by Savill, Josh
The feeling that had been brewing up inside of him for so very long was now exploding out of him in every direction, he could not control it and it would not go away. It was like a wild lust that took over every one of his senses he could not think or feel all he now knew was too feed, Jacks eyes turned black and his fangs moved into position.
He dug his fangs deep into Missy’s throat and ripped a chunk of skin away revealing her now spurting artery Jack bit his fangs down into the wound and began to suck. He felt the warm blood trickle down his throat and could not bring himself to stop it was everything that he had needed, he could feel himself becoming stronger with every mouthful.
Dreno’s plan had worked perfectly Jack was both feeding and would bring much unneeded attention onto himself after this. His slave, Missy, now knew this and began to support Jack in his blood lust making sure that he didn’t stop, making sure that he sucked her body completely dry of life. She used the knife to cut herself repeatedly from her arms to her torso to her legs and Jack in his animalistic state revelled in this licking the wounds dry.
It took all of ten minutes for Jack to finish sucking the blood completely out of Missy, leaving her body shrivelled and destroyed. She had stopped moving long before that though, and as soon as the blood stopped flowing Jack returned back to normal giving out a mighty vampiric scream as he did so. His eyes were no longer black and his fangs had retreated leaving his normal teeth as the only ones on show.
Jack looked down at Missy’s body and wept. He knew that this was the begging of the end for him. He had resisted the urge to feed on human for so long and now he had acquired the taste for it there was no turning back, he was becoming mad. The longer that he looked at the body of the only women he had ever had feelings for the more he began to feel disconnected from his conscious, he could feel himself slipping away and another invading. There was very little time now, he had to escape before anyone saw this or before he could cause any more damage Jack no longer had any idea what he was capable of.
He grabbed his hat and jacket and ran out the door of his room. His clothes were covered in blood but he didn’t care, he had to get away before it was too late. He looked back at Missy’s body and his heart sunk even further, slamming the door behind him he ran through the bar and out the door all eyes were turned onto him once more, people saw the blood and they heard his screams of pain.
Jack continued to run and run feeling no fatigue and no pain, everything was blocked out he was completely numb. He felt as though he could run forever and that was what he intended to do. He wouldn’t stop. Jack wasn’t escaping not this time anyway he was trying to run away from himself and he would keep going until he managed that.
Meanwhile in the bar Jacks exit had caused a great commotion and Valerie came out from the back room a Winchester rifle in hand. The bar staff filled her in on the situation and she ran up the stairs as quick as she could, opening the door to the room that Jack had been staying in she looked down upon the mangled corpse that had once been Missy. A member of staff who had followed her up looked and quickly threw up behind her.
“That sick son of a bitch,” She said in a quite shocked tone she was a strong women but even this was a bit too much for her “Someone get the sheriff right now, he’s going to want to see this.”
Throughout all the commotion and people screaming and panicking one man sat in a darkened corner of the room smoking on a pipe and sipping on his red wine he had seen everything and for good reason, just as he had before.
It was a month later and Dreno was still at the feeding house in Oxford, Mississippi. He seemed to have taken it as his home and had even sent for some of his most prized possessions to be sent over from his house in France where he had been living before. In fact no one really knew what he was doing, they understood his plan for the new way of feeding but did not understand why he kept such a keen eye overseeing it every single step of the way.
No one however had the sort of authority or indeed courage for that matter to raise the point with him all as it would lead to would be death or worse. Everyone at the feeding house had noticed that Dreno was very skilled with Dark magic and surely knew how to make you suffer if you got on the wrong side of him.
Two vampires approached his office door, they walked with an official manner and were not dressed like the others. These vampires were dressed in white coats, obviously to cover blood splatter from the suits that they wore underneath. They walked up to the door and opened it very skittishly one of them putting their head through just a touch as to try and not seem rude of intruding.
Dreno looked up at the nervous and strangely dressed men that stood in front of him and smiled. “Gentlemen,” He exclaimed opening his arms wide seeming to give some form of air embrace to the two of them “Please come in, tell me everything that you have found out I have not been able to control my excitement to know.”
Dreno seemed to be in very good spirits at the sight of the two gentlemen and immediately this seemed to calm the two men down as they entered the room. Standing awkwardly in front of Dreno’s desk. His eyes looked expectantly back and forth between the two men but after none of them took the hint and began to speak he thought he would start off.
“So what do my two favourite vampiric scientists have to tell me about my program, all interesting developments I hope as you know I have very big plans for this.” Dreno said as he extended his arms for the two Gentlemen to begin speaking.
One of them finally plucked up the courage and began to speak to Dreno who looked wrapped up in the world that the man was painting for him “We have been running tests on the blood sir and I will be perfectly honest with you we could not have hoped for better results. Not only is this blood much more radially available but, from the test subjects who have been given nothing but this, it has also had many other helpful effects some of which we didn’t expect including improved strength, can spend longer in sunlight, much quicker to anger, improved agility. The list goes on, sir, this blood is turning the test subjects into super vampires.”
