Thanks to my beta, Vampireisthenewblack, for her dislike of adverbs and catching my switching tenses. Thanks, also, to HammerHips for fixing my Spanish.
SM owns Twilight
Ch 2
Pedro
Pedro opened his eyes to fire and blood, blood and fire, flapping canvas and swirling dust. Strange scents burned his throat. Figures in various states of undress surrounded the fires; some fornicating, some fighting, some twitching as if doing St Vitus' dance. He counted ten of them before a tenth of a second later he registered another sensation, awareness of his many confused thoughts, multiple sounds, multiple scents, the chaos inside his head an echo of the chaos he was seeing and hearing.
He was lying in the dirt, a heavy weight pinning him, legs wound tightly with another man's, arms similarly entwined. Warm breath brushed against his cheek, the smell of desert sage, leather and rain somehow soothing him, overriding for a brief moment the terrible burning in his throat. This weight was comforting, it felt right, Pedro wasn't sure why, his mind was skittering from one place to another like a firefly flits through the night, illuminating one thing while casting another into darkness.
A voice, commanded him to turn his head to the left. Compelled to do so by some instinctive reaction to the voice, he did. A sound, a wet, hammering, sloshing, vital sound, coming from within a bag of skin and bone. It was leaking an unpleasant wetness and making an irritating noise. Pedro wanted the noise to stop, so he could concentrate on the liquid flowing through the sniveling thing to his left.
Liquid pooled in his mouth. He swallowed, but it wouldn't stop. It tasted cool and sweet,not how his mouth should taste, used to taste, he thought. He began to drool, some small part of his brain fearing he would drown if he didn't let the liquid escape but somehow aware that this was impossible. His mind was spinning, confused, attempting desperately to cope with the extra stimuli bombarding him but at the same time clinging to his human self, a self he was not fully aware was gone.
He wriggled and bucked against the weight on his back, vaguely aware that strange sounds were coming from his mouth, from deep within. Noises he had heard before, but he paid them no mind. He just needed to get to the warm body beside him. He knew once he was close, close enough to grasp, to tear and claw and bury himself into it, that he would be whole, that it was what he needed to live.
Pedro was overcome by a violent rage and a desperate need to get free, to rip into the skin covering the thing he craved. He tried again and again to get free. Some part of his mind registered that two seconds had passed since he opened his eyes, and that was too long to be trapped like this.
With an almighty roar he thrust violently up and threw off the weight, somehow knowing that the weight had allowed itself to be moved. He scrambled the six feet to the man and tore into him with abandon, drinking the hot liquid so rapidly it spilled out of his mouth and down his chest. He did not care. Another body was tossed at him, he did not pause to see where it came from, nor the next. When, finally, he finished drinking, fully sated and somewhat calmer, he stood and looked around properly for the first time in his new life.
He stood at the entrance of a cave, the ragged canvas draped across the entrance flapped in the wind. Beyond that was a rocky outcrop with several campfires burning, all with figures doing much as they had been a few minutes before. The desert stretched out in front of him, familiar but not known; he was not home here, but close. The sky was black with cloud, no stars were visible even with his new sight. He sniffed the air and knew a storm was rolling in. Pedro was in no state to contemplate just how he had this information, other than the fact he had always been observant. He had no way to know his new vampire brain was capable of picking up cues from nature that even the more acutely sensitive animals missed. The slight charge in the air from lightning many miles away, the difference in air pressure – many other minute changes in light, plant and animal behavior. These things were overwhelming, and he began to slink back against the wall of rock behind him.
There were different scents in the cave. The blood, as he now knew the noise had been, was spilled all over the floor, already beginning to coagulate and attract microscopic bacteria and the first traces of insect life. The familiar smell of sage was there, as was the leather and fresh rain. Or was it the scent of the desert after rain? The more aware he became, the more complex the scents seemed to be. There were even some he could not recognize, but they were intrinsically woven into the sage smell. Alongside that was a mix of amber and desert rose. Pedro was immediately on the defensive. The sage he knew, he could feel that he knew it, the rose scent was new and strange, and therefore a threat.
