As a boy, which Alfred could arguably still be called, he'd thought death a terrifying monster lurking at the bedsides of the old and under the hooves of horses, hidden in a piece of tough meat left unchewed, or beneath the wavering strength of a creaky step. He certainly hadn't expected to meet his own at the hands of a girl, the hands of the girl he loved.
The professor had led him down a path in life after school which he had not expected himself to follow. Indeed, if his lectures hadn't been so persuasive, perhaps Alfred may have remained in his seat to continue to learn the traditional style of doctoring. But when the professor proposed a nightmare that none would listen to, Alfred had blindly followed him from Heidlberg. A man with so much conviction, or as many years behind him, simply could not be wrong! Mad men talked to walls. Mad men ate their hair. Mad men thought themselves lumbering bears or incarnations of various angels and sometimes even god himself. Alfred had met one such man as a student, and in the face of Abronsius he saw none of this insanity others seemed to think he was so rife with.
Death had found the professor many times, and Alfred had fished the old man from it's clutches, cutting the cord behind the hook just in time. But, unfortunately, the old man was not present to do the same for him. Oh, sure, he was there, but he was not truly. His mind and words had wondered to speeches of a new world in which the creatures that stood at death's side to spread his peculiar curse throughout the land were no more, or that he himself had indeed finally conquered his lifelong foe.
Professor Abronsius, speaking in that same impassioned tone which Alfred had come to know so well, and respected as his former student and assistant...stood merely a few dozen feet away while Sarah, the girl he'd thought to save and love, drank deeply from his neck.
A pool of rich red fabric spread about them in the snow, red as the spots of blood that slipped around her lips. Hazily, he stared up into her perfectly pale face, and then at the skirt surrounding him, which seemed to blind against the pure white of the snow.
"S-sa-sa-" he stammered, mouth gasping like a fish on land, while the professor continued to mumble and ramble to himself even as he trudged forward in the harsh landscape.
Alfred's hand fluttered in the air, straining against the biting wind and his fading strength, to caress Sarah's perfect cheek, to touch what he'd so long to lovingly caress from the first instant he'd seen her reclining in that bath at the inn. Each pump of his heart drained him further, each pull of her silken lips ruthlessly tore deeper into his neck, and Sarah made no move to grasp at his hand even in sympathy.
The light in Alfred's eyes, the light that was the reflection of his youth, his innocence, and his love, faded into the glaze of death. Yet, he continued to feel. The first emotion was rage, rampaging through him, destroying and shredding every single sweet or simple thought, twisting them and devouring. Then, that black rage consumed his soul. It turned his simple desire to live into hunger, his fear of dying into comfort, and though he fought to hold onto it with everything he had, his love too left with his humanity. What remained was something he had never felt before, and something he was not sure any human man could.
She pushed him down into the snow and wiped at her chin with delicate fingers, eyes trained on the old man as he trudged forward through the continuously falling white, and Alfred mindlessly brushed at his neck.
"What is this?" He asked, overcome by the desperate need to devour it, to taste, to savor. He knew it was blood. Knew it was his. Still, had it ever smelled so good? He could hardly believe it.
"Blood, lover," Sarah replied eagerly, leaning closer to him and hissing into his ear with a menacing whisper, "lick it up!"
Drawing his hand close, he sniffed and lapped at the blood, licked, sucked, and nibbled at his bare hand until it was pristine, still yet wanting more even as Sarah knelt down for another bite. She drank all that was left, and while a part of him knew it should not be possible to continue to move and blink and see and live, his body stubbornly defied that clinical line of thought. With her final gentle pull against his neck, so too did she take with her any shred of curiosity left.
Alfred was no longer a boy, and not yet a man. He was something else. With a calculating look, he watched Abronsius disappear in the distance, no doubt to be made an icicle soon enough if he didn't follow to keep the damnable old man safe. Frankly, he didn't much care anymore as Sarah pulled him to his feet. Nor, he realized, did the cold seem to bite anymore. In fact, it felt quite soothing, plucking at his skin while the wind brushed his curled chestnut bangs back from his face.
"We'll have to be quick," Sarah told him darkly, and Alfred turned towards her with fresh eyes. His mistress, who he knew in his core he must always serve. That, and the instinct that he must soon feed...those were the only certain facts in the vampire's mind anymore.
"Is the sun rising soon?" He asked flatly, dispassionate as he gazed up at the sky and felt the hunger churning in his belly. It was outright enraged he should have been turned so close to dawn, while his mistress got a satisfying meal out of it.
"I think so," she replied, hesitant. He was right, though. He could feel the sun's fingers already creeping languorously over the horizon. Could already feel a torrent of thoughts rushing in his mistress's mind, chastising herself for not acting sooner. They could have spared themselves quite a lot of trouble if she'd just bitten him when they were still fleeing from the hunchback. It could have bought them a good hour to get to the village, and dine to their hearts' content before retiring.
There wasn't enough time to return to the castle, nor to find a cemetery to ransack it for coffins, which would really take far longer than simply going back anyway. "We could burrow," Alfred suggested.
"What?" Sarah looked at him with an expression of sheer confusion which must have rivaled what he felt when her fangs had first pricked his neck only moments ago.
"Like rabbits," he went on, "it should still be thick enough by tomorrow, we'll be safe...we just dig a bit through the snow, and the ice, perhaps a few layers of earth if we can manage…" He realized how barbaric it sounded once the words were out of his lips, but the thought of nestling beside her in the makeshift grave was not without its perks. He was, after all, still enamoured of her, even if it was only physical now.
"Rabbits…" Sarah rolled the world around on her tongue, savoring it, even as she flinched with the growing sense of doom while the sun continued to approach. Without another moment of hesitation, she dropped in a puff of floating fabric to the ground, scrabbling through the snow and clawing as quickly as she could to push the packed white powder away.
He didn't need to be told, Alfred was soon at her side, digging just as hastily, his fingers turning blue with the damp cold, though he could not actually feel any pain. The notebook tucked under his jacket would be filled with thoughts and observations the following evening about this, he realized, noting that he still had a somewhat clinical mind...even if it didn't hold a candle to the ramblings of his former professor.
"Rabbits," Sarah repeated, meeting Alfred's gaze when they had finally managed to create a hole just big enough, though it would be a tight fit, as they climbed down into the snow and reached up to pull it about them.
"Rabbits," he agreed, pulling her close in their shallow grave together.