The First

by Michael Santana

  My screams of pain had made them aware of my presence. I can only assume the young man had never seen a vampire before, he advanced without caution, fearless. As I said, he had never seen a vampire before and if he had not one as powerful as me. Arrogantly he straddled me, slowly took aim at my head and fired once more.

  I can only wonder what it feels like to have your intestines hanging on the outside of your body; I cannot say the same for the brave young fool. He turned his head for only half a second to tell the young woman she was safe; he was wrong.

  By the time he turned his head back to where I had previously lain, I was gone. Unfortunately for him, I hadn't gone far. With one more turn of his body, he was face to face with his fate. The wind whistled through the hole in my cheek as I smiled my toothy smile. My fingers flexed reflexively before their nails sliced through the flesh of his abdomen.

  My hands moved so fast and the nails cut so easily, that he didn't realize what had happened until she screamed. Her eyes darted back and forth between his exposed intestines and the blood that dripped from my fingers. His gun fired twice more, both bullets striking the ground at his feet as my teeth sank deep in his throat and pulled. When he was spent, I took one last look in his eyes before tossing him into the shadows. I dipped my fingers into my mouth and sucked them clean all the while watching the young woman who still hadn't had the sense to run.

  I walked towards her slowly, letting her mind comprehend what had happened and what was about to. She had stopped screaming and just stood there waiting. Her eyes fixed on the ragged hole in my face that healed with each step I took. The woman didn't resist as her head tilted back exposing the artery that pulsed in time with her heart. She smelled of lilac and fear, two of my favorite smells. In the softest of voices, she started to pray. I leaned forward and extended my fangs in an attempt to draw one last fit of terror. It had worked. Her body stiffened, and the praying stopped. Just then a lightning bolt of pain seared through my right eye. Instinctively, I reached for it cupping it protectively. I didn't know how she stabbed me, but I knew she had. I snatched her hair with my free hand, and my left eye exploded in my head.

  "Aigghhhghghhghghgh" I screamed nearly shattering her eardrums.

  I could barely hear her screams over my own. She took this opportunity to make her escape. I didn't give chase. I didn't know what happened to cause those pains, but I assumed it had something to do with her. They started as I stalked her and her gun-wielding boyfriend. I heard a large mob running towards the park. The gunfire had attracted a lot of attention. Too much attention for me in my weakened state. Fearing another wave of pains might come leaving me defenseless, I crept into the shadows.

  The next day while hiding from the light of the sun, the blinding pains that had attacked me the night before, struck once again: First, the legs, then the arms and chest, before finally the eyes. The following day it was the same thing. The pain brought bouts of nausea which caused me to vomit up almost every meal. It was non-stop agony, and I never knew what would trigger it. I tried desperately to determine the source to no avail. Days turned to weeks and weeks to months as the pains continued. I had been dealing with the invisible assaults for a little over two months when they increased in their ferocity

  I had learned to hunt quickly and without much enjoyment. Too many times, I came close to being caught because I couldn't control the actions of my own body. The attacks didn't seem to be regulated by the sun or moon. They came at all hours. Sometimes it would be the stabbing pains from invisible blades and other times the bones themselves would break.

  One such instance occurred while feeding on a nursing mother. I entered the house through the upstairs window, carefully shutting it behind me. The lullaby she sang quietly carried through the house reaching the top rooms as a whisper.

  Following the sound of her voice, I made my way down the stairs and across the hall to her sewing room. She sat with her back to me, cradling a little bundle of blood against her chest. Creeping up behind the chair, I wrapped both of my arms around it securing her to it. Softly, I continued humming the lullaby that she had abruptly stopped singing. She clutched the child tightly into her breast, and he continued to suckle on her teat. Without releasing my embrace on the chair, I bit softly into her neck. She let out a low gasp, followed by a soft moan as my teeth sank into her flesh.

  I stroked the little one's downy hair gently, as I continued to feed off his mother. Her grip on the child started to loosen as her heart drummed its last beats. I quickly reached out and caught the child as it fell from its mother's grasp.

  Holding the child like a melon, I bit deep into its abdomen and felt his blood pool in my mouth. The instant pain caused the child's heart to beat so much faster. I pulled my fangs from the screaming infant's stomach, licking at the little punctures that continued to ooze. Dangling the child in the air by his foot, I prepared to finish the little one off.

  The child dropped from my grasp landing on his mother's lap as my right arm snapped and bent itself backward. I screamed in horror and pain at the sight of my crooked limb. As I stared in shock at my now angled appendage, my left knee bent backward on itself. With my arm bouncing loosely and lower leg in a permanent goosestep, I tried to escape the house before anything else could happen.

  This wasn't to be. My right ankle broke and spun around, twisting the foot behind me. I scooted into a corner with my back against the wall. I once again searched for my attacker. Flashbacks of little children scurrying from my touch flooded my thoughts. I then understood how they must have felt facing an unbeatable foe.

  When the attacks finally ceased, and the pains subsided, I crawled to the still breathing child and opened his artery and drank quickly.

