Chapter 1

Nightmares

To misquote my wife’s favourite novel, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a father in possession of children, must be in want of a good night’s sleep. And though I was past the point where this should have been an issue, having become a vampire and slept through my children’s teenaged years, life finds a way. Sometimes ,that way is painful. Sometimes, that way involves magic. And sometimes, that way leaves you broken as a father.

I went from sleeping peacefully in my grave to experiencing unimaginable agony, the kind that causes demons to shudder as they carve into a new sinner’s soul. My outsides were my insides, and my insides were everywhere except where they were supposed to be. My flesh folded through itself and over itself in an excruciating dance as everything fought to reposition itself with agonisingly slow intent.

In the dark flesh-filled prison of my body, my vampiric instincts woke from their slumber with one thought. One instinct. Survive.

My soul remained asleep, too weak to claw its way back to the world of the living. There was no Vincent, no self-aware mind to guide the demon that sensed it was far from home, no morality or control to restrain its intent.

Driven by survival, it lashed out, latching onto the nearest source of life that could save it from its misery. Teeth met flesh, and I learned the answer to a question I never wished to know. Blood, the sweet elixir that made me salivate, had a flavour as close to pure joy as I could imagine. The best day of my life was summed up by its taste.

It entered the demon’s mouth, like the juices of forbidden fruit, curling my toes with happiness. The demon drank without remorse, without thought, without pause to consider the consequences. The blood flowed down its throat, absorbing into flesh without ever reaching the stomach, as the demonic parasites glutted themselves to recover from the mistreatment the soul called Vincent had subjected them too.

One by one, they healed from their pain and mistreatment. The raging inferno of lifeforce held within the corpse they’d reanimated which was beyond their reach for months, became available. Allowing them to recover.

Pain began to vanish as my demonic parasites restored their vampiric kingdom. The threat to their survival retreated. And strength returned.

As the demon continued to feed, I began to wake. It was a gently pull, slowly returning me to the world of the living, without pressure or fear. It whispered that I was safe and happy.

And then a small voice, filled with pain, that sounded like my wife’s when we met, whispered in my ear. “Dad, you’re hurting me.”

Those four little words spoken by a voice that had matured over the past eleven years were all it took to break me from my peaceful haze.

My eyes snapped open as my fangs retracted. If I had a heartbeat, it would have raced. A wave of abject horror filled me, as the joy-filled taste remained on my tongue. Nauseous dread swept through me as I pulled my mouth from Kathrine’s throat and stared at the ragged wound I’d given my daughter with mounting terror.

She looked like her mother, with dark blonde hair and dimpled cheeks. Her shoulders were slim, and slightly wider than her mother’s, because of her extra height. Tears sat in creases of her eyes as she looked at me with horror, fear, and hopeless confusion. Like she couldn’t understand why her daddy was hurting her.

Her heartbeat fluttered, weak and erratic, as she gazed up at me from the ground, the way she had as a child when she had fallen off her bike and broken her arm. She wanted me to fix it. To make it better.

But I couldn’t fix it.

I’d drank too much.

I’d bit too deep.

She was dying.

Because of me.

The sound of her fluttering heartbeat pleased the demon but appalled the father I had been. The flesh missing from her throat looked like art to the demon but hurt my soul to see. And the joy her blood had brought me made the experience feel like a happy dream, instead of the living nightmare that it was.

The vampire could not deny the reality it saw, as my soul screamed its way into madness. The vampire forced the madness to accept this reality and allowed me to react.

I swept my gaze around me, trying to understand what was happening. I was in some sort of living room, with three doors leading from it. Another young woman cowering in the corner, but she wasn’t important. I was wearing my Day Walker set and had Slaughter beside me. The furniture had been pushed to the sides of the room, and a teleportation circle was drawn on the floor.

I immediately understood what had happened.

Nearly a year ago, I’d sent Kathrine a letter with a lock of my hair. In that letter, I told her if she ever wanted to see me, she could use her blood and my hair to summon me through a teleportation circle. To anyone else, a teleportation spell would be a death sentence, as the individual always arrived inside out.

She must have done as I told her to, teleporting me across the world while I slept in my sarcophagus.

A wave of grief washed through me as she reached out to me with the last of her strength. I peeled off my glove and took her hand in mine, feeling the weakness in her grip as her soft hand touched mine. She passed out a moment later with her eyes open.

I swept my gaze through the room again, searching for a solution. There was a bookcase, several couches, and the young woman cowering in the corner. I sniffed, running every sent through my nostrils. There were no healing potions to save Kathrine, and my storage pouches had been destroyed in transit. I couldn’t risk making a run for it to search the building.

Kathrine didn’t have that much time.

I didn’t have that much time.

There was only one way to save my daughter’s life and keep my soul. The choice was so horrible that even as a vampire I hesitated. Her heartbeat slowed.

