The Vampire Stas
All characters © xsweetxpandemoniumx
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Paris, France - 1734
Anastas Donnagan Delacroix, a very young and attractive and very successful French businessman, was just finishing locking up his offices around the hour of nine that cold December night. The offices had once belonged to his wealthy father, who had passed away when Anastas was fourteen, leaving just the boy and his mother. They had come to belong to Anastas, now known by the business partners simply as "Stas," soon thereafter, along with the townhouse where Stas now lived and the family estate in the western countryside, where his mother presently resided with a few servants.
Young Stas' steadfast dedication to his work was admired by his peers, but somewhat loathed by the young women who sought to garner his attention in hopes of one day becoming his wife. His long hours spent balancing ledgers were what allowed him to maintain two large homes, upkeep his impeccable fashion sense, and keep his mind off of other things he'd rather forget. The latter is the most important. Stas cared nothing for the pretty French women who constantly tried to flirt with him at social events and Sunday Mass. To him they were all the same – unintelligent vultures, devoid of passion, and only seeking the comforts his money and social status could bring them. Further, his dedication was to his father. There were two things his deceased father had wanted for his son: to take over the family business and to settle down with a family of his own.
Stas was indeed doing well with the business, but settling down was not something he was interested in. He knew he could never be happy with these socialite women whom his mother and peers kept suggesting he court. He wanted something real – something he was beginning to think he would not find during his lifetime in France. Women were not free thinkers at that time. They were not supposed to be. Stas knew it was socially unacceptable for someone of his status to want such a thing in a woman – someone who would think freely, and challenge him, and simply make him feel alive, but that was what he truly desired. He had made up his mind at a young age that he would never marry someone who could not give him these things – even if that meant risking his family's disapproval. He soon learned that if he buried himself with work, his relatives would not have the time to ask about his relationship status. In fact, they proved to be more curious about his newest business endeavors, which he made certain, consumed all of his time.
This night was one of many he had spent hovered over his office desk until the ink on his documents blended so perfectly with the shadows cast by the dying candle flame that his eyes could no longer tell the difference. Stas had been so consumed by his thoughts as he worked that he had lost all concept of time. Not that it mattered. He lived alone. He was free to come and go as he pleased and the extra money earned by long office hours allowed him to ensure that his mother continued to live comfortably in the countryside.
He left alone this night, as usual, and walked silently down the empty Paris streets towards his large town home. He remained deep in thought as he walked, creating a mental list of duties to be completed the next day. It wasn't until he turned down a particularly dark street a mere four blocks from his home that he realized he was being followed.
He could hear footsteps mimicking his own, but always staying at least four meters behind him. Stas whirled around suddenly, hoping to intimidate his follower, but what he saw when he turned was – nothing. No one was there. Just an empty street and cold, damp cobblestone. Stas felt a shiver run down his spine as his eyes scanned the horizon.
"Perhaps all I heard was the echo of my own footsteps resounding off the buildings," he told himself.
Stas exhaled an unsteady stream of breath in an attempt to calm himself down as he slowly turned to continue on his pathway home. What happened next would forever be a blur in the young man's mind.
He turned around and came face-to-face with another man – a man who's face was as pale as the moon, who's hair was a dark as the midnight sky, and who's dark eyes burned like embers in the scarce light of the alley. Stas barely had time to gasp before the well-dressed stranger clasp a hand tightly over his mouth and drug him further into the shadows of the alley.
Stas was suddenly afraid for his very life. He tried to fight this ghastly stranger, but the man restrained him with little effort. It was at that moment that Stas began to grasp the slightest idea of what was about to happen to him. This man was no man at all. His strength was inhuman and those eyes – those eyes that seemed to burn and freeze all matter at the same time – if Stas had not been so afraid he might have found them beautiful. They were vampire eyes. He began to realize that he was meant to die that night, in that dingy alley so very close to the safety of his home.
The next sensation he endured was the feeling of his head being tilted back towards the night sky and the horrible pain of two razor sharp teeth piercing his flesh. He tried to cry out but couldn't. All he could do was make horrible gurgling and sputtering sounds as the blood was drained from his body. His heart beat rapidly until he thought it might explode, but then slowed. It slowed much too quickly and he felt his entire body become a dense weight as his vision swam and his breath grew short. A wrist was then shoved to his lips. It was pale, almost gray, but beginning to glow a subtle pink. It bore two puncture wounds identical to the ones on his neck and blood was beginning to flow from the two holes.
"Drink," the pale stranger commanded.
Stas had no more strength left to fight or to even think. He obeyed, drinking the sickly sweet liquid from the stranger's veins, which he would later learn was not only the blood of the stranger, but also his own blood flowing through the other's veins.
As he drank, feeling began to return to his limbs and he felt his heart beat again. He could hear it pounding in his head. The more he drank, the louder the pounding became and his chest began to ache again. Suddenly he was feeling dizzy and nauseous, much worse than he had felt minutes ago.
"No more," he muttered to the stranger.
The creature retracted his wrist and began to drag Stas away, to some unknown destination.
"Where are you taking me?" Stas murmured. He was in intense pain now, as though his insides were on fire and he would be sick at any moment. His vision was failing him. He could barely make out the blur of the street lamps against the sky and the shapes of the passing buildings as he was now carried over the shoulder of this extraordinarily strong being. He felt like death, and he could not understand the man's actions in the alley. The confusion was making his already weakened mind crumble into dust.
"Am I to die this night?" He asked his captor weakly. His words hardly sounded like more than infantile utterances now. However, his captor's heightened senses were still able to make out their meaning.
Having reached their destination, which from the few senses Stas still had functioning he guessed to be a stately house located quite some ways from where their journey had begun, the mysterious man laid Stas down in a type of bed and looked into the young man's pained eyes.
"No fledgling, you will not die this night," said the man in response to the question posed previously, "but when you awaken, you will no longer be among the living."
Stas grunted in response, no longer able to form the syllables necessary for speech. There was a scraping noise against the floor near Stas' feet and then it seemed to Stas that he was being sealed in. With the last strand of logic left in his brain, Stas realized that the bed he was in was in fact a coffin and that his pale attacker was placing the lid back on it with Stas laying helpless inside.
Stas panicked at the thought of being shut in the dark box. He groaned and tried to summon the strength to get out or lift the lid, but it wasn't in him and he soon found himself in total darkness. There were more scraping noises outside the box and then there was total silence.
As Stas lay there trying feebly just to breath, the man's words echoed through his mind, "No fledgling, you will not die this night…"
"He plans to make me into a vampire like himself," Stas thought.
He breathed in again, shutting his eyes tight against the pain of fire consuming his lungs. The darkness of the coffin pressed down on his mind, enticing in him a deep desire to sleep and to make the pain forgettable. The last thought in Stas' mind before submitting to unconsciousness was "Why?"