“Not super vampires my innocent friend, it is turning them into what we always should have been, what we were before the rise of humanity,” Said Dreno quickly catching the pause in the gentleman’s he looked off into the distance with a mad stare seeming almost like he was dreaming of something.
The other gentleman began to speak “As you predicted sir the cattle plugged up to the machines are fine, apart from their eternal blood supply is in a constant flow and everything seems to be going ok for them, they will not die.”
A wide smile appeared on Dreno’s face he was pleased to hear that everything was going so well “How many cattle do you have at the moment? I am fully aware that we are still in a test phase of this.”
The men thought for a second and then responded together “11 Sir.” The gentlemen looked confused.
“And how many test subjects gentleman?” Dreno asked.
“8.” They replied with a sense of certainty and confusion as to why Dreno was asking simple things that he already knew and no doubt set up.
Dreno turned away from them knowing that they would be displeased to hear this as they were already snowed under enough anyway “I want the cattle upped to 30 and the test subjects upped to 20 and I want this to be the way by the end of the week do I make myself clear?”
The men seemed to panic for a moment, completely taken aback by their suddenly gargantuan work load “But sir I must protest,” began one of them. His partner just stood next to him in silent shock “This is just in test phase at the moment there is no possible way that we can get those sort of numbers and still remain researching at the rate that we are it would be sacrificing one for the other. We wouldn’t be able to handle such a large amount of cattle at the moment, some of the machines are still weeks away from completion. We could up the numbers a bit but nowhere near that level sir I’m sorry it’s just not do-able,” The gentleman had seemed to have built confidence during his speech and now look
ing up over the rim of his glasses and seeing how Dreno was looking at him and where he was he took a great gulp and began to regret every word that he had just said.
Dreno stood up from his chair and stooped over the gentleman who had spoken his piece. It did not seem as though Dreno had appreciated his words one bit “Do you doubt my ideas? Do you think that I am stupid?” Dreno sounded much to cool and relaxed. He did not normally behave like this, even when he was angry, this must have been something different this must have been disappointment.
The gentleman in the chair began to get very nervous and sat up completely straight, Dreno looming behind him was a very bad sign. “No of course I would never think anything of the sort of you High Chancellor. I was just simply saying that I feel those numbers are too much I can’t manage them maybe it is my problem, I must be the inadequate one.”
Dreno raised an eyebrow to this and then with one quick and all too easy movement pulled the head clean off of the gentleman who he felt was letting him down. The anger could be seen deep in Dreno’s eyes, anger mixed with some strange form of sadistic joy. Blood splattered in every direction and landed on pretty much everything throughout the room. The other gentleman now covered in the blood of his partner tried to pretend that it was nothing, acting almost as if he had not noticed what had happened. You could easily see the fear in his eyes that he was next as he nervously lifted his pocket handkerchief to wipe his face of blood. The decapitated body slumped slowly to the heels of the other gentleman who pushed his feet back in avoidance of it.
Dreno put the head down onto the table and looked up at the one remaining vampire “I trust that you will have no problems with my new orders?” Dreno seemed to be asking him this genuinely even though after a display of such superiority the gentleman would have to be stupid to speak up against Dreno.
The gentleman fumbled with his words and continued to dab himself with his handkerchief “Of course not High Chancellor it sounds like a most brilliant plan. I will start work on it immediately.” The gentleman stood up nervously as he said this trying to inch his way towards the door to escape Dreno’s unnerving company.
“Good I am most pleased,” replied Dreno “You always were my favourite scientist, I have seen great potential in you since the beginning now go and follow through with the plan, I expect regular updates.”
The gentleman bowed low to Dreno as a sign of respect and quickly backed himself out of the room. Hurrying down the hall, as soon as the doors were closed. That night the program would be upped, that night even more young children would go missing and houses would be burnt down under suspicious circumstances but maybe even more worrying than that was the fact that there was soon to be more even stronger vampires walking around the earth and that wasn’t good for the human race.
It may have been a whole month after the death of Missy but that day still rang through Jacks head like it was yesterday. Maybe because he had ran and never gained closure he had thought to himself for a while, but any sort of closure he could have wanted could have easily been found in the papers lying around the streets of Oxford. It was a heavily reported on story. after Jack had left the saloon the sheriff had arrived and a man hunt had started for Jack. It was a weird case as there were many people who could have told the police what Jack looked like but there was no one who could describe anything about him it had got him a name in the paper “the phantom man”.
It had been a long time now since people had really stopped looking for Jack but he still remained in hiding maybe because he had become more like some form of stray feral dog. Now he only came out every once in a while, at night, to feed when he needed to and would then quickly return to what he had now taken as his home.
Jack had spent the last month living in the foundations of an old run down building on the bad side of Oxford. Every night that he would return to his lair he would have to remove an old white board and crawl in under the building lying on the cold dirt. He shared this area with the worms and vermin and rats would often visit him and nibble at exposed parts of Jacks flesh. He should have been miserable here but he couldn’t remember what miserable felt like. All he knew was that he had been sad for so long before he got here it was fairly impossible for him to get any lower.