I squashed my parental instincts so I could protect her.

I let go of Kathrine’s hand and blurred to the cowering woman, picked her up, and blurred back to my daughter’s side. I pulled the athame for Kathrine’s belt and shoved the handle into the young woman’s hand.

“Stab her through the eye and into the brain. Turning her into a vampire is the only way to save her life. If you don’t do as I say, I will kill you slowly.” I looked at my daughter and felt myself want to vomit. “Sweetheart, Daddy is going to fix this. I promised.”

The young woman gripped the handle in both hands and then shoved it through my daughter’s eye with all her strength, killing her instantly. Kathrine’s body bucked and twitched as nerve impulses made her flail about.

“Now, the heart,” I instructed.

She pulled the athame free and tried to stab Kathrine in the heart, but the blade bounced off her ribs.

I pointed to her diaphragm. “Through here, at this angle.”

She repositioned the athame where I said and stabbed her again. This time, she got it right.

I pushed the young woman away with too much force, throwing her across the room and into a wall. Then I picked up Kathrine’s hand. The cold analytical part of my mind fell away, and grief overwhelmed me.

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Tears began to run down my cheeks and into the corners of my mouth, making me taste salt. “Daddy’s, sorry. Daddy didn’t mean to hurt you, Sweetheart. Daddy will make it better.” Her lifeless hand offered no comfort as I kept repeating those three sentences over and over again, unable to escape the living nightmare.

I wept, for the first time truly feeling like the monster I was.

***

Hours passed as I sat there holding my dead daughter’s hand and apologising for what I had done to her. Every moment of it was a waking nightmare as I waited for her to come back to me. As I waited for everything to be right.

I sobbed harder when her injuries began to heal when the demonic parasite in my bite began to infect her flesh and repair the damage I had done. I watched her flesh close with hyperfocus, unaware of the world around us.

Her hair was matted with dried blood. In death, her delicate features were contorted in an expression of pain. She had my grey eyes and height, but everything else reminded me of Sandra when we met. She was beautiful.

My little girl had spent half her life without me. She had grown into a woman all alone. And the first thing I’d done when we were reunited was kill her.

I was a monster.

Her lifeless grey gaze stared at the ceiling as her body grew colder. The smell of her blood tantalized me for the first few hours, causing me to salivate and hate myself even more. As the infection spread, the inviting smell faded, but my disgust did not.

Then she blinked.

I watched her head turn as everything came into focus. It was like watching her birth, but without all the nausea and body secretions. Anyone who tells you childbirth is a beautiful and moving experience is either lying or wasn’t in the room during the event.

She blinked, adjusting to her new enhanced vision as quickly as I had. She turned and stared at me. One minute passed, and then another. Finally, she spoke. “Dad, did you just turn me into a fucking vampire?”

“Language, Sweetheart.”

I wiped the last of my tears away, as happiness replaced my sorrow. My vampire nature didn’t allow me to dwell in the past or worry about the future. I existed purely in the present, and in the present, my daughter was safe and alive.

Indignation crossed her face as she stared at me from the floor. “You did, didn’t you?”

“You were dying.”

“Because you ate me!”

Her indignation was completely justifiable, but it was not the reaction a normal person would have had. She should have been overcome with fear and horror. She should have been terrified out of her mind. But she was a vampire.

She pulled her hand from mine.

That small action hurt. “You teleported me away from my grave after I’d succumbed to exhaustion. I was dying and so weak I couldn’t control the monster in me.”

“Now I’m a fucking vampire.”

“Language, Sweetheart.”

“I don’t fucking care about your stupid rules? You turned me into a fucking vampire. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“We take you to a cleric and have them remove the curse. In a few hours, you will be back among the living.”

Her head twitched too fast as she began sniffing the air. “Why is everything so loud?”

“You don’t have a heartbeat.”

She began to smile. “What is that delicious smell?”

“Try to ignore it.”

“It’s making me hungry.”

“Try to ignore that too. It will be over shortly. We just need to get you to a cleric.”

I gently lifted her to her feet.

She swayed on the spot. “I feel woozy.”

“The wooziness will pass.”

I remembered what she was going throught well. It was very disorientating experience.

Kathrine turned to the young woman cowering in the corner and frowned. “Riza, are you okay?”

Riza slowly raised her head from the ball she’d curled into. “Kat?” She stared at my daughter for several seconds. “You’re alive.”

Kathrine nodded. “Are you okay?”

Riza shook her head. “He broke my ribs after he made me kill you.”

Kathrine turned and scowled at me. “You broke her ribs.”

Vampires found it incredibly difficult to care about anyone they didn’t already love. Kathrine must have really cared about her friend to show this much interest.

“You were dying. I needed her to kill you, so I wasn’t responsible for it. Time was limited.”

