Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1499

During the years Adam and Helena traveled in Eastern Europe, they both learned many things about the world and human society and what their abilities were. Even though physically, Helena stayed same than the day she had been turned into a vampire, psychologically Helena grew fast, and they became equals.

In fact, Adam relied on Helena's knowledge and ingenuity, and most of the time, she made the decisions for him.

Adam had nothing against that.

After they had learned that it was their bite that turned people, Helena had created a theory that Adam was the first of their kind of a vampire, that he had lived centuries alone in the forest. Not knowing that some of the animals he'd bitten had been turned into vampires and they, in turn, had bitten humans infecting them with the vampirism.

They were in Constantinople when Helena suddenly froze and tilted her head to look at two men following them. "I can hear their thoughts," she said.

"Huh?" Adam said, looking at the men. He had learned to interpret people's emotions from the scents they produced, and he could connect with Helena's mind and hear her thoughts, but never had he heard the thoughts of humans. "How do you do it?"

Helena looked at the men. "Just… imagine their souls and then imagine that you create a link between their souls and your mind," she growled. "they are going to rob and kill you and sell me to a slave."

Adam smiled. "Can we feed on them?"

"Yes, we can, and it is a good thing that they are murderers, I am hungry," Helena replied, holding her hands up. Adam picked her into his lap and carrying her turned to a dark alley, and started to pretend that he was tired of carrying sleeping Helena. It was one of the tricks they used to lure the street thugs into a trap. No one feared father with a small child.

Helena had gotten in the taste of the human blood, and as much as she hated killing people, she still craved the human blood too much for her to resist it. She had created her own set of rules which she could kill. Helena drank only from people she thought that the world was a better place after they had died and Adam had happily agreed on her.

Not because he cared who he killed, though he had met dozens of interesting people and even be-friended with a few men, he still saw humans as his prey and preys were there only to be fed on. Adam had learned that he liked humanity in general, but he still wasn't worrying morality of his actions, but it always upset Helena when he killed people Helena saw to be innocent. So, Adam obeyed Helena's rules to whom he could feed on.

On the dark alley, leaning on the wall, pretending to breathe hard, Adam listened to the men coming to the alley holding Helena in his lap. When Helena jumped off his lap, Adam spun around and grabbed the man behind him by the throat. He pulled the street thug to his embrace and sunk his fangs into the man's neck and gulped down every drop of his delicious blood. Then he pulled the man's head off.

While Helena was finishing her meal, Adam examined dead man's pockets, there weren't any money, but he had not expected there to be, men who attacked them rarely had any money. But they often had other interesting things in their pockets. Adam picked the blade the man had intended to kill him, he liked it.

"How many knives do you have?" Helena asked, wiping her mouth.

"Six," Adam replied. "this is a nice knife, I like how the blade shines in light blue."

"Why are you so fascinated about knives and daggers?"

Adam shrugged putting the knife into its sheath and slid it into his side pocket. "They are sharp and shiny."

Helena laughed. "You're like a magpie…. I have to introduce you to gold and diamonds."

"Huh?"

"If you like shiny things then you'll love gold and diamonds," Helena said. "let's go and find a place to stay for the day."

Adam nodded, they both hated the headaches that sunlight gave them, and mostly they slept the day away and got up when the sun was setting. Helena guided them out of the harbor, and then she hired a carriage to take them to a Hotel. Because Helena wanted to stay in Hotels, Adam, sometimes picked a rich man as his food and took his money and looted his home.

Adam hated the noises and smells of the places where humans dwelt, but he was alright traveling from a town to town and living in Hotels or houses of their victims because Helena liked to live that way. In the Hotel room he closed the curtains and laid on the floor, he hated the softness of the bed. Soon they both were fast asleep.

Sometimes Adam had strange dreams about other vampires hunting him, when he had one of those dreams, after waking up he wondered why he had been so scared of them? The vampires in his dreams seemed to be weak, and they had strange ridges on their foreheads. And their eyes were yellow, not red like his or Helena's eyes. When he had told Helena about his dreams, she concluded that he had been killed by one of those creatures and, for whatever reason, he had woken up as a different kind of a vampire. Helena was sure that his dreams confirmed her theory that he was the first of their kind.

Adam wanted to meet one of those vampires, he craved to taste their blood to find out if their blood was tastier and more powerful than human blood. "Sixteen years we have traveled, and we've never met one of our kind," he said.

Helena nodded. "I've been wondering that too."

"But we have seen several wolf-men," Adam smiled. "they are tasty."

Helena snorted. "Do you judge every person how their blood tastes?"

"No, I judge them by the way they smell," Adam replied. "where are we going to go next?"

