† Chapter II †
The Vampire Haven
Central New York City
"And what brings you here this very fine night, Colette?" the vampire named Sariä asks me, her blood-stained lips reeking of blood as she speaks. She leans over the blood bar and smirks at me, tossing her bright red hair over her pale shoulder. I notice she hardly looks at all like a vampire, with a sheer white halter top and red mini skirt on. The only thing vampire about her are her dead eyes and the pale of her skin. Her fangs hardly even look like a vampire's, because they are oddly small...just barely longer than a human's. She smiles to me and I smile in return, yet I notice the fear in her face.
She taps her long nails against the wood of the table in uneasiness as she waits for me to talk. Her gray eyes look at me with fear in them, and I am surprised she manages to ask me a question. I smile and take a seat at the blood bar. All around me are the slow and drumming beats of dark music to set the mood of the Vampire Haven. And as I look around, I see vampires all around me drinking from humans. The humans are under their dark spells, entranced by their grace, and willfully give them their wrists and their necks. I feel a sense of disgust as I watch them, and I turn away and look straight into Sari's cold eyes.
"Do you know what I have come across whilst walking among the streets?" I ask her, eyeing another vampire who approaches Sariä and I. He is a powerful vampire as I am, with silver dyed hair and an upside-down cross tattooed on his forehead. He is called Blase by all vampires, and only a few know his real name. I ignore his stare as I continue to speak to Sariä. "I was out hunting when I realized I was being hunted as well. In the dark I met a man who claimed he was a Vampire Hunter."
Sariä gasps and turns to Blase, but he only stares at me blankly. I go on. "He thought he could kill me...and he almost did. When he attacked me, I could hardly fight him. My power was almost gone," I say, watching the horrified faces of the vampires around me who are listening to what I say. "He had on this special body armor... so I could not attack his body. And when I tried to use my mind, it was blocked. I was weak...." I tell them. They are all looking at me in shock.
"You were...weak," Sariä repeats slowly. She is lost in her thoughts and she looks as if she were to cry. I stare at her and open my mouth to comfort her, but a voice stops me.
"But you are not defeated..." the vampire Blase whispers. He stills stares at me intently, his dark cold eyes watching me as if I were his own prey. I nod at what he says and look down. He makes me feel naked...as if I could hide nothing from him...and his stare makes me quiver. I look away from him and begin to talk in more of a whisper.
"I barely managed to kill him. But what dismays me is how this Vampire Hunter became so powerful," I say. I think of telling them of the stone, but something in my mind tells me not to. It could be dangerous. I look around at the vampires and see the fear in their faces. I close my eyes and listen to their thoughts, and each one comes pouring out of their minds like sand. My God! I can't go out into the night! They are out there! I hear one vampire thinking. He holds a dead woman's hand in his lap and forgets about her entirely, because his fear consumes him. I look around the room and find every vampire quiet in fear. Their thoughts scream into my mind and my head pounds with it all. I stand up from the bar and turn to leave. "Keep guard," I whisper to them all...and they can hear me. And then I walk out of the Haven and into the dark night. At least I have warned them, I think to myself.
As I step out into the night air and start walking down the cold New York streets, I see dozens of mortals curled up on benches and even lying on the streets. My thirst grows as I watch them try to sleep as the cold stings their faces...and before I get to my apartment, I have eaten my full of them. I give them a better life, away from the world where I am trapped.
After I drink my full, I disappear in the dark and appear on the steps of the apartment building that I call home. A few humans walking the streets see me appear out of nowhere, and I flash my red eyes at them and immediately the forget they ever saw me. As usual, I feel a pain of sadness throbbing inside of me as I do this, as I have felt when I first did it. I remember standing with my Creator... the day I died and became what I am. He had made me kill my first mortal that day...and as the taste still lingered on my tongue, he turned to me and said, "Someone watches." I remember looking all around me and seeing nothing. But I was young. And I could not see as a vampire could then. But my Master brought the mortal to me, and I can still remember the human's face. It had been a young man...a boy.
