Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia
((Timeskip: 3 years later~))
7
Arthur woke in a cold sweat, his heart racing from the same old nightmare. It had been 3 years since his encounter with the Noble vampire, but every night he relived the deathly shiver up his spine and the strangely satisfying feeling of the fangs puncturing his skin. Arthur brushed his now too long hair out of his dulled green eyes, unable to get the taunting, accented voice out of his head. He had moved away from London after the Noble had bitten him, committing himself to expanding his own knowledge of vampires and the most effective methods to go about killing them.
He had been worried that he would be consumed by the incurable fever that plagued the bodies of those who had been bitten, eventually driving them to a mental state where they craved the blood of humans. The fever would undoubtedly turn a person into a common vampire, which was why there were more of them and no matter how many were killed, the population could easily boom again. But to become a Noble vampire was a much more sophisticated process. The first condition is that the person being bitten has to be willing, fully aware of what would happen to them. Arthur would never be able to understand why anyone would want to become a blood-sucking creature of the night, viewing the whole concept as insane. The person would also have to be strong, or they may have suffered a tragic experience recently which filled them with hatred, rage or sorrow. The most common cause was the death of a loved one, or the person had found out they had some life-threatening illness and only had a short time to live.
It was then down to the Noble to decide whether or not to convert them, and if they chose to, the Noble would drink only some of the person's blood, before offering them their own blood. However, the blood of a Noble was a dangerous thing, not only to common vampires, but other Nobles as well. If a Noble drank the blood of another Noble, both of them would perish. This is because all Nobles need at least a certain amount of blood in their own bodies, and cannot afford to waste any, which is why they drink every last drop of each victim's blood. But if they lose a considerable amount of their own blood, they lose their vampirical strength and become a lesser being than even a common vampire. They would lose their taste for blood, and human food would not appeal to them either. Eventually, they would turn to dust from starvation and blood loss.
But how long the Noble lived afterwards would depend on how much of their blood had been drained. If one Noble managed to drain the other of blood almost completely, the Noble would crumble and turn to dust instantly. However, Noble blood is also poisonous to other vampires, regardless of their rank, and if one bit another, both would eventually turn to dust.
Arthur looked in the mirror, tilting his head up slightly to expose the pale scars of the bite marks on his neck. He was still conscious of the marks day and night, and now wore scarves or high-collared garments to conceal them, but the fangs that not only punctured his skin. They had sunk into his mind, infecting his thoughts and plaguing his brain with the memory of the vampire constantly.
The process of turning someone into a Noble vampire was indeed strenuous, and nine times out of ten, it would be an unsuccessful conversion and the human would die before they turned. However, on the occasion that the human did become a Noble vampire, it was then up to the vampire who sired them to make sure they kept to the shadows and learnt what it means to be a Noble vampire.
Arthur gritted his teeth, hating how it had turned into a game for the Nobles: who sires the most is the best Noble. The prize? Respect from other vampires and possibly protection from the likes of Arthur.
A thought suddenly occurred to Arthur, something he had not so much as blinked at before. He never once saw the vampire who had bitten him. He could pass the bloody creature on the street and wouldn't know it was him. The very idea infuriated Arthur to the point that he clenched the freshly sharpened stake he kept on his bedside table and threw it across the room. He had not meant to achieve anything by it, but had automatically flicked his wrist as he did so, sending the stake whistling through the air with blade-like speed and precision, before it embedded itself into the wall, puncturing the stained wallpaper and forcing a hole in the shabbily-constructed wall.
Arthur stared at it a moment, secretly impressed that he did that, before getting to his feet and retrieving the stake, pulling it out of the wall with ease.
Looking to the window with the stake clenched firmly again in his strong fist, Arthur gave a smirk to the now full moon, unable to hide behind smoky clouds anymore as Arthur challenged it.
I'm ready. Arthur declared to the moon, to the Noble who had dared have the audacity to come near him. To the coward who had attacked him from behind. To the fool who wouldn't show Arthur his face.
I'm ready. And I'll start with you.
A/N: I'm so sorry for not updating in so long, but lately everything has just been feeling really down for me, and I didn't want to write something crappy and upload it quickly, and thought it was better to wait until I had some level of inspiration first. But thanks to everyone who has been reading this and telling me to continue, it really does mean a lot to me and I do try my best to make the story as enjoyable as possible for you! Again, thanks for putting up with my random updating and such! ~
