How can I continue with Zoey the way it is? Her life and my life is at stake. I should have told her when I followed her into that bar. But she had never gone to a bar or placed herself in danger before. All she did was stay in the house and go to school. I could watch her at school and at home without her seeing me.
I’d follow her to her evening classes and sit in the back row among hundreds in a lecture hall. She had few friends and no boyfriends she liked. That was relief to me. It made it easy for me because I didn’t trust any man with her because I didn’t want to share her. Not now. Not ever.
When I spotted Detective Cole trailing her, I thought it was him being curious and protective. But I recognized an obsession because I was obsessed with her and in love with her. She was vulnerable and warm and giving. She gave me happiness I never hoped to experience. As the years passed Cole stop trailing her and parking in front of her house at night. I was relieved because I thought he would call attention to Zoey and perhaps that’s how they found her.
When she decided to go out that night with her friend, I wasn’t expecting to see Aare. As usual he put up a good fight, but he was never as strong as I was because he was much younger than I. As I pulled a wooden spike from my jacket ready to thrust it into his heart, he read my face and my intentions to kill him. He decided he would fight another day. He left with blood on his lips and anger and spite in his cold heart for me.
I waited too long to show myself to Zoey. But it’s still too soon to tell her everything. If we are to leave Seattle, then I have to feed tonight. It’s becoming more and more difficult trying to stay away from her. She’s warm and her body is so appealing. I can smell her and taste her blood in my mouth. I need her warmth and yet I don’t dare get close to her.
Her smell is too alluring. I can see her now and feel her. I can’t get away from her, but one day I will have to do just that, because if I fall in love with her, I will have to kill her or change her into a vampire.
I can’t keep reminding myself of how much I desire her. I might be tempted to feed on her and I don’t want to do that. She’s the only one standing between me and my humanity.
Leaving Zoey in the house so I can feed wasn’t a problem before because she was unconscious, but now I’m afraid to leave her for even a short time. I will have to capture a large deer so I can feed and satisfy my thirst for a longer periods of time.
I look up and the large elk is standing in front of me. He has no notion that I am hunting him.
“There he is. I knew I would find him drinking at the river. I’ve been chasing you for months,” I murmured to the stately creature I’m about to kill.
I creep behind him. I could spring up and catch him but I want him to know he’s being hunted. I need to give him a chance to run. To feel as if he’s in control, when in fact, I control the dark universe. I have dominion over life and death.
The elk didn’t hear me coming. Was he concentrating on something else? He raises his head because he senses danger. He can’t smell me because I have no scent that he is familiar with.
This beautiful animal reminds me that I have to keep vigilant. This deer is distracted by his need to mate. He doesn’t realize that his life is coming to an end and in that way he is admired by me. For a moment I hesitate because I’m tired of killing. I watch at him and he relaxes, and my instincts are reinforced by my hunger.
It’s too late now. He lets his guard down, I pounce on him and my fangs drops and breaks through flesh and the blood is flowing in me, and now he’s dead. I killed it with one thrust to his vein and he crumpled to the ground. His heart is still beating, but not for long.
Holding him I feel his fear, I feel his longing for life, and I feel his despair when he releases his last breath.
Crouching on the ground I’m gazing at his lifeless body which strengthens my respect for life. But not my own anymore. That’s over. It’s the life of Zoey that I’m trying to protect.
I placed my teeth on his neck and plunged the points of my fangs into his vein once more. The warmth of his blood flowing in my mouth has a bitter taste. Zoey’s blood is sweet, I thought. The deer’s blood is nourishing, and I take comfort that his blood is keeping me strong. I’ve been reborn from taking a life. I raised my head and blew out a full breath.
One last ounce of his blood should satisfy my thirst and keep me strong for a week. Not as nourishing as taking it from a human, but that’s why I separated from my family, so I could live like a man, and not a cold hearted animal.
