Shadow Born: Book 1 of the Shadow-Borne Chronicles

by Paul A. Cagle

  “Well, I don’t know about being the talk of the underworld but I appreciate your time and will answer anything I can.”

  “I hate to ask Jacob, but could I use your computer?” Silas asked.

  “Of course. You remember where it is?”

  “Yes. This might take a while so please feel free to start without me and I’ll catch up to you when I can.” Silas stood and downed his glass of blood and walked into the kitchen to drop off his glass before checking on whatever it was he needed.

  Alec and Jacob sat quietly for a moment. When Alec looked up Jacob was admiring him with his dark almond eyes.

  “Alec, I have a strange request for you. May I sketch you for a painting I want to do?”

  Alec was taken aback by the question.

  “Ah, I suppose so.”

  “Good,” Jacob said jumping up. “Follow me.”

  Jacob walked through his huge mansion with Alec following until he reached a room. He entered and flipped on a light that did a great job of illuminating the room. There were easels, brushes, paintings, half-finished paintings and paint strewn on workbenches throughout the room. Jacob grabbed a huge dark cloth and threw it over a bar hanging on the wall then walked over and grabbed one of the easels and a large pad and piece of charcoal.

  “Since I have a lot of free time, I like to draw and paint. Gives me something to do.” He smiled his brilliant white smile at Alec. “Okay, take off your shirt.”

  Alec stood there for a moment before he grabbed the neck of his shirt and pulled it over his head and laid it aside. It was weird standing shirtless in front of a stranger. The old Alec never would have done it.

  Jacob admired Alec a moment thinking and then walked to a shelf on one of the walls and pulled down what looked like a folded up white sheet and handed it to Alec.

  “Drape this over one shoulder and take off your pants please.” He winked at Alec to show he understood how odd his request was.

  Alec wasn’t sure exactly what Jacob had in mind but he wrapped the small sheet around his shoulders and took his cargo pants off along with his shoes and socks. Jacob tilted his head looking at him and thinking and then walked over and started adjusting the thin material. He draped it over Alec’s left shoulder and let it hang down to the floor. Alec looked down and realized that it barely covered certain parts of his body. From certain angles everything would be visible. Jacob nodded his head and pulled Alec over to a box.

  “Put your right foot on the box like you are getting ready to step up on it but keep your other foot on the ground.” Alec did as requested and adjusted the sheet for modesty. Jacob bit his lip thinking then walked over to an old wooden chest and opened it. He rummaged around looking for something and finally pulled a sword out.

  “Now, hold this sword in your right hand and raise it above your head, pointed at the ceiling.”

  Alec did as requested and Jacob tilted Alec’s head up and back, moved his shoulders and repositioned his left foot. He stood back and admired Alec.

  “Perfect,” Jacob said, walked back to the easel and started drawing on the pad with the charcoal.

  “Alec, what is your middle name? I want your name on the painting.”

  Alec felt weird at first but it was kind of cool that someone wanted to sketch him. He relaxed.

  “Alec Reese Carson.”

  Jacob wrote the initials ARC on the sketchpad then said, “Arc…like archangel.”

  Alec chuckled.

  “That’s funny you should say that. You aren’t the first. There was a situation where I needed a fake name and they called me Michael after the archangel.”

  Jacob tilted his head looking at Alec and then ripped off the paper he’d been working on and threw it aside and started over.

  “Archangel,” Jacob said quietly. He sketched furiously for a few minutes, working on an idea.

  Distracted he said, “Ask your questions.”

  “Well I guess, I’m curious about your story. How did you die? How did you come back? What happened and why?”

  Jacob was quiet for a moment longer working furiously on the sketch in front of him.

  “I was in the priesthood in the sixteen hundreds. I was the second son of a wealthy merchant. Back then the first son was expected to inherit the business and the second son was expected to be educated. In the sixteen hundreds, educated usually meant the priesthood since they often received the best educations.” Alec could hear the furious scrape of the charcoal across the sketch paper.

  “My father got very sick and I prayed for him day and night, but he got worse and still died a horrible agonizing death. It made me question my faith and God.”

  Jacob was quiet and Alec didn’t want to rush his story so he stood there with one foot on a box and sword over his head. It was hard to believe this young looking man had been in the priesthood and then became a vampire. There was an odd dichotomy for you.

  “My father was a great man. He was generous with his money, fair to his servants and one of the most pious men you’d ever want to meet. I thought it was very unfair that he was suffering so much and for so long when I saw others, kings and princes, who treated commoners like vermin, but they were allowed to prosper and grow fat on the suffering of others. I thought as a priest my prayers should be answered and my father granted some sort of special mercy, but it never happened. He died. I had already begun to question my faith and God, but his death sent me over the edge and I renounced my vows, cursed the church and left.”

  Alec couldn’t even imagine what that had been like, watching your own father die horribly and not being able to do anything about it. That would be frustrating. It was bad enough that Alec could barely remember his father. At least he hadn’t had to watch helplessly as he died.

