by JN Moon
“I underestimated you.” I felt some relief that I had this wise, crazy soul as a friend.
Damien
Rachel
My heart sank as I left my home to see Damien, seeking comfort in his company. Despondent and heavy, I trudged across the city, my throat dry and scratchy.
His company felt serene. More soul and less ego, if that’s possible for a vampire.
He seemed to understand how complex and deadly our existence is rather than the ongoing lust for blood. I loved this city and as a mortal could easily think of living there for all my days, but as an immortal it was too small. It couldn't contain me, but I didn't know yet where I wanted to go.
Damien answered his door as if he’d been expecting me and welcomed me in like an old friend. It was a relief. I didn’t want to hunt tonight. I just wanted to talk, to muse, to act like a human.
His flat was smoky with incense and he had candles burning as before, music on quietly, and a book that he was reading on his sofa. Amongst the incense, there was a musty scent in the air and it brought back the nostalgia of my first flat, a smell so familiar and comforting. I hadn’t noticed before that his flat was so full of antiques and antiquities. Amongst the candles sat curios dating back to Victorian times—old clocks, trinkets, and tiny mirrors. Then tiny Egyptian sculptures that looked real—Bast, Thoth, Horus—and beside them, pagan deities. All packed in the mantel piece and shelves amongst piles and piles of old leather bound books.
“Is that wine?”
His face reddened. “Yes. I know I can’t drink it but I like to pretend! One of my quirks. And this is Victor, my cat.”
“Hello, Victor.” I bent to stroke his head, his long ginger and white fur like velvet to touch. “He’s beautiful. I didn’t meet him last time.”
“Well, Victor has his own life, too. I have a garden out the back; he’s often there exploring. So, have you gotten over your existential crisis? Or is the thought of immortality still too much to bear?” he asked, grinning and winking at me. It was so easy with him, we were like kindred spirits and his laid-back playfulness was refreshing. No drama. “I ask because every immortal goes through this, some earlier than others. And for every vampire I ever met, at the beginning everything seems out of control, rushed, one disaster to the next.” As he finished talking he sank into the sofa, smelling the fine red wine.
“I’m thinking of leaving Bath.”
“Of course you are. It’s so small, too many immortals. I was turned abroad so I had the unfortunate problem of learning how to exist, or rather I had to learn to exist in a place I neither knew nor spoke the language. But I empathise with you. It’s all perfectly natural.”
He sat there, so calm, the complete opposite of Anthony. He, reassuring and gentle, the candlelight casting flickering shadows across his face. Victor jumped up and settled on his lap as Damien held his wine in one hand, the other instinctively stroking his elderly cat. Victor didn’t seem an ordinary cat to me, but I said nothing.
“Then how are you so calm? How have you come to terms with the insatiable lust for blood driving you, being thrown into one supernatural disaster to the next?”
“Ah! The blood thing. I don’t know whether it lessens with time or whether you just get used to it. I learned to keep a low profile, to avoid detection by other species. I exist almost as a human...almost. I rarely think about immortality. I can’t because it seems too impossible. But I get lonely. But so do humans. I do enjoy fine wine though!” he laughed.
“Could you teach me? I want to be invisible to the others.” Relief flooded through me and the despondent state started to lift, being here with him. Here was a man who had managed to find calm in an existence that defied rational thought. I had thought before I was a vampire that my life wouldn’t be conventional. I never wanted conventional. I guess you really do have to be careful what you wish for. Now I didn’t want a conventional vampire life either, and by the look of Damien, neither did he.
“If you’re willing to learn, it would be a pleasure.”
I sat with Damien on the sofa and my head sank into his shoulder. Sleep fell heavy on me, and that night I actually felt at peace.
The Taste of Blood
Anthony
The following night I walked through the city alone, still numb at losing Rachel. Heat flushed through my body and I realised I was bracing, all my limbs tense with anger.
