16A/N: Written as part of a quid-pro-quo bargain with The Carnivorous Muffin. May she enjoy my humble offering.
This fic was first conceived because Carlisle is one of the many Twilight characters that just can't be genderbent. He can forget about being a doctor in the 19th and early 20th century, for one thing. I should also think that Carine would have stayed with the Volturi a lot longer than Carlisle did, because they'd offer her this pocket society where she was treated as equal to men. She'd have a very different experience, and a hard time turning her back on that. I digress.
My point here is that genderbend Carlisle, and suddenly you've got a completely different story. The Carine Cullen of Life and Death just didn't convince me, so here's my version instead.
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
- The Lady of Shalott (1942), by Lord Alfred Tennyson
The streets of London were cold that night, the chill wrapping around his body in an icy embrace. Pastor Cullen was walking faster than could be considered dignified, almost running in his eagerness to get inside. Luckily there was no one around to see him at such a late hour.
He drew his coat closer around him as he jogged around the last corner, glad to finally be home.
It had been a frightful night.
A whole nest of vampires had been uncovered in the very heart of London, and after a week of careful planning, he and twenty-something men from the parish had gone out to find them, intent on smoking the creatures out of their hive. Unfortunately the creatures had escaped, seemingly effortlessly.
Normal demons, the ones who played at being human, were easy enough to catch and burn. These ones had been different. It shouldn't have been possible, leaping out through the roof and away into the night the way he'd seen them do. He'd never seen anything like it in all his years as a demon hunter.
He fully intended to track down their new hiding place, but it worried him that these kinds of vampires might be harder to catch than the ones he was used to.
The door to his home swung open, and he was met by his daughter's pale, tired face. It seemed she'd waited up for him.
«Father,» Carine whispered. «I was so worried!»
She threw her arms around her father as soon as he'd closed the door behind him, and held on tightly. He laid a hand at her head, and smiled warmly down at his daughter.
«There, there, child,» he muttered fondly, gently stroking her hair.
She squeezed a little harder before she released him, and looked up at him, eyes filled with care and concern. «It scares me that you go out like this,» she told him.
«Be at ease, my dear. I'm fine,» he reassured her warmly, and stepped back from her. He hung up his jacket and hat as she watched. «Since you're up, would you go and find me something to eat?»
Carine nodded and smiled at him. «Of course, father,» she said, and swept from the room.
She didn't ask about what had happened, but they both knew he wouldn't have answered her if she had.
She knew that he'd been out hunting for creatures of the night, that much he couldn't hide from her. She knew none of the details, though. Pastor Cullen didn't want his young daughter's thoughts to be filled with such dark, ugly things, and he went out of his way to shield her from that kind of sordid knowledge.
Carine Cullen was a singularly obedient and devout young woman. She didn't waste her time on frivolous activities with youth her age, preferring to spend her days tending to the poor and the sick in her father's parish. She was always home by nightfall, and happily read to her father at night if he wasn't too busy.
The whole parish loved her, and none more than her doting old father.
And so, when he saw her blue eyes turn sorrowful as his persecutions of evil led him to discover another creature of the night, or when she would sometimes ask ever-so-carefully if burning them alive truly was the best way to dispose of witches and demons, he sent thanks to the Lord that she remained so innocent of the depravities those creatures were capable of.
Smiling to himself, Cullen sat down by the cold fireplace and waited for his daughter to return with his meal.
A sudden chill in the room made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Hadn't he closed the door?
He turned to look at the door, but it was closed. He frowned in confusion.
«I wasn't sure what to do with you.» A voice that didn't belong to Carine said behind him.
Cullen startled so badly he almost fell out of his chair, and he spun to see who'd spoken.
An unnaturally pale and beautiful face framed by dark locks smiled cruelly back at him. Red eyes glittered in the dark.
A vampire was in his home.
Cullen jumped out of his chair and quickly reached for his stake that was still in his pocket, but the vampire was faster. It seized Cullen's hand in an ice cold and vice-like grip, and held it there.
Cullen tried to free himself, but the vampire's grip was too strong. He searched his memory trying to think of an exorcism, or a banishment, anything to invoke the power of God against the creature, but the rising panic made his mind sluggish and uncooperative.
He was at the demon's mercy.
«At first,» the vampire said leisurely, as if they were simply mates making casual conversation. His voice had a foreign lilt to it, but it wasn't an accent Cullen could recall ever hearing before. «I thought I'd burn your house down. An eye for an eye, yes? You chase me from my home, I'll chase you from yours.»