Even now when Jack felt that he could not get any lower he still spent his days looking at the child’s doll. Any time that it all seemed to get too far on top of him and he sought relief in the doll. It reminded him of why he was here, why he was still fighting to stay alive and most importantly how he would one day save that poor girl. Although he now woke every night with night terrors that mixed the screams of the little girl with the screams of Missy he still held strong and swore even if it was the last thing that he did, which it probably would be, he would save her.
Someone that he could not save however was Missy. The nightmare and shame of her death played regularly in front of Jack’s mind seemingly nonstop. It tortured him and bound him to never want to leave the vermin filled hole in the ground that he had decided to call home. He continuously wondered how he could have been so weak and how he could have brutalised the one that he loved like that, no matter what state she was in or indeed what state he was in either.
Saying that Jack was unhappy would be an understatement but there was a positive though, Jack was very well hidden. Dreno’s men had lost all knowledge of the whereabouts of Jack on the night of Missy’s murder they had become confused in the commotion and had not realised that he had ran out until it was too late. They had not stopped their search for Jack’s whereabouts since but it probably comes as no surprise that, with no knowledge of where Jack was nor whether he was alive or dead, Dreno was less than happy.
Dreno had not forgotten. Every day he thought of Jack. Every day he thought about how he was still out there defying his punishment going against what everyone thought was possible. Dreno, as always, had plans though and it would not be long now before they ran through.
Dreno once again met with yet another vampire that day. It seemed that his life revolved around meetings at the moment. It had often been quite full of different talks and meetings when he was living in France but it seemed as though, now that he was here in America, much more of his time was taken up by talking to feeding house Chancellors. He put it down to people around here not being used to having the High Chancellor in their presence. But it was still beginning to annoy him greatly.
This meeting however was different, this was one that he had only just arranged himself and he was very much looking forward to it. Dreno had summoned one of his test subject vampires to see him, one of the ones that have been feeding purely off of the children’s blood, after the meeting with the scientists earlier he was very interested to see first-hand just how strong these vampires truly were.
The doors opened wide to Dreno’s office and in stepped a tall vampire. His hair was long and black and his eyes were near solid black themselves. He had more colour in his face than a normal vampire and stood with much less fear towards Dreno, though he still stood with respect. This was one of the test subjects.
Dreno looked at the vampire that stood in front of him and smiled. It appeared strong and easily up to any challenge of strength. As soon as his eyes fell on the vampire he gained the feeling that hoped for, the feeling that this was how vampires were supposed to be. Dreno was pleased with what he saw and decided to test further.
Dreno stood up and walked slowly over to the vampire who stood completely still in the middle of the room. He had said nothing since his arrival. Dreno began to circle several times but still the vampire stood solid as rock, unmoving. Finally Dreno stood still in front of the vampire looking deep into his eyes and in a split second shot his hand forward in an attempt to rip the vampires beating heart from its chest.
Usually this would have worked. In fact on any other vampire it would have worked after all he would have caught them off guard and Dreno was known for his lightning fast movements. This however was different. The vampire si
mply grabbed Dreno’s wrist and threw his hand back towards him returning to his original standing position once he was done just like nothing had ever happened.
Dreno looked at his hand a slight look of shock covering his face. He had not been blocked like that since he was very young. Truly this new feeding technic worked and it became obvious to him that he needed to begin giving it to everyone, himself included as soon as possible. Dreno could not have been more pleased at the results of the test that he had seen here today.
“This is perfect,” he began, as a smile replaced the look of shock. “This is exactly what I was hoping for, vampires who are finally once again proper vampires, back to the way that we were supposed to be.” It was then that an idea came into Dreno’s head, one that surprised even him at its resourcefulness but never the less way very good. “Sir I want you to take all of your fellow test subjects and hunt Jack Crowe, no doubt you still remember him, when you find him I expect you to bring him back here, after of course you have savagely beaten him. I trust that this won’t be a problem?”
“Not at all, it will be my pleasure High Chancellor,” Replied the vampire as he bowed low “We will head out tonight, we will find him for you, I can promise you that.” The certainty in the vampire’s voice seemed to spell nothing but trouble for Jack.
Night time was in full swing in the city and it had been an uneventful night to say the least for Jack. He had ventured out of his hiding place for the first time in a couple of nights but found himself nowhere near hungry enough to feed plus the fact he tried to avoid feeding as much as possible. Jack had more gone out for the walk to soak up the moonlight as it were. He sometimes liked to take small walks around the area that he lived it, would clear his mind and make him forget just for that short amount of time.
Jack had walked along some of the roof tops that he used to hunt from. He remembered capturing the humans and taking them back to the feeding house and he did not find himself missing those times, in fact he found himself regretting those times and wishing that that he would have only realised what he was doing sooner, maybe he thought, he could have saved all the trouble that was happening now and quite a lot of lives at the same time for that matter.