“What kind of dog was that?”
“A hellhound,” she stated, clearly not exaggerating.
“We have bred them for hundreds of years only for our purposes. They are very loyal and obedient. They will guard us as we sleep even to the point of death.”
“Holy shit,” I said as I stared at the twitching remnants of the animal at my feet.
We were in a whirlwind of sensations as we ran down a stone tunnel, but between us there fell a silence in which I could not think about how I would find my friend. I pulled my Smith & Wesson out of my holster, pulled back the slide, and as it sprang forward, an extreme shock round chambered. The first two fingers of my left hand braced the bottom of the pistol as I swung right and left, following the sight with my eyes.
I could only hear my own breathing as we continued. Fabiana was close to me. I could see the outline of her frame a few steps ahead.
“Your weapon will be of no use to you here,” she said.
Regardless, I felt safer with it. But she was probably correct.
“Fabiana? How is it this place is underground?”
“This was an old house, built many years ago. It was engulfed by a landslide thirty years back and forgotten. The Origin of Blood now uses it for their church. They have always sought out places hidden from humans, but at the same time they must remain close to their food source.”
Fabiana was no longer the gentle, elegant creature that I had known an hour ago. She was now a ferocious fighter leading the way to the destruction of her own kind.
In the distance, an open doorway was illuminated by a blazing fire. Shadow danced in and out of the wooden door frame and as we slowly moved closer, I felt as if the structure of the home would buckle at any moment under the weight of the earth on top of it. The wood was rotten and crumbling. It must have been at least eighty years old.
As we entered the rustic home that was once decorated with carved molding, dark wood floors, and painted panels, I could see that at one time it had been nice. But now only dirt and rotten earth sat everywhere. Walls had gaping holes where the dirt had pushed its way in and had collected in piles. Time and natural destruction had turned the home into a tomb of mud.
Glowing light filtered throughout the house. Heavy wooden pillars struggled to hold back the earth. Then my eye caught sight of it: an arm lay motionless across the threshold of the doorway. Blood had pooled on the floor next to it. I stood very still, my eyes moving from one drop to the next. At the edge of the dirt floor, the bloody area appeared to have been smeared by a large foot, as if the person had been standing in it when the blood hit the floor. I moved in for a closer look, afraid of what I would find. I slowly made my way around the doorway, almost sure it would be Kenny. My head dipped low when Jack’s dead body came into view, the fire blazing just in front of him.
“Jack…” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Then a door on the far side of the room swung open and several vampires ran into the light. The young looking men stood motionless before us for an instant, then Fabiana moved with speed that I had never seen before. An incredible force blew the men back. They tumbled through the doorway and were engulfed in the darkness of the room. Fabiana disappeared as she ran after them. Only the sounds of destruction told the story to my human ears.
I felt uneasy as I stood next to Jack’s tortured corpse. The house began to rumble and shake. An immense battle was erupting between The Origin of Blood and Fabiana.
Suddenly, a muffled voice broke my concentration. I turned around and my eyes darted from one side of the room to the other. A few flies had begun to stray into the house, drawn by the scent of death. The soft flapping of wings pulled at my nerves.
“Tim,” I heard the voice again, but more clearly.
“What? Who’s there?”
Kenny appeared suddenly and silently. His coat didn’t move at all, as if he had only taken a step into the light of the fire. It seemed to me at that moment that Kenny had reached out and plucked me from time and space. I felt frozen as I stared at him.
I had never been more relieved and happy to see anyone in my life. I wasn’t too late. I had gotten there in time. My heart pounded for a minute and I ran to him. We embraced like friends that hadn’t seen each other in years. His skin felt cold as I hugged him. Then I looked at his face. Something was not quite right as he smiled at me. His eyes looked colder than I had ever seen. His skin had no color to it and he was a man of deep color. At that moment I knew it.
“No… No…” I tried to say as I pulled from him, shaking my head as if I could not grasp it.