The demon's smile grew even wider, baring its teeth. Cullen's heart seized with terror.
Whatever the vampire was going to say next, Cullen knew with a sudden and terrible certainty that it was planning something far worse than burning his house down.
«They say a house isn't a home without a woman's presence.» The vampire said, and its smile turned lecherous.
«No,» Cullen breathed. «No!» he shouted again.
But he could see in the demon's eyes that it had made up its mind, and he realized with sickening clarity that there was nothing he could do. Carine was in the pantry, where there were no exits, and he was an old man who would struggle to win a fight against a human assailant, he didn't stand a chance against the vampire before him.
He gave his hand a wild tug, desperate to escape the vampire's grasp and get to his daughter, but the vampire only cackled and squeezed his hand roughly. Cullen howled in agony as every bone in his hand was crushed, and his vision went white from the pain. His legs gave out beneath him.
«Father!» he heard Carine cry from the pantry, and the scraping sounds of something being pushed out of the way in a hurry.
The vampire smiled wildly at the sound of Carine approaching. «Do you think she'll beg?» it asked Cullen, almost giddily.
«Don't touch her!» Cullen hissed through the pain in his hand as he struggled back to his feet. If he could distract it for long enough for Carine to make it out of the house…
The door flung open, and Carine burst into the room and ran towards him. «Father, I heard-» she skidded to a sudden halt when she spotted the third person in the room.
«Carine, run! Get out! Now!» her father shouted at her, but Carine was frozen to the spot, a dinner plate still in her hands.
Her eyes were zeroed in on her father's hand, disfigured and discolored when it had been fine only minutes ago. She looked up at the vampire, and Cullen could see realization dawn in her eyes as she took in the creature's inhuman stillness and cold, red eyes.
He saw her eyes flicker to the window, but it was too high up. Even if she did manage to climb up, the vampire would have plenty of time to pull her back into the room.
And as her eyes flickered back to her father, Cullen realized with dread that his daughter wouldn't leave him, not even to save her own life.
The vampire chuckled. «What a well-mannered daughter you have there,» it cooed as it took the plate from Carine's hand and presented it to Cullen with a gleeful flourish. «She brings one meal for her father…» It bowed courteously before Cullen, offering him a devilish grin, before it returned its attention to Carine. It walked a circle around her, keeping its eyes on her neck all the while. «And one for me.»
Without further ado, it pulled her into its grasp and sank its teeth into her throat.
Carine's shrill scream pierced the room, followed by the nauseating snapping sounds of her ribs breaking as the vampire clutched her tightly. She went limp in its grasp.
A few feet away from the two, pastor Cullen went limp as well.
«Carine,» he gasped, unable to tear his eyes away from the grotesque tableau before him.
The vampire released her abruptly, letting her fall like a sack of potatoes.
«Delectable,» it hissed, tongue darting out to catch a small trail of blood that had dribbled down the corner of its mouth.
«Like honey and lavender,» it continued, smiling wickedly down at Carine, and used its boot to tilt her head so it could see her face. It hummed in approval. It then looked sharply back up at Cullen, and winked at him. «Best of luck, eh, reverend?»
Cullen stared uncomprehendingly. The demon's mocking words washed over him, and he felt strangely distant to everything that was happening, as if he were an actor on a stage and waiting for the curtain to roll so the vampire would leave, and Carine would get back up…
Selfishly, he found himself wishing the vampire could have killed him first, so he could have been spared seeing his daughter felled in such a way.
But then, just when he thought the vampire would lunge at him and drain him of life the way it had Carine, the creature was gone, vanished into thin air.
Cullen looked wildly around the room, expecting it to pop out of a corner again, but the only sound in the room was that of his own harsh breaths. There was no sign of the demon.
After waiting for a beat, Cullen scrambled towards his daughter's form where she lay collapsed, and touched her face with his good hand.
She was deathly white, almost as pale as the vampire had been, and her neck was marred by an ugly, festering bite mark, smeared with her own blood. He was surprised to find she was still conscious, her blue eyes unfocused with pain, snapping sharply for short, harsh breaths.
How cruel of the demon, he thought, to not even kill her outright, but leave her to suffer instead.
Gathering strength he hadn't known he still possessed, Cullen drew her into his lap and stroked her hair. «There, my child, you'll soon be with the Lord,» he whispered as soothingly as he managed.
