A quick Update. Therefore, nothing much I think I need to say here, except that this chapter is about half the length of the previous one, so if anyone was thrown off by the size, please don't be. Thanks to all the people who have reviewed. It's quite addictive, really.
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Alexander was looking inside the room he had opened up. He seemed stunned. From his vantage point, Francis could not make out what was inside. He tried to move closer, but without turning Alexander stopped him with a snarled, "don't come here if you value your life."
Nathaniel was smiling coldly. He moved behind Alexander until he could see what Alexander was looking at.
"Only once, right at the beginning did Nur's awareness let me glimpse this place. That first time, I was led down here, and shown the bodies I was to keep watch over, and when I saw those bodies, I knew that the means to my revenge on you was kept right there in front of me."
Francis had a good idea of what Nathaniel was talking about. He crept up behind the other two, hoping Alexander would not force him to go back. When he was near the doorframe, he peeked inside.
The room was large, and the dusty walls were covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Right in the centre of the room was the seated body of the first vampire ever Born. The body was white, as white as marble or ivory. It sat in statuesque splendour, and from the heavy layer of dust covering it, Francis could see it had not moved for a long time. His attention was diverted from the broad cruel mouth and titan shoulders by a figure on the ground at Nur's feet, the figure having the same statue-like appearance and the coat of dust. Even his hair was frozen, like individual strands of marble sculpted by a loving artist.
Though he had never seen the vampire before; Francis knew who he was. He was more famous than Nur himself - although that was probably because Nur had gone into his 'sleep' before many of the vampires walking the earth today were born – the vampire that every vampire had heard of; the only vampire that had withstood the light and searing intensity of the sun. Francis cast around in his mind for the fanciful name that had been given to the vampire, remembering it from half-forgotten conversations with Magnus.
The Immortal Cyclops.
Francis recalled the tales that told of the vampire; the ones that spoke of how his brother Alexander had lashed him to the gates outside the castle the coven lived in, and left him to burn in the sun. They also mentioned how the sun had not killed him, but burnt his body to a charcoal black, and melted an eye. An hour or so after dawn he had broken free and fled eventually to parts unknown.
The stories would have to be re-written, Francis mused. For one thing, the Immortal Cyclops's hiding place had been discovered, and for another, the twenty or so centuries he had been hidden underground had returned him to his white state. And, with the healing powers an ancient vampire has, his face showed no signs of the melting. His eye had also grown back, and he could not honestly be called a Cyclops anymore. His real name, however, had been forgotten all those years ago, and only Nur, Alexander, and perhaps Nathaniel could be able to recall it. If Cyclops himself could not recall it, he would be called 'the Immortal Cyclops' whenever he walked among the living – and the undead – again.
Francis was reflecting on the fact that only the sun, and maybe a very strong fire, could kill a normal vampire – none of the falsified stakes through the heart or garlic stuff – when Nathaniel spoke. He had walked into the room with Alexander.
"Nur cannot be woken without waking your brother first, Nur has seen to that. I think he foresaw your coming, and saw this as an excellent way to settle a three thousand year dispute. The memento will waken your brother, and not Nur himself."
"That is why I brought the telepath along." Alexander replied. "He will waken Nur directly."
Nathaniel smiled. "You are as devious as ever, Alexander," he said frostily, "but Nur has outsmarted you. If you use the telepath, Nur will indeed waken, but so will your brother, because you have to use the artefact you dredged up to channel the telepathic powers."
Alexander pushed past him and removed the artefact from the inside of his coat, setting it on the floor, motioning for Francis to come forward into the room.
"I'm looking forward to the meeting," he said shortly.
x-----x-----x
Remus entered the room softly, carrying the candles he had pillaged from other rooms. It was midnight by now, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.
He put the thought out of his mind as he sat down on Alexander's chair.
