by S. Coop
“No, really?” Her calm, cool façade was getting on his already frayed nerves. “You think?”
“Come.” She extended her hand to him.
“Are you kidding me? I’m not going anywhere with you. Get out of my house!” He began to crawl away from her. There is no way I’m going anywhere with this broad! There’s no telling what she will do to me next!
“Come with me or I’ll knock you out and take you with me,” she said coolly.
“What are you? No, no I’m not going anywhere with you. Just kill me. Do whatever it is you chupacabras do. That’s what you are, right? Some sort of succubus?” He felt his resolve failing by the second. Damn, those eyes of hers are mesmerizing.
“Chupacabra?” Morgan laughed, “My dear, I am no chupacabra. My name is Morgan, and I am merely what you are now, a vampire.”
Her last two words sent shockwaves through his body. Vampire? Lasandro began to panic. He heard rumors that they existed, but he never paid much attention to them. In his eyes, the whole situation had to be a big joke. It also didn’t help that most stories about vampires were in the rag sheets alongside Batboy sightings and aliens.
“You’re lying!” he yelled while running to his bedroom mirror. The person that stared back at him was barely recognizable. It looked like him, had his body and face, but his skin was pasty white and his eyes glowed a bright red. He opened his mouth to see two fangs, one on each side of his upper palate. The woman was not lying to him. If he wasn’t a vampire, he sure looked like one.
Lasandro fell to his knees. Am I dead? Am I alive? I have to be dreaming, he frantically tried to convince himself. “No, no, this can’t be!”
He felt a hard blow to his head, and darkness fell.
And that’s when Morgan took him …
Chapter Four
All’s Fair in Love and War
Morgan watched her new creation rest.
She never intended to be a Maker by any means. She had been so careful but not careful enough. True, the life of a vampire could be exciting, but she also knew the other part of being a vampire—the shame and disgust, the loneliness, the need to feed, and how bad that need could get. She knew this all too well. How could I put anyone through this hell? she asked herself. No matter how much she didn’t want this to be, it was already done and she had to deal with it. I won’t have him go through this alone.
The first few days were critical in a new vampire’s life. That is why she had to bind him with silver plated cuffs and keep him in a barn not far from one of her many residences. The silver plating was a watered down version of pure silver, which is to vampires like salt is to a slug. While vampires regenerated, slugs couldn’t, and the silver plating wasn’t nearly as strong as pure silver was, but it would get the job done. It was a precautionary measure, not just for humans in the area but for his safety, too.
Newly-made vampires were known to go through a phase, something like a blood binge. Morgan gave them the name “Newmad” for obvious reasons. Newmads were vampires but new to the life. They would be mad with hunger and act irrationally and out of control. They didn’t know who or what they were. For the first three days, they would suffer from fever and delirium, not unlike zombies, and they would simply feed, feed, and feed some more. They killed viciously and relentlessly once they joined the ranks of the undead. That is why Makers were so important. Who better to control their own? Unfortunately, this had not been the case with her. Morgan hated her Maker for turning her into what she was, but she still had love for him because he was there for her when she needed him the most. Her story was an old one …
Belgrade, Serbia, 1943
The cold, snow-laden branches hit Jasmina Jovanovich in the face as she ran through the thick forest brush. Nikolai, her counterpart, trailed behind her, making sure if someone came up from behind that they would attack him first.
“Faster, Jasmina!” Nikolai warned.
Jasmina increased her pace; pulling strength from somewhere she didn’t know existed. She could hear the dogs getting closer and the blowing of whistles not too far in the distance. It was the Gestapo. They had found them in Belgrade. Rumors abounded about someone selling out many of those in hiding, someone who was one of their own, and this hunt proved it. It was the only plausible explanation. Jasmina and Nikolai were the most careful out of the whole group and had gotten a head start.
Jasmina heard Nikolai hit the ground behind her with a heavy thud. “Nikolai!” Jasmina turned to make her way back to him.