“Why? No? My brother, I have never felt so alive before in my life! I am connected to everything. Don’t you understand? I am part of something great. A Family,” Kenny was saying as he held me in his incredibly strong grip. I struggled to get free.
“No! I will not hear it! Let go of me! You’re not my friend, not anymore. Let me go, you fucking piece of shit!”
I railed at him with everything I had. He then caught my face in his hands as if we were in a lovers’ embrace and I could tell he was going to drink from me. His lips parted and revealed two small, sharp fangs hidden away for safe keeping. He was going to kill me.
I fought as hard as I could but his grip was more than I could handle. He lifted my chin and went right for the big artery in my neck. He swung me around and drew my blood from me in one great draught. As he lifted his head, I could see the blood pump into his flesh. His face now had color once more. I was getting weak and my pistol dropped with a heavy clatter to the ground. He grabbed my arm with white fingers and crushed the bones under his grip. I felt my bones fracturing and breaking all over my body. I screamed out in pain, a kind of pain that I never thought was possible, and then he threw me against a wall. With a powerful collision of bone and wood, my body slammed to a halt on the floor.
In a daze of light and dark, I heard the barking. It seemed to echo in my mind. Everything was spinning and I thought I would lose consciousness.
The barking of a dog. It was building all around me.
At first barely recognizable until it erupted like an explosion, the sound bounced around the house. It was searching for me, it seemed. The clomping of rough pads raced closer and then a large black dog bounded around the corner. It was Zakk.
Zakk was covered in mud and blood, his teeth held out in a rabid display of anger as he paused at the doorway. He was staring at Kenny. Zakk knew the creature before him was no longer the man that had loved and cared for him for so long; he knew it was something dead and evil.
Zakk stood in front of me, refusing to let Kenny harm me again. His head was down and his fur stood up in long black spikes of rage as he lunged forward and attacked Kenny. His teeth grabbed for flesh and bone as he ripped and tore at my friend. Kenny backed up, grabbed Zakk with remarkable strength and fortitude and hurled the dog across the room. Zakk’s legs fluttered as his body flew uncontrollably through the air and collided with a wall broken by rock and soil. He impacted with great force and let out a howl of pain. Zakk cried and whimpered as he lay in a muddy mess on the floor, unable to move. He held his head to the side and stared at me sadly. I wanted to help him but could make no move to do so.
My eyes were weak. Blood poured from my body. My head lay tilted on a pile of dirt on the floor. Kenny was walking slowly towards me, but then he was picked up and hurled across the room, his back colliding into one of the wooden pillars that held the church up. Pieces of wood sprayed everywhere. The ground shook and massive beams came down in a horrible destructive blast. Rock and rubble crushed Kenny’s chest as the earth came down on him. He was bleeding badly. But I had a strange feeling that it was my blood that was bleeding out of him. Fabiana stood over him and I cried out to her. She could have killed him in an instant.
“No, Fabiana! Please don’t… don’t kill him.”
“He is not the friend that you once knew,” she said as she turned to me.
The music of destruction had finally stopped.
It was not the mayhem but the sight of me bleeding that had finally stopped her attack. It felt as if she had let her victims slide from her grasp only so that she could come to my aid. At once, the violent vampire mob had turned and made for the doorway. They pulled and pushed at one another as they made their escape into the other rooms of the church, cursing and shouting in old, barbaric tongues.
Fabiana was indeed colored by the blood she had unquestionably fed on. Even now, her face was practically glowing and her hair seemed all the more radiant against her blushing skin. A tiny speck of anger was still alive in her eyes, not detracting one bit from their awesome, wondrous splendor.
She stood over me and the look on her face said more then I cared to hear. She dipped her head low for an instant and then spoke with soft words in my mind.
“You are close to death. If I leave you here, you will certainly die… But if you drink from me, you will live.”
“I have no wish to be immortal,” I answered her.
