The Carpathian Mountains, 1331-1484
His nose was overwhelmed with smells, ears filled with sounds; a snapping bough, a scurrying squirrel and distant howls of wolves. Opening the eyes, he sat up; he was naked and in a snowy, freezing cold forest. He didn't know what had happened, his mind was clouded. He sat up, trying to remember who he was. Then, suddenly there was just the...
Hunger.
He felt as though he had not eaten anything for an uncountably long time. His stomach was cramping, the hunger was the only thing in his thoughts. And then a single sound broke its way through the darkness; the sound of eating squirrel. He jumped up on the tree and caught the squirrel and sunk the teeth into it and drank hungrily, gulping its blood into his mouth.
But it wasn't enough; it only made the hunger feel worse, he caught the smells of various small animals. Then he again heard the distant howl, and a feral grin took up his face as he started to run. The hunt was on.
After a short while, he entered the wolf pack's territory and in no time had caught the first wolf, but, the wolf surprised him by biting his hand. He snarled and grabbed the wolf by the neck, and his punishing jaws clenched around her throat.
The warm blood flowed into his mouth, he saw her whole life, from a cub to this moment, and then she was gone. He threw the dead body of a wolf away, he had drained her dry, but the hunger still burned him. He hunted down the next wolf and the next and the next, and it didn't matter how many wolves he ate, it only slightly alleviated the hunger.
When the sun was getting up. He stood there, naked, knee-deep in the snow, the wolf blood dripping over shoulders from the hair. He looked blankly at the horizon until the sky turned blood red, which slowly was replaced by pink. When the first burning rays of the sun hit his eyes, he growled in annoyance; the brightness hurt his eyes.
He dug a deep hole into the ground and buried himself under dirt and snow, feeling comfortable there he fell into a dreamless sleep.
When he woke up, he dug out from the makeshift grave and looked around, the sky was blood red, the sun was setting, and the sunlight made his eyes itch. He sat down, full of dazed wonders, until the hunger again burnt his soul; a hasty expression of pain and anger escaped his lips.
A long space of time came and went as he was sitting there, wondering what had happened to him. Then the hunger became too much to resist, he had to hunt before he'd go insane and he started to run, sniffing the air as he ran. Soon the scent of blood entered his nostrils, and he followed the smell of blood lingering in the air.
He found a bear surrounded by snarling monster wolves with glowing red eyes. He felt as if the wolves had been part of him. He growled at them, and they backed away from the battered bear. Ignoring bears wildly swinging claws, he leaped on him and ripped his throat open and drank. After he had drained the bear, he left the body for wolves to devour and sat down to watch the wolves, hungrily ate the body of the bear blood.
After they had eaten the monster wolves gathered around him, they were snarling and growling, but they weren't attacking, they were looking at him with expectant eyes. He nodded and got up. Again, the hunt was on. They hunted through the night and caught another bear, a few rabbits, and other small creatures. When the sunrise was coming, he watched it until the sun was up and then again dug a hole into the freezing cold ground, laid there pulling the dirt and snow to his blanket and soon he fell asleep.
Next dusk, when he woke up, the wolves were gone, but he sensed other creatures that were part of him, he sent a mental order for them to come and sat down to wait. Before long two monster bears, a herd of rabbits with sharp fangs and glowing eyes, small rodents with fangs, all kinds of monster creatures gathered around him.
And, again, the hunt was on.
And so, the time passed on; he slept the bright light of the day away and hunted with the different monsters every night. The coldness of the winter turned to the warmth of the spring and summer only to be pushed away when the winter again came, and then the next summer pushed the coldness away. Summers and winters came and went, and for countless summers, he was happy living his life that way.
But, as time went by, he started to wonder what had happened to him, and he started to ask questions. Where had he come from? Was he the only one of his kind in the world? How long had he lived like this? He felt dazed and muddled every time he tried to remember what had happened to him, and only the great silence answered. He liked the life in the forest but wanted to know who and what he was. Slowly, but surely, he started to understand that there was no chance that his curiosity would be satisfied if he stayed in the woods.
