13 | silence
the complete absence of sound

dedicated to purgedsouls

HANNAH HADN'T STOPPED shaking. As I pressed a warm cup of hot chocolate into her fingers, the liquid began to splash at the motion. Her eyes focused on the wooden grains of the kitchen table, the sweet aroma of hot chocolate doing nothing to break her out of her trance.

"Hey," I whispered, and slid into the seat across from my closest friend. Her dark bob was ruffled, knotted against her head from the high winds on top of the building. Tears cut into her foundation, creating lines on her face in an irregular pattern. "Hannah?"

Another tear slid from the woman's crystal eyes before she locked them with mine. I gulped from her lack of emotion. Hannah's jaw clenched, as though the very sight of me had her in pain.

"You had Nathan compel me," Hannah uttered, her features growing angry.

"Hannah-"

"You had Nathan compel me, Cor. After everything you went through, you had him do the same to me too." Her eyes fell to the vampire stood behind me. Illuminated by the crappy student housing lights, Damon and Nathan stood on opposite sides of the room. Damon leant against the kitchen cabinets and fastened his suit, whilst Nathan pretended that he was not interested in the conversation. Since Elijah's life had been taken, neither men had uttered a word to one-another, and the room had dissolved into silence.

All I could feel was guilt. I had tried to protect Hannah, yet all I had ended up doing was almost end her life.

"I didn't want you to get hurt. Is that too bad? I love you Hannah, ok?"

"Cora, don't," Hannah stared at me for two seconds before she had to look away. The hurt in her eyes shattered my heart into one million irreparable fragments. Hannah - aside from my mother - was all I had. And I had lost her. "I almost died tonight because of what you did. And I get it - I get why you told Nathan to compel me to go back home. But you took away my free will. My choice to put myself in danger or not.

"I love you Cor, but I really don't want to talk to you right now." Hannah stood up, setting the hot chocolate down on the table with a resounding bang. I cringed at the noise, closing my eyes. I heard Hannah's footsteps thud across the wooden floor before her door slammed shut.

"That went well," Damon sighed, stepping away from the kitchen area and walking into the shared living room. Seething in anger, I glared at the man, but my face softened when the handsome vampire walked straight past me and up to Nathan. Both men looked worn down to the bone: Damon's face sported more scars and dried blood than skin; and Nathan's broken neck was still bruised whilst it recovered. For a clan leader, he wasn't very good at preventing other vampires from snapping his neck.

Damon tapped his suit jacket, a frown crossing his face before it flooded with relief. He swiftly took out the ebony ceremonial blade from the pocket, and held it out begrudgingly for Nathan to take.

"There you go," Damon exhaled, nudging the dark object closer to Nathan's crossed arms. In shone in the lucid light like a pool of charcoal ink.

Nathan took the weapon without hesitation and cradled it to his chest like a newborn child. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. How could an object that looked like it had been bought in a fancy dress shop be of so much value? As much as my heart fluttered every time Nathan glanced in my direction, I found it pathetic. To be King was an honour - it meant power - but it also meant sacrifice. And he would rather us die than him not be crowned.

"Thank you, Damon," Nathan thanked with a thin-lipped smile.

"Don't mention it." Damon added, tugging his suit back into place. He waved at the door a little too enthusiastically, signalling for Nathan to leave. "Now go become king or some shit."

Nathan's beautiful eyes lingered on mine one last time, before a smile pried itself onto his lips. "See you soon, Blondie." And with that, the vampire vanished, tearing my heart strings until they snapped.

I didn't know how to feel, being left alone in Damon's presence. But it was more comforting than I cared to admit, and he had done a better job at protecting me than his Clan leader. Yet, as my eyes wandered across the room, all I could feel between us were electric shocks. It cracked through the air like lightning, and I held my breath in anticipation as Damon started towards me.

The vampire stopped inches away from my face, freeing a hand from his side to stroke my hair behind my ears and holding my face like a china plate. He was still afraid I would shatter under his touch. My skin fizzed under his fingers, and I leant into his hand. Suddenly, the cold from the winter night dissipated, and all that was left was the warmth of Damon's melting hazel eyes.

"Thank you for saving Hannah," I muttered, finally pushing myself away from the man. Part of me hated myself for feeling something towards him. And yet, I still didn't know what I felt. "I know you don't normally care about people, so - it means a lot."

Damon laughed at the statement, but didn't deny the truth. "You're welcome ginger," Damon stated, pulling at his cufflinks. He closed the gap I had created between us in a millisecond, taking away the breath from my body. His intoxicating scent of new leather and evergreen leaves wrapped around me in a protective veil, and I puckered my lips as his face came closer to mine. His lips were so perfectly pale against his tanned skin, the brown flecks suspended in his irises making every nerve in my body go up in flames. The hazel lingered on my own amber eyes for a second, before the corners of the vampire's mouth twitched up into the slither of a smile. "I say we've got a parking lot to find."

Turn left and you have reached your destination.

"Damon, the turning was right fucking there!" I exclaimed as the rental car roomed straight past the gaping entrance to an old, decrepit building site. I screamed as the car screeched to a halt, and Damon jammed the ford fiesta into reverse down the narrow, empty road.

"Hold on," Damon muttered a few seconds too late as he slammed back down on the brakes, sending me skidding across the black leather of the seat.

"I am," I groaned, finally breathing as the car turned left and pulled to a stop outside the concrete skeleton of yet another abandoned parking lot. As it transpired, after two hours of research, there were six derelict sites that I could've seen in my so-called flashbacks. The first location had turned out to be a newly renovated park, and after the fourth false lead I had begun to lose hope. Yet, as the yellow car headlights trailed across the grey structure, my stomach began to knot.