  “I wandered for a while and met a man on my journeys who was very unusual. He was strong, healthy and vibrant, for an older man. He reminded me a lot of my father actually. But he had this unusual habit of only traveling at night and disappearing during the day. I didn’t understand but at that point he’d saved my life a couple of times so I trusted him. Then everything went bad for me. I was set upon one day by bandits and everything I owned was taken and I was mortally stabbed in the stomach. That night when Silas came back to find me, he told me what he was and why he left during the day.”

  Jacob’s furious drawing slowed and then stopped all together. Alec looked down and found Jacob lost in his memories and staring at the floor absently. For a moment Jacob looked like he was reliving the whole event in his head. When he spoke again, it was so quietly that Alec had to strain to hear the words.

  “He told me what he was and that he could save me, but the decision was mine. He didn’t want to force this on me the way it had been forced on him. He wanted me to decide.” He was quiet again and his face looked like he was in pain.

  “You have to understand…my religious training told me that what Silas was was wrong; it was a dark evil thing that was being offered to me and I was being tested one final time. That, of course, just made me mad. I felt I’d already been tested enough with my father’s illness and death. In my anger I decided to spit in God’s face and accept the dark gift I was being given.” He sighed loudly and suddenly remembered the sketch and went back to furiously drawing.

  “So you became a vampire…then what?”

  Jacob was quiet for several more minutes, working on the drawing in front of him. His furious movements slowly became more controlled, more fluid.

  “I thought I had finally gotten my revenge on God.” He barked out a single laugh.

  “I’m ashamed of what happened next,” Jacob said very quietly. “I killed everyone I fed on. And I reveled in it.” His voice was thick with repressed emotions as he spoke. He shook his head slowly.

  “I decided that my revenge on God was to kill his followers. I attacked priests and nuns every chance I got, even if I’d just fed. I was brutal. When I couldn’t attack clergy, I attacked
and fed on their followers. Silas did his best to blunt my efforts, often taking me to areas where there was no church when we hunted. He tried talking sense into me. He certainly had his work cut out for him. I refused to listen.”

  “When a vampire sires, don’t they have some control over their…progeny?”

  Jacob nodded once.

  “They have some. The weaker the will of the progeny, the more control they have. I had been in the clergy for several years at that point. I was trained and my will was iron. Like I said, he tried his best to blunt my efforts. But he never quit trying to help me. He never gave up on me, no matter what I did.”

  Again Jacob was quiet and simply drew, lost in the centuries of his memories. Alec was starting to question whether or not coming here had been a good idea. He was hoping that Jacob’s story had a happy ending. Right now it was bleak and dark and didn’t bode well for a ‘storybook’ outcome.

  “Given your…circumstances, I don’t know how much you know about the bond between a sire and the sired.” Jacob was looking at him and smiling now. Alec shook his head slightly.

  “When a vampire sires, he can control the sired to a degree, like I said depending on the will of the individual. He can also tell where his sired is and if they are in trouble of some sort. They can read the emotions of the sired.”

  That was interesting and something that Alec hadn’t considered. Perhaps it was an advance warning alert in case the sired was upset over being turned and decided to off his maker for turning him against his will.

  “Things were completely different back then. We didn’t have a council that ruled and governed us. It was a dark and dangerous time for humans and vampires alike. The sire was responsible for training his progeny so that they could feed and exist in the shadows without getting caught. It was a lot of responsibility for Silas. I was a handful, even for someone as strong willed as Silas. When I thought I’d learned enough, I left him. By then, I had become a brutal monster, but a small part of me could still feel. And I felt guilty for dragging Silas down into my madness. So I walked away.”

  “He just let you go?” Alec asked quietly.

  “He didn’t have a choice. He could feel my determination and rage. By this time, I was convinced that my father’s passing had been a test and I’d failed. Leaving the priesthood and accepting Silas’s gift…that had been the final straw and had damned my soul to Hell for all eternity. I had become a monster and it was all my own fault. I’d failed God. I was convinced I was going to suffer forever, in this life and the next.”

  Alec swallowed hard. He knew the feeling. Maybe not to the extent that Jacob had experienced it, but he had the same doubts and fears. Hearing it spoken aloud by another vampire sent a shiver down his spine.

  “I ran. I left England and came to the new world. I stalked the streets of villages and cities hunting for the clergy and killing them when I could. I know now that I had some sort of mental break with reality. As you yourself know, our emotions and feelings become heightened when we are turned. I was losing my mind. At the time, I thought it was God punishing me.” Jacob shook his head like he was trying to clear it of something. Alec’s heart went out the man. He could understand his fear and confusion.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I decided to hide myself away from God. There was a set of caves I’d been hiding in. I quit venturing out to feed and stayed to myself. I had decided I’d caused enough deaths for one damned soul and decided I’d never kill again.”

  “You quit feeding all together? Can a vampire do that…like in the movies?”

  Jacob chuckled quietly.

  “Can a human decide to never eat food again? No,” he said shaking his head. “A vampire must feed to exist. There is a situation where a vampire can go into a trance-like comatose state and survive for a long time without blood. But that’s a special circumstance.”

