Reborn

Carlisle

I walked at the head of the small party, my torch extended in front of me, casting long shadows up ahead. I could hear Jeffrey, Matthew and Henry panting to keep up. I sometimes forgot that they were less athletic than I. I supposed I was atypical of the clergy.

Despite his less than warm regard for me, I was desperate to prove to my father that I was worthy of his respect, and so when he had offered me the mantle of leading these witch-hunts, I seized it without thinking too hard on the ramifications. I shouldn't have had to earn my father's love, but I felt the need. A futile attempt.

"Carlisle, do you see that?" I heard Jeffrey call, and I snapped out of my reverie. Sure enough, as I looked in the direction he was pointing, I saw a manhole cover that had been slid to one side, with a tall, androgynous figure climbing from it, smoothly and swiftly. Someone doing sewer work? At this time, down a dark street in London? I thought not. So this had to be it. The hunt I had painstakingly slaved over, making sure I held no one by false accusation. I had found what my father had unsuccessfully searched for.

The mutilated bodies found nearby. The odd string of disappearances. The work of a monster. A vampire.

I would capture the demon. I would be a hero at last. My father would finally be proud.

The figure called out softly into the night in an unfamiliar language. Latin, perhaps? I did not care. He turned, slowly, menacingly...

And he was gone, taking off down an alley with blinding speed.

Our group gave chase, me speeding ahead. We raced after the creature as it fled, my heartbeat drumming in my ears. Then it stopped dead, just as I had caught up with it. I saw why. I had chased it into a dead ended alleyway. So quickly that I missed the movement, he spun to face me.

And disappeared.

I blinked, unsure of what I had just witnessed. Was it a figment of my imagination? Had my mind been deceiving me, leading me on yet another wild goose chase? I turned around to check that my companions had seen the same thing I had just witnessed. A gasp of horror choked from my throat.

"Henry! Matthew!" I cried in fear. For my two friends, my fellow hunters, good-doers, they lay crumpled on the cobbles. Cold. White. Limp. Dead.

I staggered backwards. Jeffrey was nowhere to be seen. What had become of him? The fear was like ice in my veins. I stumbled back another step, and hit a brick wall.

Only... it moved. A scream rose and lodged in my throat as the monster gripped me firmly by the shoulders. I struggled, knowing it was hopeless, but still putting up a fight. He bent his head toward me, and all I saw was the flat black of the eyes, all I felt was the icy terror of the skin.

And then teeth. A razor sharp, blinding pain.

But it dropped me. I didn't know what had made the creature release its hold, had no idea why the ground rushed up to meet me, but I hit it with a thump. Blindly, I crawled, desperate to get out of the way, curling into a ball in the shadowy right corner of the alley.

I whimpered. The pain had started.

Every nerve in my body caught fire simultaneously. The heat radiated through my bones, blistering my insides, scorching my veins, making my blood boil. I screamed aloud from the agony, writhing, wanting to disappear, and wishing the monster had just killed me.

I screamed again as the fire raged.

My tortured body stayed hunched against the flames within for hours... days... weeks. Time meant nothing. The only thing I could concentrate on was the agony. Several times, I cried weakly for death. Surely God would spare me? Show me mercy? Had I not endured the flames of purgatory long enough?

I was scorched.

---

My arms were beginning to feel numb, and I thought I could move my toes. My judgement seemed to be drawing to a close. I yelled out in a frail moan of relief, thinking my prayers were finally answered, but the cry turned horrified as the burning intensified in my chest, searing at a thousand degrees in my heart. I prayed that death would come soon. Heaven or hell, I cared not, as long as I could escape the torment.

Then my heartbeats raced, faster and faster, faster than anything I had ever heard before. The pounding was brutal against my battered ribcage.

And then...

With one dull galumph! My heart stopped.

I breathed a sigh of relief, the action strange to me. Death at last.

Wait... I breathed? I was still breathing?

The air had a flavour, a sooty, musty flavour. But it was all wrong. It wasn't necessary. Or at least, that's how it seemed to me.

My eyes flew open, faster than a conscious decision, and I saw the same alleyway that had been used as my furnace for however long my burning had lasted. Only now, the place was flooded with daylight, save for my dark patch.

I stretched out a hand in a disconcerting movement, to touch the wet ground. It must have rained while I was burning. But I did not make it that far, as my hand slid into the path of the sun.

I lurched forwards, shocked. My skin glittered, like a million diamond facets throwing rainbows in the sunlight. Then I saw something that made me gasp.

My reflection in the puddle on the ground.

Beautiful... I had no recollection of the creature staring back at me, whose transcendence was almost hubris. But I knew with a sick certainty what the creature was. It stared at me with the crimson eyes of a demon, summoned from the fires of hell itself.

God help me, I knew what I was.

I was a monster.

Upon this realisation, I felt a flash burn in my throat, an echo of the flames I had so recently been released from, as the most intoxicating scent I had ever smelled drifted to me on the breeze.

I skulked back into the shadows as the people bustled past on the street ahead. My mouth watered as the burn flared again. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I knew what this burn represented.

My thirst for human blood.

"No!" I whispered, aghast, in a voice like the sweetest symphony.

A symphony of the devil's music.

I was worse than a monster... I was a vampire.