“No! Jasmina, keep going! I’m right behind you!”
Reluctantly, she kept running, thinking Nikolai had tripped in the snow. She saw light through the trees ahead of her and hoped there was a place she could hide nearby. Surely, Nikolai was still close behind her. A loud gunshot stopped Jasmina in her tracks, her stomach jerked, and a sense of dread washed over her. No! she cried internally, afraid to make any sound. Please. no!
Jasmina fought the urge to run back, to see if she could help, but she knew Nikolai, and she knew he wouldn’t want that. He would only tell her to keep going. He always put himself in harm’s way to save her, always protecting her even when she didn’t need it.
They grew up together as neighbors. When she first met Nikolai, he greeted her by throwing a freshly dug up worm at her, a worm he had acquired while making mud pies. Unfazed, Jasmina picked up the worm and joined him in making mud pies. That impressed Nikolai, and they became inseparable from then on. As a daughter of Serbian gypsies, others made fun of Jasmina’s gypsy roots despite her parents abandoning the gypsy lifestyle for a more stable way of life.
She could recall countless scuffles Nikolai got into trying to defend her honor. Win or lose, Nikolai always had her back. As the years passed, she grew to love him more than a brother and knew he felt the same way about her. They were to be married when she turned eighteen. Her parents decided on the timeframe. Normally gypsy girls married young, but her parents did not want that for her. When Morgan turned eighteen, they were to be married in a week. Then the war came to their neighborhood, and the sweeps began.
“I’m not hiding!” Jasmina protested when her father directed her to a readymade hole under the floorboards of the kitchen. “Where is Nikolai?”
“We have no time for this, Jasmina!” her mother said. “We will find him. Don’t worry. Go and don’t come out until I tell you!”
There was a hard knock at the door that made the whole family jump. Jasmina looked at her mother’s terrified expression.
“Go!” ordered her father in a fierce whisper, as he ran to peer out of the window once more. He looked back and motioned for them to hurry. Her mother looked at her with tears in her eyes, hugged and kissed her, and lowered her down into the hole. “Volim te.”
I love you …
“Volim te takodje,” Jasmina whispered.
I love you very much …
She watched the floorboards cover the entrance and slam shut, a rug sliding over the area and voiding the cracks of any light.
Jasmina waited day after day for her parents to return. She lived off what little food was still in the house and what else she could find in the woods. She spent every other moment waiting under the floorboards. A couple weeks passed and still no mother, no father, and no Nikolai.
Jasmina was in the forest scavenging for berries late one afternoon when a burly blonde woman toting a rifle spotted her. Jasmina ran.
“Jasmina, Jasmina Jovanovich?” the woman called.
Jasmina stopped and turned around.
“I am Olja,” the woman said. “I know your parents. Are you alone?”
Jasmina nodded.
“Your parents?” Olja asked.
Jasmina lowered her head and shrugged, hiding the tears that started whenever she thought of them.
Olja shook her head and looked around. “Come home with me, quickly.” She grabbed Jasmina’s hand and cautiously led her back to her house.
Olja was a peculiar woman. She carried her
rifle with her all day long. Jasmina listened intently to Olja’s rants about Hitler, Germany, and Hungary. She often spoke quietly with visitors at her door, mostly men, who came to the house. One day Olja explained to Jasmina that she was working for the resistance and that she had word that Nikolai was alive and well in Belgrade.
“You were to marry him, were you not?” Olja asked while pouring a cup of coffee for Jasmina. Coffee was a luxury few could have at that time, but Olja’s contacts usually left her with some type of goodies.
Jasmina nodded and took a sip out of her cup. She closed her eyes and savored the taste of the scarce treat. “I want in,” she demanded, feeling more angry than scared for the first time.
Olja sat across from Jasmina and saw her look of determination. Grabbing Jasmina’s free hand with hers, Olja nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I will see what I can do. We will find him, but in the meantime I must teach you how to shoot.” Olja smiled, holding the rifle up with one hand.