That was why, one night, he started to walk a straight line, thinking that if he'd walk long enough eventually, he'd meet someone else like him. He had begun to think that he could not be alone in this world, that there had to be more beings like him. For a long time, he had walked a straight line when he suddenly smelled foul smells; bitter, angry, and ugly smells. On the next night, he got a fresh scent trail of an animal that smelled so delicious that it made him drool.
Their smell was mixed with a dead deer, he could smell its blood, and he wrinkled his nose; he didn't much like the blood of herbivores, their blood tasted stale. The blood of carnivores tasted a lot better. As he followed the delicious scent trail the monsters, two wolves and five wolf-cubs, seven otters, and a badger followed him. They were his hunting partners for the night.
Soon he smelled that three more warm blood animals joined the two original ones; they were carrying a dead elk. After a short while, he saw them; five beings that looked just like him; hairless and walking with two feet. They were gathered around a fire beside a river. For a while, he watched them, and then he walked to them. When he stepped into the light of the fire, they froze and looked at him. Then they laughed, but their elder shut them up and came to him, offering a blanket. He said something, but he didn't understand him.
The elder shrugged and said something, and then he placed a blanket around his shoulders. The elder frowned when his hands touched his skin, and he looked at his friends and said something to them. The elder then led him close to the fire, and the men started to talk. They spoke rapidly, and he didn't understand them. Then one of the monster-wolf-cubs that had followed him for a long time came, and as they saw it, they grabbed their bows and shot it. The wolf attacked the closest man, and as it bit the man, a delicious smell filled his nostrils. He caught the elder and pulled him into his embrace. The Elder's eyes widened with terror, and he screamed as he sunk the fangs into his neck.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared him for what happened next. The Elder's blood tasted life and power, and it poured into him. The power and his life, from the moment he'd become aware of himself to the moment he realized that he was dying.
Then he heard a deafening bang and felt a slight pain in his left shoulder blade, it didn't really hurt, but it made him drop the old man's body to the ground and spun around. A small blond cub was pointing him with a stick that flashed with a loud boom, and then he felt something hitting in his chest, causing mild pain. He grabbed the cub and sunk the fangs into her neck, and again, a life flowed into him. The cub's blood was bitter and spicy and sweet. Her life, on the other hand... she'd had a hard life. Her father, the man who should have protected her, had started to beat her when she had been only a small child, he had made his daughter's life a living hell. He dropped the dead girl and went to the girl's father, he didn't know why, but he was enraged and hated the father of the girl he'd just killed.
The man should have protected his daughter, not hurt her. The man deserved to die, he grabbed him by the shoulder, his bones shattered under his fingers, and the man screamed. He smiled as he ripped his arm off and drank from the fountain. When he was dead, he dropped his body to the ground and drained the next man. Before long, he had killed all of them, and his mind was dizzy from all of the memories he had devoured. He sat down, watching how the monsters were eating the bodies. Suddenly, when they were about to start to eat the girl's body, he got angry; the girl was his! He attacked his monsters, ripping off their limbs and heads.
When all the monster-animals were dead, he sat down and looked at his hands. "Humans," He said speaking the language he'd learned from the memories of the men and girl. Those memories confused him, but he was learning a lot about himself and them. "They were men, it means their gender and species, I am a man," he frowned. "No, I used to be one of them. But I am not a human anymore, I'm a vampire. Yes, that sounds right; I'm a vampire."
The images of the monster men digging their way out of the grave and attacking people filled his mind, that was how his prey had seen his kind; blood-sucking monsters. He shrugged, it described him well, all his life he had been hunting animals to drink their blood.
Then he felt a pull inside of his mind, and he turned to look at the body of the girl. It twitched, once, twice, thrice, and then it began to shake, and awful smells filled the air. The next thing he knew the girl sat up and turned to look at him and her eyes widened. "Monster!" she cried out, and with incredible speed, she climbed up on the tree.
He looked up at her. "I will not hurt you like your father did, I hate men like him," he smiled. "And I feel the urge to protect you."
"You are a vampire," the girl said.
"That is what their memories tell me," he replied, looking at her fangs sparkling in the sun. "You have fangs."
Hanging on a tree branch with one hand, the girl opened her mouth, and when her finger touched her fang, she flinched and dropped down to the ground. She looked at the bleeding finger and then sucked the blood. "I am a vampire," she looked at him. "You turned me into a vampire."