"I was thinking about getting on a ship, I want to see the world and I don't care where the ship takes us."

"Then we should bring some animals with us unless you want to kill people on the ship."

"Yesterday I bought a flock of sheep, I'm planning to ship them with us to… where ever the ship is going."

Adam nodded and opened the curtains. "The sun is setting," he turned to Helena. "can you teach me how to get into their minds?"

"I can try, I learned how to do it accidentally," Helena closed her eyes and was silent for a long time. "I can do it without seeing them, the man in the next room is mourning his son who died in a war." She said opening her eyes. "imagine that your soul is separate from your body and let it out of your body, let it fly around, it will be drawn to the minds of the people."

Adam closed his eyes and tried to do let his soul free, but, even the thought of letting his soul free scared him. "I can't do it, I don't know why, but I get scared when thinking to let my soul free."

Helena shrugged. "Maybe that is my specialty, something I can do but you cannot. Like turning to shadow is something you can do but I cannot."

"Maybe," Adam replied letting his body free from its flesh cell to merge with the shadows, that was a trick he had learned when a man had shot a crossbow bolt in the heart, and the arrow had burned him. One moment he had been there, whining in pain, and the next moment, he had left his body and merged with the shadows. The painful crossbow bolt had dropped on the ground, and when he'd come back, he had killed the man.

That also had been the time when he and Helena had learned that silver could hurt them and from the man's blood Adam and learned that there were a groups who hunted and killed their kind.

Adam rode the shadows to the next room and looked at the silently sobbing man. It always made him a little dizzy when using his eyes when he was a shadow, it felt as if he had millions of eyes and could see all around him. He rode the shadow back to their room and came out of the shadow. "He is crying."

"I know," Helena said, shaking her head. "the idea of letting go of my body scares me. What if I cannot come back as you can?" she paused. "maybe that is the key. You are scared to let go of your soul, and I'm scared to let go of my body. If we can overcome our fears, we can do almost anything."

"Huh?"

"We may be able to turn into anything we want," Helena looked at him. "When letting go of your body, instead of turning to shadow, think something else… try to turn to a werewolf."

Adam shrugged, let go of his body's flesh cell and while he was merging with the shadow, he willed himself to stop that and imagined himself as a wolf-man. Nothing seemed to happen, except he felt a strange shiver going through his body. He stayed as a shadow, and he gave up and let his body turn back to the form of young human male.

"You turned into a cloud of mist," Helena said. "white and moist mist. I could touch it… well, as much as you can touch the mist."

"Oh, that was why I shivered," Adam said.

Helena nodded, furrowing her brows. "You can change shadows and mist. It should not be impossible for you the shift your shape to anything you want."

"Maybe but trying to do that can wait. We probably should go to the harbor to find how we can get into a ship."

Helena nodded and jumped down from the bed. "I'm hungry."

Adam shook his head. "I wonder where do you put all the blood you're consuming? You are less than half of my size, and you eat more than I do."

"Maybe it's an age thing? We don't know how old you are and maybe older we get less blood we need?" Helena replied.

"Might be, you drink more than twice the amount I do. We can pick something up on our way to the harbor, there ought to be some thugs there, and you can find them using your new power," Adam said.

On the way to the harbor, Helena's words reverberated in Adam's mind, he had no idea how long he had been living in the wilderness hunting animals, but he knew that he had faced many winters. He tried to remember how many, but back then, he had never paid attention to the time passing him by. He closed his eyes and recalled all the time he had just lived and hunted.

"152 winters," he muttered as he opened his eyes.

"Excuse me?" Helena asked.

"I had lived 152 winters before I met you," Adam said.

"That means that you are 168 years old," Helena said, "that is quite old."

"But, I woke up without any memories who or what I was. Who's to tell that I had not lived centuries before I lost my memories?"

"True," Helena said as they got to the harbor.

Helena picked three men and a woman for their breakfast, Adam ate the woman and left the men for Helena. When they got to the harbor, Helena gave him the instructions on what to say and how to behave when buying their and their flock of sheep transportation to some other port. Adam had learned a lot, but he still was uncomfortable talking with the people, the nagging voice in his head always was telling him that trying to talk with his prey was stupid to waste of time.

"It is a good time to leave the city, especially when you have a child," The shipowner said after their deal was done.

Adam raised his brow. "How come?"

"Haven't you heard the news?"

"No, I'm afraid that I have not paid any attention to the news," Adam replied.

"Headless bodies drained of the blood have been found everywhere. They say that the Impaler has become a bloodsucking monster, and he has come to Constantinople to revenge us conquering Wallachia."

"The Impaler? Are you talking about the Voivode Vlad Drăculea?" Helena asked.