Using Olja’s connections, Jasmina traveled to Belgrade where she reunited with Nikolai. Their reunion was bittersweet. She found out that the Nazis had taken her parents to work camps, and there was no way to know if they were still alive. Through connections, she found out what camp they were in. She hashed out a plan to break in even though there was a large possibility that they were already dead. She was determined to find out with or without Nikolai’s help.
Not surprisingly, Nikolai wasn’t keen on the idea. Nikolai shook his head, “This is suicide, Jasmina. You know that.”
“I know, Nikolai, but if everything goes as planned, my parents—”
“And what if it doesn’t?’ he interrupted. “What if I lose you? What if we lose each other?”
“You don’t have to go,” she replied.
Nikolai’s eyes softened. “No. You’re not going alone. We leave tomorrow when night falls.”
Sneaking into the camp would not be easy, but if they were going to go out, they were determined to go out like fallen heroes, not like innocent victims. They went after her parents, tried to sneak into the camp—
And they failed.
Now alone, Jasmina continued to run, the light in the distance growing brighter and brighter. She was almost there. Just a little bit further and I can find a place to hide. “Run Jasmina!” She thought as if Nikolai himself were saying it to her. She increased her pace even more, running toward the light with record speed when she ran into what felt like a brick wall. She flew back and hit the snow, making her slide backwards at least ten feet. Devastated, Jasmina felt hot liquid run down her lips. It was blood from the impact, and her head swam violently. Through the haze, she heard a voice.
“You’re a hard one to get alone.”
While Jasmina looked around trying to make out where the sound was coming from, someone lifted her from the ground. Feet dangling, she gained her eyesight slowly through the snowy blur to lock eyes with a German officer.
He studied her for a moment. “I’ve been watching you for some time, and I must admit that you are an exquisite creature.”
“Just kill me,” Jasmina whispered. “I’ll never talk to you!”
The officer cocked his head to the side. “Who said I wanted to talk?”
Jasmina knew that look. “Jebem ti mater!” She spit in his face.
“Fuck my mother? No.” The German officer slapped her hard to her left temple and threw her to the ground.
Jasmina’s body hit a rock covered by snow, and the force of the impact broke her spine in a sickening crack. She couldn’t feel her legs, and a thread of alarm jumped through her with sweet adrenaline, but it wasn’t enough.
She couldn’t move.
The officer then straddled her like a horse. He grabbed her face and roughly moved it from side to side, further studying her every pore. “I guess I should expect that from gypsy trash!” He snarled as he ripped her shirt open, exposing her breasts. A wicked smile spread across his lips when he took in the sight before him.
Jasmina fought to move, to hit him, to do anything, but her body was lost. All she could do was lie there, paralyzed.
He let out a small growl and bared a set of fangs. With fury in his eyes, he buried them into her breast, tasting the sweet nectar she had to offer beneath her skin. Then he pulled them out and again buried them into her neck, crushing the bones and savoring every drop.
Jasmina grew weaker and weaker while he fed. Helpless, she stared at the moon through the trees. The sky was so clear. Her eyelids grew heavier and relief washed over her as she realized whatever this monster had in mind for her would soon be over and she would be dead.
A rustling of the branches and heavy footsteps thundered from her left. The officer leaped off her and pulled himself together.
Another officer led a dog into the clearing. “Marcus, you got her!” he bellowed as he approached Jasmina’s bloody, beaten body. “Aww, you left nothing for me, my friend!” He patted Marcus on the back and pulled a revolver from the holster on his waist. He tapped the trigger but nothing came out. “Ahh, damn things!” The officer cursed and tossed the gun into the trees.
“She’s as good as dead anyway,” Marcus said. “Leave the body for the wolves.”
“Trying to kill the wolves with this trash? What have you got against nature? Ha ha hahh!”
The duo headed back to the main road leaving nothing but the sounds of laughter behind.
