The First Day

The first thing I needed in order to survive was a weapon. I found a straight branch, about as long as I was tall, then ripped a few pieces of the long vines hanging everywhere around me. Quickly, I returned to the dead animal and knelt next to it. I had no weapons on me, though I still wore my tank top, short jacket and pants, my belt still held my small ammo pouch and kabar sheath, but both were empty. I grabbed hold of the animal’s paw and inspected it. It looked a lot bigger now than it had before, when I had been fighting it. The claws didn’t retract like those of a cat, but they did lift up, somehow. I grabbed the longest claw and twisted, first breaking the bone and then trying to pull it out. Even with my strength, it was proving to be difficult. I looked around, then pulled the corpse over to a nearby rock where I extended a claw and leveraged it over it, then I started pressing down on it, applying pressure and trying to tear the claw out of the finger.

It was harder than it should’ve been. A vampire was able to tear limbs easily enough, this animal’s flesh was just tougher for some reason, as I had noticed during the fight too. Finally, I managed to get one out, then I started on another. After a few minutes of pulling, twisting, and straining, I had two claws that were as long as maybe half of my forearm.

Then the ground started to shake. I braced and got lower to the ground. The noise of the jungle intensified as the trees shook and I felt a deep thrum going through the earth beneath my feet. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.

Earthquake? I could tell that a silence settled over the jungle around me as the ground calmed. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to have been a strong one.

I set to work on my improvised weapon. I started tying the claws to the tips, one on each side with the vines I collected. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for now. How I wished that I had a gun, or at least a knife, but I had to make do with what I had.

My thoughts wandered as I worked, wondering how I came here, what happened. My memories were still fuzzy, but I remembered what had happened more clearly now. The seriousness of the situation finally hit me fully and straight between the eyes. I was afraid, for a first time in a long time, since I was turned. Being a vampire meant that there were very few things in the world that could seriously threaten me as long as I was smart. And I had been. I showed respect to the Master, at least outwardly, I listened to my sire. I killed for the cartel, I studied for the cartel, I was an asset. And in the end I destroyed everything. It was my decision to fight, and the consequence had been a noose around my neck.

This place though. I didn’t know what this was. The pressure in my chest was gone, but I still felt something there, it was almost like an instinct that told me that if I wanted I could return to that room with just a thought. I couldn’t explain it, but it frightened me.

I finished my work. The long branch now sprouted two claws, one on each of its ends. The claws were a bit too hooked to be used as any real stabbing equipment, but I could still slash with them. The vines seemed tough enough to handle it. It was more of a glaive than a spear if I was being honest. Once again, I said a silent thanks to my sire for his instruction, if there was one thing I regretted, it was disappointing him. The sight of him standing behind the Master, his disappointment. That look haunted me.

I shook my head, not letting myself get pulled into the past. Survival was what mattered. The corpse still held blood, but I had no way of storing and taking it with me. I looked around at the carnage that my fight with the animal had caused. I knew from its memories that it had a mother, that I needed to leave as quickly as possible, but I also knew that I was covered in blood. Mine and the animal’s. I needed water, to wash the scents off. I turned around and listened, trying to search for the sounds of flowing water.

The sounds of this forest were eerie. I couldn’t quite place what bothered me at first, but then I realized that there were no sounds of insects. I looked around, studying the forest with more attention for the first time since I arrived. The ground was mostly dirt, I saw only a few fallen leaves, which were shaped differently than I was used to. Most were thin and elongated, shaped like feathers. But they were also the size of my forearm. Some parts of the ground were covered with moss-like growths. I couldn’t tell what color they were, there was too little light for even my eyes to discern that here. The canopy covered the sky thickly, letting almost no light through. Plants around the trees were tall, shaped like bamboo sticks, only smooth like a jade plant. They stopped near the point where the branches of the trees started, and from the tips of the plants the vines grew over to the branches, weaving around them to then fall to the ground like curtains.

A few other plants were thin, like leaves growing out of the ground, but somehow twisted in on themselves into hollow tubes. The roots of the trees bent upward around the base of the trunks like flowers before stabbing down into the ground. It was all very peculiar.

I had no way of deciding where to go, no clue to where I even was. I remembered my lessons, as my sire used to say, when in doubt find higher ground. I took another piece of vine and made a makeshift harness for my weapon on my back. Then I picked what looked to be the tallest tree around, and I started climbing. My nails bit into the bark with ease, but I had to suppress a wince from the pain that pulsed in my leg every time I leaned on it. My neck was a dull burn now, the blood had healed most of the damage that the silver had inflicted, but the wound was yet to close fully. I climbed slowly, careful not to overexert myself. The blood had done a lot to recover me, but I was still drained. I pulled myself by grabbing branches, climbing for what felt like hours. Once I got through the canopy I looked around. The moonlight was brighter than I expected, I saw far in all directions, and finally I saw more than muted colors of the darkness below.

