Annie of the Undead (36 page)

I panicked. I fought back, tried to rise. Steel
arms pinned my wrists to the earth above my head. That implacable
mouth secured my head. I might as well have been struggling against
the foundations of a mountain.

I kicked my feet against the soil, struggled as
I could, gasped some desperate cry.
He must let me go. Let
go!
But there was no escape. Within seconds I had weakened
beyond the ability to resist. I lay limp, barely feeling myself
breathe, my consciousness dimmed to some shadowy place not far from
insensibility. I gazed up at the stars with the knowledge that
there was no fighting death now. The battle was lost.

“Drink, Annie! Drink now!” came the unnatural
voice through my haze of dying.

Miguel put his arm against my mouth. I could
feel a wound there, the blood oozing.

“Drink! Drink!”

Terror had gripped me, but conditioning kicked
in. I tried to drink, but there came no blood. Miguel was so
well-fed that the wound was already healing. I clenched his flesh
in my teeth and ripped with all my waning strength.

I took one swallow, then another. The thick
fluid filled my mouth and went down. The flavor was almost
unbearable, added to the nausea of my weakened state. It was liquid
iron, salty, ripe, and overwhelming. It was something no human was
meant to ingest. I was weak, and it did not flow into my mouth, but
came when I sucked.

“Faster, Annie! Drink faster!”

I tried to obey, gurgling and choking on the
abhorrent stuff.

My assailant took away his arm and thrust a
fresh wound into my mouth, some other body part. He shoved
hard.

“Drink more! Keep drinking!”

I tried. I sucked, and sucked. His merciless
hand at the back of my head shoved my head hard against the source
with more urgent commands to drink! Drink!

And I drank and drank.

But I was so weak. So sick. I coughed, gagged. I
couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t go on. Blood came out of my nose
until I could not breathe, then I gasped through my mouth and
coughed up blood all over the place. I felt sickness churn my
inside in revolt at the unnatural substance I had taken it in such
great quantity. Blood vomit was rising in my throat. My abdomen
heaved to disgorge the poison inside me.

He shoved my jaw shut, clamped an iron hand over
my mouth as my stomach convulsed. Though my sight was blurry from
loss of blood and the tears in my eyes, I could see the
determination on his face, the hard look of the man who was killing
me. I panicked, continued to gag against an impenetrable
barrier.

He shoved my head back into the ground, and came
down with dagger teeth bared. I think I struggled, but there was
neither energy nor strength in my efforts. I was already too far
gone. He tore into my throat and this time opened the jugular
fully. I felt the dreadful pain of a bodily invasion that would
prove fatal. I felt the heat of my blood spurting out at intervals
with the futile beating of my heart. I even felt the relentless
draughts, my killer’s throat swallowing against mine, which went
rhythmically with the slackening pace of my dying heart.

There was no vital juice left to thrust through
my veins. My once cold skin went numb until I could no longer feel
the wetness of the blood that covered me, no longer feel the warm
earth at my back. Then I couldn’t feel the core of my substance.
All sense was gone. I was blind and bodiless.

At some intangible instant, I passed a
threshold, after the pain and toil for life had slipped away, where
all I felt was acceptance. I felt more than thought that it was all
right to die, because that is how everything ends.

Then, even that slipped away, and I was
gone…

For what Miguel later said was about six
seconds.

It’s a delicate, dangerous game making a new
vampire, but once the change begins, it is inexorable. A human has
died and a specter is soon to be born. The change seizes you quick
and then lasts for hours. You quake with unspeakable agony, as the
magical blood poisons every cell in your body, taking it over from
the inside out like a supernatural virus.

Dying is way easier than this. At first you feel
nothing, a symptom of death, but as your tissues change you are
wracked with simultaneous nausea, spasmodic muscle contractions,
and intense pain throughout every fiber of your being. It’s a trip
and a half.

While all that’s happening, your brain goes to
static. I guess it’s sort of like sticking your head in a really
big light socket…or maybe like getting executed by a wet sponge to
the head.

Then, all at once, it hits you. At the pivotal,
final moment, there is an explosion of the senses and awareness.
You are assaulted by odors so powerful it’s like the things you
smell are being rammed right up your nose. Your ears are filled
with a cacophony of sound that vibrates your being like you’re
sitting on the subwoofer at a metal concert, as though large
munitions are being detonated in your ears. What you see, when you
finally dare to open your eyes, is another world. Everything seems
to have slowed down, because you have speeded up. Color, detail,
and movement –even the most miniscule, hold Mesmer’s authority over
you. It’s a cliché these days, but you have been reborn, and cannot
at first fathom the new world around you.

