A lone figure separated from the crowded street and walked up the alley below me. This in itself would be beneath my notice under normal circumstances but this individual was special. He was to be my prey for tonight. He knew he was being hunted of course. I had let him know beyond a shadow of a doubt days ago but I doubt he knew by whom… or what. I watched him move up the alley from my perch atop a nearby building… still and silent as the stone gargoyles who kept me company as I waited for him to arrive. The first drops of what the news said was going to be an all-day downpour hit me but still, I did not move. It had to be the right time, not a moment before.
Halfway up the alley, my quarry paused by a homeless man. He knelt down, appearing to the casual observer as if to attempt to aid his fellow man. I could see the truth, however. A flash of teeth in the darkness opened the man’s neck to my target’s hungry lips. I likely could have saved the man but a newly sated vampire was easier to kill than a wary one. I myself hadn’t fed for quite some time and was ready for anything. Another of my blood-sucking brethren would face the morning sun today.
With the slightest of grins, I stepped from the rooftop and plummeted into a trash bin near the mouth of the alley. None of the passers-by on the street even glanced in my direction. In this neighborhood, murder was no stranger to anyone and oft time ignorance of one’s surroundings was all that kept you from being the next victim. As I moved to extricate myself from the garbage there was one person paying rapt attention. My being here and alive after such a fall only made sense if I were the one trying to kill him.
By the time I was free of the bin he was already running away up the alley. That wouldn’t do him any good, though, as the only exit now available to him lie behind me. I took a moment to straighten my clothes and remove someone’s sandwich-- wrapper from my shirt. There was no hurry, the trap was sprung and he just needed a moment to realize it. The rain began to come down harder as I started my trek up the alley. I never moved faster than a casual stroll when moving in on an animal. I enjoyed the building fear that I caused in my victims… reveled in it. When I caught up to him he was attempting to climb the walls towards his freedom. He turned to me, eyes wild like the caged animal he was, and attacked. It’s almost a shame what happens to such proud creatures as we when one knows they are about to die.
The fight was over in a matter of seconds, most happening too fast for mortal eyes to perceive. Two metal bars I found on the ground in the struggle shot out and pinned him to the wall through the shoulders. It likely would take him an hour or two to get himself free from such a bind but the sunrise in less than thirty minutes would end that plan before it even began. Of course, if he were willing to go through eternity without arms he might be able to make it inside before he fried.
“You’re him aren’t you?” I turned to look at him with a curious look. “Arkadian. The one trying to exterminate us but why? You are one of us. How can you kill your own kind?” I walked away. It was always the same thing, none repenting the lives they had taken in order to survive. Only attempts to talk their way out of the inevitable or make empty threats. “You’ll never do it, you know! Every one of us you kill five more will take their place!” The room I had rented wasn’t far and once there I began packing my things. Twenty minutes later I went to the window, the first rays of the sun cresting the horizon.
I watched as that fiery orb that once held so much joy for me rose into the sky from the shadows of the room. Now, it only meant death. I reached a hand into the beam of light from the window and watched it begin smoldering. The pain was the only feeling left to me after so long. Once more I contemplated the end. The prey today was right, it’s a fight I can’t win. It would be so easy to take that fateful step forward to end it. Instead, I removed my hand from the light, futile or not the fight must go on till there is a winner. But one thing always nagged me after a kill. Why did they always have to ask for a reason? Why kill your own kind? The questions always brought back their faces. Perhaps their memory is why.
The year was eighteen hundred and eleven, I was a coal miner in Eastern Europe. I didn’t have much but I had what mattered, a wife, an eight-year-old daughter, and a house to keep the rain off of us all. We had a simple daily routine. All of us would be awake before dawn and we would have our breakfast on the front porch. Rhia and I would then drink our coffee for the day while Lisa had her milk and we would all watch the sunrise together. I would then drop Lisa at school on my walk to work at the mines.
