† Chapter I †
The Year of 1999
New York City
It is a cold and sad night, and I am walking into a Vampire Haven. No eyes follow me because they know who I am...and they dare not even look me way. I am one of the oldest vampires living....almost four hundred years old, and every vampire can feel my power as I enter the haven. They are afraid of me...of what I can do to them. They know that even with my mind, I can destroy them. Burn them up until they are nothing but ashes floating in the air. And sensing their fear as I enter the Haven, I smile. My mind feels content as I feel my superiority, and I do not feel as low as I had felt only moments ago. When I drank from a young woman lost in the streets of New York. I heard her pleas and they still echoed in my mind. "Please! I don't want to die!" the woman had sobbed in my arms. I had read her mind and found that she was a young college student...and she was engaged to a wonderful young man named John. And I knew she was to have a wonderful life. A life where she was a loving mother and had such a beautiful family. But as I felt the desire to save her... let her live as she should and live out a life I was robbed of, my weakness overcame me. The lust and overbearing need to drink her life away overwhelmed me. The smell of her blood was all I could think of, and her heartbeats pounded in my ears. I was growing weaker as every second passed. I was growing blind with desire, and I was only a bloodthirsty beast before its prey. And when the desire left me, I found the woman dead in my arms.
A killer, I whispered to myself. For the first time in years, I realized how weak I truly was. I could not even let the woman live, because my vampire nature was too strong. I looked down in my arms and saw the bloody mess left of the woman. Her neck was broken and her head slung over her shoulder as if she were a ragdoll. I dropped her to the ground and stood there as still as a statue. I could not cry, even though I felt like sobbing on the street. The tears did not come, because tears were human and I was not. And so I stood there for the longest time, my pain locked inside of my dead body. I knew that no matter what I thought or wanted, I had to kill every night like I did this night. It was what I did. It was how I lived, even though my living was not would you would call life.
And I left the dead woman, walking endless through the city streets. I cared not where I would go, because I wanted the sun to rise with me out to greet it. I wanted to die as I was supposed to. Was a person really to live four hundred years? I asked myself. But I knew I was not a person, nor never would be. And I was caught in my mind when he found me. I was locked in my dark mind wishing to die because I was sick of living. And then I heard a voice from the darkness. I fell to the cold street and woke up from my dispairing stupor. "Who--who is there?" I asked, jumping up from the ground as if I had floated. I heard a cackle from the shadows.
"Surprise," the voice whispered, and it had an English accent to it. I had never heard the voice before.
"Who are you?" I demanded, stepping back from the darkness into the light of a streetlight and curling back my pale lips to reveal my long piercing fangs. I changed my eyes to a penetrating red and flashed the darkness. I made myself look as I was. A demon. But the owner of the voice was not afraid. He only laughed. A dark and fearless bellow of a laugh.
"You already know," the voice spoke, coming closer. Its laugh seemed to mock me. He was unfraid. Unafraid of a vampire that could kill him in an instant. I understood at once that he was not a vampire. Because a vampire would have sensed who I was and cowered away in fear. No, this was no vampire. And as I thought more of who and what he was, I became more afraid. Could this infuriating thing be more powerful than I?
"Step into the light," I said to him, my voice shaking...and he noticed it. I heard him laugh again as he came forward. He took his time, trying to spend as much of it as he could in the dark. But when he stepped into the light before me, I could feel that he had come to find me. He had been hunting me. Yes, hunting. The man was what you call a Vampire Hunter. I knew that of him when I laid my eyes on him. On his tall burly figure and his dark framed glasses. He had on a dark trenchcoat and held a dark hat which I figured he wore to cover up the bald spot on his head. But his face was what really got to me. He did not smile, even when he laughed...and his face looked as if he had risen from the dead. He was pale and he wore no emotion in his expressions, and his face looked so worn out and sulken. I could have almost felt bad for him. Almost.
"Good evening, Mrs. Collins," he said to me slowly, drawing out each word. I almost gasped as he said those words. How could he have known my name? I had not been called such a name in four hundred years. The last time I was a Mrs. Collins was when I was still a mortal. A human. I looked at him in shock after he said it, and he managed to make some sort of smile with his ugly face. But the smile was a smile of enjoying another's pain. I grimaced.
"I know no Mrs. Collins," I lied to him, and he laughed at me...mocking me. He was playing some sort of game.
"I know who you are," he said to me then...pulling his black coat tighter around his large stomach. "I have followed you for some time now. And I know all about you...about who you have killed and what type of creature you are," he said. I stood there in shock. "Why, you are a vampire," he whispered...as if it were a secret. I almost smiled.
"And what do you want with this vampire? To kill me?" I asked him. I was getting hungry watching him gloat about knowing of me. It scared me he knew so much, because it was dangerous for vampires to be known of by mortals. Somehow mortals cannot accept who we are. But I wasn't about to let this fool of a human get to me. I stepped closer and flashed my fangs to him again. But he seemed unimpressed.
