**Disclaimer: my information about vampires in Norse mythology comes from Wikipedia ("Draugr", Wikipedia), so I'm not sure how reliable it is. My information on Pictish culture comes from Phyllis J. Goodall's "The Problem of the Picts" Recumbent Stone Circles in Grampian, and again I am not certain about its reliability. I apologize for any incorrect information.

Chapter Two:

"Watch your weight."

I awoke with a gasp and dirt spilled into my mouth. I didn't know where I was, only that I was underground and there was a body next to me. Panic flooded me, and I frantically scrabbled at the dirt, trying to dig myself out. That hollow, eerie voice still echoed in my head, but I was too afraid to listen to it.

As a rule, vampires do not dream. We are the undead, and once the sun comes up we are truly dead, and the dead can't dream. I wasn't sure if the voice was part of a dream, or something else entirely, but it scared me.

I finally got myself out of the hole in the ground and I spilled onto the leaves and debris above, spitting soil out of my mouth. Once I had calmed down, I crawled closer to the hole to see what dead body had been down there with me. It was hard to tell, since it was almost completely covered with dirt, but then it twitched. Not dead then. Alive. The body moved again, and it tried to claw its way up out of the ground. The dirt fell from its hair, and I remembered who it was. It was my blonde wolf, my prey, whom I had decided to change rather than kill. I grabbed his arm and hauled him up.

Once the blonde one was above ground he jerked his arm from my grasp and stepped away from me. His eyes, which had only a night ago been filled with impending death, were now bright and glowing in the dark. And wary, very wary, especially of me.

"What is going on?" His voice quavered with emotion as he continued to back away. "What is this?"

I held up my hands to show him I was unarmed, though I didn't need weapons to kill. But that was beside the point: I wanted to calm him down. "Hush," I crooned. "It's all right. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Who are you?" he demanded aggressively.

I took a cautious step towards him but he backed away instantly. I stopped. "I am your friend. I am here to help you."

He choked back a bitter laugh. "Help me? Help me how? I was in a bloody hole!" He had stopped moving away from me.

"You have changed, and you are going to be experiencing some things you've never felt before."

"You," he whispered, his memories from yesterday coming back to him. "Last night, it was you."

I nodded.

"You are Death. You killed me. I felt it. But I'm alive..." he trailed off. He lifted a hand to his neck and felt the skin where my teeth had pierced; it was as smooth as it had been before. His hand fell away.

"What is going on?" he asked me very seriously.

I shrugged my shoulders and turned away from him. "I did kill you," I told him.

"But I'm not dead."

I shook my head. "No, you are not dead. But nor are you alive, either. I brought you back."

"Back?"

"Yes. I drank your blood, and then gave you mine." I looked over my shoulder at him. A quizzical line creased his forehead as he stared at me. "You are the undead, like me," I stated simply.

He covered his ears with quivering hands, like he refused to hear what I was saying. He sank to the ground and then looked down at his chest, at his arms, his legs, everything, then up at me again. "But I don't look any different, and I don't feel any different."

I walked over and sat by him, close but not close enough to make him too nervous. "You will," I said sadly. "Soon you will feel very different. I believe your shock and disbelief are hiding your...urges right now, but once they are gone you will realize just how different you really are."

"This has got to be some sort of joke," he muttered. His gaze wandered aimlessly around his surroundings. We were in a sparse forest of deciduous trees nearly bare of leaves. Autumn was almost over, and the bite of winter was beginning to settle in. We were sitting in a sort of hollow and at the farthest end from us, in front of a vertical rock face that housed a small cave, was the hole where he and I had been buried. He avoided looking at that spot as much as he could. I think it frightened him, the idea that he had been buried alive there. Well, not so alive, but even so, waking up while lying underground with the weight of soil above you was a sensation that took a long time to get used to.

This was my safe place, and I had managed to get him back here well before the sun rose; and while I was digging his grave, so to speak, I had considered maybe finding a new place to take shelter. This place was good enough for me, but for a new vampire perhaps it might be a bit too isolated. He wouldn't be able to control his cravings as well as I could, and we were far from any human habitation. It would drive him mad, having the thirst but not being able to slake it. It would be a good idea, then, to move soon.

I got up and grabbed a few wooden sticks that I had gathered at an earlier point. I placed them into the fire pit I had constructed, struck a rock and flint together that I had found amongst the dead men the night before, and after a few moments a fire crackled in its hearth. I sat back down, across the fire from my blonde wolf. He needed a name, I decided. Should I name him, or let him choose?

The blonde one unconsciously shifted closer to the fire. There was something about a bright fire that made you feel more secure at night, and right now he was feeling very alone and troubled.

"Who are you?" he asked me for the second time, though he was much quieter this time.