“You made my best friend kill me, so you weren’t responsible!”

“I would have lost my soul.”

“Apologise now.”

I’d hurt her friend, which meant I’d hurt her. I didn’t want to do that. So, I turned to Riza. “I’m sorry, I broke your ribs and made you kill my daughter.”

Riza cringed as I looked her way. “You threatened to kill me, slowly.”

“I’m not apologising for that.”

“Yes, you are!”

“Fine, I’m sorry for threatening to kill you slowly if you didn’t kill my daughter and stop me from losing my soul, which would have resulted in me and then her becoming a soulless vampire and given rise to a very dangerous family of vampires who would have terrorized this world and caused unimaginable amounts of death and destruction.”

Kathrine tilted her head to the side, the way she always had when thinking, deciding if she wanted to make an issue of my apology.

There were more pressing matters. “We should find you a cleric before you get hungry.” I distracted her by adding. “They will also be able to take care of your friend's broken ribs.”

Kathrine nodded and started walking towards Riza.

I caught her shoulder before she had taken two steps. “Sweetheart, you’re a newly turned vampire, and your friend is now food. You’re going to feel all sorts of urges and impulses, and you might kill her before you can regain control.”

Riza’s blood had been calling to me ever since I’d stopped being overwhelmed by grief. Now that I knew what blood tasted like, controlling my impulses was more difficult.

“Help her to the infirmary for me then.”

I turned to Riza. “Is that all right with you?”

She shook her head and made a pained expression as she climbed to her feet. “I can walk.”

I glanced at Kathrine. “How are we going to explain your condition?” She was a local, and I understood how logical her thinking would be.

Kathrine frowned. “I left the academy to have dinner at Antari’s in town and was attacked by a vampire and dragged into an alley. You were wandering past when you heard the commotion and investigated. You killed the vampire, but it was too late to save me, so you waited beside me to see if I would come back. When I did, you decided to return me to the academy so the clerics in the infirmary could restore my soul. We ran into Riza on the way to the infirmary, and I attacked her, breaking her ribs.”

It was simple, believable, and hard to disprove. It was also very cold and detached. Kathrine didn’t seem to notice.

“We’re at Darksmith academy, I take it?”

I’d seen the crest on her robe and remembered it from a history book. It was a dungeon academy in Murdell.

Murdell was a caste-based nation where pureblood sorcerers sat at the top. Two decades ago, the Dark Lord had risen to power by preaching magical purity. This caused a rift in the upper caste as more and more restrictions were placed on anyone whose families weren’t as pure, which led to a war and the nation fracturing.

Now, there was North and South Murdell. The two sides had been about to go to war again when the South had summoned a hero. Not wanting to risk having to face a hero, the Dark Lord had backed down. A treaty was signed requiring the elites of both nations to send their children to Darksmith, a dungeon academy along the border. And an uneasy peace had continued.

Murdell didn’t use dungeon legions to contain their dungeons. They used academies. They didn’t use adventurers either. They used former academy students to deal with threats on the surface.

It was a very power-based society, where the strong ruled, and the weak remained quiet or left. Those without magic made up less than a thirtieth of the population, as the sorcerers had made it clear they didn’t want or need them.

“Yes, we’re at Darksmith,” Kathrine replied. “Also, I ran away from the South, and no one knows I am here, so don’t mention it.”

Luke had told me the South Murdell government managed to convince the Dark Lord that the hero they had summoned was a powerful old sorcerer who saw their magic as a trivial plaything. They had built a massive palace for this fake hero and spared no expense, lavishing it with wine, women, and trinkets. The successful ruse was the only reason they hadn’t been obliterated. Kathrine’s way of fighting the Dark Lord was merely continuing to exist in obscurity.

“I won’t say a thing.”

“Good.”

Riza began walking to the door.

It was a mistake.

I was between Kathrine and her friend before Kathrine harmed her. Riza leapt back with a squawk of pain and surprise as my daughter mindlessly fought me with everything she had, tugging at my arms to get to her friend. She wasn’t anywhere near as strong or fast as I was, so there was no real danger. However, she was stronger than I expected. She had clearly been trying to level while she was here.

“Calm down, sweetheart. Riza is your friend. You don’t want to eat your friend, do you?”

Her struggling slowed as she regained control and realised what she’d tried to do. Tears began to run down her cheeks.

I rubbed her back as she cried. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt her. That wasn’t you. That was the monster inside you.”

I motioned for Riza to go around us.

She shuffled to the door, hugging her sides. She hissed as she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

I motioned for her to keep going.

She frowned at Kathrine and then headed off to the infirmary. I listened, waiting for her to call for help, but she never did.

When Riza was far enough away, Kathrine whispered, “I tried to eat her.”

“I know. It’s something I live with every day.”

Kathrine wiped away her tears as she stood up straight. “I hate this.”

“I do too.”