Within the Cards

by Donna Altman

  Ellie brought me the blood from a victim I once served side by side with on the USS Maine. He died in the hospital a few hours ago from his burns, so she retrieved his blood for me. She poured the juices into my mouth. I did not turn away. I gulped the warm, thick delight. It was salty and sweet. I wanted, I needed, and I drank.

  Several days past before Ellie allowed me to move from the restraints that bound me. The story she told me stretched the sheer depths of my mind. It took me to a place in my mind where fear danced with reality. However, it was not fear that danced. This time, reality danced alone. I was a vampire, and she was a witchyre. I could not believe what she was telling me. I heard of these mythical characters, but I never believed in what I dismissed as a child's fairy tale.

  Ellie warned me it would be a long time before I could exist among normal mortals. I would be a danger to them. I would feel the need to drink their blood. Their scent would attract me, and I would be compelled to kill them. This bewildered me. How could I want to kill someone? I soon realized I craved to drink the liquid that purged through their vessels. The liquid that once flowed through my body as well, but no more did it flow. My only need for blood now was to drink.

  She told me about her immortal life. How she left her family to walk alone because of feeling, she was an outcast. She did not think the way normal witchyres thought of partaking without remorse. They saw human life as a feeding ground. Ellie saw them with hope and admiration. She wanted to teach me her ways, but this new way of existing confused me. I knew nothing, but the overwhelming urge to feed the monster that was strong inside me and it grew with the ticking of the clock. This new existence terrified me. However, I was curious to know what I was and regardless of the intense urge to drink, I knew I would never disobey her.

  Over the next several weeks, Ellie explained my new existence and her way of feeding. It was hard for me to understand one could care so much for the food she feasted on. I felt overwhelmed with what I heard about my new existence. I had many questions, and I wanted her to answer them.

  “Why do you feed on them if you see them with compassion, and why did you do this to me?” I asked her. I wondered what she was, as well as me. She was supposed to be a mystical creature that was not real. Now, I was what I never believed.

  Ellie told me she fed on humans that, in some natural or traumatic way, were dying. The same way I was doing before she pulled me out of the water. She explained she was my maker, and I was her creation. With that, she was the only one who could extinguish my existence. Ellie told me that was something she would never be able to do, and as much as she wanted to, she didn’t expect me to remain with her if I choose not. However, I could not leave her. I knew the minute I looked at her the night she pulled me out of the water; I was in love with her. There was something in the way Ellie looked at me. I knew she was in love with me, as well. She saved me from death and instead of draining my body of its blood, which was the normal eating habits of a witchyre; she left enough, so when she fed me her venom, it would turn me into an immortal.

  Ellie wanted a companion, someone she could exist with and could love. With one look into her icy gray eyes, I knew I was hers forever. I was in love with her in my last few minutes of humanity and again, I fell in love with her as an immortal in the instants I looked into those eyes of gray crystals. This was the night she changed me forever and the dream of my existence started. I knew I was in love with her, and I would never leave her side.

  Ellie’s scent overpowered me. It made me want more of her than I had gained at that point. She was cautious with me. She knew I was new, and I didn’t realize the strength and power I gained. Ellie knew I had as much physical strength as she did at this point, but she had powers that were stronger than my own. She could use her witch magic to restrain me at any time she needed so she could control my newfound insanity. She used her powers to remove all lust from me and all need for physical contact. Ellie later explained she did not want me to stay with her out of desire for physical needs. She only wanted me to stay with her if I truly loved her as she did me.

  After the first few weeks, she began to use fewer restraints. She taught me how to hunt for humans that were in the process of dying. Ellie taught me not to take a life unless there was no hope in its existing further. I began to tolerate being around humans without the urge to drain their blood. This was difficult because I could smell their sweet scent. It wasn’t like Ellie’s scent. This was a scent that made the newly taste of venom flow freely in my mouth, which drenched with moisture. I thirsted for the precise thing that kept them alive. I had to learn to sequester this thrust.