Too wrapped up in my sorrow to notice, until I was dumbfounded at what I saw before me. Jolting out of self-pity, I watched, unable to move away, powerless to stop staring even though danger was in my face.
In the hidden corners of the city under the Neo-Classical columns, vampires and nephilim wrapped in an esoteric kiss of death. The vampires could not taste the blood of these vengeful angels though some had tried. Their screams sharp and piercing as they burned in agony, the delectable angelic blood scalding their insides. I watched the horror, the ecstasy and the brutality of two species coming together, which before this would have fought to the death, now entranced by blood, both attracted by the other. By the danger, the illicit temptation.
Some vampires used their eerie charms to subdue the hungry nephilim and enjoy the carnal pleasures that these creatures bestowed. Wicked and debauched, the fallen were ardent lovers and the vampires drunk up all the sensuality they could take. The struggle my kin had though was fierce. It is the strongest will in the world that in the moment of pleasure, to not drink blood, but some vampires enjoyed the denial that would save their lives. It was like looking at a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
It was shocking and carnal, my pulse raced, lust flooded my body, my need for blood.
Wayward nephilim stole the blood of vampires, the beautiful immortals merging in a bloody orgy, some willing, others taken by force. Those nephilim once so proud and pure now corrupt with the devilish fluid of the damned, their white wings stained black and their untainted splendour now a sublime and sinister elegance. I watched them, taking care not to be seen, and the intensity of their passion was overwhelming.
Behind the honey-coloured pillars, I watched the diabolical scene of fallen angels feasting on the once bold vampires. As I saw the frailty of the vampire compared to these creatures, their force and their indomitable spirit, I pitied them. Sensation turned to anger at this rape on my species. But was this not ironic? Did we not do the very same to mortals? I myself had taken pleasure in using my charms and then stealing blood of humans to satiate my hunger. I had stolen their virtues, and God only knew the outcomes I had left with the mortals of my past discretions. But this was violent, forceful, and beyond control.
A nephilim male, once tall and proud, bent over onto a vampire’s neck as she struggled to stand, grabbing at the rough stone wall next to her as his brute strength unintentionally forced her downwards. I caught her eye as she screamed in terror of his overbearing power ripping her soul from her, fast and brutal.
Too late, she was gone and was swiftly dropped to the ground. He tilted his head, arching his back as if not to spill a drop of that precious fluid, then he suddenly flipped and doubled forward with the ferocity of the change. A wild howl from him sent me behind the cover of my hiding place, but my curiosity would not be repressed so I peeked from behind the pillar to look at him again.
His sweating, dark mass appeared vulnerable in his semi-naked state. He had drained his victim, her corpse lay on the pavement beside him. Yet, naked and exposed as he was, an intense energy emitted from him. Had I been an ordinary vampire I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
To my surprise, Nathaniel appeared by my side and instinctively we approached this once Divine warrior. Nathaniel had recovered well and looked almost his normal self again. But I was too distracted by the scene in front of me and my intention too set to consider him much. Nathaniel watched in wonder having never been so close before to a creature like this. If he had, I doubt he would have lived to tell of it. The angel was so engrossed in his new sensations to take any notice o
f us or to perceive us as a threat. Had I not had the blood of those greater than me, he would’ve been right. Don’t abuse the power, Emidius had told me.
Nathaniel grinned at me and I grinned back. He was predictable and I knew what he was thinking.
The depraved angel now on his knees, agony filling his core as his body experienced these new sensations and, ironically, just as his victim had done, he pawed at the walls to stay upright.
I walked over to him, his grey eyes looked darker now, almost black and his contorted face displaying all the sensations of his victim’s blood coursing through his veins. I walked in front of him, calm and comforting. I crouched down and placed my hand on his face and smiled. Relief filled his face but in an instant it was me at his neck, my lips upon his skin as my teeth sunk in and I drank his blood.