He hadn't been sure if she could hear him, but Carine shut her eyes, and managed a small nod as her hands tightened into shaky fists and her breaths grew even faster.
Cullen quietly administered the last rites to her before he settled them both more comfortably against the wall, where he waited for her to draw her final breath.
That final breath never came.
Night turned into the early hours of the day, and she seemed to be growing stronger, not fading away.
A strange tension remained in her, she was tense like a coiled feather and wouldn't stop shaking, and as the hours went by more and more whimpers escaped. She seemed to be in terrible pain, and where the pain of his own ruined hand had dulled as the hours went by, Carine's misery only seemed to be getting worse as she got stronger.
Eventually he dared to move her into her bed, and as he felt sure enough that she wouldn't die while he was away he left to get help.
The doctor came right away, to Cullen's everlasting gratitude.
He poked and prodded at Carine, asked her questions, and through gasps of pain she told him that she felt like she was on fire. The doctor nodded to himself, and bloodlet her. She didn't even feel it.
«It's hysteria,» he told the pastor on his way out. «A hysterical fever brought on by being assailed by that villain. It's why she has no outward signs of illness, it's all a fabrication of her mind. Bloodlet her again tonight, and I imagine her moods will settle very soon.»
Cullen couldn't help feeling grateful that it wasn't a worse diagnosis. It was obvious when he thought about it, Carine had spent her life surrounded by God-fearing Christians, it was only to be expected that her humors would be thrown out of balance by an assault like the one she had been made to endure. He could only thank the Lord the demon hadn't gone further and ruined her completely.
So he asked the parish to pray for her, and prayed at her bedside until nightfall, hoping the Lord would grant her a speedy recovery.
On the second day he couldn't get through to her at all.
She tossed and turned in agony, and though she tried to stay silent even now, she couldn't keep a few piercing, agonized screams from escaping.
The doctor's verdict remained the same, but this time he had the pastor help him strap her down to her bed, so she wouldn't hurt herself.
Night fell, and her screams grew more frequent.
Cullen stayed by her bedside all night, reciting every prayer he knew.
On the third day, she broke free of her restraints. When Cullen tried to strap her back down, he couldn't hold her down, and he ended up forced to watch as she tossed about more wildly than ever, tearing at her hair and clawing at her own skin. She'd given up on staying silent, and her screams pierced the air without a moment's respite, louder and more heart-wrenching than that first, piercing scream she'd uttered when the vampire first bit her.
He didn't understand how she managed to stay conscious through such exertions, but he knew by then with that certain kind of unshakable sureness that whatever was afflicting his daughter, it wasn't hysteria.
As the hours ticked by, her misery only got worse, and all he could do was keep a cold cloth on her forehead and pray more desperately than ever.
Finally, just after night had fallen, she stopped tossing and turning in favor of clutching at her chest. She sobbed wretchedly, but no tears would come, and as the pastor watched, her back arched as she lifted off the bed like an invisible hand was pulling her up, and she let out one final, heart-rending scream before collapsing back onto the bed, where she remained unmoving.
Cullen darted to her side. Had her heart given out?
He was prepared to give her the last rites again, but as he looked down upon her, he realized with a start that she no longer resembled his daughter.
He hadn't seen it while she was contorting in agony, but a change had come over her, slowly and creeping, like a flower that bloomed, fast enough that it changed completely in a matter of days, yet subtle and slow enough that the bare human eye couldn't catch it.
Her limbs were stronger, her skin as hard and smooth as marble, and he could see none of the little imperfections that had once given her pretty face so much character.
She was beautiful.
Inhumanly so.
Best of luck, eh, reverend?
No.
No, no, no, no, no…
Her eyes opened, and they were red as blood.
Her eyes bored into his own, only inches away, and he could see the fires of hell burn in what had until moments ago been his daughter's eyes, blue like his own.
Neither of them moved.
There was a stake on the nightstand. He'd kept it there in case the vampire returned to finish what it started with Carine, and it was within his reach. If he could get it, and end Carine's cursed existence before it truly began, perhaps her soul could still find solace with the Lord…
But before he could get that far, Carine's hand flew to her throat, so quickly that he didn't even see it move. A strangled gasp escaped from her throat, and her eyes fixed on his throat.
Cullen seized the stake and scrambled back, wondering if he would even get a chance to kill Carine, or if her first act of evil now that she had joined the ranks of the unholy would be to drink the blood of her own father.