  My ankle began to heal. I watched as my foot painfully, slowly, twisted itself into the correct position, once again facing forward. I could hear the bones as they scraped against each other as the foot returned to its original position. My fingernails dug deep into the wood of the wall when my left knee popped back into place. Leaving by the window I came through, I screamed in the night as my arm began to heal itself; the bones in it set and reset until the break had finally healed.

  The one problem with feeding on a nursing mother is the smell of child's vomit that lingers long after you have fed. The smell remained for days. No matter where I was, the acrid stench wafted into my nostrils.

  This along with the attacks was becoming more than I could bear. There came a point when I thought of severing my limbs from my body and of gouging out my own eyes to lessen the torment. Just when I thought I would go mad the pain would start to ease. I was never able to prepare myself for the attacks because they came without warning. Savannah wasn't living up to my expectations of the little city.

  Chapter 16

  "Save me, and I will tell you what causes your pains," the young man said as my fangs drew closer to his throat.

  I hadn't broken my vow, I hadn't hunted this one. He was stalking me. The man thought he was clever. A shift in the wind that alerted me to his presence. The smell of vomit assaulted my senses. It wasn't the nursing mother that I smelled those last few days, it had been him.

  He was dying. He was dying and wanted me to turn him. He wanted me to make him like me. This was one of the reasons the man had been following me for weeks. This time it wasn't my arrogance that led to my being found. It was the attacks. They had made me sloppy. I left an easy trail to follow for someone who had the nerve. In his desperation, he had found it.

  "What did you say," I snarled.

  "Save me please, and I will tell you what causes your pains."

  "What do you know of my pains you insignificant little insect?"

  "The pains that come from an invisible attacker, I have seen how they afflict you," he mumbled.

  "You have seen, have you? What else have you seen? How long have you followed me? How did you find me?" I bellowed.

  "I saw you that morning when you watched as the master beat me. And again whe
n you returned that night and killed him and his sons."

  "How did you find me?" I asked, grabbing his hair roughly and baring his neck to me.

  "The bones told us where you were," he struggled to say.

  "What manner of stupidity has overcome you? What bones?" I asked.

  "The old woman, the Haitian, she threw the bones. She told me to follow you to make sure."

  "To make sure of what exactly?" I said lifting him high in the air.

  "That her doll had its hold on you, your poppet, she called it."

  Just then, a pain shot through my leg again. Without letting the young man go, I shrieked, then turned and snarled in his face again.

  "You know who is doing this to me?" I screamed as the second pain ripped through the other leg. I bore the pains as they traveled through my body before finally ceasing after reaching my eyes.

  "Take me to the Haitian." I commanded.

  We started walking. I held him by the back of the neck and pushed him forward. The whole time he rambled on about his sickness and the Haitian's promise to heal him, as long as he helped her. I could tell from his smell that there was nothing that could be done for this man. I had smelled the stench of the dying before, and this man was beyond any mortal's help. Which is why he had asked me to save him. He also knew no one could help him, except maybe me. There were points that I wanted to throttle him, just to shut up his incessant prattle, but he was supplying me with much-needed information. The more I let him talk, the more of a picture of what had happened materialized.

  From what I was able to surmise, not every slave was happy with the demise of the master and his children. The old Haitian woman that he spoke of had raised the boys as if they were her own. First along with the children's mother, then by herself when the woman had succumbed to an illness.

  The lady had died of tuberculosis a year after the youngest boy was born. The father had grieved himself into an almost catatonic state. The Haitian raised them from that point on. He rambled on telling me more about the old woman. She had been bought along with four other slaves from a farm in Louisiana that belonged to a cousin of the family. The slaves thought her a medicine woman; the sick and ailing went to her to heal them and their children.

  "Using plants and herbs, she mixes potions that ward off the demons that feed on the sick and the dying." He yammered on.

  The story was preposterous. It was absurd. There is no way that a woman could cause such damage to one such as me. That she had done it remotely made it even more ridiculous. Yet, I had felt the pains and saw my limbs twist and break. I knew it was true. We walked east through the woods until we came upon the ruins of the last stone thrower's home.

  Most of the slaves had run when the fire was set, fearing they would be blamed for the deaths of their masters. The ones that had remained had been taken by a neighbor to settle debts owed.

  Weeks later, even through the burnt ash, I could still smell the blood that I spilled there. My mouth watered at the thought of the young men screaming as I ripped and tore into their siblings. Thoughts drifted as he led me past the house and onto the property of the neighbor who had acquired the Haitian.

  Cicadas had come that year, the noise they made drowned out the sound of our approach, and we caught a group of slaves unaware. The sight of my fine clothes caused them to gasp. It seemed they had heard stories of my being but had chosen not to believe them.

  Some kneeled as I walked by showing a sign of fealty, others also kneeling reached out to touch my hand. My presence in the little community caused a commotion, and many of the brown shack's doors opened. They approached me from all sides and began to kneel like the others until finally there were only two left standing.

  A gray-haired woman stood across from me staring defiantly. Her body, strong and stout, showed no signs of frailty as she held my gaze. Her handsome face lined from age, dared me to come forward.

