“So that’s where you’ve been all along.” He walked closer to me looking at me. His eyes roving about from my head to my feet. “I didn’t think to have my guards search mother’s grave. But then it’s so typical you. I should have known.”
Aare stood before me with red eyes and pale skin. His skin white and almost translucent, but like the marble and granite statues decorating each floor of the castle.
“What happen to mother?” I said. My voice breaking now that I realized that I will never see her or talk to her again.
“What happens to all vampires when they’ve served their time in this world?” Aare said casually with icy abandonment. It was true we did have a coldness in us, but I had thrown away that bondage of indifference and brutality when I chose to feed on the blood of animals and not humans.
“Be careful, you maybe next,” he said. And he let out a chilling laugh. It had a sound of pure evil as he watched at me with his glowing red eyes.”
“Where is Zoey? And where is father?”
“Father is indisposed. He sleeps more lately. After all, he is thousands of years old. I don’t exactly know how old.” He evaded the question of Zoey and didn’t answer me.
“Where are the others?” I said looking around for vaults. “Our brothers and sisters. Where are they?” I demanded to know. Aare raised an eyebrow as if to say, how dare you ask me.
“They have gone to establish their own covenants,” he said not because he feared me, but because he liked the game of making me ask questions, and he only giving me pieces of the answers I was seeking.
“You haven’t mentioned Zoey.” I stumbled walking to him and Aare’s eyes opened wide and a smirk of satisfaction crossed his lips.
“You need something to eat, brother. I didn’t ask you about your long trip. Come. Tell me about it as you feed. I’m a bit hungry, too.”
He held out his pale hand. I reluctantly took it. If I had any chance of rescuing Zoey from wherever he had hidden her, I needed something to eat.
“I don’t feed on humans anymore,” I said to him stumbling down the dark dank corridor, and up to the first floor, as I leaned on Aare wondering why he hadn’t taken his chance to end my life. Maybe he couldn’t be sure of how fragile I had become. But then he knew he would get only one chance.
When we arrived in a large room where father and mother held court with visiting vampires, and humans, I remembered my father’s stately manner when he resided over all vampires and humans who came and who were brought to serve the vampire king. He sat in a large chair resembling a throne. He wore a colorful robe with the sun designed on the back to soften and contrast the black robes mother wore.
Looking around for a place to lie down, I fell on the nearest large cushion.
The chair which belonged to father, now Aare strutted to that chair and sat. The one mother sat in had been removed.
Placed around the throne, to his right and left, and facing him were large silk black cushions at his feet. And on the cushions lay young men and women looking up at him. Now I lay helpless at his feet, too.
Aare glanced over at me and said with a taunt, “We don’t have animal blood here. That’s for humans who can’t make the change and can’t take the pain. Those we turn into zombies. Half dead and half alive and they stay that way. And as you see, we no longer have humans. We have willing subjects who are passing through the change. They are between human and vampire. “Like the one over there,” he said licking his lips, and pointing his long white fingers at a young girl trembling at his feet, “they are the most delectable of humans.”
“I don’t want to feed on them.”
“Then you will die,” his voice filled with pleasure at the thought. He clapped his hand and the door opened and young women and men of every race and color, and every nationality filed into the room and stood before him.”
“Make your choice. I’ve already chosen the ones I want to feed on. I’ll save the others for a morning snack before I retire.” He rubbed his hands together at the thought and smiled. His voice cheerful and light as if he was going to eat his favorite desert.
I watched as he summoned two young men and three young women to kneel down beside him. They were all naked and their bodies were budding and maturing with the bloom of youth. The women’s breasts were hard, their nipples protruding and erect from the chill of the room.
I watched as Aare’s fangs slid from his lips, and like trained dogs these young men and women went to their knees and bent low as they placed their necks for him to feed on. When he rose from one of his snacks, he made a groaning sound as if he wasn’t really satisfied and went on to the next victim.
He glanced over at me as he taste one after the other leaving them writhing in pain and weak from his gorging on their once healthy young bodies. He had an enormous appetite for blood since he was a teen when he was changed, and because he lacked all amount of self-control.
“What will it take to get you to feed on these insignificant beings? If you don’t eat you will be too weak to stave off one of these ambitious young vampires looking to make a name for him or herself. Maybe they will want to feed on Zoey, and you with your selective taste for blood will be too famished to stop them. Do you want to die and never see your sweet Zoey again?” Then he clapped his hands and the youngest of his women came and sat beside me.
She looked into my eyes. She had marks all over her body. More than one vampire had fed on her from her neck to her thighs. And on her back to her ankles. She was weak and pale but her heart was strong, and the way she was being fed upon, it would take a long time for her to die.
Leaning forward at my feet, she put both hands on my thighs and looked up at me, begging me take her blood and put her out of her misery. “Kill me,” she whispered to me.
Watching her and all the puncture wounds on her body, my mouth salivated at the thought of feeding on her. I didn’t know if it was because I needed food, or because I wanted to taste the sweetness of human blood once more, which caused me to entertain the idea.
I had seen the look in her eyes once before when Aare would get hold of a young girl the way he wanted to have Zoey, and he would drain her slow, then he would have sex with her and when he finished he would feed on her again, and when he no longer liked the taste of her blood he would give her to the lowest of vampires.
They were the ones who savored their food and it would be months before they would kill these women, or throw them into the towers to become food for the starving humans they kept there until later.