But within minutes, your new neural wiring
–though wiring is a poor word for the gestalt of your new mind,
catches up, and you begin to make sense of all that assails you.
You begin to feel the truth of what it means to be a vampire.

Maybe there is no human frame of reference that
can be applied to existence as a vampire. Maybe there are not words
to describe the experience. Or maybe I just have a really bad
vocabulary. But I went through all I’ve described that night, and I
came out the other side as something without equal on this earth.
My humanity became for me in an instant as vague and
incomprehensible as a human’s earliest memories of childhood. Once
that shift is made, watch out…because that’s when the thirst
comes.

I hardly comprehended my need. I rose into a
sort of sitting position, driven by a craving so intense I thought
it would kill me. I felt myself withering inside, dying of my
need.

I only dimly understood the source of the furry
black creature that was thrust into my arms. Its scent filled my
nostrils, my throat, my being. There was no thought, no waiting. I
did not grip it with my hands, only plunged my face to its furry,
exposed neck. The most powerful instinct of my new composition took
hold. I sank my fangs deep into the flesh, through hair and hide,
to the coursing river of life beneath.

No fried chicken rapture could compare with
this. No hunger, no thirst, no sexual desire, no love or lust or
longing in the mortal repertoire comes close. As I drank I felt my
entire purpose of existence fulfilled. I felt indescribable joy,
juxtaposed with the insatiable need for more of that which brought
such bliss.

I drank and drank, until there was nothing left
to take. Then I tore into the carcass in my need for more.
Immediately disgusted, I cast the spent thing aside and looked
about for more. For the first time, I saw the Other, the vampire
who had made me what I was. Here was the one who had given me the
thirst, my invaluable gift and my curse. His eyes pierced me like
spears of ice, for I was blood of his blood and part of him.

In his clutches were two more creatures full of
delicious blood, blood that came to my nostrils through the very
air, as though I had drunk them already. He held one out to me, and
I took it, burying my teeth into it and finishing it as I had the
last. I cast it aside as casually as the one before it.

Only then did my thirst slacken. It was not
gone, and I did not fathom that it could be ever again, but my
thoughts began to come clearer, and the world spun into focus.

I beheld Miguel. I tasted him through the air.
He was cool and delicious as nothing else could be. He was my
blood, and I was his. It was as though we could communicate through
our thirst, as though some invisible current flowed between us, two
creatures not of this world, bound by mutual desire.

He glowed as he never had before. His skin
seemed to radiate light, like molten gold slunk over his lean form.
His eyes emitted knowledge of unearthly horrors and delights that I
now knew all too well. He smiled, and his integral teeth formed
perfect triangles of alabaster death. The stolen nectar of life
laced them and dripped from his bearded chin. The lifeless form of
a goat he had taken lay before him.

He crouched there with predatory earnest, and I
matched his stance, as we looked into each other’s eyes and
souls.

I lunged for him. He took me in his clutches and
let me pin him to the ground. I poured myself into his arms and
sank my fangs into his cold throat. It was divine retribution. I
sucked hard to draw the stagnant blood from his veins, and was
rewarded with something far greater than I had received from the
animals. Now, unlike the last time I took in draughts of him, I
felt the power of what I was taking. It coursed through me right
down to the ends of my fingers and toes.

He pushed me back. I let him. I watched the
wound I’d made on his neck heal before my eyes. He held me close as
he took my neck once more between his teeth, for the first time in
my new skin. He severed the artery and drank deep. I felt my
essence drawn back into his once more. I could almost feel with his
body, his fingers, his lips –even his pleasure and need. And as he
drank I could almost glimpse his memories, the long roads he had
walked through the centuries, the continuity of eternity as he knew
it. And he could almost glimpse mine. A mobius strip of
consciousness wound through our bodies and our brains.

I threw my head back and laughed to the black
skies. It was the laugh of the liberated, of the eternal, of the
undead.

And that was just the beginning.

Annie’s adventures continue
in
Vampire Annie

Varian Wolf lives in Florida with her superb
boyfriend and her enormous white fluffy dog. When she is not
working she enjoys snorkeling, kayaking, and any other good
adventure, real or imagined. She visits New Orleans whenever she
can.

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