He leaned back and waited, seemingly indifferent, while in actuality he was using his power to bring the food and drinks he had gotten for the three from the refrigerator the worker's had been using. His mind was occupied with the long passageways he could not see, but had to bring the trays up.
The three mortal's looked up in astonishment as a tray laden with chocolate, cold rack of lamb, bread, and a Caesar salad floated through the opening Remus had kicked in. It was followed by a tray with a couple of bottles of Red wine, four cans of beer, and two wine glasses.
The three mutants stared at the trays until they came to rest squarely on the table in the middle of the room, then they simultaneously looked at Remus. He smiled apologetically.
"Sorry, but the diet I'm on doesn't allow any of that rich stuff. Go on ahead, stuff yourselves. I'll watch."
There were no smiles of course, but they moved forward to take the food. It was midnight, and they were hungry. As they leaned forward, plates and silverware came swishing over their heads and landed in front of them, startling them. There were a couple of accusing glares at Remus before they all took their food and started eating. They were as comfortable with him as he could expect them to be, they knew for certain that he would not kill them until the tale was completely told. After that, they would see. He waited until they finished eating, ten minutes later, and apologized for the cold dinner. Then, leaning back comfortably, like he himself had just eaten a tasty heavy meal, he continued with the story. They leaned forward unconsciously, to catch the full effect of the varying nuances of his voice.
"And now for the second part of my tale," he began, "my vampire life."
x-----x-----x
"It was painful even to move, and there was this desperate hunger in me. Slowly I got up off the street, barely thinking rationally. I could not even identify the thirst that seemed to be flowing through my veins. I half walked, half staggered to the wall of a nearby shop, and sagged against it.
"I leaned there wondering what had happened to me. I looked at my hands, and I saw they had become very white, not as white as they are now, but even back then there was a marked difference.
"I cursed then, softly, as I saw my hands, and in doing so, I cut my tongue on my teeth, something that had not happened since I had been about five or six years old. I wanted to see what alteration had taken place, so I looked around and saw a puddle nearby. I ran towards it and arrived at it in about half the time I would have normally, and for a second I stood there wondering what I had done. Then I bent my head to look into the puddle and see what changes had befallen me.
"I noticed immediately that my eyesight was much better, as I could make out every feature of my face in the darkness lit only by a few torches. My canine teeth had sharpened, and it was on one of them that I had cut my tongue. With considerable astonishment I noticed that my tongue had also healed. My hair also seemed thicker, fuller, more lustrous, but I hardly noticed it because I was staring at my eyes in horror.
"What had once been simply black now looked like an abyss sucking light from its surroundings. My irises, red when I was human, were filled with a strange crimson glow that pulsed and flickered as my dismay waxed and waned. Every vampire's eyes reflect the emotion their owner is feeling by changing in shade and hue as I was to find out later, but at that moment I would have probably gone mad from the terror I felt had I stared at them any longer."
Madeline interrupted him. "Er, Remus, your eyes are red and all, but they aren't scary. They don't seem too intimidating. Um, just thought you'd want to know."
He smiled at her, eyes a muted red, "I've been keeping them that way, actually, Madeline, for the benefit of you three. You people would not want to look at them as they really are, as they can be."
"Can you show us what they're really like?" Madeline asked, her face eager.
"Maybe you shouldn't, Maddy," James interjected. "If you get a heart attack an' all, I'd haveta try an' kill this guy." He was serious, Remus mused, as he nodded to Madeline to tell her he would show her what his eyes truly looked like. He bowed his head down and closed his eyes, relaxing all the conscious and unconscious restraints he had put on them. Then he jerked his head upward, opening his eyes and mouth as well, in the snarl he used before he went for a victim's jugular.
Both the girls screamed, and James jerked up in his chair. After the first shock, they all averted their gaze, and Jessica sagged in her chair, holding her heart, while Madeline hugged James fiercely. Remus looked in a mirror in the room to see what the effect had been like.