The shipowner looked curiously at Helena. "Yes, I am, how do you know about her, little girl?"

Helena shrugged. "I read a lot, and I like history."

Adam grinned. "Which reminds me, we have four trunks, two of them full of books, will they fit into our suite?"

"Two trunks full of books?" The shipowner ruffled Helena's hair. "You really do like reading, don't you?" he said and without expecting her to reply turned back to Adam. "Yes, they will fit in without any trouble."

"Good," Adam said. "I have to go and arrange the delivery of the sheep's to the ship. We will come to the ship tomorrow evening," He waited until they were out of the office and then turned to Helena. "Could this Impaler be one of us?"

"It is possible, but I doubt it, Wladislaus has a gruesome reputation, and there were legends about him drinking and bathing in the blood long before he died. Turks just found the bodies we have left behind and the rest is just a horror story they tell to each other," Helena said. "we should remember to hide the bodies better in the future."

"Yes, we should, I like wilderness where the scavengers take care of the bodies," Adam frowned as he looked at the two men stalking a woman. "Those men don't have a heartbeat," he said and followed the men, and when he got to the entrance of the alley, he merged with the shadows. As the shadow, he watched the two men ambushed the woman, and when their faces turned, and they revealed fangs, he came out from the shadows. Helena appeared behind them.

"Leave her alone," Helena said.

The men turned to her and smirked. "Oh, little girl, you are a just the appetizer I needed," another man said.

Adam came out from the shadows behind him, and when he sunk his fangs into his neck, Helena jumped on the lap of the other vampire and sunk her fangs into another vampire's neck. Adam took only a few gulps from the strange vampire, and then he released him. "You taste awful," he growled. "your blood is dead," He then dropped the drained man on the ground and looked into the eyes of the screaming woman. "just forget this and go home," as he said that his eyes flashed red, and he felt a strange connection to the woman's eyes.

The woman stopped screaming. "Forget this and go home," she monotonously said, turned around and calmly walked out of the alley.

"Huh?" Baffled Adam said and turned to look at Helena. "did you see that?"

"Yes, I did, you somehow made her blindly obey your command," Helena said.

Adam nodded. "It felt strange," He said and kicked the head of the body on the ground. He frowned when the body turned to dust. "well, that was even stranger."

"You kicked his head off," Helena picked up a small piece of wood, and when she shoved it into the heart of the other vampire, he too crumbled to dust. "Didn't you see in his memories that they can be killed easily, sunlight, fire, decapitation, and wood into the heart kills them."

"Oh, right," Adam said.

"What are we going to do with Radu's vampire clan?" Helena asked.

Adam smirked, he had gotten a lot of information about the vampire clan located in Constantinople from the blood memories of the vampire. "Attack them, it'll be fun to fight someone with some strength. I wonder how powerful their Master Radu is? I want to fight him, I hope that he'll give some resistance. Killing people has gotten boring."

Adam quite liked Constantinople, it was relatively clean and didn't smell like shit, urine, and blood like most of the towns they had been. He liked Ottomans because they bathed regularly and smelled better than Wallachians. The well-maintained houses laid out along either side of the trail, framing a well-maintained road that was wide enough for the carts and horses alike to move without jostling one another.

When they were approaching the vampire clan's headquarter the wind brought the smell of several dead men into his nostrils. He knocked at the side door of the carriage. "Stop," He told the driver. After they had stopped Adam paid the ride. "if I'd be you, I would not stay here for a long."

"Sir, I was about to say the same, this is a bad neighborhood," The Driver said.

Adam smiled. "Oh, don't worry about us, we can handle a few thugs..." he paused, suddenly wanting to test if he could erase his memory like he probably had done to the woman that had been attacked by vampires. He stared into the eyes of the driver and imagined making contact with his soul. "you will drive back where you picked us and forget that you ever met us."

"I'll drive back and forget that I met you," The Driver said and soon he was driving away.

"That was easy," Adam told Helena. "stare at them, imagine that you contact their soul and then tell their soul what to do."

Helena nodded. "It sounds similar than reading their minds. I wonder if I can do that without looking into their eyes?"

"That you have to try yourself, I'm not comfortable letting go of my soul," Adam said as they walked toward the ruined mansion at the end of the street. The dark, uninviting building looked to be waiting to crush any who dared to get in. He raised his brow when he saw only two guards; one on the roof and another one at the entrance. "Wood into the heat kills them?" he asked Helena.

"Yes, wood in heart, sunlight, fire, decapitation," Helena replied.

Adam nodded and turned to the alley on their left and picked two broken planks. When he got back to the street, he threw the five-foot plank so hard that, even though it wasn't that sharp, it entered into the chest of the vampire at the roof. The vampire crumbled to dust as he threw the other piece of the plank in the heart of the vampire guarding the entrance. The wooden plank went through the vampire and sunk deep into the door behind him.