“I don’t either. I hate being immortal. But if you help me destroy him—destroy The Origin—the curse will be broken. If I don’t change you now, you will die. Will you help me?”
I looked up at her and said one word.
“Yes.”
She leaned close and took only a very small amount of my blood, only enough to make it work. She then lifted up her right forearm and bit into her own flesh. At first, small droplets of blood dropped onto my face. Then it became a river.
“Drink for strength and drink for your survival. With it will come all my knowledge and history. You will know all you seek,” Fabiana said as the flow of blood poured down onto me. The blood hit my tongue and it was the most magnificent taste I had ever had. I let the blood swirl into my open mouth. I drank down mouthfuls of the wine of her body.
There was a sudden darkness to the room, a flutter of all the many shadows. I gasped. It felt as if the air was slipping out of my lungs. I grabbed my chest and looked up to her, filled with terrible questions.
“It is only your body’s death. Worry not. It will be over soon enough.”
Finally, she withdrew from me and stepped back.
She walked away from me, her shoulders hunched, her head down. It was more than evident that she was not content with what she had just done to me. Yet, her face was impassive. She merely studied me. Then the burning inside me seemed to be gone and she knew it. She took a long breath.
My inert body was among the tiles, half covered in soil. I was a shell, a frame that was just a reflection of my mortal self. My cloths were tattered and bloody. Clumps of dirt clung to my hair and eyelashes. My face was deathly pale and cold. I had no pulse. Soon, I might be food for the dogs and other wild things that lived in these woods.
Except that the night creatures knew better than to approach me.
Inside my motionless body, something was stirring. Something was awakening, resurfacing from the depths of a sleep so infinitely profound that only a very few could ever return from it. Gradually my senses began to reanimate. As consciousness returned, I became dimly aware of the softness of the soil under me, of the weight of my body resting on it. My dead eyelids fluttered and then opened briefly to a stab of sensations. I closed them again. Only to reopen them just as fast. And I could see again.
A long sigh whistled from my lips. Memories flickered through my mind—weakly at first, gradually gaining strength and clarity. I recalled a name, snatching it out of the air, it seemed. It was familiar. And then it occurred to me. The name had been my own.
I sat up slowly, dirt falling away from my body, and gazed around the darkened corners and crevices of the fallen house. Suddenly I could see as if the sun had just risen on the darkened night and now everything was illuminated.
A few steps from me, the wreckage of Kenny lay under the collapsed house. I could hear his steady breathing. Even under all that rubble and soil, I could hear him as if he were right next to me.
I blinked at my surroundings, staring around me. Had I been in this house when it came down? The images were slowly coming back as I tried to draw them from my mind. But they were there. My mind was not lost to the vampire blood.
I looked down at the shirt I was wearing and saw it was torn and bloody. Whose blood was it? It surely couldn’t have been mine…
Some of the wounds had been caused by the compound fractures of my bones and others by the ripping of fledgling vampire teeth. I pulled my shirt up and wondered what had happened to the flesh. It seemed completely normal to me somehow. I was a vampire. The wounds were no longer livid and raw on my pale skin. The blood had saved me.
The memories grew more vivid and closer to the surface of my comprehension. I remembered dying, my blood leaving my body. Then her eyes were on mine.
Snap out of this! Fabiana needs you, I told myself.
The distant fire that burned low in the stone fireplace shone on my face and hands. My skin was whitening and forever hard. I stood in front of a cracked mirror and put my white fingers up to my cheek. I felt no pain as I moved. My bones were completely mended, even if they were still scarred, and it had only taken an instant.
Fabiana stood before me, a smile washed over her face. I touched my fingers to my neck. I felt the holes there and the healed flesh on my vampire skin. The realization was like a knife piercing my heart.
She had saved my life. But she had made me into what she loathed most and now my life’s blood was gone.
