by E. M. Knight
Is this what it means to be completely at peace?
The tranquility is overwhelming. It’s sublime. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It almost makes me languid from being too content.
I hate it.
I rip the ring off, ending that little experiment. The vampire within thrashes into being. It’s not a physical thing, of course, but it feels as if she beats against my chest, as if she senses the blood rocketing through my veins.
“Oh, wow,” I whisper.
For too long I’d hated what I was made into. That was the reason I had constantly and purposefully sought out pain, as punishment, self-inflicted, for my sins.
But with that brief quelling of the creature that grants me my duality? I realize nothing could be further from the truth. I love being a vampire, just as I love taking blood, just as I love being able to inflict pain upon my own body while knowing that I cannot do it any real harm…
A new idea occurs to me.
I look at the woman bound to the rock. I could have used the silver chains on her instead of casting the spell. But I wanted to save them for later. For me to have an ace up my sleeve in case she proved unwilling to talk.
Yet, what effect would the ring have on her?
I approach her slowly. Once I’m close, I probe her with my mind.
Still becoming a vampire. Still very weak. Still caught somewhere in the process of being made.
I pick up her left hand and carefully slip the ring over the index finger.
The moment I do, a great convulsion takes her. I step back. Wave after wave of spasms rock her body. I watch, fascinated, as she shakes and shakes and shakes.
But that suffering is not what catches my interest.
The way the ring affects the corruption over her skin is.
Her skin lightens around the ring, pushing the black away and becoming a beautiful ivory. As each convulsion takes her, the darkness is pushed away. The hand with the ring is clear of it first. Then the process continues up her arm. It negates the black, fighting it off, and healing the skin as it does.
Soon, her entire body is clear of the taint, aside from a tight, pulsing circle around the marks on her neck.
The woman’s eyes pop open. They come upon me.
They are the cruel, cruel eyes of a fully-formed vampire.
“Blood,” she breathes.
And I cut a tiny slit in my wrist and press it to her lips.
Chapter Six
VICTORIA
IN THE CAVE
I pull my hand away after the woman takes her first sip.
I see the hunger flare in her eyes. Oh yes, she feels it acutely. And now that she’s had her first taste of blood—not just any blood, but vampire blood—she will not be satiated for a long, long time.
All the best to make her desperate. All the best to make her mine.
“More,” she rasps. “Give me… more!”
I touch my lips and give her a sad smile. “I’m sorry, my dearest. There is no more for you.”
She glares at me, full of hatred, but it’s an animalistic hatred, nothing she can intellectualize. She does not yet know who I am or what I desire.
She tries to step toward me, and finds herself bound. Confusion marks her face. “Who are you?” she asks. “Are you with James? Where is he? He will give me more blood, he will give me his blood, his blood is what I need, it’s what I want, it’s what I crave...” she starts to rage, “...give it to me give it to me GIVE IT TO ME!”
The only thing I give her is a soft laugh. “My, but you are the most demanding young thing,” I say. Then my eyes pierce into her. “Why do you ask for James?”
“I belong to him!” she says fiercely. She thrashes against the rope. “What are these bonds, why am I here, what have you done? Where is James, give me James, I must see James, I need his blood, I need it I need it I need it—”
“Enough.” I strike her. Her head snaps to the side and her verbal effluvia cuts off. “You will speak only when I’ve granted permission. If you don’t comply, I have ways of making you more malleable to my suggestions.” I fix her with a heavy gaze. “So don’t you test me.”
The woman narrows her eyes and glares at me.
“I understand you want to feed. Such impulses are only natural for a newborn. But you must understand something, too.”
“What?” she hisses.
“Your life...” I step up to her, “...is entirely in my hands. You are a new vampire. Summon your brilliant new awareness of the world and feel my strength. Know it, compared to yours. And know that I could crush you were it my will.”
I turn around and strut back to the burlap bag. “Take your time. I know such things might seem difficult.”
I rummage through the contents as I let her stew. So James made her, I think. Her and all the rest.
Finally, I find what I’m looking for and take it out. A thin, silver collar, also retrieved from the rubble.
This is an item I know all-too-much about.
I bring it back to her and hold it out near her face. As soon as the metal comes within a foot of her skin, she winces in pain and shies back.
“This is silver,” I explain. “Silver is our universal weakness. In the stories, it is werewolves and shifters who cannot handle the precious metal. Not so in real life. You will find that you have no aversion greater than the one you feel for this.”
I move it closer to her face. Her expression contorts horribly.
“Do you see how it makes you feel?” I ask. “The nausea, the dizziness, the vertigo? The pain, the pressure, the—”
“Well then,” she cuts in. “Said the wolf.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Well, then,” she repeats. She starts to laugh. “Said the wolf.”
My eyes narrow. “What?”
“Well then said the wolf, well then said the wolf, well then said the wolf said the wolf said the wolf. Wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, WOLF WOLF WOLF!”
“Stop it,” I hiss.