He nodded. "So, it seems… tell me more about what we are? All these memories in my mind are… confusing and… incomprehensible."
The girl looked at him. "You don't know what you are?" she asked with a cocked eyebrow.
He nodded. "I now know that I am a vampire, but I do not know who I am."
The girl frowned looking him for a long moment. "You don't remember who you are?"
"No."
"You cannot teach me how to be a vampire?"
"I can teach you how to hunt," he replied.
The girl smiled. "Yes, I want to learn that..."
"Good, because that is all I know how to do."
"What's your name? I'm Helena."
"I don't know my name or if I even have one."
The girl sighed. "Oh, right, if you cannot remember who you are, you don't know your name," she glanced at the bodies of the men twitching around them. "Are they going to wake up as vampires too?"
He looked at her, sensing the fear in her when she looked at her father's body. "They always wake up, most are mindless, some are like me. But I have learned that, if I want to kill my monsters, I must rip off their heads."
"Can you…." Helena looked at her father's body, twitching. "Pull off his head?"
He smiled and went to her father, grabbed his head, and pulled it off of his shoulders. He brought the head to the girl as a gift but frowned when she backed away. He shrugged and tossed the head away. "He cannot hurt you, none of them can," he said, and one by one ripped off the heads of the waking men. "They are dead now."
"Thank you," Helena said and frowned. "What should I call you?"
"I don't know."
Helena was silent for a long moment. "The first man in the bible is called Adam, do you want to be Adam?" she, at last, asked.
He nodded. "Adam sounds a good name, Helena," he said. "You should wash, you smell… awful."
Helena looked down at her wand, wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I smell poo and pee..."
"Yes, that is what all the monsters smell when they wake up."
Helena looked at him for a long moment. "You are not going to… do bad things to me if I undress?"
Adam growled. "No one will hurt you ever again, you're mine to protect, and I will kill anyone trying to hurt you."
Helena smiled broadly. "Thank you, Adam," then she went into one of the tents, and when she came out, she had a pile of clothes with her. Helena placed them on the ground. Then she undressed and went to the river to wash. "the water is cold, but I don't feel cold," she stated as she was washing.
Adam frowned and searched the memories of the men he had killed buzzing inside of his mind, and then he nodded. "No, I have never felt cold or hot," he looked at her walking out of the river. "Can you teach me how to be a man?"
Helena looked at him as she was dressing up. "You need to clean yourself and then dress up."
Adam washed in the river and when he got out of the cold-water Helena was waiting for him. The next fifteen minutes, she helped him put on the clothes of the men he had just killed. "Now you look like a man," she said.
Adam nodded and again examined the memories of the men. "The village is close by, isn't it?"
"Yes, the village is down at the valley," Helena replied.
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes, yes, I am."
Adam nodded. "I'm not hungry, but I believe you need a lot of blood to finalize your transformation. Let's go to the village, human blood tastes better than anything I have tasted."
Helena took his hand. "I'll show you how to behave in there."
As Adam followed the girl, he sensed her emotions flickering from fear to excitement to bliss. He shook his head, wondering how he could feel her emotions and how she could have so many overlapping emotions happening at the same time. When they got to the village, it was full of life, but it all was going on inside of the houses. The streets were almost empty.
The village itself was laid out around a central building with a huge bell at the tower. The small houses that ringed the church were wood and plaster buildings looking like something which would fall over if a hard wind would blow over them. When a couple walked toward them, the man smiled at Helena. "Helena," He said, looking at Adam. "Is he your dad's friend?"
Without answering, Helena jumped on the man's chest, wrapping her tiny legs around his torso and her fangs sunk into the man's throat. Adam bit into the jugular of the woman, and as the delicious human blood flowed into his mouth, he kept his eyes on Helena; he was proud of his girl.
But soon after they had finished with the couple, the doors of the buildings opened, and people armed with axes, swords, and bows came out. An arrow flew toward Helena, but Adam picked the arrow from the air before it had hit Helena and tossed it back and it sunk deep into the chest of the man who had shot Helena, who jumped on the dying man, sinking her fangs into the man's neck.
Again, Adam felt proud when he watched Helena, the smell of blood was intoxicating, but he resisted the urge to kill. Then something hit Adam on the head, and when he turned to look at the man, he saw only terror in his eyes. Adam grabbed the man by the shoulder and then drank from him.
