Earlier, when John left the cave, Elena had called out for him to stay, her voice weak with fear. She was terrified that John would either make a naive mistake and attract unwanted attention, or that he would be found and killed by the ruthless werewolf. But her body, drained by the fight and poisoned by the venom, betrayed her. After about an hour of silent worry, she fell into a heavy, deep sleep.
She awoke later, not to the sound of John's return, but to a searing, internal alarm: the pain in her shoulder had begun to increase exponentially. To distract herself, Elena drifted into a daydream, a hauntingly peaceful memory of her past life when she was still a human being.
She saw herself as a young girl, growing up on a simple farm. She was twelve, and her world was still full of uncomplicated happiness.
"Elena! Where are you, lunch is ready!" a middle-aged woman named Eve, Elena's mother, called out from the farmhouse.
"Coming, Mama!"
Elena arrived at the wooden table. Her mother had just placed a platter of fresh baked chicken down. "What were you doing, Elena?" Eve asked, smiling warmly.
"I was playing with my dolls, Mama."
"Did you finish your homework, Elena?" Eve asked as she sat down.
"Yes, Mama, and I also got an A in my math test, Mama!"
Eve's face lit up with pride. She reached out and called Elena's name in a gentle, almost reverent tone. "Elena?"
"Yes, Mama?"
"You know you are Mama's sunshine, right?"
Elena giggled wholeheartedly, a sound of perfect joy. "I know, Mama, and Mama is also my sunshine." Eve gave her daughter a gentle smile. "Now eat your food before it gets cold."
The image of that gentle smile vanished instantly. Elena snapped out of her daydream when she heard a sound—a heavy, dragging scrape from the cave entrance. Something is getting closer, she thought, her senses, despite the venom, screaming a warning. She hoped against hope it was John, but the sound was too immense, too ponderous.
What entered the cave was something much bigger and infinitely scarier: a fully grown Grizzly Bear.
The beast walked on four massive, padded paws, its movements conveying immense, brute power. On John's home planet, this animal was considered one of the most formidable mammals; its paws were equipped with claws about four inches long, capable of ripping a person's head from their body with a single, brutal swipe.
Elena's face was a mask of shock and despair. She was badly wounded, crippled by the werewolf venom, and now this primal force had lumbered into her sanctuary. She thought that this day—the day of her likely death—could not possibly get any worse, but the grizzly had just entered the picture. If Elena were at her peak condition, this bear would be a fleeting nuisance, a mere obstacle for a vampire of her caliber. But at this moment, she was powerless and defenseless.
The grizzly bear moved deep into the cave, its dark eyes vacant and focused only on instinct. It didn't notice Elena sitting motionless against the back wall at first; it proceeded to sniff around, its large snout twitching, looking for anything that might pique its interest—a den, a scent, a morsel.
Elena was trapped in a state of sheer panic. The pain from her werewolf wound chose that terrible moment to flare up again, agonizingly, and she couldn't suppress a small, soft whimper. She instantly clamped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late.
The small noise was enough. The grizzly bear turned its massive head and spotted Elena sitting there on the cold ground. It stared at her with hollow, predatory eyes, its attention caught by the metallic scent of fresh, flowing blood leaking from her shoulder. The bear began to walk in her direction, and with every heavy, deliberate step, Elena could see her own death approaching closer.
Elena did not want to die yet. The cold certainty of the werewolf venom was one thing, but to be mauled by a feral beast felt like a final, cruel joke. She knew her end was near, but she desperately wanted to see John one last time before she passed.
"Stay away!" Elena commanded, but the immense bear paid no attention to the fading sound of her voice.
As the grizzly reached her, its massive head blotting out the faint light, Elena did the only thing she could: she held out her hand—a final, useless, instinctive gesture of defense.
The bear responded immediately. It began to roar—a deep, territorial sound that vibrated the air in the cave—and then it slashed at the hand she held out. Its four-inch claws pierced her flesh, tearing away strips of skin and muscle. Blood, thick and dark with venom, spurted from her hand. Elena couldn't help but let out a piercing scream, a sound that immediately irritated the apex predator.
The grizzly didn't hesitate. It lunged at the defenseless Elena and bit down hard on her shoulder, directly where the original werewolf wound was located.
Elena screamed again, a raw, primal sound of agony, but she could do nothing as the grizzly bear began to bite and chew on her flesh and bone. It crunched through her tissues, breaking and consuming part of her collarbone. After tearing a chunk of flesh away, the bear violently threw Elena to the side, tossing her frail body against the cold cave wall.
Elena's screams reached the highest pitch, a sound born of immense, unimaginable pain. If she were a normal human being, the trauma alone would have killed her instantly. But her core vampire strength and her fierce will to live kept her clinging to the edge of consciousness. She mustered the little strength she had left and began to crawl away from the bear.
The grizzly did not immediately chase her, as it was still preoccupied, savagely chewing on the chunk of flesh it had torn from her shoulder. Pools of dark blood began to form on the ground, spreading and leaking everywhere.
Elena's frantic, desperate crawl was futile. The bear swallowed the mouthful, its attention returning to the source of the feast. It dashed forward, a blur of fur and muscle, and bit and slashed at her back. Elena screamed again, the sound now choked and desperate, but her efforts to escape were useless.
Time began to slow down as the pain became an overwhelming, all-consuming pressure. In that stretched moment, her final conscious thought was of the boy she swore to protect. "I am sorry, Young Master," she thought. Afterwards, the pain finally became too intense, and she passed out, her ravaged body going limp on the cave floor.