“Wolf wolf wolf wolf WOLF!” She howls. “WOLF! WOLF! WOLF!” She thrases against her bonds. She throws her head forward and hits it back, striking the rock with enormous force. “WOLF WOLF WOLF!” She continues jerking about and screaming nonsense. “WOLF!”
Her head starts to bleed. Cracks splinter in the boulder from where she keeps hitting it. “Stop it,” I say. “Stop that. Stop screaming!”
“WOLF WOLF WOLF!” she continues. “WOLF WOLF!”
“I’m warning you—”
“WOLF! Wooooo…oooo...ooooo...ooo...lf!”
I can’t take it anymore. I move to hit her again, but then—
She coughs. Blood spurts out. I move aside, disgusted. She coughs again, and this time, there’s even more blood. It stains the front of her shirt and smells vile—rotting.
Then a great spasm takes her. Her whole body jerks like a marionette on a string. Her head twists this way and that. More blood starts to leak out of her nose. Her neck twitches sideways. A stream of blood pours out her ear. It’s all tainted, all poisoned, all smelling of vile corruption and stark disease…
Suddenly, the woman goes rigid. Her eyes go wide and unseeing.
“She comes,” she gasps, and then, with one last feeble cough, drops her head.
I wait for a second, and then two. When the woman makes no move to raise her head, I step up to her…
And am astounded when I find the life force inside her gone.
She’s dead.
I grimace. With one finger I prod her forehead, pushing her head back up. Her eyes are closed, and even with the blood staining all the different parts of her body, she looks almost… peaceful.
My gaze turns to the wound, that little mark near her neck. It’s stopped pulsing.
But I know the mark is the cause of this.
I turn away in disgust. I wasn’t expecting this woman to be taken so easily. Yet the screaming… well, it tells me her mind could not cope with the transformation. Ment
ally, she had lost.
Then I remember the ring and twist to take it off. No sooner do I have it off her finger than its protective effect is vanquished.
Immediately the woman’s skin turns a sickly purple. It’s like she’s been bruised all over. And then the purple darkens, and corruption spreads outward from the tiny mark in ripples. It takes her whole, deceased body. I watch, horrified and amazed, as her skin hardens and starts to peel off. Nasty black layers of it fall like bark stripped from a tree. Some force that I cannot discern takes them before they touch the ground. They dissipate right into the air, dissolving into nothing before my very eyes.
Her hair falls from her head. The clothes she’s wearing sag inward as her body decomposes beneath them. I step away, not wanting to be affected—
And then it’s done. There’s nothing left of the woman that would identify her in any way. All her skin is gone, all her hair fallen.
The muscles start decomposing next.
It’s like an expedition of the process that would naturally take place over weeks. The muscle fibers blacken with that same sickness and fall away. Soon, she is scarcely more than bone and sinew, and even those begin disintegrating before my eyes.
I’ve never seen, heard of, or read about the likes of this.
As soon as the bones start dissolving, the skeleton sags through the ropes. Then whatever remains of the woman falls through and collects in a pile of dust on the floor. The only thing that would identify anyone has ever been here are her soiled clothes, still pressed against the rock by the tightened ropes.
I’m watching the whole thing fairly impassively. But once it’s over, a huge revulsion grips me. I turn away and dry-heave with my hands on my knees.
Such a thing… such a thing should not be possible. Such corrosion should never take an organic being.
And I did not want to kill her. Not like that, not without first getting answers.
The ring. I look at the ring in my hand. The ring is what caused this! It pushed the corruption away, but then the woman could not stand it. She succumbed to whatever malevolent force was inside her body.
Perhaps it was the vampire inside her that had fought the corruption off. Perhaps that is why the ring affected her as it did. It cut off the very tenuous, not-yet-functional link between the woman’s human psyche and the vampiric essence that had been given to her by James.
Well—at the very least, I discovered one thing. James was the one responsible for the scene I’d found. James was responsible for the sixteen vampire fledglings spread in a circle in the woods.
I walk to the farthest corner of the cave and sit down to collect my thoughts. If James went against the most ancient vampire creed and created so many offspring…
Well, that just means that he and I might still see eye-to-eye, were we to meet again.
Chapter Seven
RIYU
THE CRYPTS
The woman is mad. She is absolutely insane!
She thinks she can get me—me—to convince the King that I am his rightful offspring? She thinks that I hold any sort of power, any sort of influence, any sort of… anything… over such a thing?
She is the one who can speak to Logan with impunity. She is the one who can approach him any time, day or night. She can whisper in his ear, and, what’s more—the King will listen.
Now, she asks me to somehow get him to acknowledge me as his son?
No. No. I shake my head. Better forget the request. Better think nothing of the possibilities. If I even attempt to do such a thing…
Well, I remember the time Father truly cast me out.
I’d been just a boy, then, born into The Crypts but as a human. I was housed amongst the other slaves—who I did not, admittedly, at the time, understand were truly prisoners. I grew up there, never knowing the outside world, never knowing there was a world that existed beyond the boundaries of my home.
We had a little village, most of it above ground. The surrounding desert isolated us from everything else. I did not consider it odd or unusual at the time that we had a seemingly endless supply of food and water, despite not once seeing a trader or merchant.