Jasmina lay there with open, teary eyes unable to move. Blood steadily ran from her nose and mouth mixing with the snow, making small holes in it, and a gentle gurgling sound came from her lips as she tried to breathe. Her eyes closed, and she lay in that state for hours, slowly, leaving behind the life she had come to both love and hate.
Then Marcus came back for her, and Jasmina Jovanovich no longer existed.
Morgan later found out that she, too, was a mistake, just like the con man sitting in front of her. Marcus’s original plan had been to drain her completely, but the other officer got in the way …
Lasandro moaned in pain both from the blow to his head and pain from a burning hunger, not regular hunger pains, but something much, much worse. “Where am I?” he muttered hoarsely.
“You’re safe,” Morgan said.
“What? Aww no! Not you again!” Lasandro tried to move his hands. “What the hell? You cuffed me?” He struggled to break his hands free. “Why … why does it burn?”
“It’s for your own good,” Morgan said gently. She wasn’t taking any chances.
“Oh, so now you’re worrying about my wellbeing,” he spat. “Really? Maybe you should have thought about that before you made me a damn vampire!”
“Believe me, it is,” Morgan responded dryly. “You have been here for three days. You may not remember, but you have been going through a transformation of sorts. I had to put you in silver handcuffs because you were going crazy with thirst. You may not like it, but as I told you before, you are a vampire now. This is a critical time for you.”
“So me trying to eat a cat wasn’t a hallucination?” he asked as blurry flashes of the last several days skipped across his consciousness.
“No, it wasn’t. You did try to eat my cat, which gained you the last blow to the head.”
“Well, okay, that’s great. Anyways, look crazy lady, I heard you the first time you said I was a vampire, and I may even be starting to believe it, but it’s time to get me out of these handcuffs. I’m fine now, K? Besides these things hurt like hell!” Lasandro’s voice became louder and more strained with desperation as he spoke. Vampire or not, he needed to get away from this woman. He could handle whatever was happening better alone.
Morgan studied him intently. His eyes were still red but had turned paler. which meant he was “out of the woods” for now at least. “I will take them off under one condition only,” Morgan stated, sitting back.
“What’s that?” Lasandro asked eagerly, if not annoyed.
“You march right into the house and
get in the shower! You stink.”
“So you’re telling me you didn’t wash my ass while you’ve been holding me hostage for three days? You couldn’t throw a bucket of water on me? I thought you were supposed to be taking care of me.” He would have made quotation marks with his fingers if his hands weren’t still cuffed.
Morgan ignored his indignation and walked behind him to unlock the handcuffs. She leaned over and grabbed his wrists roughly. She couldn’t help smelling his hair. It smelled of sweat, tears, and dirt; a testament that the last few days had been hard for him. A feeling of guilt washed over her. She put in the key and turned it with a sharp click.
“I just want to let you know, up front, that I am older and more experienced than you are. That means I am very, very strong, so if you’re thinking of trying anything, don’t.”
She opened the cuffs and stood in front of him. No matter how old or how controlled she became, flashbacks of the night she was turned haunted her. She cautiously backed away and wasted no time before barking orders. “I brought your clothes from your place. There are fresh towels already in the bathroom. You are to shower and meet me—”
Lasandro looked up at her, lunged toward her almost faster than her eyes could follow, and grabbed her around the waist. She had let her guard down for one moment, and he did exactly what she told him not to do. He had already become so strong and fast, but he unsuccessfully tried to tackle her to the ground, instead backing her up against the barn wall. No one would ever force her the ground again.
Morgan’s fangs descended, anticipating a savage attack, but instead Lasandro leaned into her face and asked in a furious whisper. “Why did you do this to me? Why? Why me?” His question sounded more like desperate pleading, a pleading for her to take it all back, but she couldn’t because things were what they were. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t rewind time and make things different.
“It was a mistake.” Morgan couldn’t look into his eyes.
He leaned in closer, forcing her to look at him, pinning her hard against the wall, which roused something in her she hadn’t felt for a long time.