Coming Undone

[Caine]

He ran until he couldn’t see from the tears. It was a strange sensation, really, crying. He didn’t think he’d still be able to after he was turned, hadn’t found a reason to. He hadn’t really cried since he was a child. He’d learned that tears got him nowhere and the more he cried, the worse it got. And in one night, the resolve not to cry anymore was destroyed and it felt like there was a gaping hole in his chest, worse, even, than when Coralie had shot him to keep the Hellhounds away.

He was in Coastside, not exactly the direction he’d wanted, but it was at least secluded and far, far away from what he was running from. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. He imagined it was from Asher, the thought never crossed his mind that it could be anyone else, maybe Ripper trying to weasel his way into finding out why he refused to shoot Asher again. Caine didn’t know what he was doing anymore, the sick feeling he thought had gone when he’d ‘died’ at Moriah’s hand was back, turning his thoughts in on themselves and moving his limbs without his consent until he was gripping the hunting knife he’d gotten off a gangster in his hand and when his eyes focused, he was close, almost close enough to touch a man on the side of the street near the one of the warehouses.

The blonde didn’t even think, the knife lashing out and hitting the man in the throat, making him jolt awake with a shocked gurgle, not quite dead yet, but getting there as blood poured. His grip on the knife shifted and then the blade was cutting, ripping into his neck and leaving it an unidentifiable mess, blood coating Caine’s face, his clothes and he had a flash to the faces of his first victims, the ones who had started it all, though it had only been a matter of time. A ticking time bomb. The teenager stumbled back and stared, tears slipping down his cheeks to mix with the blood and form a pattern out of the thin rivulets until he was running again, disappearing in the blink of an eye like he had at Alpha Towers to appear in his crypt and then he was on the floor just inside, the knife thrown to clatter and skid across the stone, leaving a trail of red.

In a moment of clarity, his stomach still churning with uncertainty and anguish, he fished his phone back out of his pocket to see who had tried to contact him, fully expecting it to be something to do with Velox Nocte, the group that let him get paid for making a target out of vampire’s skulls. The device slid out of his hand when he saw the sender only for him to pick it back up and cradle it in his palm, the plastic smeared with crimson. Tell me where you are.

He wanted to ignore it, to save himself more of these tears and more of this humiliation, but he couldn’t. He was powerless to resist so he sent his message back, making sure she knew where she could find him if she really wanted to. Caine didn't make a move to change or to clean himself up. He didn't feel remorseful, though he never had, the man had been in the wrong place and the wrong time and while Caine was relieved there had been no witnesses, that was now his primary concern: his carelessness. Granted, he knew that it had been a 'crime of passion' or something, like the first four had been, though those four had done something to him and this man had not. Wrong place, wrong time.

Waiting to see what would happen next drove him further into the shadows of his own mind.