I stared into the dancing flames as I thought of how to frame my answer. "You were right to call me Death," I told him after a long silence. "I am Death. I bring death wherever I go. It is unavoidable."

He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, then rested his head on his arms, watching me over the burning blaze. "You didn't kill me, though. You saved my life."

I laughed quietly. He really hadn't believed anything I had told him so far. He still thought he was human. "Yes, in a way I did. Though I doubt it is the kind of life you would have wanted."

"Any kind of life is good."

"Do not say that too quickly. You have yet to experience this life."

A wolf howled in the cold night. We both stopped talking and listened.

"What kind of life is this, then?" he asked me after.

I sighed. "An eternity of blood and pain, and surrounded by death. A very, very long, lonely, monotonous existence. While it does have its moments, overall this life will be very...boring, I fear."

"Then why did you give it to me? You talk like my life, as it has been so far, will no longer exist for me."

I had been trying to figure out why I had made him, myself. "I think I did so because I was bored. The nights started blending together in an endless routine of hunting, feeding, and sleeping. That's all there was to my life for many, many years. I was hunting you the same way I had hunted thousands before. I was going to kill you as I had killed them. But when I saw you, I could almost taste your vivacity, your love of life, it was so strong in you. That simple joy in living was something I hadn't seen before in such abundance. You interested me, and I when I saw you were dying I thought that your desire for life would persuade you to join with me, and perhaps it would brighten my otherwise dull existence. And as for your old life, it is now redundant. You are no longer who you were, and you cannot go back."

He had sat up straight during the middle of my explanation. Something I said had caught his attention, and though the last part, about him not being allowed to go back to his old life, made him frown, he chose to ignore it for now. "You speak as if you are very old, but you cannot be more than sixteen."

I smiled gently at him, because I knew that this would be very hard for him to grasp. "I was fifteen when I died." I paused. "For the past thousand years I have remained a fifteen-year-old boy."

His eyebrows darted upwards, and then he began to laugh. "That's good," he managed to say between bouts of laughter. "That's good. You are very compelling. This is a very convincing joke."

I did not laugh with him. "I am not joking," I said bluntly. His mirth began to subside. "This is no joke. This is the absolute truth. I am over a thousand years old. I was a Pict, one of the 'painted people' as the Romans had named us, for our tattoos. These tattoos," I pointed to the ink on my chest, arms, and back, "were given to me by my people. I was born only a handful of decades after the assassination of the man named Gaius Julius Caesar." I could see he did not accept what I was saying, but in time he would understand.

"It's impossible," he said under his breath, but I still heard him.

"Not impossible," I responded, "just unlikely."

"So what would that make you then?"

I was waiting for this question. "What do you think I am?"

He didn't reply.

I leaned forward, and I looked him directly in the eyes as I said, "I am, as you are, a vampire."

"Vampire!"

"So you have heard of us?"

He stumbled to his feet, shock evident in his body language. "In myths and folktales. They are stories told by parents to frighten children, nothing more."

"I am afraid that is quite untrue." I remained sitting on the ground. "I am a vampire, and now you are as well."

"These are all lies," he yelled angrily. "Lies and tall tales, told by a madman." He turned to walk away from me. I got up and flashed past him, to stand in front of him. His eyes widened in surprise and fear.

"This isn't a lie, and it isn't a joke," I said coldly. "These are all truths, about what I am and what you are. You must believe me."

He tried to walk around me. "I refuse to believe such things. Now let me pass: I am going home."

I grabbed him and threw him to the ground, pouncing on him and holding him down. My fangs slid out. "You know I am telling the truth. You felt it last night, when I drank your blood and then you drank mine. You saw me for what I was."

When I flung him down, the anger he felt towards me had inadvertently forced his fangs to come out. I reached forward and touched one of them with my finger. "Now you will see yourself for what you are."

His hands went to his mouth, and when he felt the razor sharpness of his own fangs he began to tremble. He pushed me off of him and went towards the bucket of water I had used last night to wash the blood of his dead companions off me. Though the water was red, he could still see his reflection. A quiet wail forced itself out of his throat.

"No!" He knocked over the bucket and spun to me. His lips were pulled apart in a snarl. "What have you done to me?" he roared. I watched all this in a detached manner, as you would a fly on the wall: you saw it, but didn't really notice that it was there. He rushed towards me and seized me by the shoulders and shook me. "What!" he demanded.

"I gave you exactly what you wanted," I answered levelly. I grabbed his fingers and slowly pried them out of my flesh. He winced in pain as I bent them back further than they were meant to go. "I offered you a choice, and you chose life."

"But not this life!"

"Well, then it would have been death. Complete, final, irreversible death. Do you want to die? Because I can still kill you if you wish it."

The blonde one took back his hands, and his head drooped. I waited for him to reply and went back to sitting by the fire. He stayed where he was.