The black part of his eye he had described was, as he had said, drawing the light from all around it, but even it could not dull the luminescence with which his irises shown, brighter than he had ever remembered. They were roaring scarlet fires that seemed to reach out of his face to burn onlookers. His face looked maniacal in that moment, with the glowing eyes, as well as the protruding fangs between his bloodless lips. His face was the face of a demon. The face.. of a vampire.
And there was no changing that.
He waited for a few moments, letting the girl's compose themselves, then he picked up the thread of his tale again.
"As I was saying, and as you just saw, my eyes were horrifying. I ran about in delirium, wanting to scratch my face, running into an alleyway where a beggar had made his bed.
"I fell across the beggar, not having seen him in my dementia, but as soon as I heard the beat of his heart – for indeed my hearing was keener too – I pounced on him, drinking his blood without even thinking about the monstrosity of the sin I had committed. I drank and drank until there was no blood in him, and then I lurched up. The taste of blood had been ecstasy, and I wanted more, like a virgin does. Thinking no clearly than before, I ran towards a butcher shop I spied near the end of the street. After my initial horror I did not pause for once to wonder what had happened to me, what I was doing, what was wrong with me that I took such pleasure in killing. I knew only that I needed blood.
"The door to the butcher's shop burst easily. I concede that it could have done that because of the cheap quality of the timber, as opposed to the massive strength I had acquired, but I doubt it.
"I don't want to describe what happened in there in great detail, but I will tell you that I drank all the blood from the meat – mind you, there wasn't too much because cold storage was not discovered then – and I happily realised that old blood would help me last if no fresh blood was around.
"After I had drunk the blood from the carcasses, I killed and drained the butcher's dog of all his blood."
Remus paused, watching the look of revulsion on all three faces. "I am what I am," he said coldly, "I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it, but I try to do the best I can." James looked like he was about to say something, but Remus held up a hand. "I'm continuing the story," he said, "if you have any snide remarks to make, jot them down and tell me later. I want to get this done with today."
"I roamed the streets aimlessly," (he continued) "until I experienced a queasy sensation in my stomach, like one gets when he knows something bad is about to happen. I did not realise what it was then, but I knew that I had to hide from something. The sun did not strike me as a threat because I had not been brought up on stories of vampires and ghosts unlike the simple peasants. It also was about an hour away from dawn, and the sky was still pitch black. In those early days, I could not even wait around to see the yellowing clouds; that was how weak I was.
"I knew instinctively that I had to hide, and I wisely chose to do it in one of the few houses of that time which had a basement. I went to sleep after latching the door to the basement shut, knowing only that my privacy must not be intruded upon, and that I hide as far underground as I possibly could.
"I awoke the next day, at about an hour after sunset. It was only then that the full horror of what I had done hit me. I spent a few minutes crying in the darkness, and then I felt all emotion leave me.
"I rose out of my hiding place and walked outside. When I looked at my hands in the flickering torchlight of nearby fires, I saw they were covered in blood, and I did not feel scared. I noted coldly that I cried tears of blood, and that was that. Then I went along silently, looking for victims.
"As I walked, I thought of my predicament, of how I had killed Belle, and I felt no shock or remorse. None at all. It all seemed so distant as to be the life of another man."
Remus looked intently into their eyes. He grinned humourlessly. "This is the important part," he said, "you people might want to consider running after what I tell you."
"The reason for this sudden dying out of emotion was the development of an alter ego. This alter ego was the vampire, the emotionless killing machine. He existed only to continue his life, by murdering others, and he found pleasure only in the act of killing. I initially thought he had come into existence because Magnus, my creator, had been in a royal fit of detached uncaringness when he made me, and had somehow transferred that detachment onto me.
"I had thought that even a few weeks ago, but then I realised that it had not been Magnus who had made me a distant, uncaring vampire, but it was my own mind which had created such a personality. The sole purpose of this personality had been to withstand any emotional shock without a scar."