Rhia always complained about how dirty I was when I first got home from work so we changed things a bit. Every night I would come in the back and head straight into the washroom. Only once I was clean and presentable once more was I allowed to officially ‘arrive’ home. Lisa would always be there first hopping like a bunny till I let her ride up on my shoulders for a few laps around the house. Rhia bore our romping with a kind of quiet serenity that I have always envied. When we stopped playing she would greet me with a simple kiss that spoke volumes to my heart and then go get dinner ready. I would spend the rest of the evening reading some of the few books we could afford to buy. As I said... we didn’t have much... but each other was enough.
One night I got home particularly late. A cave-in at the mine had taken us late into the night to clear. I was exhausted and the only thing on my mind was getting some food in my belly and falling asleep. The tub was filled and waiting though it wasn’t as warm as usual. Nevertheless, I dove right under the water and began scrubbing the day away. I drained the tub and got dressed in a clean set of clothes before walking out and announcing I was home. I immediately knew something was wrong, Lisa was not there to greet me. I began a quick search through the house, thinking perhaps that she was hiding from me. Perhaps she found a new game or such. I found the both of them in the bedroom bound and gagged on the floor. I was almost too stunned to speak.
“What’s going on...” Rhia’s eyes went wide at the sight of something behind me and I spun around. Too late I saw a raven-haired woman throwing a punch at my jaw. Her fist hit me like a kicking mule and I dropped to the ground, unconscious. When I awoke it took me a moment to figure out where I was. I finally recognized where we must be... under the house. We had made a small storage area down there for tools and the like but someone had tunneled it out to nearly twice its intended size. The woman had collapsed the support timbers around the entrance leaving us no way out.
She had likely brought down the entire house above us so that the neighbors would assume us dead and not think to look for survivors. The entire process was remarkably well thought out, if it wasn’t so monstrous I might have even admired it.
Both my hands were tied behind me so that we couldn’t move. I struggled against the ropes as I searched the dimly lit room for Lisa or Rhia. Something out of the corner of my eye moved and I struggled to crawl over to it. It was Rhia, or more appropriately what was left of her. A huge gash in the side of her neck bled out onto the floor. Her eyes met mine with a look that begged for the help that I couldn’t give her. She tried to speak... to say something... anything... but her lips couldn’t form the words. I was sure I was watching my wife’s last moments on this earth. Soon, though, that would become a preferable alternative.
“Oh no...” Said our attacker suddenly appearing near us. “You’re leaking again. I keep telling you you’re of no use to me dead, woman.” She knelt and leaned close to my wife’s wounds. Her mouth opened in a grotesque smile as she began to drink. I watched, horrified, as she sucked the blood from my wife’s neck. Rhia went limp on the dirt floor where she lay and our captor licked the wound clean. At least that was what I thought she was doing. When I looked again my wife’s neck was once again whole, it appeared as if the gash had never been.
The weeks that followed were like a nightmare that we couldn’t wake up from. The woman, who eventually said her name was Brienne, seemed to delight in my struggles as she fed off my wife. While our attacker was gone Rhea and I could do nothing more than weep for the unknown fate of our daughter. Every two or three days she would return to feed, only giving Rhia just enough time to regain her strength between. She never touched me, though. She had some sort of special plans for me.
“Besides, the game wouldn’t be as much fun then.” All my family was to this... thing... was food and entertainment. I vowed her death a hundred thousand times from that day forward. It wasn’t more than six months into our captivity when I guessed Brienne’s intentions towards me. She had plans to make me what she was. There was no way in hell I could accept that. Legends of vampires had been a topic spoken in some of my more obscure readings and I thought I could not exist as one. Fearing the church and sunlight as harbingers of death. Everything one finds good in life is reversed in death. If only I had known the truth back then things might have turned out differently, but I was taken in by the same stories others died believing. The tales I put my hope in were spread by the vampires I planned to use them against. That night I found how just that small bit of ignorance can be as deadly as the sharpest blade.
Brienne didn’t trust me enough to spend the daylight hours with us in the collapsed ruin but shortly after nightfall, she arrived, as always seeming to materialize out of nowhere. She ignored me as usual and walked directly to where my wife lay. The feeling of being nothing but cattle to this woman fueled my anger and added to my determination. Behind my back, I held a pair of stakes I pulled from the ruined timbers blocking the exit. When Brienne leaned down to drink I pulled one of them out. Clutching it white-knuckled I snuck behind her and plunged it with all my strength into her back.