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Everywhere I looked the jungle extended into the distance, hills rising and falling but I saw no holes in the canopy. The trees were the shades of red, green, and blue, even some violet here and there. I had never seen trees like these before. It was all so vibrant. Then, something caught my eye, far away, on the horizon, a flash like lightning. There were… clouds? Only they were swirling, or it seemed that way at least, in a circle, and covered the expanse before me, like a wall of red mist that stretched from the ground up to the sky above. I followed it with my eyes, and that was when I noticed it.

A moon that was pale blue in color, larger than what I was used to, with a piece of it missing. Like someone cut away a slice of it, with cracks spreading around the hole, tiny pieces floated around it, remnants of what it once used to be. My mind couldn’t quite process that, not until I noticed the second moon, shining down on from directly above me. This one as red as blood and smaller than the blue one.

“I’m not on Earth,” I whispered to myself. Finally admitting what I had known deep inside since I remembered the words hanging in the air. There was no other explanation that I could think of.

But I didn’t choose anything, I passed out. I thought that I was dying—that I had already died. Did I do something by accident? I couldn’t remember, but in the absence of any other explanation, I had to conclude that I was someplace else. The Mask and that pressure in my chest seemed to add to the strangeness of this place. I couldn’t believe that this was the afterlife, it sounded nothing like what I knew from religion. How or where, were not important now, survival was.

With one last glance at the two gorgeous moons shining from above me, I climbed down the tree and started looking around. I was in a strange land, a place where my advantages obviously didn’t mean as much as I was used to. My sire’s words echoed in my mind: a warrior is only as strong as their mind. It sounded inspired, but a week later he had told me that the right weapon made the warrior. He had a habit of changing things up on me from time to time.

As I climbed down, a terrifying roar filled the jungle. I froze, instantly I knew that it had to have come from the mother of the animal I had killed. The memories I drained confirmed it. The roar continued for a few long moments, shaking the entire jungle, all other sound was drowned out and when the roar ended, when the last echo of it subsided, the silence continued to reign. Nothing alive in the jungle let out even the tiniest of sounds. My limbs didn’t want to move, it was as if that roar had locked my entire body. A few more seconds passed; the silence of the jungle filled only with the sound of the wind passing through the leaves around me.

My body trembled as I tried to force myself to move. My muscles burned, and my vision started to darken. Then I was free. I gasped, and immediately started to climb down faster. As soon as I landed, I ran in the direction opposite of the roar. I ignored the pain in my leg that made my run more of a hobbled jog. I just knew that I had to get away. I was a predator, a hunter, a stalker, but that thing… it was beyond even me, beyond perhaps even my sire. I just knew it deep in my bones. The roar instilled a dread in me that I couldn’t explain.

I ran, my legs carrying me with a speed that the fastest animals on Earth would envy. I felt my skin burst, the wound on my leg open, but I didn’t slow, I couldn’t dare, even though I was doing more damage to myself. Then I started to feel a familiar sensation coming over me. The sun was almost out, dawn was coming. All vampires could feel the coming of the dawn and dusk. And with the sun’s arrival I would be helpless, and probably dead the moment the light hit me. I needed shelter. Another roar came from behind me, closer now. Shit, shit, shit, shit. My knees buckled and I tripped, my bones were shaking from the roar’s impact. Somehow, the roar was… influencing me. I pushed myself up as I heard stomping behind me, powerful, quick, the sound of plants being pushed aside and trampled.

I couldn’t outrun it, I was a vampire. We were made to be ambush predators, we weren’t endurance runners like the humans were. I might be able to move faster than anything else on Earth, but I couldn’t sustain it. I would grow tired soon.

I pulled my makeshift weapon from my back and glanced at it. I knew that it wouldn’t help me now. Not against that. I looked around me, looking for anything that I could use. The jungle around me grew brighter as the pre-dawn light approached, and I saw something catch my eye, just a short distance away. A sudden rise in the ground, a boulder perhaps, with vines and growth all over it. I started running toward it, the sounds behind me getting closer and closer.

I pushed everything out of my mind, focusing only on what I saw in front of me. The vines covered everything, but my vampire eyes saw a small opening behind them, a crack in the stone. It was my only chance. A growl filled with anger was just behind me now, the sound of feet stomping after me matched that of my heart beating inside of my chest, pumping thirst filled blood through my body.

I reached the opening and leapt through it, barely twisting sideways in order to fit. Something crashed behind me, shaking everything, dust and rocks fell on me, and I feared that I would get buried in a collapsed cave. But it quickly stopped, and a low growl that sent a chill down my spine echoed all around me. I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked back. A large eye the size of a baseball glared at me, filled with hate. Slowly, it pulled back and after a few moments disappeared.

I was breathing fast, my body exhausted, the wound in my leg had opened up and I lost blood.

The sun rose, and the exhaustion doubled. I shook as the weakness came over me, and then my eyes closed, and I was fast asleep.