by Neha Yazmin
A fierce, painful burning took permanent residence there from then on.
“So, it is done,” he’d said quietly as he entered his flat, looking me over. He threw my clothes at me, picking them up from where he’d undressed me three nights ago. I didn’t realise it, but I was dressed in under a second.
“What’s done?” I asked. Then I gasped. My voice - it sounded magical. Sounded like me but better, nicer, more… melodic. At the same time, I could smell everything in the room and outside it. Hear everything in the next street and perhaps the one after that. “What’s happened to me?” I cried but the words chimed like a bell.
“You have become a vampire, Ellie,” he said simply.
The words froze me to my spot. I’d already deduced he was a vampire, believed it, that’s why I didn’t laugh at his answer. That’s why I knew it was true.
I was a vampire.
He came and picked me up in his arms, sat me on the sofa and made the bed. Such a normal thing to do. Then he sat on the new maroon sheets and started to explain, induct me into this new world. Fascinated, I went and sat next to him as he told me about his old life and new one. But he had deliberately refrained from explaining why he turned me into a vampire. At that time, I was under the impression that he had intended to make me like him.
My creator was still not telling me.
“Christian,” I pressed, “I know why I became like this, technically.”
Vampires are venomous and when you are bitten by one, the poison not only paralyses you as it spreads through your bloodstream, but if pumped all the way around your body by a still-beating heart, it changes you. The conversion usually takes 2 or 3 days, before the heart thuds its last beat, and then it’s done.
You’re a vampire.
“But if you meant to drain me till I was an empty corpse, why did you stop drinking?” Ugh, the thought of drinking… blood… disgusting, unthinkable.
“That was your fault too,” he snapped.
“How?” I snapped back.
He hesitated before saying, “You tasted… you did not taste good.”
“Thanks,” I replied bitterly.
From what I’d learned so far that day, and having consumed a couple of bags of donated blood myself since then, I still can’t get my head around the fact that a completely healthy human with no drugs or alcohol or anything out of the ordinary in his or her system, could taste anything but good to a vampire.
“Well, you tasted wrong,” he said, “and it terrified me. I just had to get away before it… I managed to heave most of it out of me but the rest… The rest just made me feel ill. When I was myself again, I realised it was too late. You were probably already like me. And you are.”
“Huh.” I tasted so bad to him that not only did he stop feeding, but it made him sick for… for about the same time as it took for my conversion. “So…” I thought out loud, wanting to ask if he had any idea why I hadn’t been the dinner-date I should have been. Then I decided I didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter; I wasn’t that human with that blood anymore. “What happens to mistakes like me?” I asked instead.
As a human baby, I’d been a mistake. As a newborn vampire, I was no different. After giving birth to me, my mother got stuck with me. I didn’t think that would be the case with the vampire who made me.
“I gain nothing by killing you,” he said flatly. “And you’re too strong for me now, anyway. Of course, I have contemplated the notion that you would want to destroy me for creating you, taking your life, but I had to return to you before you left my flat. I couldn’t let you roam the streets without knowing the rules.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.” What happens to me now?
“I told you, I already have a mate,” he reminded me.
Yes, his mate was a vampire called Lydia. She had created him especially to be her companion. She worked for The System and was away on business. I’d already promised that I wouldn’t tell her that Christian cheated on her. I had no intentions of meeting her so the point was moot.
“I’ll go off on my own then,” I said brightly. The idea of independence thrilled me.
“That is probably best,” he agreed without looking at me. “Ellie, I am sorry that I cannot guide you further.”
“I’m sorry I tasted so bad.”
We exchanged a quick laugh before I rose to my feet. The movement was so fast and yet I could see every fibre of his shirt, hear the shuffle of my clothes against my smooth skin. These things are second nature to me now, but in my first few days, it was rather disorienting.
“Ellie,” he said as I headed for the front door. “Wait until its dark.”
We talked as we waited for nightfall. He finally asked about my mother - he’d been following me since that first time we met, so he knew the story. He regretted that I couldn’t patch things up with her anymore. I didn’t harbour the same regrets. I was still angry at her; those feelings had not died with my human life.
In fact, they had intensified.
I made him tell me a little more about Lydia, his mate, the one who created him almost a century ago.
“She can see into the future,” Christian said. “That’s why The System recruited her. They almost always need her because she can guide them on every mission, every job, every thing. So, she’s almost always away on work.”
“And you get lonely,” I said automatically. He flinched.
“We also have to move around a lot,” he said, changing the topic, “all over the world. When we come home, to London, we can’t return to the same place again, not for a few years. Just to be on the safe-side. The System encourages our kind to be mobile.”
He spoke like a normal guy who disapproved of the government, the politicians. A guy who didn’t like his girlfriend being away for work so much, the same distaste for his partner’s employer as any man in that situation.
“They wanted to recruit me too, but I refused.”
“Why, what special power do you have?” Some vampires have an additional supernatural gift, and of course the powers that be were most interested in the extra-talented ones.
