Blood Reaction A Vampire Novel (19 page)

His laughter at my outburst was low and quiet yet still filled the room with its coldness. “I do not care how many humans he kills. You need to grasp that concept, Annalice. I am not like you. I have not seen the world through human eyes in over a century. The taking of a small insignificant human no longer bothers me. Oh, I remember WHEN I thought like you.” He was laughing that awful laugh again. “But I am no longer capable of thinking like you.

“When I remember back to being human, I spent quite a bit of my time worrying over the most ridiculous things that now I wished I had not wasted my time on. Who would become President? Politics, right, wrong, injustices, the thought of going to war, Americans fighting Americans. These trivial matters filled my mind day and night. Money, family, honor. I could go on and on. But after I was changed, I realized the nothingness of it all. The world just keeps going and going. Humans keep living and dying. They all die. The timing is of little consequence,” he concluded, leaning back into the comfort of the couch cushions.

“As for killing him,” he continued, “I would relish the opportunity if it were to present itself.” His voice fell silent now, awaiting my next question.

“You hate yourself, don’t you?” I knew I shouldn’t have said it as soon as it was out of my mouth, but it was too late. In the blink of an eye, I found my shoulders being crushed between his too-powerful hands. His eyes were dilated and his fangs were fully out. Anger practically danced on his skin.

“I hate myself and I hate you as I hate every human. You have everything I deserved when he took it all from me. What makes you more deserving than me? What! Tell me!” His voice was little more than a hiss.

He was shaking me so roughly by the shoulders, I thought my neck would snap, but my durability had increased slightly. I answered him as quietly and calmly as I could. “I don’t know, Asa. I don’t have the answers.”

I was sure for a moment he was going to rip me apart with those fully extended fangs, but he finally loosened his grip and shoved me away hard.

Nodding his head as if he was answering some question in his own mind, he retracted his fangs. “But he gave me a few things, Annalice. Hate, blood lust, and an appointment with the devil, and now I am seriously thinking about giving them to you.”

It was starting to make more sense. He had been turned not just against his will, but also left to fend for himself. Similar to a neglected child who never matures emotionally and becomes a serial killer. Eerily similar. Never releasing his rage on his creator, he had unleashed it instead on himself and every other human with whom he came into contact.

Putting my hands down to steady myself before I spoke again, I asked, “Why didn’t you hunt him down?”

He shook his head in the negative while a slight sigh escaped his lips. “Where would I have hunted? You make it sound so easy, but I was new to this life. I had no idea where to look or even how to look. I was just trying to survive and yet hoping to die. Truly die. The peaceful kind that humans find at the end of their short existences. But by the time I had learned to do more than just survive, I no longer cared enough to bother with the search for my blood relative. It is unlikely I could have defeated him in any event. He was incredibly old, nearly four hundred, and many of those years had been spent in combat. Wars were different back then. Very up close and personal.”

Twisting his hands in his lap, his voice had a broken quality as he continued. “While I lay on the floor of his house suffering and dying, he told me of his life’s journey, giving me little useful information that would actually help with my survival. I am certain that my success as a vampire was of little importance to him. It took nearly forty-eight hours for my heart to finally cease to beat and there was nothing I could do in those hours except listen.”

For a moment, I think he forgot he was talking to me. He was lost in memories that must have tortured him for a century and dragged him down deeper each time he remembered them.

Falling silent now, I realized I could smell the fear and rage these memories evoked in him. I took a deep breath so I might never forget what horror smelled like lest I become immune to it.

Venturing on to what I thought was slightly safer ground, but not by much, I posed my next question. “So how did you survive with no one to help you? Did you ever see your family again?” Quietly waiting for his response, I was still human enough to have a twinge of guilt asking the questions that probably hurt him the most. But my guilt was easily suppressed by how much I needed to know. I watched closely, expecting another breakdown.

But he was much more composed and this time only lifted his hands to run his fingers through his hair. He ran them through slowly, pulling at the locks from his crown to his shoulders. A gesture, I decided, he had developed over time to deal with frustrations. I had seen him do it several times before tonight.

“Instincts are powerful in my kind and that is how we survive. Like the dawn for instance. It cannot surprise you for it is always there at the back of your mind. Like a tether you can never truly escape from, pulling you back into death and reclaiming your soul at the beginning of each day. No matter how strong I feel each night, or how alive I think I am, the sun always delivers you up helpless each morning. Vampires do not crave the sun or the sight of it, and I have never missed it. The instinct to avoid it is extremely powerful and cannot be resisted.”

He paused here for a short moment. Just enough for me to know that whether or not he had any true emotions left for his family, he still had some reservations discussing their deaths. “As for my family, I did go to them shortly after I was turned. I did not go immediately afterward, of course. I was frightened, naturally, at my changing and for a few nights did not leave the house in which I experienced my conversion. I was thirsty, quite thirsty actually, by the time I did leave, but I did not stop to feed my new hunger, still thinking there was some way I could resist it.

“Convinced that my family could help me, I traveled at night to reach them. How naïve I was then. My mother was so good. So kind. I can still remember the touch of her hand, her smile, and her smell, and I honestly believed she could fix what had happened to me. I struggled to hold onto everything she had taught me. Praying continually as I traveled, I made better time than I had when I was a human and reached them in three nights. As you have probably surmised, they were dead, lying in state. I won’t go into the details of how I got in to see them. It would do nothing to increase your opinion of me.