I sprang to my feet, the emotion bursting out of me like a fountain. It echoed through my empty soul. For my life essence was now gone—taken from me and replaced by something else. But what? I truly didn’t feel evil or like a monster. But there was something new in me. Part of me no longer cared if Kenny lived or died. Was my conscience gone?
“No, not gone, Tim. It is merely subdued by your thirst. That thirst will be all-consuming soon. That is why we must act quickly. Timothy, I can’t go on without you. You are a blood collector now, an immortal. You will be cursed to walk forever unless we kill Cognatus, The Origin. Will you help me?”
I would have done anything for her. I loved her. Tears came to my eyes. I opened my mouth to her and relished her embrace as her tongue came to mine. With my eyes shut, I felt her quiver, and her lips became tight on mine. Her kiss was frozen on me. I never wanted to pull away. Of course my answer to her couldn’t be anything but yes.
“The next room is the chamber they use for Cognatus. That is where he will be.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
252
Chapter 54
10:00 p.m., November 25th
In the midst of our siege, as we stormed the chamber of the church of The Origin of Blood, I could feel every emotion coming from Fabiana. She felt almost human to me. There was no trace of the impervious and indestructible god left. Our eyes simmered with the blood of immortals. The power was indescribable.
Fabiana wasn’t a decent person. She hadn’t been decent for a great many years. But this was true of all the immortals who had walked the world and fallen in love. Love inevitably falls apart, but not before taking all that is good and decent with it. She believed that little in life was her fault, that she was inherently good, brave and full of good intentions. The truth was quite the reverse.
In fact, she was as monstrous as she ever was—one of the most bloody and dangerous vampires ever to roam the cities of humanity. She had killed countless hundreds over the years and the fact that she only took the blood of immortals wasn’t even enough to tip the scales. The one person that Fabiana had ever cared about was Cerci, the longtime friend of her father and her mentor, her guide into the world of blood. She loved him more than anyone and the sight of him now was more then she could bear. She cried out as she glimpsed him lying face down in a darkened corner of the room.
“No! Cerci!”
Fabiana ran forward and came to a screeching halt, grabbing him up in her arms. The vampire was dead. She reached out with her thoughts and searched
the minds of the few remaining vampires in the house. The answer came back to her almost immediately.
Cerci had been killed by Cognatus for his blood. Cognatus had been far too weak to take on the power that Fabiana had gained and he knew it. Maybe he had always known that this limitation would come and had intended on killing his children when the time came. He needed the strength of blood. But no human blood would do. No, Cognatus needed immortal blood. The Origin needed vampire blood. Unfortunately, Cerci was the oldest and most powerful vampire close to Cognatus. So the first vampire, the father of The Family, took the life of his faithful and loyal High Priest.
It had been quick, far too quick for Cerci to ever react to the act. He had no choice but to die. His blood had indeed been potent. It was more than enough to bring Cognatus to the power level that he needed to be.
Fabiana looked down to his face. His lips almost formed a smile as she gazed at the ruined High Priest.
There was so much that she wanted to say to him but she couldn’t find the words. She knew it was too late anyway. Cerci was dead. She had always had so many questions and now she would never have her answers. She would never feel his touch again and it pained her heart to have him gone, taken from her. She had always imagined that once she was human again maybe they could be together. But now he was gone forever. Tears welled up in her eyes, flooded down her face and landed in a pool forming on the wet ground.
I could feel her anger, her immense pain. It was powerful, more power than I had ever come across. She was getting stronger as she sat there with her dead lover in her arms, and at that moment I knew Fabiana could never really love me. Not in the way that she had loved him. Not in the way that she still loved him.
She stood up, shot me a look of ice and forced all her rage and might onto the wooden wall of the back of the house. The structure boards of the old house began to burn. Flames were swarming up the planks, turning them into a charred blackness of crumbling timber. Then, with an impressive blast of her mental power, the wall exploded and fiery shards of wood rocketed outward. Every square foot of the house was soon engulfed in flames and a thick smoke filled the rooms like flooding water.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector Page 25