Raising my head with blood dripping down my short beard, I murmured, “I’m not like my brothers or my father. I don’t have to feed on humans.” Had I misled myself into thinking I was different from them?
“But you are. Don’t you know that?” I jerked my head around. I recognized the voice. It’s another one of my many brothers, Aare, but the most dangerous one to me. How had he found me? I guess that wasn’t hard. This is the closest place that have wild life.
He stood over me, my knees planted on the ground, blood dripping from my mouth on to my sleeve. I unconsciously wiped my mouth as if I were a human and didn’t have a napkin to catch the bits and pieces of food I may have eaten too hurriedly.
I looked like the animal I had become, the one I didn’t want to be. I’m on the low ground and I’m at a disadvantage. Now I’m like the elk that I had just slaughtered. The very thing I scold the deer for, I fell into. My mind not concentrating, my senses full with the smell of Zoey’s scent, arousing me, distracting me from engaging the dangers surrounding me.
Aare stepped in front of the animal. His eyes lowered. He possessed the greed of a human who could never be satisfied by money, love, or food.
“Let’s not let a meal go to waste,” he said. Then he stooped crouching down in front of me, to the right of the elk’s neck, with his eyes never leaving his focus—me. He’s totally concentrated on my every movement. He opens his mouth. His young fangs protruding. When I left my father’s home, he was a teenager like Zoey. He worshipped me and he thought I would be the one to change him. But he was always a destructive boy. Always a destructive child.
All he enjoyed doing was killing things. I made the mistake of taking him to the fair with me and Zoey, and three children went missing that very night. He swore to mother that he didn’t do it, but I knew he had because he loved to take souvenirs. I found dolls and a watch in his bedroom soon after. I knew one day he would either kill Zoey or turn her.
Aare took a bite and raised his head and his cold eyes glared at me.
“How can you stand to eat this?” he said still watching me. Still sizing me up. Still feeding on the animal’s blood.
“I have no taste for human blood any longer,” I said to him expecting a response but none came and even though he detested the blood of animals, his greed was insatiable and he didn’t stop until not a drop of its blood remained. The animal lay, its body only few minutes ago a splendid animal, now, a dried up carcass.
That’s how I envisioned Zoey if Aare ever got his teeth into her. Her blood smelled of youth and so sweet that he would feed until nothing was left of her. I could never allow him to do that to her.
Trying to find the good in him where he wouldn’t pose a threat to Zoey, I tried reasoning with him. “You don’t have to be like you are. With a little self-control, you can be a vampire like me. If you want,” I said eager to convince him of my new found preference, and the freedom from the nightmares of having to live with all the souls I’ve consumed in my hundreds of years of being a vampire.
“But I don’t want to be like you,” he said with a teasing tone.
“Once you did. Don’t you remember?” I asked looking into his face. His expression changed to one of sadness. Perhaps for that second he saw what was possible. His fiery red eyes jolted to me.
“I enjoy the pleasure that warm blood from a human brings me,” he said with an irritated voice. “It makes me strong to know I can take a living human in my hands, with its warmth,” his eyes fell to his hands, “and suck the life from them, and make them cold like me.” He raised his hands as if he was holding the neck of a person and a smile crept across his face. His eyes lit up and his inhumanity was never as overriding as it is now.
“I enjoy my death. I enjoy killing and savoring the blood of my victims. I can have all the women I’ve ever wanted forever, and when I’m finished with them, then I can feed on their bodies. Some I let live, some I turn, and some I just discard like trash. He opened his hands and waved them to his side. His expression unchanged. It was like looking at a piece of concrete with eyes.
“Now where is our sister?” He said with a huff. “Mother wants her back and father is beside himself because you’ve killed one of our brothers, and you have disobeyed him,” Aare said with a smirk. Aare never liked that brother who tried to molest and turn Zoey when she was a child. If I hadn’t heard Zoey screaming, and killed him on the spot, he would have harmed her later. And as for Aare, he would have killed him himself because he had his eyes on Zoey, too.