James interrupted. "I'm confused," he growled, his tone indicating that it was Remus's fault, that Remus had not done his best to make them understand.
"I was going to kill myself," Remus clarified, "if not because of the monster I had become, then certainly because of what I had done to Belle. This new personality did not care about anything, and so he took over, putting me in the background."
Madeline interjected, eyes wide, "So, so you're – you're –" she stopped for a second, incredulous, "a schizophrenic?" Remus nodded.
"So are you, are you the cold-blooded killer, or the happy-go-lucky mortal?" she asked, then stopped suddenly, eyes widening further, as if something had been made very clear to her. After a second she spoke in an embarrassed, empty-headed voice, "I guess we wouldn't be alive if you were the emotionless killer, right?" James shook his head at the naiveté of the question.
Remus nodded mechanically, his concentration fixed on the telepathic message Madeline had fired at him under cover of her seemingly brainless blunder.
So you're the long-lost human, huh? I'm willing to bet you actually are in love with Jessica, and I'm willing to bet that it was she who made you realise this reason for the split personality. I'm also betting that you've recovered from Belle's death and your split personality isn't needed anymore. Am I right?
Correct on all counts, Madeline he thought back, then without waiting for another moment he began the story again.
"Anyway, as I was saying, this new personality completely submerged my old one, and for almost all of my entire vampire life, I, the person speaking to you at this moment, was a small part of the vampire's personality, and I didn't know that I had been a whole human being once.
"I can now recall having unconsciously made some suggestions, such as implanting the desire to kill Magnus because I felt he had done this to me, but on the whole, I was mute, remote, playing, if you will, the role of the vampire Remus's conscience. It was a small role, at that.
"Anyway, continuing with the story, by the time a few days had passed after my mortal death, I was completely submerged by the vampire Remus. Through the eyes of this vampire, I saw all the kills he made, the ruthless efficiency with which he disposed of the evidence. To avoid any confusion, I'll refer to this period in my life as being witnessed by me, and not the vampire, but I want you all to remember just who was in the driving seat.
"After a few days, I figured out that I needed to hide from the sun, that I needed blood to live, that all my senses were keener than before. For a few weeks, killing was the only thing I consciously thought about. Then I began wondering, were there others like me? I searched and searched throughout what Paris was at that time, but I found no others like me. At that time, I did not even know what to call myself.
"Eventually, about a year later, I left the city, chose a random road, and began following it. In later years, I realised that someone had been directing my movements from the time I had become a vampire, but at that time, I thought of taking that particular road as a chance fluke.
"I had travelled for a few days, when I came across an old castle. Fires were lit around it, and with my sensitive ears I could hear the sounds of laughter and merriment coming from inside the walls. Without knowing it, I had discovered my first and only vampire coven.
"A vampire coven is a collection of any vampires' in the nearby region. A good-sized coven can have about five to ten members; any more in one area leads to a severe shortage of food after a short time, as you can imagine. The coven has a leader, and the leader can command every aspect of the other vampires' lives. He is usually the oldest, and is the only vampire allowed to kill another vampire, if he thinks it best for his coven, but the vampire he kills must be from his own coven. The leader can give orders to the other vampires', but he mostly leaves his coven to do as they will, only stopping them from getting out of hand on occasion.
"So, I made my way towards the castle, not knowing that these were vampires', not knowing that my presence had been monitored since I had left Paris, not knowing that there was a vampire feast going on. I also did not know that if I had been mortal, I would have been carried off as a feast to the castle by now.
"So, I made my way to the castle, thinking that a party meant plenty of people I could surreptitiously drain, a few mouthfuls from each – the little drink - so that I would have my fill without the inconvenience of murder.
"I made my way to the castle, knocked on the doors', and was admitted inside. What I saw there surprised even my aloof vampire self.
