From Slate to Crimson

For Liz above all…

And my college friends who cheered me on…

And for everyone who believed in me and gave me help and support. How I wish I could thank you enough.

I call this decision my folly. How can it not be; the entire theater of its outcome was, in my opinion, a sad comedy of errors. Of course, Amelia would say that it was the best thing that could ever have happened to her. I chalk such optimism up to her youthful naiveté, however endearing it is.

Still, it was indeed folly, a grand error of my own design, which brought forth a fledgling that I had created out of desperation and passion.

I often wonder, were I given the chance to re-live the situation, but wiser as to its outcome, would Amelia, my dearest and most precious love, the bride I had been blessed with after nigh on ten millennia of loneliness, still be human? Now like all of my children, her blood is more stimulating than satisfying, but I have needed her no less, nor do I love her less fully.

She lies in my bed, beside my coffin which has gone unused for almost sixteen years, resting in light slumber after a long night of training with my chief lieutenant, Justin, and an even longer night of love with me, her now-ageless body still beautiful, her blood still as sweet as it was as the night I first met her, though it would never nourish me again.

Oh, but how it enflamed me for those few scant weeks! My heart swells with love at the sight of her in repose, and I afford myself a brief chuckle at the many legends that have cropped up about our kind over the centuries.

Contrary to popular belief, we are quite capable of love. It strengthens bonds between even our immortal souls, and is, I believe, the one means by which we are kept connected to our lost humanity. But it is that very capacity for love that led to my folly. Still, as I take one last glance at my wife before I set my pen to paper, I begin to suppose that perhaps my folly was not so foolish after all.

* * * *

It happened at the end of a time of calm in the war: a lull in the cycle of endless violence against our great enemy that defines our immortal existence. These times generate both a sense of elation, and a sense caution for their frailty, for the worst violence comes immediately after. But in addition to accompanying peace, however fleeting, times of calm offer opportunities love among my kind.

Our capacity for love is the one thing that separates us from our enemy, the clan of Lothos: a breed to whom love is alien. They had long ago castrated themselves of their souls’ gentle compassionate side in exchange for the seductive powers of our gift—and curse. Because of Lothos’ ever-present danger to my kind, I approve of those among my clan who find love between each other.

I have eagerly encouraged us to love one another, as well as the human hosts whom we care for out of sacred duty and for their benefit as sustenance. But from time to time, love can spawn potential problems. This is best expressed in the occasions when our kind chances to fall in love with a human. Never has this kind of love not spawned misgivings in my heart when I come to hear of it.

However, my feelings are not born of a sense of superiority or malice; after all, we need humans. Their blood sustains us, and the chemicals in our bodies that are passed to them in our bite benefit them with better strength, speed, perfect health, and long life. Those brought into knowledge of our existence function as our daylight eyes and ears.

We, in turn, care for them, and keep them safe from the depredations of the enemy. Some, we have even trained with relics of my technological marvels in order to assist us in our ongoing war. As we do with each other, my kind are wont to form strong relationships with humans, and once in a while, some form an especially intimate and consummate bond, a relationship forged by an attraction to blood that consumes both our kind and host, irrevocably binding one to the other for life.

And once in a greater while, these consummate bonds grow into romantic love. Rare though it may be, it is potentially dangerous for those involved, as the complications that may arise from such an act are too many to tell.

The flippancy and recklessness of my actions after I met Amelia were born not only of that consummate bond that I could not resist, but also of a selfish nature that I had thought long dead. I was intimately seduced by the blood and soul of a woman who awakened emotions I had thought buried for thousands of years.

* * * *

It was the dead of winter when I first met her, during the death of the old year in the Christian calendar, and the birth of the new. I had taken up temporary refuge in one of our many safe houses, and my children celebrated while I brooded.

It seemed as though the bitter cold had frozen the world, and had led Lothos and his clan to take a brief respite from their own machinations, despite reports from my spies of increased enemy activity. This, however, did not deter festivities for the New Year from being held. But my eternal vigilance kept me too deeply embroiled in planning and strategies to enjoy a party—or so I thought.

Elisa had arrived in the planning room and sat upon the table before me, ready to enlighten me to the error of my ways, her small form, frozen forever in the body of a ten-year-old resting upon books and maps that I had disgorged from their alcoves and laid open haphazardly.

“You’re vigilant, Father,” she said to me, dangling her legs over the table’s edge and rocking them back and forth as if she were truly the age her body reflected, “but too much so. You don’t take the time to appreciate life when you have the chance. Even we are not
completely
immortal. Our losses in the cause are proof enough of that.”

Her words gave me pause to think, and then I could not help but smile at my adopted daughter. I could never say no to her, and that night would be no different. “You’re absolutely right,” I said, taking her by the hand as she alighted off of the table. Making rapid steps, she moved ahead of me and led me to the party. With no sign of the enemy, and with Elisa’s coercion, I agreed to join the festivities. And for the first time in decades, I forgot about my cares.

I had passed leadership duties for that evening to Justin, who rarely celebrated and had little reason to. Born a Carthaginian slave, Lothos had taken his wife and children. With nothing left, he embraced our war as the means to exact his revenge. Though this purpose had consumed his life for two thousand years, I shuddered to think of what he would do should we win the war.

It was he who later informed me of the human he had found nearby, spying upon us.

“Did Haas trail him?” I asked as he took me aside during the party. I was flushed, and dizzy with the alcohol I had taken from the blood of four host humans, who had been quite inebriated when they gave themselves to me. I yawned in the midst of my question, since I was growing tired with the approach of the sun, and was quite ready to sleep.

