Chapter Two
A voice resonated through the blackness, stretching itself toward my ears as though through a long corridor. At first, I could not make out what it said; its cadence was dream-like and still far too distant. Within moments, however, it gained volume and purpose.
“Peter, dear,” she said. “It’s time for you to wake up.”
I struggled to ignore her evocations, but they continued, drawing me out from my slumber. Resisting with all my might, I twisted my thoughts away from the woman calling me and back into the void of nothingness. I already knew something was different. I didn’t want to face it; not yet, anyway. No, I wished to remain in slumber for an eternity, sheltered within a cocoon and far from reality.
Still, her voice persisted. “Come now, young one. Rise and embrace your destiny.” It pushed me another step closer to the surface. As my mind stumbled forward, the strangest sensations began overwhelming me, providing a stark contrast against the romanticism of her words. Rather than being some pleasurable entanglement with this ‘destiny’ of which she spoke, waking brought with it a burning that consumed me from head to feet.
It threatened to strangle me. I gasped for breath, but the act of breathing stung and the air sat useless on my lungs before being expelled back through my mouth. My hands grasped fistfuls of whatever fabric I laid upon while each sense and synapse in my body fired at the same time. The initial pangs of awareness were not to be the worst of it, though. They built up to the crescendo that occurred when I opened my eyes.
The burning intensified and localized. I issued the most blood-curdling scream my vocal cords ever produced. The light illuminating the room waged an assault against my eyes and yet, I tried keeping my lids open so I could figure out what the devil was happening to me. I turned my head to the side, chest rising and falling with erratic breaths. Three people sat nearby whom I had never seen before in my life – one woman and two men. Their piercing eyes regarded me in silence, watching me tremble while failing to be moved by the sight before them. In turn, I studied them with the knowledge that something about my sight had changed, but I could not bear to keep my eyes open another moment.
They clenched shut while the rest of my body writhed in agony.
“Peter, calm down.”
I rolled over, discovering in some distant observation that I laid on a bed as I clawed at the blankets and sheets. I buried my head into a pillow, if just to rid my eyes of the violence that was the light. “Make it stop,” I said. “Make it stop. Please kill me, kill me, just make it stop!”
“We can’t do that, Peter,” said the woman who brought me into this hell in the first place. Her voice became louder, as though she was walking closer to me. “What is it that hurts, dear child?”
“My eyes! My fucking eyes are burning!”
“Turn off the lights,” she said. I listened as one of the silent members of the jury stood and walked to the other side of the room. Another one of my senses conspired to drive me toward madness as even sound itself filtered into my ears in an odd manner. A click preceded a flood of darkness all around me, but this only eased the pain in my eyes. The rest of my body continued to tremble.
“What. . .” I managed to say, taking pained breaths while continuing to struggle with the odd sensation of air sitting unused in my chest. “What did you do to me?”
I felt the bed dip beside me and flinched against a hand which reached forward to stroke my hair. It retreated at once. “Peter,” the woman said, the calm in her voice a contagious force threatening to stop my shaking. “Don’t you remember our discussions? Do you remember who I am?”
“I don’t know who I am right now!”
“Look at me, dear. It’s alright, the lights are out now.”
I did not wish to look at her, but somehow I knew I had to face the world at some point. Slowly, I placed my hands, palms down, onto the satin pillowcases. Carefully, I pushed off the mattress and lifted my face to gaze at the woman speaking to me. I knitted my brow as she filled my line of vision, peering at her while conducting a mental evaluation.
Did I recall her? Yes, there was something familiar about her. Her flowing red hair fell over strong shoulders and her suit accentuated a curvy, slim body I knew I had seen somewhere. Middle-aged in appearance, yet still quite attractive, her face stirred the recesses of memory, but I was left with nothing more than a fleeting sense of déjà vu. She gazed at me like a mother and I found myself regarding her in kind. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice reduced to a whisper.
She smiled. “You know who I am and yet, you have no idea.” She reached forward, her fingers grazing past my cheek. This time, I did not flinch. “My name is Sabrina. I’m sorry, this part is never easy, dear. It will take you some time to adjust.”
“Adjust,” I said, trying to decipher the word and its relationship to me. My eyes shifted toward the others in an attempt to ascertain who they were, but I sensed nothing near what came over me when I gazed at Sabrina. The first two beings remained seated where they had been before; one, a woman in sensual, Gothic dress with long, blonde hair. Despite the darkness of the room, I noticed the color of her pale green eyes and glanced past the look of curiosity painted on her countenance to gaze at her companion.
Clad in a dark suit, the man seated beside her possessed short, brown hair and blue eyes. The third onlooker, however, stood against the wall. Our eyes connected with the most friction of the lot. His long hair tied back in a ponytail, he wore a three-piece suit which matched the regal air emanating from his posture. The corner of his mouth curled in a condescending grin. I immediately loathed him.
My gaze returned to Sabrina. “Why does it hurt?” I asked, with the pitiful frailty of a child.