“Father demanded that I bring you back to him. He said not to return without you. Do you see what I mean? I can’t go back unless you’re with me.” His voice is calm. But Aare is most dangerous when he’s calm.
“You could go to him and say you couldn’t find me, and he would stop looking.”
“Why would I do that?” Aare said standing.
“I just want to live like a human again.”
“But you aren’t a human, and you will never be that again. Even if the world comes to an end, there you will be all alone, and the human females who fall in love with you will die, or you will consume them, or try to save them by making them immortal, and you will still be what you are—a vampire who roams at night and turns everything into lifeless dead creatures.”
It was painful to hear.
“I’m going to marry Zoey,” I said out of anger and truth. I didn’t want to hear anything from him. I didn’t want to have my brutality laid bare before me where I would have to accept who I am. I had been running from that since Zoey came into my life.
“What do you know about love or marriage?” He said.
“I know that even now as a vampire, I still have a soul because I’m still able to feel emotion. I’m becoming less of a monster because I no longer feed on human blood. And I know Zoey is in love with me.”
“Does she know what you are? Of course not,” he said answering his own question. “She never knew what we were when father kidnapped her on her way to school. Mother saw this little innocent creature and she wanted something to play with. She wanted what she couldn’t have. A human child. Something inside her longed to be human like you’re doing now. Father would do anything for mother then, their love was still young and strong for each other, but after a thousand years together, he was just operating on instinct. Then he brought Zoey home, and me, and then you and I had a sister to play with. Why didn’t you release me with Zoey? I wouldn’t be here now, tracking you to this god awful place.”
“I didn’t release you because I knew you wanted to be what you are. You’re a killer and you were going to kill Zoey one day.” Aare shifted his head to the right. He shot me a closed smile as if to acknowledge that I had been right all along. He would have either killed her or turned her.
“I haven’t revealed anything to Zoey because I wiped her memory before I released her. I’m going to tell her everything. I’m going to ask her to marry me,” I said breathless.
“Do you hear yourself?” He raised the broken neck of the deer, took a bite and threw the body into a tree. There was nothing standing between me and Aare. “I guess you can get to like anything,” he said. “Acquired taste I suppose. Why don’t you just turn her, and have her serve you for eternity?”
“I can’t do that. If you could see how beautiful and warm she is then you wouldn’t want to harm her. She was a child and now she’s a woman,” I said to him trying to ignite some feeling of empathy for Zoey who was then his sister.
But there was no light in his eyes. He was as cold as the day he was turned when he became eighteen. I should have known better, Aare is a born killer. I saw it when he was young when father first brought him to live with us. He killed Zoey’s cat and he began killing all the little animals and some children where we lived. It was because of him we had to constantly move about.
Aare became quiet as if he was wondering what to do with me. I didn’t want to have a confrontation with him. I needed to get back to Zoey. She needed me more now than ever. I quickly turned and bolted down the path, but I wasn’t as fast as Aare.
The blood of humans gives you inhuman strength. The blood of animals gives you only strength to exist.
He stood in front of me with a grin. “Where do you think you’re going?” I was always faster than you. Do you think you can out run me?”
My hands balled into a quick fist, and I rammed it into his chest and it threw him backwards and I started to run once more. I needed to get back to Zoey before more of my family discovered my safe haven.
He caught me. “Do you think that little blow will stop me? But this will.” He carried something in his hand and threw it at me. It was a ball of silver net with a wooden handle which unraveled as he threw it in my direction. It dropped over me burning my hands as I held them over my head to protect my hair and to lessen the umbrella effect of covering and burning me completely.
My hands threw it off and I rushed away leaving Aare to deal with the blow I had dealt him. He didn’t look like he was coping well from the shock to his chest. If I wanted I could have reduced him to nothing, but I couldn’t because I still thought of him as a brother and my little human brother. That was my humanity, and it may prove to be the end of me.