Without fully comprehending what had happened he was in a crouch facing the strange scents. A growl built up in his chest. Part of his brain registered that it was not a sound he was used to making, and also that he had heard its like before, but most of his concentration was on the two figures before him. He made a rapid assessment of the threat he was facing and discarded the male almost immediately, focusing his attention on the female. He could not have said why this was so, it just was.
His growl intensified as he took her in. She was beautiful, with her wild black hair and ruby eyes. She was dressed like a man in an oversized shirt and pants with a wide leather belt around her waist. She was smiling, her hands held out in front of her, palms facing him. Pedro did not relax at this gesture, but his growl did lessen somewhat. Without taking his eyes off the woman he was also aware of the man standing next to her. He was tall, pale, with the same ruby eyes and rough clothing. He was also smiling, although his was more of a smirk. The woman spoke, her voice husky and beguiling.
"Welcome, Pedro. I have no doubt you will fit in well with us in time. You will soon learn what is expected of you, and you will be rewarded accordingly. Now tell me, are you still thirsty? Does your throat still burn?"
Pedro took a moment to think before replying. He did not feel a burn, although his mind was spinning in many directions at once. He felt confused and wanted to run, to get away from these strangers, yet he was somehow held in place. His instinct told him that running would be wrong, not to mention dangerous, and that his interest would best be served by staying and learning from the two in front of him.
He glanced at the man again. That sense of familiarity returned, touched with belonging, and maybe a sense of awe. The Anglo was tall, blond, his face handsome and sharply cut. He had a few scars on his forearms and two on his neck, visible where his shirt was loose. He gave the impression of a man at ease but ready to explode into action at any second, a contradiction in itself. He was fierce and hawkish in his gaze, but that was tempered by the wry amusement displayed in his grin. He held himself aloof from the woman, but Pedro could tell that they were – or had been – in a very close physical relationship.
He found he had also scanned the cave repeatedly with his new-found peripheral vision. He noted a cloth traveling bag with worn straps, clearly a woman's, in a faded green. Nearby lay a leather satchel and larger leather bag, both dusty but not badly worn. Again the scent was sage and desert rain, intertwined with woodsmoke and something else. Glancing through the canvas he took stock of various other small bags and boxes, stacked alongside a larger wooden box of the kind used to carry corn on a donkey's back. This appeared to contain clothing, and there was no donkey in sight or a scent anywhere close. Pedro briefly considered this then dismissed it within a fraction of a second. He was also aware that the storm was coming closer. Dry lightning was flickering over the crest of the mountains to the south, the colors astounding to him in their variety but also giving him a strange chill, as if he should be afraid of the fire in the sky.
He spoke at last. "My name is Pedro?"
The woman's expression flickered quickly to surprise then back to welcoming. "Yes, your name is Pedro. Do you remember nothing of your life then? Do you know who you are?"
He thought. "I remember the end. I remember El Diablo Blanco and my bargain with him. There was a priest, he was stronger than he looked, stronger than me. He would not let go of his faith when I abandoned mine. He will never forgive you for what your . . . for what they did to his village, to him. Is he dead?"
The woman laughed, a glorious sound. "He is as dead as you or I, Pedro. What he will do with his new life I cannot begin to imagine, but I am not concerned with a priest damned by his god. I am only concerned with what happens here, with us, now. You say you remember mi Comandante, you made a bargain with him? Well I will allow that to stand, for now. We will have to see whether you are worth keeping first."
Pedro crouched and hissed as she spoke. El Comandante tightened the skin around his eyes, his muscles bunched with the tiniest amount of tension as the woman spoke. Pedro immediately stored this information away to be dissected at a later – a much later – time. For now all Pedro knew was that the man was displeased with something the woman had said. This, in turn, made Pedro displeased – and this, in turn, confused him again. This confusion was beginning to annoy him. He didn't like the feeling of not knowing, of feeling . . . strange.