He struggled, hapless fool. Kill my kin, what do you expect? I felt intense, vengeful, and heady all at once. For a few seconds I had to try and keep my feet beneath me while around me in all the corners of the city, chaos reigned.
As I stood back from him, the shock filled his face and I looked him in the eyes. A vampire drinking his blood with no ill effect was the last thing he expected and we shared that moment before his death.
I stumbled from being blood-drunk and Nathaniel steadied me, keeping his hands on the back of my shoulders as I locked my gaze on this immortal. He reached out to grab my hand, probably to drag me into the depths of Hell with him, but I stood back offended that such a creature would imagine me to care. I had struck back.
I swayed. My head felt like it was swimming and my body tingled and flushed hot all over.
Watching him without remorse as he crumpled into a ball and then fire sparked ferociously from him, white and hot. The instant heat and brightness stunned us and we instinctively jumped back. And then he was no more. Nothing surprised me anymore.
Before I moved away, I felt Marcus’s presence rush up to me, and standing there looking at the scorch mark on the ground he said nothing. In the pandemonium around me, everything seemed in slow motion.
With that nephilim’s blood rushing in me, forceful and intense.
“There are more than nephilim here, aren’t there? I sense something else. Demons?”
“They are here, watching in the shadows.”
Without another word, I moved unsteadily to the small hexagonal Georgian building that housed an ancient hot spring that was now Spa baths.
I gently pulled out what looked like a woman, but I knew was in fact a demon. She was hesitant; after all such species don’t normally mix.
Her long slender white arms looked luminous under the street lamps and she was cold and fragile. Though from what I’d been told she was anything but.
Marcus stepped forward with Nathaniel, poised to attack, knowing the power these creatures have, and I stood there for a few seconds transfixed in her demonic spell.
The Demon
Anthony
She shuffled herself, unsure of the situation. A nephilim and two vampires facing her, cornering her. Long dark hair fell down to her shoulders and her body was small and lithe. Her face milky white with sharp features and jet black eyes She looked like a vision of a human rather than a human—too perfect. Clenching her jaw, she muttered some spell in a language I couldn’t understand. I still held her wrist; she looked at it, to me, and spat some words which I didn’t recognise. Marcus was immediately at my side, talking back to her in an unknown language and had grabbed her other wrist.
I reminded myself that she was a demon, like the one in Rachel’s home. The one looking to take my beloved. My dazed mind longed for Rachel then, and I felt a surge of emptiness without her. Shaking my head I focused on the demon in front of me, shoving all thoughts of Rachel aside.
“Who are you?”
She didn’t respond but edged slowly away, Marcus and I still holding her wrists. I knew from what Marcus had said, most were stronger than vampires. But I am no ordinary vampire, as she would have seen from her hiding place.
“I need to know. I need to know about your kind.”
She frowned, then lowered her eyebrows as if my questions were too simple to answer. “And why should I answer you?”
I shook my head. “Because you are here, and if you don’t answer me, I will kill you.”
Laughing, she cried, “You cannot kill a demon, vampire. We are not made the same as you! We can change if we will it, into the nonphysical.”
I knew she was bluffing me. If that were true then she wouldn’t be here right now talking to me. She quickly changed the subject. “Vampires and nephilim, what craziness is this? You should be more concerned with other entities. The streets are rich with devilry, with blood. There are worse fiends out tonight than demons.”
Some strange compulsion drove me forward, and seconds later I held her wrist to my mouth and drank. She gasped in horror and I was vaguely aware of Nathaniel stepping up to me in shock. Marcus stood there, still clutching her wrist, his mouth open, I supposed not believing what he was seeing.
My instinct, to know her secrets that were held in her blood held. I always knew a being from their blood—their experiences, their confidences, their sins and their hopes. As I drink it, all is revealed to me in a flash of images or emotions.