Like any organisation, The System hired the best.
“You didn’t notice?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. When I stared blankly he said, “How I can shield myself from view?”
“You appear out of the blue! But you’re actually there all along, just hiding yourself?”
“When I first spoke to you in front of your friends, you didn’t think it strange that they completely forgot about us?”
I’d thought about it, but it didn’t seem strange. I thought my friends were subtly letting me get cosy with a fit guy. After both those encounters with Christian, Carrie did call and ask, “What happened to you Ellie, you just disappeared?” Assuming she was referring to how I ran away from Christian, I told her that I didn’t want to talk to him in case mum found out. I didn’t tell my best friend about the mild flirting between Christian and me - I couldn’t risk mum finding out that there was some mysterious guy lurking around.
“I can make you think that I’m not there, that you can’t see me,” he explained, “as well as anyone else I want to hide within my shield.”
“Like an invisibility cloak that you can wear whenever you want and drape over whomever you want?” I suggested excitedly, bouncing off my seat.
“It’s your mind that I throw a blind spot on, actually. I can make myself completely invisible to the whole world if I want. I can even throw my shield onto Lydia’s foresight, so she can’t see my future. It took me half a century to perfect it, but it was worth the effort.”
“Wow.” That explains why we didn’t get a single look, let alone get pulled up by the police, when we rode his bike to his flat. “So why does Lydia see the future but you have this cloak?”
“I think it has something to do with what special gifts or abilities we had as a human. So much of who we were intensifies in this life.” Yes, like my anger and irritation at my mother.
“Lydia used to have premonition-like dreams. When she told her mother about them, and how many had come true in some way or the other, her family thought she was a witch and threw her out. This was a couple of centuries ago, when they believed almost everything this generation assigns the term fantasy to. Then her creator found her and… And I was very good at blending into the background. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“That’s hardly a gift,” I thought out loud.
“Like I said, I’m not sure what the reason is. There are some people who The System has created specifically because they thought he or she would have a special power, but it never materialised.”
“Such as…?”
“So-called psychics… men and women who seemed to go unnoticed by their peers… people who claimed to be able to hear other peoples’ thoughts…”
“Did they raid the local mental hospital to find these people?” I joked.
“Pretty much,” he laughed and I joined in.
“Do you think I have a special power?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, you would know if you did.”
My mood went sour. “Was Lydia already working for The System when she made you?” I asked pointedly.
“Yes, why?” His mood went sour too. He knew where I was going with this.
“Are you sure she created you to be her mate or to join her employer?”
He didn’t speak.
“Does she even love you?” I pressed.
“Yes!” he snapped. “But I’m not naïve enough to think that my potential abilities weren’t a factor in her decision to make me,” he admitted bitterly. “Lydia’s always been very efficient.”
Obviously, their relationship issues went far beyond Christian’s dislike for Lydia’s workaholic behaviour.
“So, its 10pm now,” he said the next second.
Clearly, I’d overstayed my welcome. I grabbed the rucksack that I probably won’t need anyway but it would help the look I had decided on. Teenage runaway.
“Where will you go, Ellie?” he called when I opened the front door. I turned.
Despite knowing I had to keep out of The System’s radar, and just how close he was to this powerful organisation, I trusted Christian enough to tell him I was headed for London. That’s all I told him though.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” he said with a smile. Then he was serious as he said, “And really, do stay out of their way, please.”
I knew who he was referring to.
The System.
Chapter 6: David Ryan
So I came to London and made the underground my new home. Unsurprisingly, I’m not the only vampire who has taken refuge here. In my second night on the platforms of the Central Line train, I saw the first immortal since my creator. Lucas. Like me, he had black eyes and brown, wavy hair, and as with all of our kind, he is utterly beautiful.
But he totally ignored me at first. Well, more that he pretended that he hadn’t seen me, that I wasn’t there. When we finally spoke, about a good four weeks later, he seemed alright to be honest.
We’re not friends or anything, we don’t hang out. In fact, we try not to occupy the same platform at the same time if we can. But we have a strange bond. Well, I say bond, it’s more a common ground that we share.
We refrain from feeding on humans.
I do it out of disgust; Lucas, I suspect, does it out of sheer apathy. If you thought I was an odd, mildly depressed vampire, let me tell you now that Lucas takes my condition to the extreme end of the spectrum.
He didn’t tell me how he came to be like this, but I suppose he’s been around for so long that nothing interests him any more. Not even blood. I’m glad he was in a generous mood when we talked though, because it was him who introduced me to the idea of blood-bank robbery.
“How long since you last fed?” Lucas asked me in a half-interested tone. My oil-black eyes were what he focused on as he asked that.
Christian had told me that my eyes would become black soon, and then red again once I had some blood in me. The colour of our eyes tells you whether we are well-fed or starving. My creator had offered to bring me my first meal while I was still at his apartment, but I’d refused.
“I haven’t… fed… once,” I told Lucas. I’d already mentioned that I was over a month old.