As he was drinking the rest of the people surrounding him attacked. The time slowed down as he ripped arms and heads off from all twelve attacking men and drank their blood. But his hunger hadn't been fulfilled, he looked at the people around him, they were too terrified to even run away. By now, Adam had lost all his coherent thoughts, and only one word echoed in his mind:
Kill!
Adam grabbed the nearest person by the throat and sunk fangs on her throat, took few gulps before he ripped her head off and spun around, plunged his both hands into chests of two men, pulled their hearts out and then turned to the next prey. He and Helena had become killing machines that were pulling heads, arms, legs off and drinking their blood.
During their rampage, a few men managed to shoot at Helena and Adam, but they were berserk vampires full of blood, they barely noticed the wounds they got.
It didn't take two of them long to kill everyone in the village.
When there wasn't anyone to kill anymore, Adam grabbed the arm of the ax buried deep in his head and pulled it out. Then he began to pull out the arrows and blades from his body. While he was doing that, Helena looked at the bodies surrounding her, and her eyes widened. Then she dropped to her knees and began to cry, curling into a fetal position.
Adam went to her and picked her up. "What is it? Why are you… crying?"
"I killed them!" Helena screamed. "I killed them all!"
Adam pulled the girl tightly against his body and instinctively began to stroke her back. "It's okay," He said as he walked into the church in the middle of the village.
"No, it is not! I killed them all!" Helena cried, burying her face in his chest.
Inside of the building, Adam sat down, holding the crying girl in his embrace, letting her cry her heart out, not knowing what else he could do. He held the wailing and crying girl, trying to do his best to comfort her until she fell asleep in his lap. After Helena had fallen asleep, Adam gently laid him on the church bench.
Then he sighed and ripped off the heads of the bodies inside of the church. After that, he methodically went through the village and ripped off the heads of the bodies. He didn't really care if they woke up as monsters or not, but he did it for Helena. Adam was sure that if the girl waked up surrounded by the dead monster people, she would be terrified, and Adam didn't want that.
All he wanted was Helena to be happy.
For weeks Adam and tried to make Helena come back life, but she just kept weeping, he barely managed to make her drink from the animals he brought to her. He had to hold the living animal on her face and cut a small would into them to make her drink. For a long time, Adam was sure that she would never get over them, killing all the people in the small village she had been born and raised. A few times he killed the people who came to the village, and every time he did that Helena fell back on silent sobbing.
Then he took Helena on his lap and began to walk toward the rising sun. Further away they got from her home village more often, Helena was willing to drink. Three weeks he had been traveling when Helena spoke.
"Can I die?" She asked.
"I don't know," Adam replied. "Do you want to die?"
Helena was silent for a long moment. "No, I don't want to die, but I don't want to be a monster either," she looked at him. "Can I stop myself?"
"Doing what?" Adam asked.
"Murdering people, can I stop myself doing that?"
"Yes, or, at least, I can. In the village, I resisted the urge to kill until they attacked me. If I can do it, you can do it."
Helena nodded. "Can you teach that to me?"
"I don't know, maybe if we start with animals. I bring an animal and make a cut, and you resist the urge to drink as long as you can. I don't expect you to be able to resist it forever at first, but we can do it until you can stop yourself drinking from them."
Helena smiled weakly. "Let's try that," she sighed. "I envy you, Adam."
Adam frowned. "Why?"
"You don't feel anything."
"I have feelings," Adam said.
"You don't feel guilty about killing people."
"No, I don't. They are my prey, just like a rabbit is a wolf's prey."
Helena shook her head. "People aren't preys."
"Yes, they are, if they'd be predators, they would have eaten us."
Helena giggled surprising him. "Adam, you are strange."
"Perhaps others are strange?"
"No, you are strange," Helena looked into his eyes. "Do you feel anything else? Does anything make you happy?"
"I feel… I feel a need to hold you, that makes me happy," Adam picked her on his lap and smiled at the girl. "You make me happy."
TBC
AN: In this story, Helena is abused in all the ways a girl-child can be abused, except she's still a virgin. The reason for her virginity is because her pedophiliac psychopath of a father had planned to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.