It was a cold London night, bitterly frigid. My coat was thick, padded with layers of wool, and yet it wasn't enough to keep me warm. I fashioned my hat over my dirty blonde hair that wasn't worth combing through, and I wrapped my light blue scarf around my neck and part of my face. Lastly, I grabbed my father's pistol off the wall and stuffed it into my belt. It was uncomfortable, its cold metal freezing my skin through my breeches. I sighed to myself in the mirror. I'm twenty three years old. I shouldn't be living with my father, doing his bidding. He was a preacher that went against his morals that he preached. He believed that the innocent should be rewarded, and then he went out falsely accusing them of being nonexistent monsters, such as witches, werewolves and…vampires.
Now, due to his age, I was following in his footsteps by force. I was the one being forced out into the glacial London winter to complete a chore that I didn't believe was moral, but I couldn't go against the town's priest. That would make me just as horrible as the monsters I was set out to find and kill. I glanced back at my father, wrapped up in a blanket with his Bible by the fire. Pursing my lips, I silently slipped out the door and into the snowy night.
Drifts of glittering snow piled against the buildings and street lamps around the city. The fire danced upon the blankets, creating stars in the white heavens. Heaven. Was there a place after someone passed on? When their life ended and they left this torturous, agonizing world, did they move on into a place where it was never cold and snowy, or hot and humid? It was a paradise, and as I walked out into the foot of snow covering most of the road, I wished that I could be there now. I could take my life today and join everyone there, especially my mother.
My father accused women who had hooked noses and cackled when they laughed as being witches. Men who had a bad argument with their wives and were running angrily through town on full moons were werewolves. If a beggar's lips were cracked and bleeding from the mouth and his skin was pale as snow, they were a vampire. My father had no logic to back up his sentiments, but I did. I had a mind that wasn't full of hell, fire and damnation. I had a brain of reason, full of answers to questions that asked 'why' and 'what'. Why did snow sparkle? It's just water. What are the symptoms of influenza? Fever, fatigue, headaches, and coughing, just to name a few. I had the mind to know that the people I'd discovered were not average humans. Their combined lack of heat chilled the area they resided. Their eyes were copper, almost topaz, and their features were too perfect to be a human being's.
And I found them.
My father's congregation joined me on my trek through the snow, bearing torches for illumination and as a weapon. They didn't care for my logic, as it was unnecessary. They knew that vampires were vampires and witches were witches from my father's sermons, but they didn't care to know why. I had evidence from my experience to back up my discovery, but they didn't care as long as they were dead. We all trudged through the snow, the water soaking into our trousers and boots with the water soaking up toward our thighs. I was shivering not only from the flakes on my face before they melt and the wind, but from the nervousness. I was so close. I was going to protect the people of London from these savages. They weren't innocent people, they were indeed vampires. I stopped about fifty feet from the entrance of their abode, waiting for them to emerge to hunt. There we all stood, knee deep in snow with the wind blowing hard on the sides of our faces with me in the front lines. The wind blew my newsboy style hat off and down the road, and my shoulder length hair blew in front of my eyes. At one moment when the locks blew out of my path of vision, there was no one in front of me, and not a second later, four of the beasts had peaked out from their dwelling.
The townspeople went wild, and they themselves turned into the savages I wanted to cleanse the city of. Charging at them, the vampires fled, all but one. Even in the dark I could see its eyes were black as pitch, and he staggered about like his bones were too weak to carry him. The faster vampires attacked us, but some brave villagers warded them away as I broke through the mob to confront the weak leech. What was I doing?! My reasoning mind was failing me in a moment of panic and confusion. A flaw of the human mind! And yet with this awareness, I still climbed forward, my hand on the pistol that was slowly causing frostbite on my hip.
Then the world that had seemed so slow flashed before my eyes.
Before I could even get a grip on my gun, the weak blood-sucking monster lunged at me, stopping only feet in front of me. Its black eyes were wide, eyeing me with a disturbing interest. I was the hunter that became the hunted. I took a step back, and it sensed my fear as it seemed, because with the slightest twitch of movement, it advanced and tackled me, forcing me into the cold blanket. The wind was knocked out of me, and my only wish couldn't be granted.
I wished to scream.
I was a grown man, and all I wanted to do was scream for mercy. A clergyman's son wanted to ask a vampire for their mercy. What mercy would they give, for they were a damned race? I was pinned to the ground, the vampire's eyes full of hunger and the urge to kill. I could barely breathe, and all I could hear were screams. The next thing I could physically feel after the snow numbed me was the piercing pain of teeth ripping my skin through to the veins of my neck.
It was the worst pain I'd ever experienced. It stung worse than a hornet, salt in an open wound, or the frostbite on my hip. It was worse than all three put together. Far worse. It felt like white hot metal being melted down and injected into my veins, and I felt like I was on fire. Maybe I was, but I didn't know it because I had my eyes clenched shut. Then again, even with my dulled senses, I could still tell that I was on the soft blanket of snow, and not the hardened cold dirt road. I couldn't be on fire.
I could vaguely hear screams, but they kept getting softer as they echoed through my head. I couldn't tell if they were running away from where I lay, or if it was the poison killing my logical mind. I forced myself onto my hands and knees to crawl toward the white light and desperately embrace the death that was to be anticipated before me. All I wanted to do is end this horrible burning pain! I wanted to rid myself of the guilt that overwhelmed me, but it felt like a stubbed toe compared to the pain I endured physically. I could feel myself stumble blindly around in the snow, and then I could feel myself slip on something round and soggy, but I couldn't figure out what it was. All I knew was that I was in a pile of them, and they soon collapsed around me. I crumpled into the pile of the unknown, waiting for death to find me since the light disappeared from before my eyes.