  With several weeks of training, Ellie knew I would be able to function on my own soon. She began to prepare herself that I might leave her. She hoped I would love her as she did me, but she was insecure about loves intentions. Her family did not believe in love. This was a new feeling for her, and it scared her that I could leave. She no longer wanted to walk the earth on her own, but she didn’t dare return to the family. Ellie was not like them. She was kind and gentle. This was why she gave me the opportunity to leave and walk on my own.

  She didn’t want to control me. Control was the exact thing she rebelled against with her family. She loved me enough to let me make the decision whether I should stay with her or leave her behind. It was as if she had been human at one time in her life. It was as if she understood the feelings and sorrows of their mortalities. This was different from the normal ways of the witchyres. They didn’t care about human emotions. These things called humans were just a food choice that walked the earth waiting for their hunter. This hunter would lunge and carry them to their deaths. Ellie wasn’t one to lunge. She was one to take only of the weakened by inevitable death.

  One morning we finished a feast we obtained after a ship sank in the same harbor where she rescued me. These men were drowning. We set our table and enjoy what would have soon rotted at the bottom of the vast darkness. As we finished our meal, I could tell Ellie was preoccupied. We were sitting next to the water’s edge when she turn to me and asked if I wanted to leave her. I could not think she would believe I didn't want to be with her. Maybe, it was that she didn't want me around anymore. I wondered if I had done something to make her want me to leave. At this time, I had not perfected my abilities to read her mind, so I didn’t know her true feelings. I thought she didn't want me. I thought she was ready for me to leave her. How could this be? I needed her, and I loved her. Many questions filled my thoughts at one time. Did she not love me? Had she gotten tired of me? Did she no longer want to share her meals with me? All I saw of her thoughts were hazy forms. I had just found out I could read the thoughts of other, and I had a hard time focusing on this new ability.

  She read my fears and touched my face. This was when I learned I had the power to feel another person’s feeling through his or her touch. I saw how she felt about me. She was deeply in love with me, and she wanted me as much as I wanted her. I pulled her close to me. There were no restraints on my physical needs. She lifted the spell that removed my urges to need her touch, and she did not resist my advances.

  I did not use my mouth to pierce the flesh of a human, but I used it to taste the luscious scent that I smelled all too many days without partaking of this sweetness. Our bodies were in perfect alignment. We were both hungry, but not for the taste of blood. We wanted the same thing. I wanted to devourer her as she did me.

  I did not want my life to be any other way than it was at that place in time. I wanted the woman that pulled me from the dark abyss and changed me into an immortal. I wanted to spend an eternity with her. This was where I needed to be, in eternity loving this woman. She pulled her body close to mine, and I became one with her. As the night's sounds whispered, we pledged our eternal lives to each other. I had made love to women as a human man, but I never knew the feeling I felt when I made love with Ellie. I truly loved her more than I loved living. At no time did I want to know a life or an existence without her.
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  “I Love You Ellie,” I told her as I looked deep into her warm gray eyes and held her body close to mine.

  “I love you Daught” she replied. Her eyes looked as if tears were forming, but I knew immortals didn’t cry nor did we make the blood tears that movies portray.

  In eternity, we wrote our vows to be together forever. I belonged to her not because she was my maker, but because we loved each other. I knew I would never leave her. We held each other for most to the night. Neither of us wanted to release our embrace. As with humans, we didn’t feel the physical exhaustion from long hours of physical exertion. We didn’t need to rest. Our only reason to release our grip was to look into the eyes of the other and verify this person was truly a reality. We both felt the love of the other, but I knew her past made her question the reality of love. This was an emotion she knew little about, but she felt this feeling and wanted to know more.

  I knew I was her creation at a weak time in her existence. I was a forbidden creation that belonged to her, but I loved her. She tensed at times with insecurity, but I pulled her closer to my body and held her tight. Ellie was far from an insecure being, but this was a new feeling for her. She had never been in love. She didn’t know what love was other than she knew it felt right. She was different from the other witchyres. She was in love.