Minutes passed. I had stopped expecting him to answer, but at long last he did. "No," he breathed. "No, I want to live."

I peered up at him. His anger seemed to have flowed out of him, and now he was an empty, living corpse. His energy was gone. I hoped it would come back soon, or all my work would've been for nothing. "Come," I said, motioning for him to join me by the fire. "Come sit. We will talk."

He walked lethargically over and collapsed to the ground.

"What do you know about vampires?" I asked.

"Draugr," he spat, "is what we call them. They are evil, wicked, undead creatures who rise from the graves of dead men to prey on the flesh and blood of the living; greedy men who are so worried about their wealth that they will come back from the dead to protect it. They have magical powers that allow them to change shape and see the future, and can drive men and animals insane simply with their presence. They are virtually unconquerable, have superhuman strength, and they can also swell to great sizes and crush their victims."

I was laughing quite loudly by the end of his description.

"What?" he demanded.

"That is what you believe?"

"It's what my people believe. Is it wrong?"

"Quite so."

If I had known him better, I would say he was sulking. But I didn't know him, so I couldn't say. "Vampires are the undead, that much is true. We do survive on the blood of humans, and some vampires do seem to have certain powers, but I've yet to find a vampire who can read the future or is able to shape-shift. Mostly it's that they can fly, which I can do, or they can communicate through their minds with other vampires that are connected to them by blood, or they have a very strong sense of smell and make excellent trackers. Powers like that. We are not strictly greedy men, though there are a number of them, and we cannot grow to an enormous size and...crush people!" I snorted noisily. "Sorry, I do not mean to be rude." I cleared my throat. "We do have superhuman strength and speed, and while we are difficult to kill, it is not impossible. The sun, fire, decapitation, a wooden stake to the heart, all are good ways to kill a vampire. Silver hurts us, and if you lose a limb it is unlikely to grow back. We bleed when we are cut, but we heal much faster than a human. And I'm sure there are a few vampires who could drive humans insane with their presence." I chuckled, but stopped quickly.

His face, already white, had become whiter still. "We must kill humans to survive?"

"I did not say kill, but that is the general idea, yes. Why?" I cocked my head. "It is not so unlike your former life. You were a fighter, were you not? Did you not kill other humans in order to protect your people?"

"Well, yes. But this is somehow..."

"Different?" I supplied. He nodded. "I understand. But you will get used to it."

He held up his hand and motioned for me to say no more. He bit his thumbnail as he tried to digest everything I told him. "Wait," he blurted out. "You said we didn't have to kill. What do you mean?"

"It is possible to drink from a human without killing them." He opened his mouth to say something. "But," I interrupted, "that will be very difficult for you to do in the beginning. You won't be able to help yourself."

He sagged. I was becoming worried that the vigour I had seen in him yesterday had disappeared. I truly hoped it wasn't so. I tried to cheer him up. "Just think of them as your enemies. When you were alive, you had no qualms about killing in order to protect your people. Now you must kill them to survive."

"Why did you choose me?" he asked suddenly. The change of topic fazed me momentarily, but I gathered that he didn't want to think about killing anymore at the moment.

"I told you, I was bored and you interested me."

"How did you find me?"

"I was watching all of the men when the battle started. I sat in the trees," I waved my hand up at the overarching tree branches above our heads, "unnoticed by any of you. As the numbers dwindled, you and a few others were all that was left, and you caught my eye. You were like a god, the way you fought. I was in awe watching you."

He was silent for some time. The fire popped, sending sparks into the air. "I saw you," he murmured as he stared into the fire.

"What?"

"I saw you." His eyes returned to my face. "When I was hurt and being carried away. I saw you in the trees. I thought perhaps you were just a bird or that pain had skewed my vision. But it was you, wasn't it?"

I nodded. Then I got up. "You need to feed," I said.

"What?"

"You need to feed." I offered him my hand, which he took reluctantly. "We have wasted too much time talking, and if you don't feed now it will become much worse later." I pulled him towards the east, which would take us to the closest village. It would be a long walk. He followed without much protest, though I could tell he was unhappy with the idea.

After a few hours I could hear the quiet noises of a sleeping village. "Almost there," I told him. He had let me drag him here without complaining, but now he stopped cold.

"Why are you making me do this?" he asked despairingly.

"Because you have no choice. This is your nature."

"What if I don't want to?"

I growled at him, letting him see my fangs clearly. "Then I will make you." He inhaled sharply, and I stopped growling. "I do not want to force you. I want to teach you, so that you will learn to enjoy it." I lifted my hand to him again. "Come my child, let me teach you." He wrapped his hand around mine unwillingly, and I guided him towards the first heartbeat that I thought suitable for him. I truly did want his first lesson to a pleasurable one.