He cocked his head to the side. “Hmm.” After deliberating a few seconds, he warned me that I’d have to get some nutrition in me soon. “You’re far too young to go without eating for much longer.”
“I know,” I assured him. “I’ll think of something,” I said under my breath. But of course he heard me; I kept forgetting that he had the same advantages that I do.
“You don’t want to kill,” he murmured so quietly that I was the only one who heard. “And you’ve never wanted to kill… Hmm.” Then he shrugged and told me about the donated blood idea.
Reluctantly, he went on to ask whether I was aware of all the rules and regulations I needed to follow. I sensed he would have been even more reluctant to explain it all to me from the deep relief I saw on his face when I said that yes, I’d been armed me with all the know-how by my creator.
My creator.
I think about him often, how can I not? My first time - and if I’m totally honest, my first proper kiss. As a human, I didn’t get around to figuring out how I felt about Christian - emotionally that is; physically, I did want him - and as a vampire, it’s a lot more complicated.
For one thing, I feel connected to him. Deeply. Like we’re a part of each other. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a romantic way, but is it impossible that we are tied in some way? Because it was his venom that changed me? Because my blood sort of wounded him too? And could there be some significance in the fact that we’d only finished making love when he bit me? Sex sort of bonds you to each other, doesn’t it? I don’t know.
Thankfully, there’s been no sign of Christian or Lydia in London, or anyone who I believe is associated with The System. Yet. I don’t know why, but I can’t help thinking that my path will collide with them all some day. Christian, at least.
That’s just how my luck works.
Today’s actually a very lucky day. I’ve gone exactly 6 months without triggering the suspicions of the humans on the underground and avoided the bad vampires above ground - yes, I see The System as the bad guys, the rebel that I am. And also because it’s Wednesday, and every Wednesday is an auspicious day.
It’s the day I don’t have to wait too long before I see him.
See the man I see twice a day, but see him for the second time, earlier than usual. At 3.30pm instead of around 6. I always see him in the morning when he gets on the tube for work, but waiting until 3.30 is better than waiting till 6 in the evening to see him once more. On Wednesdays, he works till 3pm, jumps on the tube and is at the stop near his home 30 minutes later.
And I am ready and waiting in my seat on the platform, in position to see him exit the carriage and make his short walk home.
The first time I saw him, I’d just stared. I don’t need to look long to remember a face, but I couldn’t look away from his. Mature and wise, crinkles around the light green eyes. Strong jaw and prominent cheekbones. Medium-brown hair, cropped short and neat. Handsome and youthful, he didn’t look like he was in his early forties.
And very, very human.
I didn’t move as he hopped onto the train, stood by the door and then disappeared into the dark tunnel. Later that day, on the return journey, he seemed tired and eager to get off the train and go home.
Curious to know what he did at work, I followed him onto the train the next day, keeping my distance, my grey hood pulled over my face. Not that he would have noticed me - he reads on the train, and can do it even if he isn’t sitting down.
He works in one of the tall, but not-quite-scraping-the-sky, buildings in the City, the type that requires a security pass to use the lifts so you can’t go beyond the foyer. And with the kind of receptionist that seems to kno
w everyone who works there and raises an eyebrow at anyone that isn’t dressed in a suit.
Because of my brilliant eyesight, from the other side of the road outside his office block, I could make out which button he pressed in the lifts before the door closed. His office is on the 7th floor; the silver board next to the lifts told me that floor is occupied by an international bank. I honed in on the voices and sounds up there and realised he works as a senior analyst for the firm.
I know what he does on a day-to-day basis because I spent the rest of that week monitoring him and the 7th floor. If I really wanted to, I could actually whiz into that building, sneak into the lifts after someone’s exited it, use a stolen security card to get up to his office and watch him work. No one would see me - I have a knack for hiding places.
Or I could climb the outside of the building and hang outside his window. But I’m not interested in what he does at work. I’m interested in what he does outside of it. Especially on Wednesdays.
It’s nearly half-past 3 now and if I still had a beating heart, it would be pounding real fast now, anticipating his arrival. I really try my best to stay away from him all week. I watch him get on the train for work, I watch him return, and go about my usual business in the interim. In fact, after that first week of obsessive stalking, I promised myself that I would leave him be. And I do, mostly.
But Wednesdays are just special.
Right, here comes his train. I know it’s his train because I can hear him breathe inside it. I know, obsessive to the point of psycho, but I can recognise his breathing, hone in on it even over all the sounds of the underground. I think I know him better than his family and friends and colleagues, and I haven’t said one word to him.
The coming routine, I know by heart:
The cold, whooshing air blows by my face. The train slows and then comes to a halt. Waiting commuters on the platform close in on the doors of the tube, while those inside the carriages converge towards the nearest exit. He’s usually one of the first to jump off, with his black briefcase in one hand, his book in the other. It’s winter now, so his long black coat is over his snappy designer suit. Without thinking, he heads for the subway exit. I follow him with my ears and when I know he’s walked into his street, I get off my seat and go after him.