  “What about feeding on animals like deer or cattle? Does that work?”

  Again Jacob shook his head. “That’s only in the movies and books, Alec. It would be the same as a human lost in the forest trying to exist on bugs alone. It might be a temporary solution to a bad situation, but there’s no way that something like that is sustainable. Eventually the human body would get weak and die of malnutrition. It’s the same for us. Movies try to romanticize the vampire attempting to hold on to his humanity by feeding on the blood of animals to save human lives, but it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Do you always kill when you feed…on humans?” That was a question Alec had been curious about for a while but afraid to ask.

  “Not necessarily. If we have enough control over our Thirst then we can feed a little from several humans and they live. It takes a vast amount of willpower for that. When we are newly turned and feed, it’s not pretty. It almost always results in the death of a human. The sire has to be very strong willed to stop a newly-turned vampire from killing his first host.”

  Alec let the information sink in. He shivered again. He’d dodged a bullet when Clarissa had been killed. He couldn’t even begin to imagine going through this sort of life with that crazy bitch as his sire. It was enough to make him sick to his stomach. It would have been better that he’d burned in the fire if she had survived. It would have been a far fairer fate than being subjected to her insanity while trying to learn this screwed up world he found himself in.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I decided to pay for my crimes against humanity by never feeding again. I knew it meant my death but I couldn’t live with the crushing guilt and pain of what I was doing any longer. I feared Hell and God’s damnation of my soul, but I thought maybe I could change and die on my own terms and maybe God would find it in his heart to forgive me.”

  Jacob’s sketching had slowed to long, slow thoughtful strokes as he relived that time. Alec quickly glanced at the man from the corner of his eye. The pain and guilt of the atrocities he’d committed were still with him. He could see it in the man’s haunted eyes. What was it like to carry that kind of pain around for an eternity? And here Alec was making him relive it. No wonder he didn’t want to talk about it with others.

  “I thought in my own small way, I was taking back my own destiny. I had decided that I was never going to kill again. I quit feeding. Instead I prayed every night to God to forgive me for my trespasses against his people and against humanity. I knew it was a death sentence and I knew that I wouldn’t last long. I just couldn’t do it any longer. What I hadn’t counted on was Silas.”

  Alec knew from personal experience how determined Silas could be when he put his mind to something. Alec wondered what Silas had been like back then? Did he look the same, just different clothes and hairstyle? If Alec survived all this he was going to ask Silas and Marcus both if they had any pictures of themselves throughout the centuries. What had they been like?

  “As I lay dying on my final night, I’d made it three nights by then, Silas found me through our bond. I begged with him to let me die and answer for my sins. He argued with me but my mind was made up. Part of the problem was I was Silas’s first progeny. I didn’t know it at the time, but for him it was like watching his firstborn child die.” Jacob shook his head at the memory.

  “And then it happened. I died. I felt myself leave my body and suddenly I was standing in this field of stars that went on forever. It was like floating in space but at the time I had nothing to compare it to.” Jacob had completely quit sketching now and was staring fervently at Alec.

  “It was beautiful and I was at peace; real peace. The type I hadn’t known ever in my life.” He licked his lips, thinking of how to explain.

  “Floating among the stars, I felt better than I ever had. After what could have been a thousand years for all I know, I felt a presence…it’s hard to explain. It was like this warmth and love that was beside me, around me and inside of me all at the same time.” Jacob had wrapped his arms around himself and had a small smile on his lips as he remem
bered. Alec wasn’t even sure he was aware of what he was actually doing but he was rocking back and forth slightly as he talked.

  “And then, it spoke to me. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was inside or outside of me. It might have even been me doing the talking but it was a force that I couldn’t fight…didn’t want to fight. Do you understand?” Jacob’s eyes focused back on Alec.

  “I think so,” Alec said lamely. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what something like that would have been like.

  “I can’t even begin to explain all that the Voice said to me. It was words, emotions and visions all in one burst of power. It was like downloading all the information I had been seeking instantaneously. Suddenly I understood.”

  Alec turned his head then to look directly at Jacob.

  “I had been wrong the whole time; we all have it wrong. God is not Christian or Pagan or any of those religions, but God is every single one of them. There’s Truth somewhere in each and every one.” Jacob could tell from Alec’s confused look that he didn’t grasp what he was saying.

  “Alec, God is everything. God is this huge power that we can’t possibly understand so we define him, or her, in a manner that allows us to interact with that energy. If we are more comfortable with women, we call her Goddess. If we are more comfortable with men in power we call him God. But the power is both male and female without truly being either. No one religion has it right. In their own way, as long as they promote peace, love and growth, they are all right in a generic sort of way. As far as specificity goes, none of them will ever be correct. Even my words are limited by experience and learning and inadequate to explain the complexity of the being we call God.”

  “So you are saying that God is the huge power that we can’t even begin to comprehend so we define it as best we can in order to interact with it?” Alec asked confused.