"Vampires are unique creatures..." he told me...as if I did not know. "To many they are myths. But I know better. Though, to bring back the corpse of such a creature. And a powerful one at that...." I stared at him smiling then. I knew he could not kill me, though he assumed differently. And as he rambled on to me, I watched him slip out a wooden stake from inside of his trenchcoat. I almost laughed as he did so, and he smiled. He thought he could kill me with a wooden stake! Mortals were so very, very foolish. If a vampire is such a powerful creature, than how could it die by such a little thing as being stabbed in the heart with a stake? My wound would heal immediately and I would walk away with not even a scratch. And as I looked closer, I noticed a cross around his neck. I could not help but laugh. As if a cross would harm me! Mortals assume that since we are demons, we should be terrified of God and everything to do with Him. But in truth, I believe in God. I believe in Him just as I had when I was a mortal. Though as an immortal, I see no reason to flock to the nearest church every chance I can to redeem my soul. For I have no soul. And I will never see God. Will never stand before Him to be judged whether to be hailed to heaven or cast into hell. I am already in hell. Hell in the form of an eternity on earth....and I did nothing to deserve it.
"What is it that you find so amusing, Mrs. Collins?" the vampire hunter asked me, his eyes glowing as if he was so sure of himself. He truly believed he could kill me. I smiled even more as he spoke to me, and I licked the tips of my fangs in delight. It would be fun killing this arrogant fool.
"Well, I'm just...surprised that you dare to kill me. You do know who I am, do you not? And I am not speaking of a Mrs. Collins. She died four hundred years ago...and now you stand before a vampire who could kill you in an instant," I said, taking a second to laugh. My laugh cold and dark. "Here I thought you would be running off in fear...shitting in your pants. But instead you stay. And of course, that is what I find so amusing...Though, you are wasting your time." I stepped closer to the foolish vampire hunter and stared him in the face. But he did not reek of fear as I had thought he would. Instead he managed to stretch a long smile across his face.
"There you are wrong," he whispered, spitting the words out in defiance. And in a flash, he slipped the stake before my pale face and stabbed it as hard as he could into my chest. My heart. I suppose he thought it was still alive, and not the black dead thing it was.
I did, though, felt a sharp pain pierce through my chest, but only for a second, because before the hunter could even take another breath, I had wrenched the stake out of my heart and stabbed it into his chest. But as hard as I pushed, I did not feel the stake slice through his chest. It did not go through at all. I stared at it in awe and the Vampire hunter grabbed my head and pulled it back exposing my throat. "I wish you luck in the afterlife, Mrs. Collins. It is time to see the fiery pit of hell God has reserved for the damned." And then I felt a cold sharp knife against the pale skin of my throat. I whimpered, and I felt like a child. So weak and scared.
And then I gathered all of the power in my mind and tried to kill him with all of my strength. But nothing happened. I struggled and gasped against the hunter, but he did not let go and instead slit my throat open before him. I could feel the warm blood pouring out of me and I could not even talk, the pain overbearing. The blood was even spilling out of my mouth and dripping down my neck and breasts. But then I realized the flesh of his arm was against my face. And in terror and anguish, I swung my face towards his arm and bit through it, my teeth like razors. But I did not bite his flesh. Instead I bit into a rough, almost metal material that hid underneath his trenchcoat. And it dawned on me. This man was wearing some sort of armor. I gaped in fear and cried out as I felt myself growing weaker.
"Who is running off shitting in his pants now?" the hunter asked me. I heard his voice above me and looked up to see him smiling down at me. I almost smiled, too. He was such a fool. A fool to bend his face to mine just to mock me. And before he finished smiling, I lunged at his face and bit onto his mouth. His horrid mouth. I bit so hard on it that I could feel the flesh of his lips in my own mouth. I growled like an animal...a beast, and I sucked on his face...drinking as fast as I could. Sucking so much of him into my throat. Eating as much of his face I was able to. And the screams of his that echoed in my ears were like music. As his arms grew limp and his grip on me fell, I lifted my face from his mouth and ripped open the collar of his shirt, exposing his throat. And I lunged at it, piercing my fangs into his veins and his flesh, sucking the rest of his life away. In a matter of minutes, the arrogant fool was dead on the street.
"I wish you luck in the afterlife, my friend," I whispered to the corpse. "Enjoy that fiery pit of hell." As I turned to leave then, I felt as if something was wrong. Not right. As I turned back around to the body, I saw a glow underneath the man's shirt. A bright red glow that seemed to call to me. I leaned down over the corpse and lifted open the shirt to find a chain hanging from the man's neck...the glow reflecting brighter off of the armor he wore. The chain held a bright red stone. And it glowed furiously. "How did you get this?" I asked the dead man as I lifted the chain from his neck. I held the chain in my hands and watched the stone glow brighter as I held it. As it glowed under my stare, I felt a wave of recognition wash over me, and I gasped as I realized what it was I was holding. Almost intictively I lifted the chain and placed it around my own neck. It went dead. The red light gone and a dark still stone lying around my neck. Just as it always did.
I stood up and turned to leave, but something in my mind said that it was not enough. Suddenly my anger arose and seemed to overcome me. The light from the streetlights disappeared and everything went black around me except the glitter of silver that laid on the street before me. As if I could not control myself, I picked up the silver knife, that the Vampire Hunter had tried to kill me with, from the shadows of the dark street and walked back over to him. I could see his half-eaten face glaring up at me even as he was dead. And then I took my time, spending hours just cutting away at the man. Slicing him into so many parts that he didn't even represent a human being when I was finished.
When he was only a pile of flesh, I walked away, my heels clicking on the streets. And when I turned around, a pack of hungry dogs had gathered around the flesh and began eating away. They would have a feast tonight.