But Carine didn't attack. Her hand remained at her throat, and she shut her eyes and remained perfectly still for several long seconds.
Finally, keeping the stake from her view, Cullen inched one step closer.
Carine's reaction was immediate.
«Don't!» she cried in a too lovely voice, one that sounded more like a bird singing than a person talking, and fled to the corner of the room, again so fast that he didn't actually see the movement, only that she was suddenly crouching on top of a stack of her books, more graceful than any cat.
He pressed his lips together in consternation, and let her see the stake. She flinched when she saw it, and looked back up at him with a look of betrayal in her hellfire eyes.
«You've become a demon, Carine,» he said coldly.
The words came easier than he'd expected.
He suspected a part of him had known from the moment the demon had given what was left of her back to him, but he'd been too afraid to admit it.
Too weak.
Had he been stronger, he would have realized what was happening and put Carine out of her misery while her soul could still be saved. He wondered if the devil himself had been in the room with them, laughing while Carine screamed and her reverend father sat oblivious by her side. Anger flared up in him.
He wasn't going to fail her again.
«If there's any fear of God left in you, surrender now.» His hand tightened around the stake.
Carine just stared at him. Her eyes slipped to his neck again for a second, before she shut them again. She was as still as the room around her.
Well, then.
Cullen moved decisively towards her, raising the stake to shoulder-level.
Carine's eyes widened, and a sound of despair escaped her as her eyes locked onto his throat again.
Then she vanished entirely, though he could sense a gust of wind wash over him as she moved past him.
He ran down the stairs to the main room, where he found her again. She was pressed against the far wall, hand still on her throat, her eyes flickering madly about her, staring at things Cullen couldn't see.
Her eyes snapped up to meet his, and he halted in his movement.
He could see hunger in those unnatural, glowing, red eyes, a rabid, consuming hunger that made his insides seize up in terror.
But there was fear in her eyes too, a profound horror that seemed to run even deeper than his own.
She broke away from his gaze and looked to the window. Her hand scratched and stroked absently at her throat, with movements so quick her fingers were a blur. Her whole figure trembled.
Abruptly, her figure stilled. Her shoulders lowered, and a sort of calm came over her. She spun back to look at him, again so fast that it was like she'd never moved at all.
«Father, I-» she began in her new voice, before she broke off, looking more tormented than ever.
When she next spoke, her words came so quickly he barely caught the words, «I will destroy myself, I promise.»
She looked back into his eyes, glowing red on sky blue, as if she hoped to convey her sincerity with her eyes, since she was having so much trouble speaking.
He wondered if she even knew what she looked like now.
Then she was gone.
Years went by.
Pastor Cullen threw himself into his work, hunting, burning, and drowning demons and witches relentlessly, but he never found the vampire that had entered his home that fateful night.
Carine's things were packed up and donated to the parish, even the clothes she'd made or mended for her father were given away. Cullen did not suffer anybody to mention her in his presence, and the parish soon learned not to speak of Carine Cullen at all.
But his advanced age caught up with old Cullen soon enough, and soon he was bedridden.
It was funny, all his life he'd longed for the day he'd be with the Lord, but knowing that Carine wouldn't be waiting for him with her mother in Paradise filled his heart with melancholia. He had lost his enthusiasm for life, and he couldn't seem to summon up an enthusiasm for the afterlife either.
It went against his teachings, but he couldn't shake the blasphemous thought that Paradise without his daughter wouldn't be Paradise at all.
He was awakened one night by someone quietly smoothing out his duvets. He was frowning before he even opened his eyes, hadn't his nurse retired for the night?
A single oil lamp had been lit on his nightstand, and as his eyes adjusted he saw the flames flicker over a feminine form that was slighter than Gladys' and far paler. She held herself unnaturally still.
His veins turned to ice as he recognized her.
Carine looked much as she had the night she left him, but there was a difference about her all the same, one he couldn't quite pinpoint. Something in the way she held herself. Her long, blonde hair was loose down her back, not a style he would ever have permitted her to wear in public if he were still her father, and she was wearing a pale dress. It was far too simple for a woman of her former standing, and too light given how cold it was in the room, but she didn't appear bothered.
Still, she was as impossibly beautiful as he remembered, perhaps even more so. Where the demon's beauty had struck terror into his heart, Carine looked like an angel.
How deceptive, Cullen thought, that Satan's underlings should appear so wonderful, that they made men look like the pale imitation.
She wasn't unhinged like she'd been the last time he saw her, but there was still a tension in her, like a coil ready to spring.