The vampire screamed and reared back throwing me to the ground. So intent was I on holding on to the stake that represented my freedom that I tore it from her as I fell. She turned to me with a feral snarl, no more beauty left in that face. Now there was nothing but pure, unbridled hatred.
“How dare you, you puny insignificant little insect! You dare strike at me?” I was never that much of a religious man before that moment. I asked god to banish this being from his sight innumerable times in those few seconds that it took her to reach me. I used the two pieces of wood to form the likeness of the lord’s cross and for the slightest moment, she stopped. I thought it was working, against all hope there still was a chance, until the monster burst out laughing. No matter what happened to me from that moment on mattered not, I died with that sound. “I knew I picked a winner in you. You have to be punished though... something so you’ll learn your lesson and never... ever forget it.”
She picked Rhia up from the ground with one hand and held her at eye level for me to see. Then in a blur of motion, her jaws snapped forward tearing Rhia’s throat from her body. Blood sprayed everywhere in the small enclosure. The beast holding her greedily drank every drop she could and I watched in horror as the hole that I made in her back closed and vanished. My wife’s eyes were wide with shock before the light behind them that I loved so much dimmed and faded. Brienne dropped the body to the ground and I scrambled over to it. Rhia had a look of serene peace on her face. I realized then, why fight? Freedom lay in death... perhaps the only freedom left to me. I stood and faced Brienne ready to leave this life and get the rest I so urgently desired but I was denied even that.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“So brave aren’t we? Ready to die and give up? On no no no no.... that simply will not do. You need to remember this day for eternity. That is your punishment for striking me.” I felt all the color drain from my face. My worst nightmare was about to become real.
She walked over to me, put an almost gentle hand on the back of my neck, and kissed me on the lips. The taste of Rhia’s blood on her lips made me nauseous but she didn’t stop. Slowly, almost sensually her lips trailed down to my neck. I thought of running, of fighting her, of doing anything besides just standing there like a fool. The sharp pain of her fangs piercing my skin seemed to drive such ideas from me, however. She drank my life’s blood slowly as if she wanted to savor every moment. I tried to move, held tight in her grip as my life drained away into her hungry mouth. Darkness crept into the edge of my vision as my head swam and knees buckled. I fell to the ground and lay there as the last beats of my struggling heart echoed in my ears. I heard each thud clearly as my heart slowed... and finally stopped.
The next thing I can remember was a burning liquid being practically forced down my throat. It tasted sweeter than any drink I had had in my entire life so I drank it greedily, trying to sate a thirst I only then was aware of. My eyes opened slowly... reluctantly... and I saw Brienne holding her wrist to my hungrily feeding mouth. I cried out in shock and pushed her hand away from me. She simply smiled... enjoying the knowledge that she had won. “Now, you are mine forever.”
She talked to me a lot over the next several days, telling me how I was now nothing more than a mere animal and I would feed when I was hungry enough. I refused to rise to her goading and argue, neither would I touch the bodies she brought to me. Each of these she would dispatch before me in as gory a way a possible. As much as I hated to admit it the smell of the blood when she did so was near overpowering. Each day the craving built in strength until it was the single all-consuming thought left to me. It was then, in my near frenzied state, that Brienne revealed the final part of her horrendous ‘punishment’. The hunger had built within me for days during which Brienne was nowhere to be found. I paced the confines of my small prison unendingly, not knowing day from night for what seemed an eternity. I clawed at the walls trying to dig my way to freedom. I would have anything by this time to stop the burning in my throat and she knew it. She arrived one night holding a small bundle in her arms saying it was all she could find. The scent of blood on the small body drew all cares out of my mind. I thought not of the child’s worried parents, nothing but my blind blood lust was present in my mind.
“Daddy?” The word cut through my mind like a knife. The voice, the face, all familiar but it was too late. My newly formed fangs tore into my own daughter’s throat. She screamed in fear and pain, struggling to get away. I tried to stop myself. I begged god to give me the strength but the hunger drove me onwards. When the frenzy had abated I held the body of my little girl in my arms and wept. Crimson tears fell on her pale face. Brienne leaned close to my ear.