  As I lay here I realized I was not in the year eighteen ninety-nine. This was the present year of two thousand and ten. Ellie did not remember me. She didn’t remember the night we committed ourselves to each other. I had to make her remember me. My only problem was how I would remind her of how much she loved me when she could not stand to look at my face, or smell the scent a vampire.

  Reality came flooding back. I shook my head in hope to remove my insecurities that replaced my memories of our first night together. I was starting to convince myself Ellie was right I had tipped over to the side of hallucination and psychosis. This would have been strange for an immortal, but my being was not normal for even the abnormality of my existence. No, I could not let myself think like this. I had to convince Ellie of who I was.

  Now that Ellie was back, I had three problems. She hated me. She could not stand being in the same room I attended, and if I remembered her correctly, she wanted to rip my head off. I was thankful for the moment she didn’t realize she was my maker. This would have decided my fate. If she knew she was my maker and still had the feelings of hatred, I wouldn’t have made it out of the class today. I knew her feelings of hate were true because I could see the hate that she propelled at me.

  “What did they do to you Ellie?”

  Chapter Four

  ACCORDING TO ELLIE

  Ellie kicked the leaves on the ground as she walked to the building where she was going to spend the next several weeks attending classes. She was angry at the fact her sister sent her away to school. She had no choice in the matter, so she had to make the best out of the situation. She would have to play the role of a teenage college student. It made her sick to think she had to blend in with silly arrogant females and egotistical males.

  ELLIE:

  I couldn't believe I was going back to this ridicules place they referred to as higher learning. College was a dreary place of old people that tried to tell younger people about things that happened in the past. “Who actually cared?” It was done, and it was finished. They need to get over it, and find out about new things. I wanted to scream, “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” to the top of my lungs. These humans tried to achieve a goal in life to make themselves feel as if they were someone noteworthy. I had no clue as to why. They were just poor souls on the waiting chain of my food choice. I couldn't believe Dee sent me away to this place. What was she thinking?

  As I continued to fulfill my sentencing at this school, my thoughts returned to my dorm room. “Yuck”, white, I hated white walls. If they would hire me to decorate this god-forsaken place, I would make it look presentable. Let me see, maybe some black and crimson red, yes that would make the thoughts of staying at this dull place tolerable.

  The thought of crimson made me thirsty. Now let me see, what would be appropriate for dinner? Hmmm. A few government nerds might be tasty. ‘For the people, by the people’, maybe that should be ‘for the Witchyre, by the people'. I couldn’t stand looking at those walls any longer. I had to get out of that room. It made me sick just looking at it. It was just as well I looked at the clock and knew it was time to go to the ridiculous class I was enrolled.

  I walked across the campus to the building known as Jefferson Hall. The dead leaves lying on the ground covered my shoes. I don’t understand why these idiots don’t clean the grounds. I can’t stand getting my shoes wet and filthy. Of course, with so many idiot humans around I couldn't use my powers just to pop in and out of places so I had to walk through this mess.

  As I pulled on the door to the stadium lecture hall, the minute it opened I knew that smell, a vampire. My nose slightly burnt. This was strange. I knew I had encountered this particular one before. Hmmm, the smell was slightly sweet, that’s odd. A vampire usually smelled like a musky, wet sewer rat. This was a different scent. I knew the scent was of a vamp, but this scent was strange.

  “Where is this vamp?”

  I walked further into the room. I heard the thoughts of every one of these plain pieces of food.

  “Look at that, she’s hot.” The person with spiky blonde hair looked in my direction as if he were undressing me. He and his friends were smiling at each other as they drooled in my direction. A dark haired male with enormous biceps began to smirk, and I heard him tell the blonde, “I would hit that”. I knew in this creature’s own mind he thought he had an irresistible ability to charm any female he encountered. I had news for him. He wasn’t everything he thought. I was one female he had no power over, but this could be fun watching him try to charm me.