Sabrina smiled. “Young one, you have just risen from the crossing,” she said. “You are facing this harsh world as a newborn again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I brought my hands to my forehead. The riddle of Sabrina’s words did nothing to help decipher the unusual perceptions I now possessed. Crossing? I did not have the foggiest notion what a ‘crossing’ was. “How long have I been asleep?” I asked. “A few hours? A day?”
“A bit longer than that.” Sabrina paused. “Do you remember what happened before you fell asleep?”
I blinked, trying to recall anything prior to the pain of waking. That was when one memory came crashing through the haze, a disorienting image whose origin I could not ascertain. “I remember a knife,” I said, my eyes gazing into the distance. “I had been holding a knife and then I ran. I stabbed her. I stabbed Lydia.”
She frowned. “Yes, I’ve never seen one so covered in blood prior to the conversion. Such violence does not make this transition any easier, but you have been given the gift you asked for. . .” The next words caused me a start, as though Sabrina read my previous thoughts. “. . . my new son.”
I perked an eyebrow. “Gift?”
“Yes, gift.” Sabrina’s frown settled into an even expression and her eyes drifted away. I shifted into a seated position on the bed, forced to take a few seconds to get my wits about me, a slight wave of dizziness following the effort. Glancing down at my body, I regarded the simple pair of khaki slacks and black, button-down shirt which hung from my frame. It occurred to me for the first time that I was feeling weak and hungry.
My gaze shifted back to Sabrina as she continued speaking. “You told me about your parents,” she said, looking back at me. “About being a doctor. Do you remember? How everything in life seems so transient and how you wished to be part of something more permanent?”
I struggled to recall the conversation. Familiar though it was, the words echoed at me from the other side of an impenetrable wall. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I want to remember, but I can’t.”
“No reason to be concerned,” Sabrina said. “It’s all part of the process. Many vampires have a hard time recalling much from their past lives, I’m afraid, until the initial shock wears off.”
The word forced my eyes open. “Vampires?”
Sabrina smiled wide, baring a set of pointed fangs at me. “Yes, my dear. You have become one of us. Just as you asked to be.”
The sight of her ungodly daggers frightened a shout past my lips. I backed away with such sudden force, I slid too far and fell off the edge of the bed. Struggling to my feet, I fought past another bout of dizziness while finding the wherewithal to retreat until my back hit the wall. Sabrina came to her feet and walked toward me, her steps slow and cautious. “Peter, don’t be afraid… .”
“I don’t believe you,” I said in a frenzy. “I don’t believe any of this.” My eyes shifted toward the others as they peered at me with upturned eyebrows. “Who are you people?!”
Sabrina did not allow them to respond. “Those are your brethren.”
I shook my head once more and slid across the wall until I stopped in the corner of the room. This beast of a woman I initially found captivating came closer to where I stood and I, in turn, pressed my back against the wall. “No,” I said. My erratic breathing resurrected that peculiar feeling in my chest again, my body implicitly asking what the devil I thought I was doing by inhaling. I still had not put the pieces together; had not noticed the lack of pulse or come to understand the notion that breathing felt odd because I did not need to do it any longer. The sole matter which held my attention at the moment was her surreal assertion that I had become a vampire.
I glared at Sabrina. “I don’t know you,” I said. “I’ve never met any of you. This is a nightmare I’m going to wake up from when I. . .”
“Peter,” Sabrina interrupted. “This isn’t a dream. You’ve been asleep for almost a week. . .”
“No I haven’t. . .”
“. . . and during the course of that week. . .”
“No, stop. I’m not listening to you.”
“. . . you’ve died and been reborn again.”
“Stop saying that!” I shouted with a hiss, but the death knell to my denial sounded its toll when I felt something hard and sharp pressed against my lower lip. Although I closed my eyes to holler, they shot open when I realized that whatever that was, it was coming from my mouth. One shaky hand relinquished its hold on the wall and rose, hesitating at first before answering the dare to touch my lip. My fingertips traced the contours of a sharp, pointed incisor akin to Sabrina’s and my hand recoiled in shock, but the wall of truth had been broken. Curiosity took the reins away.
I raised my other hand, touching a complementary dagger on the other side of my mouth. Another breath inhaled amplified the silence in my chest. My fingers lowered to my neck, searching for a pulse and were met with nothing but cool flesh without the normal rhythm of a heartbeat. I was dead and yet, there I stood with fangs exposed. “It’s true,” I said, my voice just above a whisper. My eyes found Sabrina again. “Oh God… I’ve become a vampire.”
She smiled with relish. “Welcome to the coven,” she said. “Don’t worry, all of the answers will come in time.”
At first, I blinked and nodded in semi-acceptance, but a shiver reached the base of my brain and brought the one thing that made accepting my newfound condition that much easier. While I could not name the premonition overcoming me at the time, it bloomed into a litany of symptoms that filled the picture with much more detail. The wooziness, coupled with a light-headed dizziness forced my back against the wall once more. Hands lowering to my sides, I closed my eyes and swallowed past a dry throat, summoning an infantile thought that threw me headlong into my first tangle with bloodlust.
I was hungry.
