Chapter 1: Returning to the World

Three nights hadn't shaken the feeling. The time between Wednesday and Sunday seemed to stretch on forever, making him feel as if every single minute was an hour. The nights were too long and the days were even longer as he had nothing to do then.

I can't remember the last time I had something to do during the day, he thought, staring out the window as he lay on his side on the tattered red couch. Cold rain beat against the windows, but a few rays of sun were piercing the clouds, signaling the shower's end. After a few more hours the puddles would become ice and someone would have to throw salt on the ground. It was close to noon. The hours passed and he remained on the couch. He didn't have the energy to get up and walk around and he hadn't eaten or drank anything besides blood so he didn't have to pee. Even a good shower was the last thing on his mind.

Three days worth of mail piled up in his private box downstairs, but he didn't care. It was mostly junk mail and the occasional letter from a friend traveling abroad. The phone rang. His answering machine was turned off. After the fifth ring the other end gave up. People came to his door. A pair of Jehovah's Witnesses, a Girl Scout with her mother trying to sell cookies, someone from the Relay For Life fund trying to collect donations. Sean could tell with his enhanced senses, but none of the callers were interesting enough to compel him to answer.

When the rain ended and the clouds were clearing up, a light wind picked up and howled against the windows. The rhythm lulled him back to sleep.

He stood there in the middle of a city, though he didn't know which. But all around him were the bodies of his clan, fallen and bloody as if there had been a battle here. Some were in the road or on the side walk; others were draped over vehicles or fallen against a building. In a sheath beneath the blazer he wore was a knife made from Spanish steel, with an emblem of a wolf carved from blue cobalt and embedded into the handle, where the blade met the soft brown leather. It was his twenty-first birthday present from James Reed, and when he pulled it from the sheath he found that it was as blood stained as the bodies surrounding him. His clothes were clean as if they had just been taken out of the laundry, and he didn't have any wounds or injuries on his body.

Neither confused nor one hundred percent aware of his situation, Sean stepped over the bodies of his fallen clansmen. There must have been more than two hundred Gangrel in the street alone, but he couldn't be certain. Some were beheaded; others had died of severe blood loss or other dismemberment. A few had been killed while in animal form and had not changed back. Though he couldn't really tell one way or the other, Sean was sure that all of them had been of his generation or younger.

Something was keeping him from looking up, but as he looked ahead he could see a sliver of the empty sky. But as he walked down the street he could see the bodies of other clans, also killed in any number of ways. One body was so badly dismembered that he could barely tell if it had been vampire or human much less what clan it belonged to.

As he walked he began to pick out familiar features in the buildings. The sea was close by and a few boats were moored to the docks. This city was familiar now because it had been the city where his fate was once decided by a council of Kindred. It was the city where James Reed now sat in the Council of New England.

As he began to recognize the city he began to also recognize the bodies of fallen Kindred. The faces of his fellow primogen stared up at him, wide-eyed with the shock of their deaths. He saw his fellow clan members and close friends dismembered and laying about. Terrance lying beside the girl who had died last week, Ryan McVeigh, Jeff Coulter, and Alex Sanchez spread out over one another. Ryan's hands still clutched his drumsticks and Jeff and Alex had their guitars close by. Their van with the Rabid Monks logo was on its side, crashed into a music store and burning slowly, while CD's and pamphlets littered the sidewalk and the streets surrounding them. In a police car, slumped over the wheel was Andrew, and in the passenger seat Aaron's head hung out the window. Both of his surviving childer had gaping holes in their hearts and their eyes, though certainly dead, watched him as he walked by. Trent, Kyle, Dennis, Benjamin, the initiates, and the Brujah guards all followed his every step all watching with gazes that conveyed longing, hatred, and envy.

Sean remembered a time in high school when his creative writing class took a trip to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. One painting in particular stood out to him. It was a painting of a well dressed man with deep blue eyes, done by a German artist back in the mid 1700's. When Sean took two steps in any direction the eyes seemed to follow him. It sent chills down his spine then, and it was doing it now as he looked down at the bodies of his friends.

Suddenly he was no longer surrounded by bodies. Wolves stood where Kindred lay dead, and they all looked at him expectantly. A person in human form walked towards him.

Her robes seemed to float behind her and she was as clean and unsoiled as he was. Even though she walked with a purpose, she gazed about her, absorbing her surroundings as though she were equally confused about what was going on.

Once she was closer Sean recognized her as the one responsible for the deaths of more than forty Kindred, and countless more humans. He recognized her as the one he fought in the woods near Lake Paran, impaling her before she could kill one more. He recognized her as the one who ordered the death of one of his precious progeny. Anger welled within him as she came to a stop and noticed him finally. Her expression went from confusion to shock.

"But I…I thought I killed you!" Her voice was empty and she dropped to her knees.

"Reality bites." Sean replied, taking his knife out and swiping.

Before the blade found its mark the girl disappeared, and a man with short dark hair looked up at him. He failed to notice the man until the blade cut through flesh, and by that time it was too late. The Kindred who now stood in the place of the girl died instead of her. Sean looked down at the man who looked at him with look of desperate silence.

"I'm sorry," Sean said, dropping the knife. "If I'd seen you I wouldn't have-"

The man's body hit the ground before he could finish, and the head rolled onto the ground.

Sean shot up from the couch and looked around in a startled sweat. Desperately he looked about him, trying to get his bearings. Like a sailor in the water trying to stay a float Sean's eyes passed over his familiar surroundings, as if they would keep him anchored in reality. The marble counter, which separated the kitchen and living room, the refrigerator, the toaster, blender, and microwave, the stove and the sink, the Star Wars clock above the stove with the Deathstar hour hand on the one and the X-Wing minute hand on the twelve, the limited edition tri-dimensional chess set from his mortal life set up on a table by the window with two collapsible lounge chairs, one blue and one red. Posters of favorite bands and foreign countries decorated the walls and the concrete spaces between the windows, and glow in the dark stars lit up the ceiling.

Sean went into his bedroom where he kept an unofficial library on an old wooden shelf. Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Poe, the complete Animorphs series. All the books of his mortal youth assured him that he was still in the world and that nothing had changed. On top of the shelf were picture frames containing memories of his friends. The Theater Arts class after their first production of the Diary of Anne Frank. Jeff Coulter and Ryan McVeigh were in the class that year, both still human. Mr. Foley and Mr. Peterson stood on opposite sides of the group smiling proudly, although that first night was hardly anything to be proud of.

Finally tired of being a permanent fixture in the house, Sean put some water on the stove and took a quick shower while it simmered to a boil. When he was washed up and dressed in clean clothes, he made himself a cup of hot chocolate in a thermos and flipped on his answering machine. He took out all the mail from his post box and tossed most of it in the recycling bin. Then, without a second thought, he reentered the world for the first time in three nights.