“Yes, Master. This makes the third night. We have been keeping a close eye on her.” Justin gestured towards the blueprints of the safe house I had spread upon the table in the room that Elisa had led me from earlier, and drew an imaginary ellipse around the picture with his finger. “She circles the place for about half an hour, and then returns home every night. There has been no sign of the Others trailing her, or visiting.”

“Is that so?” I said, the alcohol still turning my thoughts lackadaisical and pleasant,

“Sir, you are taking this too lightly. This human may pose a danger to us.”

“You don’t say?”

His dark features darkened even more with his countenance. He believed that I was toying with him. He hated that, and I admit that the alcohol was making me bemused when perhaps I should have been more concerned.

“Sir, please,” he stressed. “This could be dangerous. You know Lothos has wanted to find this place for months now. Reinforcements or unwanted attention by humans could—”

“Not to worry, friend,” I said, shaking my head ruefully at his bewildering, yet not at all unexpected lack of humor. “I’ll be the one to take care of this.”

Clearing my head as much as possible, I strode from our safe house and into the streets to search the surrounding neighborhood, hoping to understand more of this intrepid human who had kept my children abuzz with so much curiosity and worry.

The sky was clear, and the new moon had become a waxing crescent, giving more than enough light to see the intruder.

Despite the cold air that cut most of her scent, my senses nevertheless locked onto her blood. As I trailed the spoor, a faint bouquet of rose perfume met my senses as I stalked closer to my target, unseen and silent in the shadows that enfolded me.

It was definitely a woman, as Justin had said, but I had figured that by scent alone. Her form was clear against the white of the snow. The moon’s faint light highlighted the delicate whiteness of feminine legs that formed a striking contrast from the long, black skirt that flowed below the hem of her white, hooded trench coat, boots, and gloves. Her back to me, she stood among the snow drifts, ambling carefully around the perimeter of the safe house in the silent streets.

A sudden gust of wind whipped the formerly still air into motion, carrying with it a fragrance that was all too familiar, yet far, far more powerful than I had expected. It caught me—no, it
grabbed
me, grasping with all its strength, striking my senses like a fist to the face, and overwhelming me unlike any time that the blood scent had ever enticed me before.

It is all but impossible to explain how it made me feel. The scent was beyond delicious. It was compelling, even more consuming than the fragrance of a flirtatious human who had let the pleasures of my drink go to her head and tried to entice me into her bed.

I tried to shake myself back to my senses, but the alcohol hindered me from gaining full control of my faculties. And so, though I tried to hold it back, the sensation pierced me through, utterly overpowering me, suffusing every fiber of my being in a way I had been completely unprepared for, and could not control, pushing me out of myself, and into a fevered stupor, where I surrendered to a pull stronger than gravity, drawing me inexorably to her.

All but my focus upon the woman who stood in my sights, unknowing, had vanished, as I was drawn her way like a June bug to a porch light. My feet moved of their own accord, utterly silent across the snow drifts, or so I thought. I felt the focus of her mind shift abruptly to me as I approached, despite the almost uniform whiteness of my body amidst the snow drifts.

She whipped about towards me, a heart-shaped face framed in short-cropped black hair that fell in wisps across slate gray eyes that were rimmed in small glasses. Her soft, pink lips framed a mouth that was frozen open in an “O” of surprise. I felt fear spike in her mind at the sight of me, and she turned and ran.

I headed her off, moving at preternatural speed. Still looking behind her, she slammed into my chest and fell, backside first, into a snow bank. I stood, towering above her, possessed by her blood, trying to hold on to my eroding restraint.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid, and I could hear the delectable liquid pulsing in her veins as though it were the roar of rapids. God, its scent would have driven a pious man to sin! Even in the snow and chill, she exuded beads of sweat, each suffused with the compelling aroma. I recall a blaze of erratic thoughts from her, but amidst the overpowering feedback of terror, two observations echoed within her mind.

Not human!

Vampire!

She scrambled back to her feet as I struggled within, and tried once again to run away. This was the seal upon her fate, and the undoing of my restraint as my hunting instinct drove its serrated sword into the last vestiges of fight within me. It was only the shock of her thoughts that forestalled the inevitable. Her blood had overpowered me, seduced me completely. I had to have her!

Unfortunately the range of our powers does not include knowledge of the future. Had I known how deeply I was to become involved with this woman, I would have perhaps fought all the more tenaciously. But alas, it was not to be.

“No! Please! Stay away!” were the only words she uttered before I bore my fangs into the soft flesh of her neck. She did not scream; few mortals ever did. The euphoria set in too quickly for that.

Instead, she emitted a choking gasp, perhaps expecting the initial pain of the bite, which either never came, or was washed away so quickly by pleasure that none ever remember it. Her slender body tensed against me at first, prepared to fight futilely against my titanic strength, and then quickly gave into the devastating pleasure, falling limp in my arms. The beginnings of a cry of terror melted into lilting moans and sighs of delight as her blood poured hot against my tongue and down my throat.

God…so
good!

Her blood was like sweet magma bursting from a gash in the earth, setting me ablaze with a feast sweeter than any human from which I had
ever
fed! I was compelled to drink deeper, the burning pleasure of her blood a pulsing flame, subsuming me, pulling deeper into bliss, gout after gout.

I was content to drink my fill, to fall into the void, and die figuratively in that throbbing bliss as she died literally…

…and then, my head began to clear as her pure, untainted blood began to offset the crippling fog of the alcohol of my previous meals. I began to feel again; I began to care again. And I wrested back control, realizing what I was doing for the first time.

Stunned at how reluctant I was to do it, I released the suction of my mouth upon the wounds of her neck, and licked over them, the chemicals on my tongue speeding the growth of cells to heal her in an instant.