  He sat up straight in his seat. He portrayed an image of being sure of himself. I knew, he too, was inedible a weak form that showed his insecurities by working to make his body what his mind would not allow him to be. These human males were pathetic worms. They strive to hide their fears of insecurity behind bulging pieces of flesh that would riot after I finished with them. Hmmm, of course, I was sure his muscles were all that bulged on this mortal man. How could these poor perishable females put up with such misconceptions?

  I watched as these mortal females looked at these piles of puke as if they were exactly what they made themselves up to be in their little pathetic minds. These human females were weak enough to overlook the truth that their male mates were nothing but scum in a pretty package. These humans irritated me with their emotions and their fragile egos. Their blood was all I crave to know about them.

  “She’s beautiful. I would never have a chance with her.” The thoughts of a small framed, dirty blonde male in front of the room peeking over thick-rimmed glasses were barely audible.

  He fidgeted in his seat holding his head downward as his thick glasses slide down his nose. He was a merger, debilitated, little creature, but still a leech nonetheless. Of course, if I paid him some attention, it would teach these other ego trips a lesson. Just because they looked buff didn't give them the right to think they could get any girl they wanted, especially me. On the other hand, maybe I should kill this little, unimportant male and take him out of his misery. Oh crap, I can’t do that. I would have to wait to kill the little worm. These others would be more fun to kill, but I can’t do that either. Dee would ring my neck, damn it.

  I continued down the aisle as I listened to the thoughts of all in the class. They were ridiculous, these parasites. Their needs to the physical form were superficial. They needed to reassure one another in such a stupid, pathetic way. Their insecurities in their abilities of fulfillment along with their need of knowing that they were more than what they could produce were ridiculous. These idiots made me sick. I thought I was going to vomit, but then the females would just think I created another male. These people were so arrogant and
simple-minded.

  “What are they looking at? She doesn’t look better than me. Does she?” The thoughts of the girl with long blonde hair that sat with three other females in the middle of the room echoed in my head. The four of them kept their eyes on me. They smirked with disapproval.

  The blonde-haired girl's insecurities reeked out of her as she rolled her eyes in my direction. Each of the three other females had similar thoughts of insecurity. Awe, the golden haired girl's name was Trish this would be useful later. It was so much fun knowing their names when I decided to kill them. I enjoyed playing with my food a little before I drank its blood. Adrenalin does something tasty to their vital fluids.

  I continued my descent to the front of the class. The smell was stronger. It reached its magnitude when I reached the middle of the room, and I glanced to the right as the smell radiated from the center of the row. Where had I encountered that scent before? He looked familiar, but I could not remember where I had seen him. How had I forgotten someone that looked like that? Hmmm, although he was a vamp, he was somewhat cute for a rat.

  His hair was black and shinny. It was so dark it would have stood out against a wall of coal. He wore it shoulder length with a slight messy razor look. His pale skin made his light green eyes pierce through me with one glace as a sword hitting its intended mark. I knew he was tall from the height he sat in his seat, and his body was thin but muscular. I saw the definition each muscle made under his black shirt. What century had I ran into him before? I should remember him. He stared back at me. How dare he look at me like that. I hissed to warn him that he was not alone, and I knew he was an immortal. I warned him I was a witchyre, and I was superior to his mongrel race.

  I sat a few rows in front of him. My mind was still trying to remember where I knew him. His scent was so familiar and appealing. Yuck, a euphonious vampire, something had to be wrong with my nose. There was no way a vampire could be sweet. I concentrated and removed the other’s thoughts. I had to see what he was thinking. How did he know so much about me? Awe, he thought I saw him as a threat. That would be the day, the day he wished his maker had killed him instead of turning him into a rodent. What was he saying, me his maker? He must have hit his head at some time. That was a sin and wasn't allowed. I would never do something so ridicules.