Helena sighed. "And there went any possibility to have a surprise attack," she said as the door slowly fell down.

"How should I have known that they are so fragile?" Adam asked.

"They have human bodies, you should treat them as if they are as fragile as humans," Helena frowned as she looked at men and women rushing out of the building. "I wonder what will happen if I pull their hearts out? Can that kill them, or are they capable of regenerating their hearts?"

The vampires stopped and turned to stare at Helena. Adam snorted. "Apparently they have good hearing," he scratched his nose. "fifteen… that cannot be divided with two."

"Adam, you should not underestimate the enemy," Helena replied.

"I have the blood memories—" Adam paused, tilting his head as he watched Helena running to the closest man and plunging both of her tiny hands into the vampire's chest. When she pulled the heart out almost immediately, the man crumbled to ashes.

"Add removing their hearts to the list how to kill them," Helena said and then she became a blur of motion even for Adam's eyes and before the dumbfounded vampires had reacted in any way she had killed four of them.

Adam ran to the vampire closest to him, plunged his knifed hand through the chest of the vampire, she had a baffled and pained expression on her face just before she exploded in a cloud of dust. The next minutes two of them were killing the vampires, and by the time Adam got inside of their house, he was bored about killing them; they were too slow to be any threat to him. He slowed down to the human speed and looked at the two vampires guarding the tall, sturdy man.

"Red eyes… Zamiel!" The tall vampire cried. "Kill him!"

The two vampires attacked Adam, and he let them hit him. "Well, that actually hurt," he said as he staggered by the force of the blow. "You are slow, but you do have some strength in those dead bodies of yours."

The other vampire swung a fist into his face, The blow broke his cheekbone. The two tall, bulky vampires had managed to move in close to him, and they were raining blows and kicks on him, breaking his bones and ripping his flesh.

Suddenly they stopped, and Adam dropped down to his knees when the two men backed away from him. The most of his bones, including both of his legs, were shattered or broken. Half of Adam's left cheek, his eye, and most of his teeth were gone, and his jaw was hanging. He fell on his back. "Not so cocky anymore, eh?" Another vampire said standing above him. "we are three centuries old Master vampires,"

Adam smirked, and when he got up without bending his back, two vampires jumped away from him. Adam pushed his jaw back into its place. "That actually hurt, a couple dozen of men like you probably could really hurt me," As he spoke his body began to regenerate itself. "now, I believe is my turn," Then he hit the face of the other vampire sending him flying backward. He then exchanged blows with the vampires for a minute, fully enjoying the fight.

"Stop playing with them," Helena said.

Adam sighed and, moving with his full speed, ripped off the heads of the two vampires. "Happy now?"

"No, their Master fled," Helena said.

Adam nodded. "I think that he knows more about our kind than we do."

"What makes you think so?" Helena asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"He called me Zamiel when he saw my red eyes as if knowing who I am," Adam said sniffing the air. "follow me, I got his scent."

"Samael is the archangel of destruction in Talmud, it is Hebrew and means Poison of God."

"Sounds like a nice man," Adam said and jumped down from the window following the scent trail. Five minutes later, he ran into the small stone house, and in seconds, he found the Master vampire hiding in the basement. "you have seen one of us?"

"Will you kill me? Only kill me and not to impale me?" Terrified Master vampire asked.

Adam wondered what kind of a man Zamiel was if he caused such fear in a creature like the Master vampire. "If you tell me what I need to know I will not kill you."

The Master relaxed a little. "They say that Zamiel always keeps his word."

"Who is Zamiel?" Adam asked.

"We don't have time for this," Helena said and jumped on the lap of the Master vampire and wrapped her tiny legs around him as she sunk her fangs into his neck. The vampire struggled, but Helena was too strong. She didn't let go of him as they fell to the ground. Finally, she got up and wiped the blood from her mouth. "Vlad Țepeș is one of us, he still is fighting against Ottomans,"

"Maybe we should find him, he might be able to tell what kind of abilities we have."

"And, more importantly, perhaps he can tell us about our weaknesses, we only know that silver hurts us. He might know if we can be killed and how, that is valuable knowledge," Helena said. "However, we already bought the tickets to Porto Ercole, Italy. We could start looking for him there,"

"It would be nice to meet one of our own," Adam said.

"Or, he might try to kill us."

"If he does, I'm sure that two of us can kill him."

"You are too confident facing an unknown enemy. For all we know, Wladislaus could be ten times stronger than we are," Helena said.

Adam nodded. "As always, you are right, we have to find out more about him."

"Indeed."

TBC