Shadow
“My first nights were a blur. Callisto taught me how to hunt and drink, and how to hide from the sun. She taught me how to survive, but I could not bear this existence. I could not bear learning and being good at all this. All I had wished for was death, and I was not dead enough for my liking.
“She said that as a newborn vampire I could choose my own name. I could keep the one I was born with, or choose a new one. I told her I was no one, a man with no past and no future.
“She told me she had saved my unfinished book from my house, and I could keep it and reread it if I wished, but I had no interest in this. After seven nights, I could no longer bear her help and told her I wished us to part ways.
“‘What you need is a fresh start,’ she said. ‘Let me take you to Rome. Let me show you the world and help you leave this place of pain behind.’
“Erniké would have loved Rome. ‘I have no desire to see Rome,’ I said. ‘I beg you, leave me. I need to be on my own.’
“She took my hands in her own. ‘I cannot leave you alone so young and inexperienced. I made you. You are my responsibility.’
“‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘The man you saw before is dead. I cannot be who you wish me to be.’
“She smiled. ‘Perhaps not yet, but you will find your own way. And I have all the time in the world to wait for you.’
“I looked at her—smiling, calm, and confident, sadness and understanding mixed in her dark eyes. ‘You won’t try to stop me?’
“Her eyes widened. ‘Never. My own sire tried to force me to stay by his side, and I have spent centuries running away from him. It is wrong. If you need to find your path, I have to let you go, but I have faith we will meet again. Remember the peak where Roxana sacrificed the wolf to see the future? No human climbs it at night. But I will. On the night of the next spring equinox, I will be there. And I will keep returning every two years until you are ready to meet me.’
“I thanked her, and we parted ways for what I believed to be forever.
“I became a shadow, neither living, not dead. I terrorized the land, feeding on the new Christian priests and on those of the boílas—now called boyars in the Slavic style—who had stayed away from our rebellion. But I kept my word and never touched the Khan.
“One night I drank a man in his home, but before I left, my eyes caught something on the table. His meal was unfinished—a baked rabbit with rice and a goblet of wine. I approached it with a sense of detached curiosity. Callisto had claimed I could still eat human food, and the taste would be the same, only more intense. She had claimed I could sense so much more now—the ground in which the vegetables had grown, the sun that had shined above them, the people who had picked them up. Slowly, I took a small piece of the meat and placed it in my mouth.
“I spat it out. It tasted like ashes, dry and harsh, and strangely hot, as if fresh from a funeral pyre. I fell on my knees, retching. Nothing would ever taste good again. I had lost all joy, all meaning, all purpose.
“The world around me changed until I could no longer recognize my home. Churches appeared in every town and every village, and everyone went to hear the sermons. Boris had won his battle, and almost everything he had hoped for had come to pass. And when the disciples of the brother monks Cyril and Methodius fled persecution, he gave them shelter and resources to continue their work.
“The Slavic people had their own alphabet, and it was taught to everyone—nobles and commoners alike. Scholars even translated the Bible from Greek. A new common language emerged, and everyone in the realm spoke it, but although they called it Bulgarian, it was completely Slavonic, with the Bulgar words far and between. My language—the tongue in which Roxana and I had shared our love, the tongue in which Erniké had debated with me topics big and small, the tongue in which my father had taught me what it meant to be a good man, was becoming extinct.
“Boris failed in only one thing. After a few more years of machinations, he secured an independent church, but all sermons were still in Greek and would remain so for centuries to come. And yet, people flocked to listen, whether they understood the language or not. This foreign religion held a strange appeal that forever remained beyond my grasp. I had underestimated it, and this had led to my downfall.
“I lost track of time. Had months passed since I had lost everything, or had it been centuries? Every night was the same—kill, drink, look for shelter for the day. There was nothing bigger, nothing to give me purpose. But then something happened that brought me back to the present.
“I heard that Boris had decided to retire. He would give up his throne, become a monk, and spend the rest of his days in a monastery. And the throne would go to his firstborn, Vladimir-Rasate.
“Something I had long thought dead flared in my unbeating heart—hope. I started talking to the humans I met and learned that over twenty years had passed since my family had died. Vladimir was no longer a young boy, but a grown man. Would he stand by his beliefs from decades ago? Would he stay true to the promises he had made to a few men long dead?
“He did. He persecuted clergymen, declaring them agents of Byzantium. He burned down churches, and I laughed and cried as I watched the flames consume these temples that had grown on my family’s grave. He did all in his power to restore the faith in Tangra and our old ways… and he made a complete mess out of it. Vladimir was the exact opposite of his father—all passion and no cunning, all heart and no mind. A great man, and a terrible ruler.
“He could not strengthen his position, and just a few years after his coming to power, Boris left the monastery and dethroned him. He burned his son’s eyes with hot iron and threw him in a dungeon, from where he never emerged.”
Sissi gasped. “His own son!”
“His own son,” the Prince said softly. “Boris was determined to secure the new Christian faith, no matter the cost. After this, he returned to his monastery and left the throne to his third son, Simeon. Simeon was just as cunning and capable as his father, perhaps even more so. Sadly, the same was true for his dedication to Christianity. The realm flourished under his rule and became a true empire. This new realm, that was no longer my home. The place where I had grown up had become foreign to me. There was nothing left for me there, so I decided to take the road and follow it wherever it took me.
“I walked on and on, with no purpose or direction. People of the West often said that all roads lead to Rome. But this was the East, and so my road took me to Constantinople.”