====
John burst into the cave, the scream from Elena still echoing in his ears. The sight that assaulted him was one of primal horror: the massive grizzly bear, its jaws clamped and tearing at Elena's defenseless body.
When he saw what was transpiring before him, everything went black for a split second. A profound, overwhelming surge of power—a mixture of terror, rage, and protective instinct—erupted from within him.
His body began to transform.
John's left eye's pupil changed to a vivid red, while the surrounding sclera slowly turned pitch black. Unlike normal vampires, there were no dark, sickly veins spreading beneath this eye; it was pure, controlled power.
However, his rage at seeing Elena mutilated unlocked something deeper, something completely chaotic. His right eye's sclera also turned black, but the pupil began to wildly flicker before settling on a brilliant, startling blue.
His power and bloodlust exploded, a volatile aura that immediately began to envelop the entire cave. This massive, sudden surge of energy attracted the grizzly bear's attention, pulling it away from its feast.
Fangs slowly extended from John's mouth, longer and sharper than any he had manifested before, and he unleashed a primal, throaty growl that met the bear's roar. John gripped the fixed-blade knife tightly in his right hand and let the useless primitive shovel drop from his left.
The grizzly bear instantly sensed the danger emanating from the small figure. It let out a defiant roar and charged at full speed, intent on eliminating the threat standing before its food.
As the bear came running, John threw the knife with astonishing precision. The blade flew true and buried itself deep into the bear's eye, the hilt sticking out from the socket.
Yet, strangely, the massive beast did not respond to the knife in its eye—it didn't slow down, flinch, or roar in pain—it continued its charge unimpeded, its powerful instinct overriding the injury.
John did not move an inch. As the bear closed the distance, he held out his left forearm, allowing the predator to bite down with crushing force.
The attack should have severed his arm, but John did not react to the massive pain. His bone structure held, though the bear's jaws did manage to make a small fracture. John gave a grim, manic grinning display of fangs, and then, with his uninjured right hand, he calmly removed the knife from the bear's eye socket.
The bear did not let go of John's arm; instead, it proceeded to bite down even harder, driven into a frenzy. Blood, both John's and the bear's from the eye wound, mixed and leaked onto the cave floor.
John then took the fixed-blade knife and, in one swift, overwhelming motion, buried it deep into the bear's skull. The knife sliced through the bear's tough flesh and encountered bone, but the force behind the blow was so immense that it went through the skull bone just as easily as it entered the flesh, punching deep until the tip reached the brain.
The grizzly bear instantly went still. Its massive body slumped, then fell to the ground with a heavy thud close to John's feet.
John looked down at the bear's dead body. He then went down on one knee, his face twisted in a silent snarl, and removed the knife from the bear's skull.
What followed was a moment of uncontrolled, residual rage: he began to stab the dead bear repeatedly and viciously until several large, gushing holes could be seen spurting blood from the dead animal's head.
After a minute of this primal frenzy, the dual transformation abruptly faded. The red and blue lights vanished, the black sclera receded, and the immense power dissolved. John went unconscious, collapsing momentarily, but woke up only a few seconds later.
He looked at the scene—the bloody bear at his feet, the carnage everywhere—with wide, confused eyes. "Jesus Christ, what happened here," he muttered, his mind a complete blank regarding the fight. "What the fuck!"
The blinding rush of adrenaline was gone, and the excruciating pain from his mangled left arm rushed in to replace it. John gritted his teeth, suppressing a cry of pain, and instantly started scanning the cave for Elena.
The throbbing agony in John's mangled forearm was completely ignored; his world had narrowed to one person.
"Where is Elena?" he thought frantically. He looked around the carnage-strewn cave and saw her: Elena lay there motionlessly, her body horribly ravaged and limp against the wall.
"Noooooo!"
He scrambled across the bloody floor to her side, his mind screaming in panic. He carefully gathered her broken body into his arms, tears streaming down his face as he rocked her gently. "No, Elena, wake up… wake up, Elena!"
He immediately placed his fingers over her mouth and nose. To his immense relief, he found she was still breathing, shallowly but persistently. She was alive.
His next thought was the one thing that could stabilize her now: blood. But he needed his knife. "Where is the knife?"
John searched the floor frantically, his eyes landing on the grizzly bear's massive, lifeless head. He saw the hilt of his fixed-blade knife lying nearby, coated with gore and blood. John snatched up the knife and hurried back to Elena's side.
Without a second thought, driven purely by desperation, he cut open his own wrist with the blade. He held his bleeding wrist over Elena's mouth and began to drip his blood into her lips, forcing the life-giving fluid past them. John had to repeatedly cut open his wrist in the same spot, as his own vampire healing factor was attempting to seal the wound every time. It was becoming tedious and agonizing, but he had no choice.
John's face became bleak—pale and sweat-dampened—as a result of losing too much blood, but he did not care about the physical cost. He only stopped giving Elena his blood when he saw a faint return of colour to her cheeks and knew that her own body, now fortified by his unique supply, might be able to stabilize her.
But what truly shocked John was the sight of the werewolf wound. The bite on her shoulder that had stubbornly refused to heal and was actively darkening her veins was now, at a very slow pace, beginning to close.
John's blood seemed to be countering the core problem, providing the spark of life that normal vampire blood could not. Yet, he was not sure if the venom was still actively poisoning her, or if his blood could truly replace the powerful antidote at the castle. He knew with absolute certainty: he needed to get his maid and companion back to the Crimson Castle as fast as humanly (or vampirically) possible.