Of course, now I know that vampires of the coven brought us food from the far-off reaches of civilization in Eastern Russia. But as a child, what interest had I in such things?
All that I wanted, in truth, was to be like one of those beautiful creatures who occasionally came into our midst.
Gods, the people whispered of them. How could they not? Those beings were magnificent. They were flawless, with smooth, ivory skin and grace of movement that made the best of our dancers look like clumsy fools. Everything they did was effortless—at least, it seemed effortless to me. Their limbs were strong, their eyes were sharp, and they had a certain aura about them that made them seem invincible.
Well. At least in that aspect, I was right.
Back then—two hundred years ago or so—the most I knew of these beings was that they lived in a compound below us, and only came out at night.
I thought that utterly fascinating. I was drawn to them from the start. I had felt such an affinity toward each and every one—particularly the males—that one day, I decided to sneak into their compound and see their true home.
Of course, doing so was forbidden to us. But I wanted to walk amongst their kind as they walked amongst mine. I could understand none of the terror that the other humans felt for these magnificent creatures.
I had none of it.
So it was around the time of my fifteenth birthday that I finally mustered up the courage to break into the underground.
I found it deceptively easy. Locked doors and bolted passageways were never big obstacles for me. I had always been small and able to squeeze through the narrowest of openings. I was also nimble of hand and foot. A little bit of wire was all I needed to make even the most stubborn lock reveal its secrets.
So in the dead of night, I made my way down the forbidden passage… and discovered a world entirely unlike my own.
I had not known it at the time, but I had made the journey on a full moon. And, beneath the human city, the vampires were celebrating. The monthly feast that the King had established, wherein he would share just a trickle of The Ancient’s blood, was taking place.
I was drawn by the sounds of festivities. Maybe I should have worried about how easy it was for me to get in. But such thoughts of caution were lost in the face of all the riches I beheld… and all the hot, sweltering bodies.
The vampires celebrated the feast as if it were an orgy. I saw the muscle-bound backs of the males, the slim, slender curves of the females. Such perfection astounded me! It fascinated me! These were nothing like the bodies I had come to know and loathe above ground, with their pock marks and ugly scars and horrible imperfections. These were flawless, beautiful. It was as if the feast were a painting come to life.
But of course, I was a fool, thinking I could watch and be undetected. The vampires were all lost in the ecstasy of their bloodlust. The smell of a human amongst them would have sent them into a greater furor.
I had only the shortest bit of time to watch before I was grabbed by the shoulders and plucked away.
I had no idea what was happening. Nor how the creature holding me could move so fast. One second I was peering down from my secret spot by the topmost ducts, the next I was hurtling through the air at breakneck speed. The next, we came to a complete stop in a cube made of metal bars.
The top remained open, and the creature leapt out. I was left alone.
And yet, for whatever reason, I was not frightened.
My cage was hauled up by a long chain and left dangling high above the feast going on below. The vampires, with their golden goblets and smooth, perfect, naked bodies, all began to shout for me. Their voices coalesced into a horrible song, but still I felt no fear.
Only… curiosity.
Inch by inch my cage was lowered. The screams descended into a maddened furor. The vampires were drunk on blood
of The Ancient, but none would turn down the hot, fresh blood of a healthy human boy.
As I came lower, some of them started to jump for me. They stood on the table and leapt up. Their claws swiped against the sides of the cage and made it rock.
Still, I was not frightened. All I felt was a dull fascination. The lowering of the cage felt to me as a rite of passage. If I made it to the floor, I would be welcomed among them. I would be one of them! I would be accepted, and, for the first time in my life, I would know true happiness.
How naïve I was.
The vampires were not welcoming me. They were hungry for me. They wanted to taste my ripe, hot, flowing blood. They wanted to have it all, to drink it from my veins, to feel the gush of it against their throats as my weak human heart pumped and pumped and pumped the nectar into them…
But I thought it all a phenomenal performance, a magnificent play. I was so aroused and hypnotized that I had no conception of the danger for myself.
Finally, the cage touched ground. Vampires flew at me. They thrust their limbs through the bars and reached for me. For a moment, I was too dazzled by the splendor, by the spectacular feeling of being wanted that I simply sat there, right in the middle, in a dumb sort of stupor.
The cage was large enough that the vampires on the outside could not reach me. Everything was within my control. I felt like the most desired little boy in the world.
And then I glimpsed him. One vampire, so tall and so muscular he stood out from the rest. His shoulders were broad, his arms were long. His face was handsome. Even I knew that he commanded a special type of power, that he was in possession of a special type of strength.
As he made his way closer the vampire crowd parted for him. My eyes were locked to his. I had to shift my legs to hide my growing excitement. He approached, and the rest of the world seemed to fade away. Nothing mattered but his eyes. Nothing mattered but his attention.
He came up to the cage, took hold of two of the bars, and easily pulled them apart for the rest.
A stream of vampires rushed inside. They picked me up and carried me out. The larger one stood aside. The others were simply doing his bidding.