"Leave me, you....demons!" the boy had screamed. His screams had echoed through the streets and I seemed paralyzed. I could not stop watching this horrified boy. And then my Master commanded me to take away his memory. I did not know what he meant, as I had never even heard of such things. But my Master ordered me to. And then it happened...as if it were supposed to happen. My mind grew angry and my eyes glowed red. I flashed my eyes at the boy and his screams died. His eyes went blank and it was as if a part of him had died. And he knew nothing of us...of my Master and I. He stood in the street as if he were lost. And then he glared at us and briskly walked off as if nothing had ever happened.
"What...what has just happened?" I had asked my Master. He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders.
"He forgot about us," he said. "We are invisible to them. To the humans. We are dead to the world of the living. Do not forget that." And then he had walked off, leaving me alone in the dark with only my thoughts. It was then that I realized I was truly dead. I could not live among the living. Not what I had thought when I was first Changed. The minute I became a vampire, I believed that my life would be the same, with the exception that I would be able to live forever. Yet, then I learned I could never see the sun again...and that I was to be dead to all. I thought I would be able to return to my family again and to the people I loved. But I learned I could never see them again. A vampire was to forget about their former life entirely. My Master told me to forget about everyone I had loved and cared for. And I told him I would, yet I never did. And their faces still come to me in my dreams. I seem to live in my dreams.
Every time I erased a human's memory of me, I felt even more dead. Do I have to live like this forever? I ask myself, and I know the answer. As I watch the humans walk away from my apartment, forgetting ever seeing me, I feel like calling out to them, "Look! I am here! I cannot be dead if I am here!" But instead, I turn from them, the living, and walk into my dark apartment.
As the night grows older before me, I watch the glowing city from my window. For once, I do not wish to leave my apartment and hunt as I do every night. Instead, I watch all of the humans below me...watching them live and laugh and make themselves believe that demons such as myself so not exist. I watch them and listen to their thoughts, which bring peace to my mind for a small moment. For that small moment, I almost forget about my own life. Just as a human can sometimes forget their own when they cut their pain away...and it lasts only a few minutes. But those minutes are cherished.
As I watch a young man intently and listen to him scream, "No God, No! I killed her....I killed that bitch!" and I learn of how he brutally murdered his wife with a hammer, I hear a noise behind me. I turn away from the man I had been watching on the street and I glare into the dark of my apartment. I hear the whisper of another being, and I jump at the noise. For some reason, I cannot see where the being is, though I always could before.
"Who is there?" I ask the darkness, and I hear nothing in return. I take a step forward and flash my eyes, but nothing comes forth or makes a sound. "I swear, I will kill you if you do not show yourself now," I say to the dark. I hear nothing. Nothing but the sounds coming from the street below...and the voices of the millions of humans and vampires living in the city. I stand still for a moment and listen for anything...my ears a hundred times sharper than a bat's. And then, like the soft stirring of a single blade of grass, I hear something. A rustle of clothing. I laugh, my voice cold and cunning.
"I hear you," I whisper to the dark, the words barely leaving my lips. But the being does hear me. "Step forth...or I shall kill you this instant!" I say to the dark. I wait for something to happen, for anything to happen. But nothing does. And as I step forward and start to focus my mind, I hear a loud whip of the air, and I see a vampire appear out of thin air before me. His shined black shoes step through the air as if he wears an invisible cloak. And then comes his black pants and shirt...and then his marble white face and the upside-down cross tattooed on his forehead. I whisper his name "Blase," before he grabs me by the neck and pins me against the wall. He is as strong as I in every way, and as I focus my mind to throw him off of me, he blocks his mind against mine...and I am as weak as a child in his grip.
"Why do you wish to kill me, Colette?" Blase whispers in my face, and I feel his cold breath against my cheeks. I turn my face away from his, but he takes his hand and guides my chin back towards his own. "Tell me," he says, stroking my cheeks with his sharp nails.
"I did not know it was you," I say to him. "Since I normally do not come across a vampire who conceals himself from the world." I stare at his dark eyes and his grip loosens on my neck. And then, almost as if he never moved his hands, he drops me and I fall to the floor. I rub my neck and stand up to face him, and his eyes remain coldly fixed on my own.
"Colette," he says to me, crossing his arms, "I know you have that stone." I stare at him in shock at what he has just said to me. But he only smiles and shakes his head. "Remember that there are those who can hear your thoughts."
End of Chapter two..............
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