So very hungry.
Bloody hell, when was the last time I had eaten?
Sabrina’s voice broke through my senses. “Are you alright, my new son?” she asked. When my eyes opened, however, her look of anxiety morphed into a wicked smile. “You’re hungry.”
I leaned my head back and stared toward the ceiling. “Yes, I am,” I said, although the term ‘hunger’ did nothing to capture the all-consuming thirst overwhelming me the longer my fangs remained exposed. I had no notion of how to retract them, which caused my appetite to mount. “I need something to eat. I don’t think I’ve eaten in a while.”
I looked at Sabrina, a silent plea emanating from my eyes. End this torture, they said without stealing my voice to convey the message. The grin on her face broadened. She turned toward the man standing on the opposite side of the room. “Michael, bring in the girl,” she said. “Your brother is hungry. It’s time we taught him how to feed.”
“As you wish, Mistress,” Michael said, emphasizing the term in what struck me as a disdainful manner. The condescending smirk lingered – an expression which seemed intended to convey just who between us was the superior being. I choked back the contempt his actions inspired for the time being, though. If he was to assist me in my dilemma, I was not about to jeopardize raising his ire. So, I watched him leave and closed my eyes, awaiting his return.
A few moments later, the door opened and I knew Michael had returned merely by scenting the air. An intoxicating aroma emanated from the doorway and my eyelids lifted to fill my sight with the vision of a woman, bound and gagged. She beheld me with panic-stricken eyes. Michael dragged her further into the room. The sight of her fear intrigued me and the steady pulse I heard summoned a craving unlike any I had ever experienced before. Where once, I would have looked at her and seen a human being, hunger distorted her into nothing more than the answer to my thirst.
Michael held her steady and commanded my attention. “Now, dear brother,” he said. “Come here and observe me.”
I nodded and walked closer, ignoring the hallow feeling of inhaling to indulge in a deep, steadying breath. As I glanced back at my newfound immortal sibling, I watched Michael’s own fangs slide down and shivered when his nose pressed against the girl’s neck. She wriggled, a pitiful squeak escaping past the fabric covering her mouth. He ignored it, as did I.
“You can always tell where it is the sweetest by their scent,” he said. Michael closed his eyes and ceased his pursuit at a certain spot. “Those sharp teeth you possess are deep enough to reach it. Plunge them into her neck… like so.”
I watched the girl jump when Michael’s fangs pierced her skin. Blood ran down in rivulets, staining her shirt and producing a sight which unnerved and excited me all at once. Her eyes filled to the brim with tears, but again I found myself strangely apathetic to her plight. Instead, the viscous, red liquid running from her veins held my interest captive.
Michael pulled away and lifted his eyes to regard me. “Now it is your turn. Don’t think about it, merely do it.”
Nodding, I approached the woman, her potent scent tangling me inside its enchanting web. I wrestled with the notion of ripping her apart and imbibing whatever did not spill to the ground, but images of Michael’s fangs driving into her flesh lulled me into a fledgling form of temptation. I rather liked the way that bite looked. So intimate – sensual, even. A communion with this frail being for fleeting seconds before she had nothing left to offer.
Without further thought, I allowed my senses to become saturated with her and ran my nose along her neck until that golden spot gripped me and forced me to pause. With that, I did what I saw Michael do.
I drove my teeth into her neck and spilled forth the first drops of human blood I ever consumed.
The taste was exceptional, slipping past my tongue in rivers of ecstasy which stirred to life the most primeval of urges. It was reminiscent of the pleasure I experienced while drinking from Sabrina’s wrist, but this time the fire of human blood filled my veins and lit an inferno of all-consuming need. I drew inward with dire urgency, swallowing mouthfuls in a lusty manner, taking her in until she became unsteady on her feet and had to be held upright.
Her pulse wavered before ceasing altogether. Within moments, my fangs retracted and the heat of blood warmed the chill of my body and filled me with sated contentedness. I pulled away, my eyes closed, and allowed my victim’s used body to crumple to my feet.
“Very good, my son,” Sabrina said, her voice ebbing toward me through the haze of afterglow. “You did well. It’s as though you were born to be a killer.”
I turned my head to look at her, still ignorant of so many things as our eyes met. I could not remember who I was beyond the vision of a knife and flashes of imagery centered around confessing the death of a girl named Lydia. I had no memories of my past life and could not be bothered to care at that point. I could only think of drinking that girl’s blood and draining her dry.
“I could get used to being a vampire,” I said, allowing my gaze to shift away from Sabrina and the others. A sinister grin overtook me and my own voice rang peculiar in my ears. The being speaking was a different man; I had no need of remembering my mortality to know as much. I knew with one mere murder I had transcended even the frightened being that woke with his eyes blinded by pain. Something squeezed away that fear and dread, replacing it with the enamored state of euphoria I had just experienced.
Its footsteps were cold and calculating; sadistic and enchanting. I smiled as its ghost left a mark on my psyche.
“Yes, I enjoyed that very much,” I said with a nod. “In fact, I’d like to do it again.”
