Vampire: The Fallen
by
Montdeleon
Chapter 1
I see a bad moon a risin'.
I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.
Don't go around tonight,
Well it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.
-Creedence Clearwater Revival
There was only darkness. A thick, deepened sleep wherein nothing was seen, felt, or heard. It was a rest like any other, bereft of even the stimulation of dreaming. He was nothing, and nowhere. There was only the peace of unending, all-encompassing black upon the consciousness, absent in its void of happiness or anger, sadness or pleasure.
Even so, while the mind's eye remained closed, the blood stirred within and throughout the body….trailing down through his veins, into his arteries, his heart, his lungs and all the inner workings of his body-that which had been left an empty husk before was now revitalized with a vigor unlike any that could be imagined. One that did not require air to breathe, or food and water for sustenance. No, this was some alien new presence that now bubbled up to the surface, threatening to boil over with a searing potency that was foreign to the common human experience. What woke up inside him was not life, but a new force of existence, borne from the womb of a black and wholly profane origin. After some time, the blood reached the end of its course, now fully consummated with the flesh and producing a new, remade form of being.
And though it was beyond his cognizance, this transformation was a bliss unlike any other. One that couldn't be described in words or even imagined, as it basked upon a plateau external to the waking dream that mortal men lived within. An ecstasy impossible to be likened to any pleasure of carnality or taste, it was the rush of becoming, of being molded; a transmogrification through sheer unhinged passion that seemed impossible to ever know or feel. It would be gone before it ever had the chance to register within his consciousness, and then it would haunt the corners of his mind, like so many others before him, to the end of his days.
The eyes opened, his repose ended.
As he awoke, the night sky emerged before him, fluorescent moonlight seeping in rays through the canopy of cascading tree branches down over him, leaving him to languish in dispersed pools of shadow. A slight breeze passed along over his face, gently brushing along his hair and cheeks. The cry of a distant fowl somewhere far away echoed along the membrane of flora, casting a sonic wreath upon the entire area.
He'd regained his senses, yet...everything was different. Clearer. Sharper. His world had, in some way, become far more vibrant than he'd ever known it to be. It was all...
Wait. Where the hell am I?
Coming to the realization that he was lying face up, he pushed himself up off the ground and onto his knees. The ground in question was all dirt, leaves and twigs. He was in...a forest? Where was he? All around him were trees, packed together like sentries of bark and leaf that stood towering over him, looming overhead as though in wait to swallow him whole as one.
"What...what the…" the words lingered on the tip of his tongue, but he was too disoriented to finish a clear thought. Where was this place? How did he get here? Why didn't he remember anything? Why….why what? Why anything? Nothing came together. Just a big, gray blank in his mind that hung like an unseen web in the darkness, where his recollection of the past twelve or so hours should have been. If not more.
A man with smoky hazel eyes that locked right onto whatever his gaze fell upon, like the fiercest bird of prey….the grayest he'd ever seen. Wild, unkempt copper hair that fell shoulder-length in long, straight locks that veiled across his face. Broad shoulders. Tall. An imposing manner. The very object of his pursuit.
He reached a hand up to the base of his neck. Nothing there. But-no, he could have sworn there had been something. But his mind refused to obey in finding concept or recollection. It was like he'd suddenly been afflicted with an amnesia; an impermeable haze within his mind dissembled any effort for a desired accounting of a few hours ago, the previous day, any of it. Something had happened to him. Something had been done to him, but he didn't know what.
There was only...a hunger.
The city, choked to death smog in the air and homeless in the streets….the gun, a companion that he knew all too well, his shield and his curse...the man with the terrible, inexorable gray eyes, always somehow beyond his reach….
He didn't notice the hunger at first. He simply felt...weak. Malnourished, as though he hadn't eaten or drank for several days. To merely even stand was a labor in itself. His eyes scanned the area for something, anything to be drawn to. There was no hint of nearby civilization. He checked his pockets. His phone and wallet were both missing. So was his .38.
Any normal person in a similar circumstance would begin to panic. Isolated in the middle of a wilderness in pitch black, with no food or water, no means of communication with the outside world, no way to find one's way back, no shelter, no recollection of how one had ever ended up in this place. None of this occurred to him in that moment. Only the hunger occupied the space where his concerns normally lay. Hunger.
The weakness was fast growing more difficult to ignore now. He needed sustenance, but of what kind he had no idea. He closed his eyes, rubbing his face with one hand. "Fuck," he whispered.
He started walking forward, though he had no direction by which to guide himself. It was all he could do. But the hunger inhibited any way to properly compose himself, to regain control over his thoughts. Trees. There were too many trees everywhere. The hunger persisted. The senses swam, his vision formed a tunnel that he was looking through but couldn't seem to reach the end of. He'd gone on solitary excursions through the wild. He knew that taking shelter and getting out of the exposure of the cold would be a smart first place to begin, yet none of that was important. He wasn't cold. Being lost of was of no interest. Only the hunger.
The man with grey eyes….the corpses suspended by metal upon the wall, mutilated beyond all moral comprehension, defiled in so many ways with the creative fervor of someone like a child burning a small ant with sunlight and a magnifying glass...the blood, crashing through his veins, making his pulse pound, making him crave more, need more….
He was running now. He had no idea he'd started running, nor was he thinking about it much further. He had some small semblance of understanding why he was going at a dead sprint, but that didn't matter either. He was honing in on something amidst the forestry all around him, ducking under fallen logs, cutting through underbrush, vaulting over a stream, all the while not actually drawing the breath a person would need for such exertion. He was so sick he could anticipate throwing up at any moment, but it only made him keep pushing. The hunger demanded it. Howled for it, deep beneath the chest and within the heart that no longer beat. It would have no less.
The man with grey eyes...the trail of corpses he'd left behind in his own wake, a craftsmanship he'd never asked for but came naturally to him, like painting to an artist or words for a writer….the city that he hated, but could never leave….the blood….
It was fast, and so was he after it. It shouldn't have been possible for a person to keep up with, but for him it was natural, and now also necessary. He'd ceased merely running, and was now eloping on all fours himself, like an animal. The pretense of a man was long abandoned. Only the thirst remained.
The grey eyes...the violence...the city...the war he could never leave behind...the blood...the hunger…..
He was closing in on it now. And with each inch that he closed the distance, the hunger intensified in a shrill, hundred-degree inferno that made his pupils dilate, his muscles coil and flex, and the teeth sharpen into incisors. This is what I am.
The blood...the rush….
The hunger.
All else evaporated as like a mirage that had never been. Conscious thought ceased.