Karizma

Kristopher felt his heart rupture as it broke. The remnants shattered into the pit of his stomach that was beginning to fill with bile. That cannot be true, he thought as he studied the woman before him. The woman that he had given himself completely over to. The woman that made his glacially mute heart warm itself enough to melt the ice, to allow him to experience feelings that he had not felt in centuries. The woman that had accepted him completely. “No,” Kristopher croaked out softly. “No, it isn’t true.”

“Listen to her heartbeat, Kristopher,” Nathan answered. “She does not lie.”

“Say it again,” Kristopher demanded suddenly.

“I do not love you,” Ryleigh spat at him. “You are just another vampire.”

Ryleigh’s heartbeat did not so much as flinch from its rhythm, its steady beat shattering Kristopher’s heart more and more with each beat. Her heart is not lying, Kristopher thought to himself. She is telling the truth. No, he immediately argued with himself. No, she cannot be. What if this is a trick? She knows that they are listening as well. “You’re not another witch,” he caught himself whispering, reciting his words from the night when she revealed herself to him.

“You’re right, I’m a Karizma,” Ryleigh said. “I have mastered hiding myself and bending the world to my will, and that includes you. I knew that you were a vampire, and I had to have one in my pocket to protect myself. You failed at that, clearly,” she added as she nodded to the chains above her. “Waste of a spell.”

Kristopher staggered backwards as his auburn eyes brightened in agony. Never skipping a beat, he thought as her heartbeat continued to fill his ears. Not a fucking beat. He did not know how he was going to rescue her, but he had every intention of fighting the Master and the Mistress if it came down to it. But now? Fighting them for a lie? Kristopher growled against the bile that rose in his throat and forced it back down. Her words cut him so deep that he felt his blood weep, he felt the void in his chest that was once his heart echo with nothingness. The first person in centuries that he allowed in, and it was all a lie. All of it. “None of it?” he whispered.

“Jesus Christ, no,” Ryleigh said exasperated. “You’re relieved of duty. If I had my magic, I’d lift the spell my damn self. You failed your mission to protect me.”

“And you failed your mission to kill the remaining Karizma, but do you understand why you would not be punished?” Nathan asked Kristopher suddenly. “Out of all of the Karizmas that you killed, it only makes sense that the final Karizma would be the strongest one. So strong that she bewitched our best hunter. You had no choice but to keep her alive, quite literally.”

“We cannot kill one of our kind for doing something that he literally had no control over,” Mistress said soothingly.

Kristopher finally broke his trance on Ryleigh to observe the Mistress. He had never met her before; he was only her hitman over the years, and he had never asked what happened to the bodies of the Karizmas. Looking at her now, he knew that she ingested them. She was the spitting image of a Karizma, and he could feel the power beneath her skin, despite the warding on the building. The amount of magic in her blood was only dulled by the warding, not nonexistent like Ryleigh’s was. Kristopher understood immediately why Nathan had kept Naomi hidden all of these years; a witch, a Karizma, nonetheless, was ruling the vampiric race. It was dangerous, but it was also genius. The vampiric race had a secret weapon that was being fueled to the brim, as much as the weapon could handle every twenty-three years. Power on top of power. It was genius, but it was also terrifying.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Nathan whispered. “Her name is Naomi. You must understand why I did not introduce you two sooner, Karizma Killer.”

“I do,” Kristopher nodded. “And why you are introducing us now.” Lukas may have found the building, but Kristopher did not doubt that Nathan knew that he was coming. Vampiric senses were heightened, which meant that the Master Vampire’s surpassed any other vampire’s senses. Nathan knew that Kristopher was on the premises; he could have easily hidden Mistress from Kristopher once Nathan knew, but he did not. Which meant that he had a plan.

“My assassin, I want to bring her out in the world,” Nathan spoke. “After she finishes the Karizma line, she will have centuries of the strongest magic coursing through her veins. Our people can finally assume their place back in the world. Humans will be cowering from us, succumbing to whatever we ask of them so that they can live. That is how the world should be, not with us as the ones hiding in the shadows. We are gods compared to man.”

“But if she has been eating all of the ones that I have been bringing her, why not sooner?” Kristopher asked. “She is strong enough now.”

“We had to make sure there was no chance of a threat,” Nathan said as he nodded at Ryleigh.