Because he chose the very young ones, she could last for years and he would torture her by feeding and then having sex with her. His sexual activities were not really sexual, but more of torture where he was the only one to derive the pleasure he sought.
When the young women or men were unconscious, after he drank their blood, he left them almost comatose, and that’s when he enjoyed their bodies more.
I knew that’s what he wanted to do with Zoey when she became a teen, and mother stopped him. Zoey was to be her human child she could never have. I don’t think my mother really wanted to change Zoey. But as Zoey grew older she began to ask questions and wander around the castle alone.
Gazing down on the girl who had to be about eighteen, I placed my hand on her head and rubbed her dry hair that was probably once shiny and full with life. I placed my hand to comfort her.
She whispered to me, “I want to die. I don’t want to be an undead.” Her voice soft, her dark eyes opening and closing. Her face beyond pale and lifeless. Her body emaciated from the constant feedings by others.
Then I leaned over. The smell of her, the lack of food excited me, and my fangs automatically sprang and my head lowered and I sunk my teeth into her neck. The feeling was more than I could explain. I felt a surge of energy and vitality I hadn’t known in years. I didn’t know it could feel this wonderful. I had forgotten.
She held my legs tight with both hands as I sucked hard on her frail neck. Her pain reached its peak, her face twisted. The pain became more than she could stand. Her blood sweet, her smell sweet, but not like Zoey’s blood. As I’m feeding on this young girl, the vision of Zoey is haunting me. What would she say or do if she saw me this way, I thought.
But I’m doing this so Zoey can live, I rationalized. She would understand wouldn’t she? I questioned.
Remembering Zoey as I’m feeding on the young woman’s blood, it reminded me of the smell when Zoey first had her cycle. I can’t get enough of this young woman’s blood because I’m thinking of Zoey as I feed on this innocent lost woman.
The taste is exhilarating and exciting. The blood is making me strong and I’m reliving every moment with Zoey when I first smelled her blood.
I close my eyes as I feed and I can think of something pleasant as I commit this unthinkable act.
I had taken Zoey from the castle to keep Aare away from her, and we were living in England, and one night she woke with blood all over her gown, and she began screaming not knowing what to make of it. I rushed to her room to comfort her only to find her lying in a small pool of blood.
At first I thought something had crept into her bed and fed on her and left her bleeding. I thought Aare had found us. I pulled her up to examine her. Then I realized it was something natural for a girl her age. I had forgotten because it had been years since I had been with a human female.
The sweet smell of her blood was the reason I sent her away. I couldn’t be sure I would be able to control myself because I loved her more than my life, and I couldn’t allow anyone to turn this innocent child. Not even myself. She had been like a young sister to me where all I thought about was her protection.
I never wanted to make her a vampire. I needed her to live out her life and I would be with her eventually.
“I see you’re taking to your old ways. You were the strongest of us and that’s because you couldn’t get enough of that young blood. I eventually followed in your footsteps,” Aare said watching at me. I raised my head, and let the memories of Zoey as a child, fade from my consciousness at hearing his voice.
“I only fed on the women who wanted this kind of existence. The ones who wanted to live forever and keep their youth,” I said raising my eyes to meet Aare’s sinister eyes. I lowered my head and continued feeding because it would take longer to drain this young woman. If I didn’t drain her completely, she would become like me. And she didn’t want that.
When I felt her heart slow, her grip release from my legs, and her blood dwindling in my mouth, I lifted her cold body into my arms and cradled her, she weakly glanced up at me. She still had life in her eyes. I sank my teeth deeper. She gave a gasp and she was no more.
A tear fell from my eyes because that could have been Zoey.
Then I heard another loud gasp and when I looked at Aare he was laughing, and Zoey was standing at the door in a white gown and watching at me.
I looked like the killer I was. Blood dripping from my mouth down my robe. A dead woman in my arms. I tried to wipe the blood on my mouth with the back of my sleeve. But there was so much blood.
On hearing Zoey’s moan with obvious pain at seeing me, I placed the young woman down and rushed to her.
“Get away from me. Do you see yourself? I expected that from him but not you,” she said her blue eyes dark and seething with hurt and disgust. “You are just like him.” Her voice fragile and shaking as she breathed through her teeth in a broken whisper.
She stood shaking her head side to side with her eyes closed.
“But I’m not, believe me.” My voice quiet. My tone forceful. I reached for her. I wanted to feel her warmth about me to make me feel as if I were human again. The way she had made me feel before when I entered her body and became one with her.
“How can I believe you now?” She pulled away from me and rushed for the door and then she turned to me.
“I would rather marry Aare and live in this hell. At least I don’t love him and he knows it. But you had me believing that our love could have been different. I know I will never be rid of this life no matter where I go, but I can choose which devil I want to be with, and it’s not you.”
She rushed out of the door. I turned and looked at Aare. “You did this on purpose.”
He looked at me with a gleam in his eyes and said, “All’s fair in love and war. This was your choice to make. Zoey made her choice to marry me. We will be married in two nights. Be happy for me brother. Maybe she can change me the way she changed you.”
And all I heard was the ring of Aare’s laughter throughout the room.
I watched at the door Zoey disappeared behind, and I turned to look at Aare and I knew that only one of us would leave this castle. I should have sensed, I should have known that I had damned myself when I took Aare’s bait and gorged on human blood.