save all of humanity? Setting me aside and placing me here where I perhaps belonged all along? I started to walk and heard the moaning. I remembered the souls trapped here, the ones who had no choice but to be blind with no voice, as black thread robbed them of it. I walked along with my arms crossed on my chest, rain started to come down and my red hair stuck to my face like traces of blood. If I took a moment to think about it, I would be so angry as to how I ended up here, tossed aside like a nuisance.
I then heard more moaning and started to walk faster as the lighting continued to roll across the sky above me. I could see shadows off in the distance, but they seemed to not even care that I was here. Maybe it was my vampire soul that made me invisible to them now, I could not be certain. The lighting lit everything up around me and I saw a large tree. At the base of it was a woman, leaning against it and a man knelt down next to her. He was touching her cheek and I could see a golden color coming from her skin and towards his hand as he held it steady only a few inches from her face. I walked towards them as rain rolled down my face and dripped from my chin. Then I stopped as he turned his face towards me and lightening showed me who he was. It was God.
He stood up and rubbed his hands together as the woman slumped by the tree, sliding down it like her life had been drained from her and he took a few steps towards me as I narrowed my eyes and wiped the rain from them. He stopped and looked upward and the rain slowed and then stopped all together, but the lightening remained and low thunder rolled off in the distance. I stared at him and then glanced past him at the woman now lying at the base of the tree.
“Halo Bay. I did not expect to you see you here,” he said as he approached me. And before I could move he had touched my cheek and quickly took his hand away. His expression telling me he was not happy to see me changed as I was.
“That is unfortunate.”
I looked him over and then pointed to the woman.
“What did you do to her?”
He looked back at her and then turned back to me, looking me over.
“I simply gave her release.”
“You killed her?”
“I would not call it killed, more like mercy.”
I laughed, but he did not.
“I am not concerned with what you think of this, I am more concerned with how you became the undead.”
I sighed and looked up towards the sky, the lightening lit up my face and he could see my red eyes and elongated teeth in my mouth.
“So what? You feed on people in purgatory?” I asked him and he sighed.
“I see you are going to test me, so be it.” He started to walk and I followed his as he waved his hand out to one side and then to the other. The darkness rolled away from us like fog as did the scenery and we ended up in a field, bright blue sky over head and lush vegetation all around us. In fact, it looked like the rain forest and as I turned and studied it I knew that was exactly what it was.
“You can change anything then, just as tricky as your brother,” I muttered behind him.
He shook his head. “No, I can simply show what I have seen and this is what it looked like when I first came here with my brother and all of our people.”
I stared at him and he turned with an apple in his hand and I grinned.
“I am not hungry.”
“Oh but humanity was. It was hungry for something to believe in and I gave that to them in exchange for everlasting life.”
“What they have in purgatory and hell is not life, it is torture.”
He looked down at the apple as it started to wither with age and rot. He tossed it aside and his soft eyes met mine. It was strange how much he reminded me of Lucifer, just the opposite version of him.
“Free will,” he said to me as he tilted his head and I sighed.
“People need guidance, I agree, but…”
“But what? They have their freedom, Halo.