people who might see her. There aren’t many places for her to run. Actually, there aren’t a lot of places for us to run, either.”

“Then we’ll move. We can go somewhere else.”

“But where? We need a place where there’s a lot of open land for running and hunting, and I don’t want to live right in town. I’d rather live out in the country or something.”

“We’ll find a place. I promise.”

Xavier took Allanna in his arms and planted a kiss on her now crisp lips. In all honesty, he didn’t particularly care where they went. As long as they were together, that was the important thing.