Her eyes were downcast, fixed on his hand that lay on top of the covers, the one that had been ruined that night. It never healed properly, but he didn't mind the disfigurement as much as those around him believed he secretly did. He would have minded worse if he'd escaped unscathed while Carine suffered her unhappy fate.
Finally Carine looked up to meet his gaze.
He started at the color of her eyes. They weren't red as he'd expected, but gold, like honey. The pupils weren't vertical, but all the same he was reminded of a snake's eyes.
Had she come to tempt him, offer up the proverbial apple, steal his soul as hers had been taken from her?
At last he remembered himself, and he looked to the nightstand, where he knew he had a Bible. The light was too poor for him to recite from it, but it was a powerful talisman.
She seemed to realize what he was thinking. «I'm not here to hurt you,» she said quickly. He'd forgotten just how lovely her voice had gotten, too, higher and clearer than any bell.
She held up her palms and leaned away from him in the chair she'd pulled up, clearly hoping to communicate harmlessness.
He snorted at the notion.
«I thought you would have destroyed yourself by now,» he stated coldly, before she could get any further. He had no intention of humoring her.
«Didn't you promise?» he continued, each word dripping with his scathing disappointment in her.
Because that was the issue, wasn't it?
In the years since Carine's unhappy fate befell her, Cullen had found a morbid comfort and pride in the fact that enough of his God-fearing daughter had remained in the demon that she recognized her own continued existence as unholy, and sought to end it.
To see now that she'd relented, that when it came down to it she would sooner break her word and walk the earth as unholy filth, spreading death and disease, made any remaining compassion he might have felt for her wither in his heart.
He wondered if the evil that had taken root in her was that powerful, overruling the good, Christian woman she'd once been, or if she had always been this weak.
Her eyes fell away from his, down to her hands, which lay folded in her lap.
«I tried,» she admitted quietly.
«I tried every way I could think of, for months on end. Nothing ever even made a scratch on me.»
She held her hand out before her, palm up, regarding it somberly. «I never even felt any pain, no matter what I tried. In the end, I decided to starve myself.»
Her eyes met his again, and she seemed to steel herself before continuing, «Father, I'm sorry that I failed, I truly am. I really did try, you have to believe me.» Her voice had a pleading note to it, and her eyes were so wide and so sincere, for a moment he could have sworn they were blue again.
What did she want from him, he wondered. Didn't she know that absolution was beyond her now? She had been cast out from heaven, there would be no salvation for her.
She continued before he could say anything, though, and there was something he didn't recognize at first in her voice. «Father,» she began, pausing as she picked her words, «when I was starving myself I found out… father, I don't have to feed on humans.»
Cullen felt his face scrunch up like a table cloth in bafflement. Whatever he'd been expecting her to say next, that wasn't it.
Carine continued talking, and as the words came out his heart sunk as he recognized what it was in her voice that hadn't been there before: excitement.
«I feed on animals. It's not pleasant, and I'm not satisfied, but it's enough. I don't need to harm humans, in fact I never have. I've never harmed anybody. I think that's why my eyes are like this.» Her honey eyes held his with an intensity Carine never had in life.
Again he wondered what she wanted from him. There had to be something, or she wouldn't have come. Could it be that she wanted his approval? For him to merrily stamp his approval on her continuing to mock the person she'd once been by living on as a monster because she gorged herself with beasts instead of men?
He felt sick just thinking about it.
What he said was, «You don't think your nature will seduce you soon enough?»
Her face fell, and she leaned forwards in her chair. «What choice do I have? Hm?» she said urgently, eyes bigger and more pleading than ever. One of her hands snaked towards his across the duvet, though she didn't make contact.
She leaned even closer. «I can't kill myself. I can't starve myself, I tried. Feeding on animals over people is the only thing I can do to be better, father, I-» she broke off, and she seemed to realize how close to him she'd gotten.
She tried to hide her reaction, but he saw straight through her.
«How can you hope to be better when you can barely resist devouring your own father?» he asked scathingly.
Carine flinched back as if he'd struck her. «But you've no idea how hard this is!» she exclaimed in a voice thick with despair.
She looked at him searchingly, perhaps looking for a trace of that paternal warmth he'd given so freely all through her human life.
He had none to give her.
But he looked at her, her forlorn face and her hand that was still so close to his own, and he remembered the vampire that had attacked them both, how easily it had escaped its burning nest and then crushed Cullen's hand like an overripe fruit.