"I stood inside the passageway, looking into the main hall. There were about seven or eight vampires there, and of them all save two were gorging themselves on young men and women – from the nearby villages, I judged by their clothes – while the other two looked at me.
"One was an angry-faced man. He had shoulder length blonde hair, and pale blue eyes. He had been about twenty eight or so when he had been made, frozen forever at that age. The other, I recognized as the person who had made me a vampire. He had long white hair, the greyest blue eyes I had seen, and the bearing of a king, though I must say the other was no less regal. I guessed him to be about fifty or sixty – a ripe old age back then.
"The old me wanted to kill him right there, even though I would in all probability be destroyed before even hurting him; but the new me just stood there, as still and impassive as those two. For about a minute or two, we just stared at each other, then the white haired vampire spoke to the other.
" 'Was this really such a good idea, Alexander?' he asked, his voice so low I could barely make out what he had said. Alexander nodded curtly to him and walked towards me, with the ghost of a smile on his face. In all the years since I have known him, that half-smile was the closest he came to looking happy. Something in his psyche prevents him from feeling any joy whatsoever."
"Prevents him? As in prevents him right now?" James interposed. Remus nodded, smiling.
"He's very much alive, James. Oh, don't look so disturbed; vampires are very much a part of the modern world. You didn't think I was the only one around, did you? Cheer up man, most of the vampires' alive today were Born within the past two hundred years. Not too many of the old ones are still around. They just get morbid after a while; it seems their lives have no purpose, no direction. There's just killing to stay alive for no reason at all. Eternal life can be quite boring, you realise. So these old vampires' just go off and kill themselves when they can't take it anymore, by the heat of a fire, mostly. Not too many have the guts to stay in the sun. So if you meet any vampire on the street, he won't be too powerful." Remus paused, peering at James. "James, have another beer, you're looking positively pale." He waited until James had emptied a can, which took about three seconds, and then resumed the narrative.
"So, as I was saying, he was smiling, and he came with his arms slightly outstretched – stiffly, mind you – and he spoke some words of welcome to me. The white haired vampire came behind him and stood there until my welcome was finished, then he said,
" 'You know I made you what you are without your consent. Why are you not angry?'
" 'Anger serves no purpose,' I replied, with the absence of emotion that had become my hallmark. They exchanged quick glances, and I thought I detected some astonishment emanating from them. I'm not sure about that, of course; they were much too powerful to let anyone detect their emotions.
" 'My name is Alexander,' said the blonde haired vampire, 'and this is the leader of our coven, Magnus. Come; let me introduce you to the others.' He led me into the dimly lit main hall, where the other vampires were having their feast. Because of the presence of only one or two torches, I could not make out their features too clearly.
"He led me around, telling me their names. There were the men, Mikhail and Piotrvich, brothers, and the women, Elizabeth, Katherine, and Moira. They were all mutants except for Moira."
"There are non-mutant vampires?" James asked. Remus nodded.
"Some are," he said, "but most vampires tend to be mutants, because the x-gene seems to facilitate the process by which a vampire grows in power over time. I can tell you that I myself can take on and kill a twenty-five hundred year non-mutant vampire. It's Darwin's survival of the fittest, actually. A non-mutant vampire is much weaker than a mutant vampire, just as a human is weaker than a mutant.
"Anyway, there they were, all gorging themselves, pausing only to look at me and nod for a second before getting back to their feasting. There was one vampire however, who was not drinking like the others. He was lying like a broken doll in the corner. I asked about him, and was told that his name was Francis, and that he had never drunk blood in his life, except for when he had been made. At that time he could move around a bit, but he preferred to lie quietly."
"What happened to all of them?" Madeline asked.
"I'll tell you as I go on with the story," Remus replied, "and if you people keep interrupting, it'll take till tomorrow or the day after. I want it to finish by today, okay?" he paused, waiting for their nods of acceptance. "Good. Just bear with me here. I'll be telling you a condensed version of the events that took place."