I recognised the skeleton of concrete almost immediately. It's rugged limbs were weathered down by British rain, and an abandoned car was slowly rusting into oblivion at the entrance. A billboard that used to showcase adverts was now white, the paper long gone and colours vanished. As the car ground to a halt and I clambered my way outside, the stench of petrol was no longer abundant, and all that I could smell was damp and decay.

I steadied myself against the bonnet of the grey ford. Damon noticed my discomfort straight away and killed the engine. His hand took mine, and for a moment I was dazed by the contact. He squeezed my fingers gently, watching intently whilst all I could do was continue to stare at the sight before me.

It was exactly how I had seen it in my flashback. With the two storie parking lot on my left, an expanse of unused parking spaces unfolded before us. Dust had gathered and carpeted the floor, camouflaging the white parking lines into nonexistence. Beyond the spaces, two trees rustled in the night, and the river bank was green with grass. The moon's light was barely enough to make out the shadows beyond, but the gushing water from the stream beyond screamed in my ears, drowning out my thoughts.

The chilling breeze took away a layer of warmth from my body leaving me shivering. Damon squeezed my hand tighter.

"Cora?" He whispered.

I wasn't usually scared by the night, or the wind, or anything other than spiders and deep water. But everywhere I looked, all I could see was death. Beyond the rushing stream, everything was absolutely and completely silent. The noisy road had disappeared into oblivion. The night creatures didn't dare to breath. Everything was just... still.

I took a tentative step forwards, pulling Damon with me. He retrieved the phone from his pocket, and turned on the torch. The tarmac was illuminated into an inky black, and I shuddered with every footfall against the hard surface. I didn't know what I was looking for, but every instinct in my body was drawing me closer and closer to the raging stream.

I had always hated deep water. When I was younger, I fell in the sea whilst whale watching in Cape Cod. I had screamed at the top of my lungs as the water rushed over my tiny body, hands flailing everywhere without knowing how to swim. I feared what was below me; how the whales could swallow me whole without knowing I wasn't their prey. It was only when my mother hauled me to safety and wrapped her arms around me that I had felt safe. I wish she was here now, but it felt as though Anne Hawk was on the opposite side of the planet.

"Cora."

I stopped right in front of the stream, unaware that I had been moving towards it. The dark currents ruptured the surface like spikes, black oily water running past the riverbed with a deadly ease.

I turned to glance at Damon, who I had dragged along beside me. His stubble was slightly overgrown, and his hazel eyes had hardened with worry.

"This is it," I muttered.

Expecting a sarcastic comment, I was surprised when Damon only squeezed my hand tighter out of reassurance. "Do you remember anything?"

I shook my head, although something was amiss. Something was different to the flashback I had seen whilst in Elijah's custody, yet I couldn't place my finger on it. Being here in person only made me feel stick to the stomach, but I wasn't going to leave until I had answers.

I shivered once more. Damon removed his coat and placed it around my shoulders without a second thought, to which I sent him the best smile I could muster.

"Thank you," I mumbled into the suit with a raspy tone. "I hate it here."

"Look, Coraline, if you can't remember anything, then let's-"

I waved a hand to break off his speech, suddenly intrigued by something I hadn't seen in my vision. Although the river bank was just as ominous as it had been during my nightmare, a tuft of verdant grass had been replaced by a poor covering of frosted-dirt. The ice crystals from the frost shone in the torch light, illuminated to cast a deadly beauty on the bare patch of earth. I sucked in a breath, smelling nothing but the scent of death woven within the fresh winter air.

I dropped to my haunches almost immediately, and scraped away the dirt with my bare hands. The brown substance clogged behind my nails, and the sub-zero temperatures turned my fingers from pink to pale to blue. I grit my teeth as I lost feeling in both hands, panting in exasperation as the ground refused to move. There was something buried in the ground.

"Cora!" Damon exclaimed after ten seconds, grabbing me by the shoulders and hauling me away from the bank.

But he was too late, the image from below the soil embedded in my memory like a third degree burn. Unsettled by my silence and lack of struggling as he pulled me away, Damon's arms fell limp around mine. He released me slowly, fireworks trailing across each nerve like a consecutive lightning strike. The handsome vampire peered in the dirt, only to turn away and throw his hands into his pockets.

And yet, the world had already begun to fade around me, until all that was left were my empty hands - clutching my phone. The blank screen stared at me, breaths growing rapid as I tried to unlock the screen to no avail. All I could see was the reflection of my face, but where my skin was usually fair and my hair was brushed, stood a girl with blood covering every skin cell and hair ruffled like a feral animal. My eyes shone back at me a lustrous black, the whites merging into an abyss of insanity. I wanted to say I didn't recognise the strange girl who had captured my reflection, but I did. Because she was me. The me I had been made to forget.

That was the answer - I had to find my phone.

"Fuck me," Damon muttered, giving the item one last glance and bringing me back to reality. We both knew what it meant - we both knew what I had done. Bile rose in my throat in a surge. "Fuck me."

Because lying buried, brown from a fresh covering of dirt, was the rotting heart of Alexander, the vampire king.

a ShORTer CHAPTER?? I DON'T KNOW WHO THIS IS EITHER

and i'm sorry this was so bad, but I promise you the next chapter will be worth it and cora may or may not figure out her feelings!

also i know the heart should disappear like the hearts of the other vampires when they die, but there is a reason the king's doesn't (which might be something to do with the sequel hehe ;))

i really hope you enjoyed!! i'm so sooo excited for the next chapter and can't wait to share it with you all! thank you for reading, and lots of love xxxx