  "You are not welcome here," she said in a tongue not common to this country.

  "I go where I choose, and tonight I choose to be here," I replied.

  If she was surprised at my knowledge of the language, she didn't show it. I watched closely, as slowly, her left hand came in to view. In it, she held what looked like a child's toy. Upon closer inspection, I could see it was made of moss, clay, and straw. The doll was draped in a violet cloth I quickly recognized as the handkerchief I had thrown away weeks before. Raising the doll up to her face she smiled. I watched as her hand twisted the little head.

  My spine cracked and twisted. Pain shot through me as my head turned until I was looking not at the old woman, but from the way I had come. I spun my body around awkwardly and faced her once again. I looked down my frame to see my back, backsides and the heels of my feet. Looking back up at her, I screamed and bore my fangs. To my surprise, she stood her ground and didn't even cringe at my most ferocious of looks.

  Her courage didn't spread to the kneeling group as they quickly took to their feet and fled back to their houses until only the two of us were left.

  What did surprise her, was me raising my hands to my ears and violently snatching my head back into the correct position, before slowly turning back in her direction.

  Her hand once again reached for the little effigy, grabbed it by the arm and turned it. My left arm followed suit, twisting sharply, appearing to snap right below my elbow.

  "You will obey me; your will is not your own" She commanded.

  Having enough of this painful game, I crossed the thirty or so feet between us as she blinked. Snatching the doll from her hands, I twisted the little arm back into its natural shape, causing my own to do the same. With my other hand, I raised the old woman above my head and brought the doll to my lips. If it hadn't been for the smile she sought to hide, I would have followed my original plan biting into the doll and tearing it to shreds.

  "Do it, creature, destroy it, and be rid of it forever."

  The vision of her twisting the head of the little doll and its effects entered my mind. Cocking my head slightly to the side, I smiled at her.

  "Old woman, why would you hurt me? How did I offend you?" I asked.

  "They were babies, just babies, you had no reason to hurt them." She answered.

  For a moment, I had no idea what she was talking about, and then it came to me.

  "Yes, babies that would have grown into men and carried a whip," I said. "Men that would rape your women, maim your men and disfigure your children," I continued.

  "As much as that might be true, they were still just babies nonetheless."

  "What are you? And what manner of magic is this?" I asked, holding up the little likeness of myself.

  The old woman looked down at me and said nothing. Her heartbeat was slow and steady in her chest. She didn't fear me.

  "I freed you from the shackles that bound you; from the tormentors that flayed the skin of your kind and this," I said holding the doll in front of her "is how you repay me."

  "I have faced your kind before in New Orleans, you do not scare me." She stated.

  "You may have faced others, but they were nothing like me." I retorted.

  "I admire your courage; if you tell me all you know about this magic, your eyes will not see me eat your family." I said, before slowly dragging my tongue across my teeth making sure that my fangs showed my true nature.

  Finally, her heart increased its pace. The steady beating was replaced by rapid drumming at the thought of her loved ones feeling the touch of death's hand. I slowly lowered her until her face was only mere inches from mine.

  "Do we have an agreement, old one?" I asked her.

  "Yes." She said switching languages to English.

  "We shall use the few hours of moonlight left, for you to tell me all you know." I said.

  If Irisi had been here, she would not have had to ask. She would have understood immediately what took me hours to comprehend. The magic that the old woman called "Voodoo," was based in the same magic that had led to my creation.


  By using the handkerchief I had so casually tossed aside, the old woman had made a talisman with a direct connection to me. Where the Christian relics had no effect, these of the African continent could cause me great torment. It didn't matter if I believed in the magic or not; if they acquired something of mine, I would fall prey to its spell.

  Her door, lined with corn and sweets, smelled strongly of rum as we stepped through it.

  I listened for hours as she bored me with the story of her ancestors and the trials and tribulations they had faced.

  "Are there other practitioners of your Voodoo magic in this little community, those who might know more of the history of these rituals?"

  "No," she said proudly. "I come from a long line of Bokor, those who practice dark arts of the Voodoo. But, I am the only one here."

  "So, there are others, just not here?" I asked.

  "Yes, I am sure of it." She said.

  "How many dolls like these have you made?"

  "Countless ones, but they are only used in the grimmest of times." She replied worriedly. "No," I corrected her. "How many have you made in my likeness?"

  "Only the one, I intended to scare you off, not to kill you."

  I only believed half of what she had said. I did believe that the doll I held was the only one of its kind. I also believed she intended to use it to kill me. Just as I am sure, she had done many times over the years to those of my kind.

  "I made you a promise and that I intend to keep," I said clasping my hand over her mouth. "You will not see your loved ones die. But, you will never see anything again." I said as I thrust two fingers into the sockets of her eyes and pulled out the little globes that rested inside. Those that waited outside the little shack didn't hear her muffled cries.

  Placing my mouth next to her ear, I popped both squishy objects into my mouth and chewed vigorously. The fluid contained in her eyes shot out, spraying the side of her face. After spitting the old woman's useless orbs onto the ground, I leaned back to her ear and whispered.