I was only partially conscience. The pain blurred my ability to think but there were some things I understood.

Pain and Hunger. There was no denying the fact of there existence.

Vaguely I wondered if I slipped back in time or if my memories of the past were a figment of my fevered imagination. Maybe I was still in the beginning of the vampire conversation.

I seemed to remember this, the pain, the hunger, the fire.

Blood would ease the pain and hunger. I tried to call for Jeremy. I tried to tell him I was thirsty. My own voice refused to register in my ears.

A bag of blood was shoved  in front of me. The smell of the plastic was so strong I turned my head away. Someone gripped my head and held it still as the plastic bag was shoved against my mouth.

I hissed at the smell. My lips pulled back and the bag was pushed and empailed on my fangs.

The smell and taste of blood evaporated my eversion of the plastic. 

I swallowed repeatedly. The hunger faded but the fire grew. I twisted my limbs even as I tried to keep the blood flowing into my mouth. I was unaware of the blood streaming down my face. No matter how I twisted I couldn't escape the fire that burned me. 

Awareness faded. I floated in a black pit of pain and flames.

I caught the sound of voices but I was unable to access the meaning of the sounds. I begged the disembodied voiced to put out the fire. They either couldn't understand my screams, were unwilling to help me or were unable to help.

I don't know how long I writhed in agony but the fire faded. I was so thankful I wanted to weep with it. If I had known what was coming I would have wept with horror.

The new pain started out as a pleasant cooling of my burned limbs. The cooling sensation became cold. It wasn't painful just unpleasant. Cold became fridged. My limbs tried to compensate for the chill but no matter how much I shivered I became colder and colder until I felt like I was freezing.

I was so cold that the inside of me shivered. My body forced my stomach to upend its contents.

Someone pushed me to my side. I felt my muscles freezing one by one.

It didn't happen as it should. You're supposed to freeze from the outside in. I didn't.

It started in my core. The pain was excruciating. My shivering muscles rebeled but it was useless.

Hot blood spewed from my lips. My body froze slowly until I was unable to even shiver in an attempt to warm myself.

Ice became fire. The sounds of my weeping joined the the sounds of another.

Even through my fire and ice shrouded consciousness I recognized the other weeper.

Beth. Her pain ripped at me. I wanted to lie and tell her I was fine. But the words came out a twisted imitation of pleas.

I now feared I knew why Jeremy told me how he felt about me. I understand why he had almost been desperate to discover I was under a spell. I knew why he had avoided answering my questions about this. Even Breea had been elusive with answers.

They didn't think I was going to live through this. How could I? I was being frozen and baked at the whim of fate.

They should just kill me quickly instead of subjecting me to this never ending but constant slow demise.

"Kill." I tried to beg them to release me from my agony. I forced out the one word but my lips twisted in pain, refusing to form the second one. Still I tried. "Mee."

I would have given anything for the dark pain filled firey abyss I had struggled against earlier.

The firsy bone to crack was a vertebra in the center of my back.

I screamed. Another back bone cracked. Tendons snapped. Muscles ripped.

Blackness engulfed me. Unfortunately the next bone to break was my left collar bone. The pain revived me. The right collar bone followed.

I panted. I screamed. I had never felt pain like this.

The process was like... I have no analogy to compare it to. Every bone, every muscle, every tendon was breaking, ripping, tearing and I felt it all.

My existence was pain. Nothing else was in me but pain. It was no longer hot or cold. It just... was.

I suffered through it. I couldn't even get the broken bones in my jaw to beg for an end to it all.

When my body was nothing but a broken, torn, ripped mass a new sensation smothered me. Numbness.

By then you would have thought I would have figured it out. I hadn't.

Still the numbness was at least a reprieve from the pain.

I lay there. My numb broken body struging to breath. My heart attempted to beat. But I didn't care that it wasn't able to function.

I was allowed to float in the black void but this time there was no pain, no sound, no sight, no scent, no taste.

This too did not last. My nerves began to itch. My skin seemed to crawl even though I didn't feel it my mind senced it.

I can recall only momentary fragments of what happened next. I'm fairly certain that is my mind's way of preserving my sanity.

The pain of what I remember is enough to know I don't want to acknowledge the moments I've forgotten.

I'm sure I felt every agonizing second of my body rebuilding it's self, but some things stand out in my mind.

When my hearing returned I could clearly make out every sound. Sounds that would have required me to concentrate even as a vampire were crystalline clear.

There were a total of 8 heartbeats. The werecat, Breea. Two vampires, Jeremy and Stephano. (It didn't cross my mind at the time to wonder why or when he arrived.) Two human heartbeats that for some reason I had no trouble telling apart. There were two tiny heartbeats inside the wall, mice I suspected. I could hear one more heartbeat, it was fast and strong but muffled. It resided in the center of Ann's womb.

The mice squeeked. Then they settled in and began to naw on the wood in my wall.

I wanted to yell at them all to shut up. Even their breathing was too loud.

Beth's sobs sounded amplified. It was too much. It was all to much to handle.