“My baby sister, her daughter, and my parents were all dead. I could smell the stench of the man that made me in every room of my family home. I could have followed him as the path was made so obvious by his smell. But what really caught my attention was the blood left in my sister’s body and I could not stop myself from sinking my fangs into her neck and drinking it, even though it was old and starting to rot. I think my maker did it on purpose. He knew I would go looking for them. In fact, he had said his own creator had once told him that a good maker did not leave survivors to search for the new child. Of course, at the time he told me that, I did not understand what he was really trying to tell me.

“And truthfully, I no longer cared and I cannot even say I was that angry over the death of my family at that point. Actually, I was angry with them as well, certain that my maker had treated them far better and with more kindness than he had treated me. The only kind thing he did for me was to kill my beautiful mother. I was glad she was dead. Glad she would not see what I had become. But for me there would be no pity and no justice, and I knew from that moment on that I would never truly feel anything again.

“I left my family home with my great thirst raging and went looking for blood. I found it in the home of a young lady I had courted as a younger man, just a few blocks away. Our previous courtship did not protect her. I could have taken her in her sleep with a quick snap of the neck, never knowing what evil had befallen her. But I did not allow even her that respite; I woke her and saw the recognition in her face before I drank my fill. In my anger and not yet having perfected my bite, I made quite a mess of her with the force of my thirst. Her blood brought a slight calm and I was able to think rationally for the first time since I had been reborn. The sun would be up in another few hours and I wanted more blood.”

Stunned by his story, the words exploded from my mouth, “How could you, even you, be jealous of your family’s deaths and then go and kill your girlfriend in cold blood? And drinking your sister’s blood! That’s got to be the sickest thing I’ve ever heard.” My words were hard, judgmental, and cold. I knew my face showed the revulsion I felt and I knew he could see it too. I didn’t try to hide it.

Smiling back at my disgust, he countered, “Death is nothing compared to what could have happened to them, what happened to me. It is nothing compared to what I may do to you. Their death means nothing. Your death will mean nothing. Your rebirth, if I choose that path, will mean only that I have been more cruel than usual.”

“Why do you say that? Surely becoming a vampire is better than death?” I could hear the desperation in my words.

He laughed softly now. “Will you think it better than death when you crave your daughter’s blood? If I turn you, I should kill them too. To protect you, of course. But I promised you their safety so I will not. But mainly because I do not think I will have to. Like me, you will try to see them. And likely as not, you will kill them for me, especially if you go too soon after you are made. I hope you like blood, Annalice, because you are going to spill a lot of it. Just. Like. Me.” He emphasized his words by leaning closer to me with each word.

“How do you know? How many other vampires have you actually known? Maybe that’s just you! Maybe I won’t become like you. There’s at least a chance.” Emotion was threatening to overpower me and I quit talking lest I reveal too much.

Raising one hand into the air in a questioning way, he dropped it nonchalantly and smirked. “Perhaps I will change you just to find out. It would be interesting to watch you drain your own child,” he noted, leaning back into the cushions of the couch, laughing at my outburst.

His words made me angry and I retorted back, “I could never hurt her.” But his words made me nervous and I looked down to see I was twisting my hands in my lap. I refused to give up my only hope, willed my hands to lay still, and forced myself to not argue with him.

“How do you know it was your maker that killed your family? Could it have been another vampire?” I asked, changing the subject.

He shook his head slightly at my naivety. “We take the scent of our maker. I smell like him and he like his maker before him. Humans have their own individual scents. I can no longer differentiate you like I could when I first arrived here because vampire scents are so much stronger than humans. Your scent is being destroyed just by me being here.” That was beneficial, I thought to myself as he continued to speak, as it would mask the fact that I was changing.

He was still talking so I turned my attention back to him. “I could only just make out my mother’s lemon balm perfume over his overpowering stench. He made the deaths look like the handiwork of a human, but my much stronger senses told me they had been drained. My eyes could pick up the fang marks that were invisible to human eyes.”

Four somber and loud chimes split the quiet of our conversation and I just barely caught myself from clapping my hands over my ears. There was very little of the evening left, I realized; time to move on to a new topic.

“How much sun will kill you? How much blood do you need? If you do turn me, how will you do it?” I wasn’t sure if he would answer the last question but it would do no harm to ask.

“The sun is the weapon of God. In its direct power, we will die very quickly. We cannot stand in its purifying rays,” he answered, staring me in the eyes without any hint of humor.

Wow. Talk about superstition! Did he really think God couldn’t just as easily kill him at night?

“Who says? Did your maker tell you that?” I asked as I got up off of the couch. Pretending to need to stretch my legs, I got up off the couch and made a big show of doing a few stretches, folding down into a yoga pose here and there. Really, I just didn’t want him to see me smiling at his superstition.

“I’ve already told you. My maker was merely an observer. But what I have said is true, I have heard it preached.” My question had exasperated him.

Getting control over my expression, I leaned against a wall facing him once more. “I don’t think God judges you for things out of your control. I think you’re far more likely to get judged for killing indiscriminately than simply for your existence.” I knew my words were falling on deaf ears, but I still couldn’t help say them.

“Do not forget how easily I seduced you, Annalice. I do not think you know God. But very few in this century do. Your God is friendly and caring. Not at all the God I was raised on. You new Americans have tried to make him more like you instead of making yourselves more like him. Please understand that I do not mind that. It makes for much easier targets. Women and adolescents walking alone at all hours of the night. Secret rendezvous anywhere out of sight. Morals at an all-time low. A vampire’s dream!”

I had no plans to argue religion with him, but it was far more likely that the virus didn’t have the necessary genes in its genome to reverse the damage that occurs from ultraviolet rays the way the human genome does. It gets less effective with age, of course. I had proof of that on my own face, and I was pretty sure that didn’t make me evil.