«God has forsaken you, Carine. I can see that. But,» he held up a finger on his good hand when she opened her mouth to say something. She'd never been this insolent in life. No, that wasn't quite true, she would sometimes interrupt him, but never with impudence, and besides that he'd been too fond of her to take real offense. Perhaps he should have been sterner with her. «You may still make your existence slightly less of a blight upon this earth.
«I couldn't fight that thing. You couldn't kill yourself. Whatever it takes to kill your kind, a man won't be able to do it.» He gave her an assessing look. Immortality made her stronger, but would she be strong enough to fight others of her species? To win?
But if she wasn't, then she would almost certainly be destroyed by others of her kind. Either way, there would be one less demon walking the earth.
That cemented the pastor's decision.
Carine had stilled completely.
«Father, where are you going with this?» she asked quietly.
Cullen raised his chin as he gave her his most commanding stare, the one he had worn countless of times as he thundered at his parish to obey the Lord.
«It's too late for you, Carine,» he stated gravely. He didn't want to give her false hope.
Judging by her small nod, she wasn't going to argue.
«But there may be a way for your existence to have meaning all the same,» he continued.
Carine was so still she could have been mistaken for a statue as she listened to his words.
«If you truly can't destroy yourself, use your power to save others from sharing your fate. Devote yourself to destroy the others of your kind, those that are too powerful for men to stand against. Have no fear, for should you fall, you'll no longer be living in sin. Let nothing stand in your way, Carine.
«Do as I have,» he finished wryly, and almost laughed at the irony of it all. «Though I'm not sure if it counts as God's work,» he couldn't resist musing aloud, and snorted to himself.
Carine didn't see the joke.
She was turned to look at him, horror apparent on her face, but she had frozen over completely, like his words had cast a spell on her. Her eyes were caught in vivid emotion, but they were as still as the rest of her, making her otherness all the more clear to see.
She looked more inhuman than ever.
She sat like that for several minutes, long enough to make him wonder if she'd turned to stone right in front of him.
Finally, she spoke, in a voice so quiet he struggled to hear it. «I don't even know how.»
«There is a way, Carine. There always is.»
Carine opened her mouth to protest again, but one strict look from him silenced her.
She gave him that same, searching look that she had before. Whatever she was looking for, he hoped she would find what she needed to see to understand that he was right, that this was the best, the only, option.
Several minutes went by.
«I never wanted to kill anybody,» she finally said, and he was surprised to see, even in the poor light, that her eyes were watery with tears. Who knew demons could weep?
Cullen gave a heavy sigh, and closed the distance between their hands. She gave a small gasp as his old, brittle hand closed around hers.
She was so cold, he reflected. He'd known she would be, but feeling it was another matter. Her skin was as ice cold and hard as any stone, and he understood a little better how killing herself had proven challenging.
He gave her hand a squeeze, wondering if she could even feel it. It seemed she could, for her lips tightened and she swallowed thickly in immediate response. Her other hand shot forwards to cover his, and after a nervous look to him, as if for permission, she squeezed him back.
«It's the right thing to do, Carine,» he said quietly.
Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she looked at their joined hands. Her gaze wandered to his other hand, the ruined one that had become a testament to just how superior a demon's strength was.
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He could see the steel form in her eyes, and the tension she'd had since she arrived went out of her.
When she met his eyes again, he could see in her golden eyes the decision she'd made. They had that same cold conviction he'd carried over the years, the one that had fueled him in his tireless pursuits of evil things. All in the name of God.
«I'll do it,» she said quietly. She took another breath, nodded to herself, gathered her courage. «I'll find out how, and I'll do it.»
Carine leaned a little closer, and gave him that same intense look of sincerity that she had given him a lifetime ago, when she promised to kill herself. «I won't fail you again, father,» she vowed, «I'll fight the unholy and protect humans until someone kills me. I'll never let up, I swear it.»
Her inhuman eyes burned with fierce conviction, and he believed her.
He nodded slowly back at her.
She gave his hand one final squeeze, before she carefully placed it back on the duvet with such gentleness, he felt a bit moved.
«Never forget my words, child,» he said. «Never forget your promise to me.»
«I won't,» Carine assured him quietly.
He nodded at her again, and the flicker of a smile ghosted across his lips.
«Go now,» he said, feeling drowsiness creep up on him.
He didn't hear her leave, but just as he fell back to sleep he thought he felt something cold brush across his face.