“Perhaps now you will realize who controls your life from this moment onwards. It certainly is not you...” I turned to her and fixed her in a stare so cold that she backed away from me a step. Placing my little angel down on the floor, I stood up. This would end right now, I thought. No more games, one of us wasn’t leaving this hellhole. I ran at her, raining blows down on her. I pounded on the object of my hatred with all the feelings I had left in me. She stood there in shock for a moment, merely taking everything I sent at her. In an eye blink the tide turned on me. Before I even knew what was happening she caught my fist mid-swing and backhanded me. The force of the blow sent me flying across the room into a pile of debris.
“I’ll kill you for that you ungrateful wretch!” She picked me up off the ground and threw me into the far wall. “You’re nothing! I give you immortality and this is how you repay it?” She kicked me in the gut over and over. I couldn’t believe how far her strength surpassed mine. I felt blindly around on the ground beneath me, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. Nothing presented itself so I grabbed a handful of the dirt and threw it in Brienne’s face. She covered her eyes and I put everything I had into one last punch. The air around me filled with blood and I looked for where it was coming from. Surely I couldn’t have hit her that hard. Brienne had been knocked back by my punch... just enough to impale her on the end of one of the fallen timbers.
I watched her carefully, wary of some sort of trick. Thinking to myself there was no way it could be that easy. She continued to convulse for long hours after the fight ended. She wasn’t dead, that much was for sure but she was also in no shape to pose any threat anymore. It was during that long night I finally looked at her for real. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old when she was changed. How could someone so young become so evil? I looked at the still corpse of Lisa and knew the answer. We had no choice, what we were was evil to the core. I refused to let the blight we represented to man go on any longer. Brienne was right, I would never forget the events of that night. I would use the anger to fuel me and destroy them all.
I took a piece of wood from the collapsed entrance and began tunneling my way to the surface. Hours stretched into days as my makeshift shovel worked without tiring. My entire world shrank down to my hands and the next bit of dirt that needed to be moved. Finally, I smelled fresh air as the wood burst outside into the night. I’ve often wondered since then if it wouldn’t have been better if that last stroke had brought in sunlight instead. Only luck had kept me alive that night and all these years later I am still undecided as to whether it was good or bad.
I went down into the hole once more to bid farewell to my family. I promised I would join them as soon as I could. As soon as I made sure that nothing like this could ever happen again. The hunger had long since returned but I pushed the pain to the back of my mind. I climbed out of the rubble that had been our house and looked around what once had been my town. Some of it had been cleared away since its collapse but most people apparently had other things on their minds to keep them busy. With some work, I collapsed the trench I had dug, once again sealing my family in their tomb, and left. My thoughts quickly turned to feeding. It was a sad fact where that sustenance had to come from but I knew of no other way. Every house I passed contained someone I knew, though. How could I pick one to die so I could live? The choice was taken from me soon enough. A man stopped me and asked if I was lost. His eyes grew large as he recognized what he must have thought was a ghost. He was dead seconds later and could never tell anyone of what he had seen. I refused to look and see who it was, knowing the face would be of a friend, co-worker, or someone else I knew. I had to get someplace where I didn’t know any of the faces.
I traveled as far as I could every night afterward. Making as much distance on foot or on the coin of my victims before I had to hide for the day. I had no idea how I was to begin my hunt of the undead so I headed towards one of the larger cities. I would break into libraries at night and read, trying to learn what no one truly knew. Eventually, my first victim came seeking me. I was in London at the time, searching through the libraries of the many Universities located there. I had just stumbled upon what looked to be an ancient order dedicated to the very thing I wished for... the eradication of vampires. With the proper disguise, I thought I could join this group and learn all I needed to know and begin to hunt on my own. The plan was still fresh in my mind when I heard a voice behind me.
“You tried to kill your sire because of a lack of reading materials?” I turned to the speaker with an astonished look on my face. “Well, you couldn’t expect to keep something like that a secret forever could you?” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know who this person was, only that the likelihood was that this was a fellow vampire. “They’ve called a hunt on you... since you’re new it might interest you to know that any vampire that comes across you from now on is to kill you on sight.”