"What am I? Who am I? Who are you? Why do I feel so . . . different? What was that you gave me to drink?" He burst out in a quick breath. Until then he had not even realized he hadn't been breathing for a while. A sensation akin to panic began to rise in his chest before he reined it back, determined not to show weakness in front of these . . . people. He was at a loss as to what to call them. They were not like the men he had been thrown, they did not have the vital sound of rushing blood or the leaking or the . . . warmth he had just recalled the men had. Yet they looked like people, spoke and moved and were dressed and felt like people but . . . . but.
The man, el Comandante, el Diablo Blanco, looked at Pedro with compassion in his eyes and told him the truth. "You are a vampire. You are cursed to live off the blood of your former family, friends, compadres. You are stronger, faster, more intelligent than before. You will crave blood as you used to crave air to breathe, water to drink. You are ruled by blood. Maria will provide that blood. You will learn to accept our terms, our demands. In turn you will be rewarded with blood and pussy for as long as you are deemed useful." The last words spoken almost bitterly. Pedro had no time to make sense of that before the woman spoke again.
"My name is Maria. I am your leader, the leader of all of us here. Mi Comandante, Jasper, is your sire but I am his sire. I am building la banda – you understand? We need food, we need to feed. We need el territorio. It is important for us, for our survival. I will tell you why, soon, but for now I think you need to be introduced to my sisters." The beauty smiled lasciviously, before speaking in a normal voice "Nettie, Lucy, why don't you come and meet our new toy? I'm sure he won't disappoint."
Benito
Benito's re-birth was not as kind as Pedro's. Benito opened his eyes to a building in ruins. After his decision to reject his priesthood and his clothes, and after his silent promise to bring death and destruction to the one who had changed him into a demon, he felt a burning in his throat worse than anything he'd ever known. He was driven to distraction by the scent of the spilled blood surrounding him. Desperate, he scrabbled around the remains of his church licking the dried clots off the floor and walls. It was most unsatisfying, dried-up and crumbling, mixed with dust and plaster.
The buzzing of flies, the tiny mastication noises of beetles, the wriggling of maggots in their moist home; noises which distracted him until he focused on the source. Benito's rage and desperation grew so that he even attempted to squeeze the precious liquid from the bodies left behind, but that was a fruitless task. They had already been drained, even those that were not dismembered, and the putrefaction process was well underway. The corpses bore the brunt of his sudden fury, ripped asunder and thrown around only to smack wetly against walls and floor, slopping over the remains of the alter and decorating the sanctuary with bursting entrails and grinning skulls.
Crazed with thirst, he ran. Away from his church, his village, his former life. He followed his instincts, running away from the scent of others like him, away from Monterrey and el Cerros de las Mitras. He ran north and east until he reached an area clear of demons. Wild with thirst, crazed beyond comprehension, he finally smelled what he needed and ran to it, greedily snatching the source of his torment and latching on as a baby to a teat. The rich blood ran down his throat, it spilled out of his mouth and ran down his chin, but it was not enough. The burning had lessened but was still present and he knew he needed more of the delicious blood, his new sacrament. He consumed several before he came to his senses.
Benito took in the sight before him in surprise and disgust. The remains of three, possibly four, men were scattered over the dusty ground. What disgusted him, though, was the fact that not only was he naked but he was sparkling in the setting sun. Quickly realizing that this might draw attention, he stripped the remains before him until he had enough clean, unshredded clothing to cover himself, then considered what to do next. He did not know where he was, or where to go next. He knew he needed to learn about himself, to discover what he was and how he became that way. He reasoned that if there was one small group in Monterrey, there must be others in other towns or cities nearby, perhaps he could make contact and explore his new life with them for a while – until he could build a band of his own. He started to run.
AN: There are no good guys in this fic, and there are no bad guys. These vampires bite.