Demon blood, like the nephilim, sent a tremor through me and not only did I see, I felt her life. Monstrous, deceitful, and merciless. In my mind I saw a void of black, a dimension of eternal nothingness, then a spark of a thought, and finally her. What I felt was her presence shifting from nothing to physical, filled with anger from having to rely on a mortal to come into existence. So to exist a demon relies on mortals to acknowledge their presence, but once the mortal dies then the demon can no longer take physical form and shifts back into incorporeal. But with the veil shifted, many were seizing the opportunity to plough forth into the physical reality of men. With the chaos, the darkness growing in the hearts of man, their hate manifesting as wraiths, the demons had seized that energy, that hatred, and rode it like a wave into the twenty-first century.
I released my grasp and stumbled backwards to the ground, my body searing with burning liquid and her life flashing before me. In my haze I saw a great bright flash of green light and felt a tremor but, as darkness closed in on me, one piece of knowledge slammed into me. How to kill a demon.
Killing Demons
Anthony
“What happened to me? Her blood?”
“Yes,” Marcus spoke. He got up and walked to me, ushering the others out looking concerned.
“Tell me of Lucius,” I asked.
“Lucius is young for a demon, but he has the energy of a thousand minds made manifest by the realization of his being. He is physical to be sure, but if you don’t acknowledge his existence, he cannot be in your reality. That’s why he would be grateful to Aaron. Aaron made you aware of him and thus, he now exists in your reality.”
Everything fell silent, I was too stupefied to speak. Why the fuck did Aaron do that?
I knew I’d kill him, that demon. I lay back and shut my eyes. Prickling and burning sensations ran through my body, no doubt from the nephilim and demon blood. I guessed I should be more careful in the future.
“Try and rest. You have pushed yourself too far this time. Yes, we know you can go further than most, but none has drunk the blood of a demon. Please stop drinking blood of creatures you know nothing about. You will get yourself killed or worse,” Marcus sniggered.
I could believe him. My head was spinning and all I wanted to do was sleep. But every time I closed my eyes my head only seemed to spin faster. I remembered hating that feeling as a mortal. It seemed worse now.
“What could be worse than death?”
Marcus grunted in surprise. “Well, let me think. Living a life in purgatory as a strange ghoul type being, being neither alive nor dead and having no control over your destiny? Will that do? Is that worse?”
“Maybe not if I felt better as a ghoul!”
&nbs
p; Acacius had come to see me. He was unblemished by what was occurring and he appeared unfazed by it, though I doubt he really was. His manner was annoyingly calm and sarcastic. He never participated in anything ungodly, unlike the rest of us. I had a gut feeling that would be his saving grace, and possibly my undoing.
“I like being around you and Anthony. You’re always in the thick of the action. Killing a nephilim after drinking his blood! I should kill you, you know. But I won’t. Dominic—the one you killed—had fallen from the path and death was his own making. But you! I am afraid for your soul, Anthony. You have fallen so far!”
“Acacius, I am weary and I don’t care what you think. My soul? It’s a bit late for that! My soul was lost the moment I first stole blood and killed an innocent. And yet, I am still here, damned or not. Why did you come here? To see, to feel perhaps? Feeling is something you never allow yourself to do.”
“I do feel, Anthony, but I don’t need to live my life in such an extravagantly debauched way as you do. I know... Vampires, act first, think later. Isn’t that your motto?” he snapped.
I was annoyed that he came into my home to criticize me. He picked up on this and paused, looking out of the window at the dirty, busy road below and the grim cloudy weather. Then he turned to me and said, “So, the female demon; how was she?”
“How would you know that?” Unable to curb my fascination, I asked, my voice raised, “And how do you know so much about me? And why do you care?”
“Initially I didn’t much. We hear of most that are turned. Especially by the foul creatures that turned you. They’ve been alluding us for years. I was more interested last year when I heard of the attack on Alexander, Tyrell’s son. A vampire brazen enough to attack one of the Elite! That really grabbed my attention. But not as much as Emidius saving you. Then I knew I had to find you.”