Kristopher’s eyes shifted back to Ryleigh’s as he studied her. Naomi was significantly stronger than Ryleigh; Naomi had centuries, and Ryleigh barely had two decades, but Ryleigh’s strength was enough to make Naomi uncertain about attempting to rule the world. Ryleigh is the key to everything, Kristopher realized. That was why finding the last Karizma was so important. Nathan did not give a shit about murdering the last vampire slayer; he needed the remaining part for his weapon before they could move forward with domination, and the remaining part of his weapon was also the only thing on the planet that could prevent his domination. While the Karizma line was alive and thriving, there was the threat that domination would be struck down; with Ryleigh’s death, no other threat existed, and domination could thrive.

Kristopher saw something flicker through Ryleigh’s eyes. He could have sworn it was fear, and it would not surprise him if it was. Knowing that she would be the one responsible for a vampiric plague wiping out most of the planet was the furthest thing from the Karizma legacy. “Her magic could be so much more,” Kristopher whispered.

“We have been planning this for centuries. We can wait a few more decades while her magic matures,” Naomi said. Power on tap, Kristopher realized. Take just enough blood to leave her on the brink of death, allow her body to heal, allow her magic to strengthen, take her blood again; rinse and repeat for the next few decades.

Kristopher studied the woman before him again. The woman that he had confessed his love to, opened his heart to. Ryleigh’s face was etched with anger and repulsion, but her eyes were harder to mask. Her eyes showed fear, pain, regret, and sorrow. He knew in that instant that she was wearing a mask. His mind swirled with the memories of the moments that they shared together, everything that they had been through. It is no spell, he thought. The damage was done to him regardless; the lie itself destroyed his heart. It was a lie to protect him, he knew that and understood that, but, in the moment, it was the worst thing that anyone had ever said to him and coming back from that was damn near impossible. He loved her, but he was broken all over again, and he knew that he would not be repaired this time. No more repairs, no more hope; he would remain a broken man.

Kristopher watched Ryleigh’s eyes widen as he approached her. He expected either Nathan or Naomi to stop him, but, given the performance that Ryleigh just acted, he also expected them to not stop him. If he was entranced by her as the spell claimed, he would be expected to feel pain and love and hate all at once. Just like he does now. Kristopher saw Ryleigh’s emotions in her eyes, the regret and fear that she was successful in hiding beneath her pain that was consuming her being. Kristopher shot his hand out and wrapped it around Ryleigh’s throat tightly.

Kristopher heard shuffling behind him. Nathan and Naomi had approached behind him. Kristopher growled as he stared into Ryleigh’s emerald eyes, the eyes that captivated him. He remembered that night in his office, the first time that he allowed himself to act on his desire for her, to throw caution to the wind and succumb to a witch, and how she responded in kind to him rather than to fight it. “Did you mean it?” Kristopher growled.

“Of course she meant it,” Naomi said. “She tricked you, dragged you along, for nothing, my dear. I am so sorry.”

Kristopher shook his head and kept his eyes fixated on Ryleigh. That is not what I am asking her, he thought to himself. He remembered that night in his office, how they both succumbed to each other. His auburn eyes dulled to a dark brown as he stared into her emerald ones. “Did you mean it?” He repeated. His question meant so much more than her admission of her lie; his question was to confirm that everything was not the lie that she was admitting, that everything was true. Ryleigh inhaled sharply, disguised as a struggle for breath by his grasp on her throat. One stray tear fell from her eye before she blinked and forced any future tears away.

“Every word,” Ryleigh said. Kristopher inhaled sharply and simply nodded in response. It was a lie. The bewitching, her claiming that she never loved him; all of it. She did it to protect me, he thought. She knew that if the reason for my sparing her life was a spell, that I would not be executed for my failure. She knew that one lie would keep me safe, which would keep Bailey safe. She knew that we would both live with that one lie. Kristopher growled deeply and tightened his grasp on her throat. Ryleigh smiled, very briefly, before Kristopher squeezed even tighter. He kept his eyes locked on to hers as her body began to thrash due to the lack of oxygen. Kristopher heard Naomi shout something, felt Nathan’s touch on his arm as a warning, yet still his eyes remained fixated on Ryleigh’s. Before Nathan could fully grab Kristopher to remove him, Kristopher tightened his grip sharply and a loud pop reverberated off the walls. Kristopher immediately removed his hand from Ryleigh’s throat, and her head fell forward as she hung lifeless from the chains, her bright, emerald eyes forever extinguished.