“Not exactly the good news I was hoping for.” I found out long after the other vampire’s death that he hadn’t been a vampire that much longer than I had. He either wanted to make a name for himself or the vampires in town underestimated my strength. I hadn’t just been reading at night... I had grown more powerful in my pursuit to learn the extent of my new abilities. A few weeks later I left London and traveled north. A small town in that direction held the headquarters for that pack of vampire hunters. The only problem was how pale my skin had become. That would give me away before I ever had a chance to learn anything.
It took me only a little time to find a vendor of face make-up. The kind only ladies of ill repute used back then. Using that to color my face I hid within the hunters for years.
I was fascinated with how much they truly knew... and how much the vampires intentionally spread falsely. Rumors like the fact that a vampire cannot cross flowing water turned out to be completely false. I could only imagine how many poor souls ran across a river and turned in triumph only to see their deaths bearing down upon them.
I spent years rummaging through their archives and learning all I could. I learned how to find other vampires... where they made their lairs. I learned about their habits and their culture. If my kind weren’t all killers it would almost be fascinating. I left there when I discovered something I wasn’t supposed to. These hunters not only killed vampires... they at times simply watched them. Within their libraries, I found a file about me.
These people knew all about me... how Brienne captured me and my family to make another vampire. It was even a patterned occurrence. Vampires had been doing this for ages untold. Hundreds of families were tortured for these creatures’ enjoyment and these hunters simply watched in the name of learning their enemies. They were as bad as the vampires themselves. I was truly alone in my quest. At least then I was armed with information. My hunt had begun but my greatest weapon was a long time in the making.
Almost all damage a vampire incurs is healed through the consumption of blood. There are some wounds that are too much to be healed, though. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, I lost most of my arm in a battle. I thought I was doomed. How could I defeat vampires with a single arm? It was soon after I met Lornvig Horsenburg. He was working on a way for people missing limbs could live their lives normally. I worked with him for years developing his ideas into a reality. Once he had what he wanted out of the project I used his ideas to change it into a weapon. I made an arm that was not functional as an arm but instead fired out wood projectiles. Many times I had found myself in a battle and discovered nothing wooden available to drive into the monster’s chests. Now there was no way I would ever be caught unprepared again.
Back then I thought I was making progress in my mission. But now... I’m not so sure. In more recent years the vampire population has exploded to such a degree I can’t even fathom their numbers. I’ve hunted so many that it’s become a reflex. Almost no thought is actually involved. Which has almost gotten me in trouble more than once. For I have discovered something I never would have believed those first few years after my family’s death. Vampires, like humans, can vary in personality. I’ve met others who, like myself, detest the price they have paid for their immortality. Others who try to make right what they once may have done. These creatures will eventually die as well, but I have let them live for now. I almost dread the day when they and I are the only ones left. In my travels, I have even run across Brienne. How she escaped the prison I left her in I am not sure but she is never alone. She stays near her friends... vampires of such incredible strength that I am nowhere near ready to fight them. I think she knows I am still hunting her... and she is afraid.
My preparations to leave were complete. Another week from now I would be on the trail of another killer in another city. Either that or I would be fighting off a group that was sent to kill me. Either way, their numbers would fall a small amount more. I’m going back to Europe... near my hometown. I’ve been back only once since that day all that time ago. It’s changed a lot. The coal mine has long since shut down. The people there are more concerned with raising sheep, though it’s still not large enough for many maps to be bothered with showing it. I’ve bought the lot where my house once was. Spent a lot of money rebuilding it the same way it was when I lived there. I’ll go back again one day and sit on that porch with my coffee. I will stay there with my family and wait for the sunrise one last time. It will be good to feel the sun on my face once more but I cannot let myself die till I’ve brought it to an end. There are more of them out there and most humans don’t even know it. They think it’s a myth of some sort... stories they tell to frighten their children. Just like they want us to believe, but I know the truth. My fight will never be over until there is a victor, and I intend that victor to be me.