Chapter Two: Inception

I decided to grab just a few valuables and burn the rest to ashes. This house was never a home and it's been my shelter for all of three months. All I needed was the silver locket my mother gave me as a child, my favorite bottle of whiskey, my cell phone and my Corvette. The rest was toast. I doused the entire first floor of the creaky old house with gasoline, grabbed my bag then headed outside. I stood a good 15 yards away from the house, leaned against my car and started smoking a Marlboro. The night sky was slightlit and sparkled against my shades. That's one of the few beauties of being a vampire. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was heightened. Sensations, sights, smells, tastes, sounds, emotions. Everything is 50 times more intense. But then there's love.

They say the few unlucky Soulless vampires, like myself, can't feel love. It's a luxury reserved only for humans and the Seraphic vampires. I spend 90 percent of my undead existence contemplating if it's true. A part of me thinks it is. I've been 18 for the past 117 years and haven't felt love since before I turned. You'd think that after a century I'd give up, but no. I will never accept my nature. And love is the only thing that can awaken the soul I'm said not to have. But above all, it's the feeling I miss most. Loving and being loved. You take one look into their eyes and you completely lose yourself in them. It's like nothing else in the world matters. Like everything you've ever known was a lie and they were the truth. Like the only place you'll ever feel safe is in their arms. That's what I miss. And it's worth it… all of the guilt, shame, self-hatred, pain and death. Love will make it all worth it.

I took one last long drag and flicked the cigarette onto the trail of gasoline I lead outside. In a fiery domino effect, the entire first story ignited into flames. The hellish images danced across my black aviators as I scratched out Devil's Kettle on my map. I got in my red vette and started on my way to Rosewood.

Rosewood… I never thought I'd go back. Over a hundred years after leaving, I feel myself drawn to return. I'm not much of a poetic person, but it's as if that's where I left my humanity. It's the town where I was born and raised in, where I took my last human breath, where I last felt happy. It's where I fell in love for the first time. Her name was Cece Drake and she was a 300 year old Seraphic vampire from northern Italy. She came over to America with a group of Italian explorers. Some didn't make it all the way since Cece weakened them with all her feeding. That's another luxury reserved for the Seraphs. They're the romanticized vampires, the ones that hide in plain sight and humans easily fall for. They don't have the uncontrollable hunger that the Soulless do, and can stop themselves once they begin to feed. "Snatch, snack, erase" is what they call it. Find your prey, get your fix, then compel their memories away. Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is for the Seraphs. That's how Cece's meals lasted the entire way to the New World. So needless to say long voyages really aren't my thing. Planes neither. They'd find a headless corpse wearing a sign saying "I'm sorry" propped up in the bathroom.

It was April 2, 1898 when I first met Cece. I remember it like it was yesterday. I immediately knew how special she was. Cece had this way about her, a certain charm. Every word she said was daring and mysterious. Somehow it seemed as if she knew all your weaknesses and secrets just as swiftly as she learned your name. And when you see her... I didn't know true beauty until I laid eyes on her unspoiled perfection. She had long, shimmery blonde hair, dazzling blue eyes, a smile that gleamed, and pale skin that was just slightly kissed by the sun. Her beauty was so unsettling, I could barely speak when she approached me.

"Is something wrong?" Cece asked me, furrowing her transparent eyebrows.

"I… I'm…" I stammered. "No. Everything is lovely."

"Perhaps you're a bit too hot. I can barely tell you're a woman underneath that drab garb you're wearing."

I looked down a little confused. I wore a white-sleeved burgundy bodice and a long off-pink skirt that brushed the back of my ankles. It'd be drab in 2015 but it was fit for a proper young woman in the 1890's. Still, my cheeks flushed from the embarrassment.

"Try something a little more form fitting, darling," Cece suggested. "Here..." She moved in close to me, so close I could feel the coldness of her body colliding with my heat. I gasped at how frigid her skin was. Her crystal blues shot into my brown eyes and I was frozen still. She reached around and took out the pins that held up the bun in my hair. "Much better," Cece said as smoothed out my dark brown hair over my chest. "At least you can show off those stunning brunette locks," she added.

A horse drawn carriage then pulled up along side the dusty road we were standing on. "See ya round, darling," Cece said with a wink and a smirk. She began walking away to board her carriage, floating on air it seemed. Then in my trance I realized I hadn't gotten her name.

"Wait! I didn't learn your name," I proclaimed, still unable to move my legs.

"Ce… hmm… meet me at the Rosewood Barn at dusk and I'll tell you there." She blew me a kiss, sat down in her carriage and rode away. From that moment on, nothing would ever be the same.

The next few months, my life was turned upside down. Cece showed me a world I never imagined could exist. She was dark, volatile, dangerous. And I loved every minute of it. I fell even harder for her when she told me she a vampire and showed me her true face. We were in bed of course. A vampire isn't easy to satisfy. They're constantly craving sex. Anyways, I was lying on my back, looking down to find her tongue swirling around my clit. Cece was looking back up at me with those daring, hungry eyes. Savoring the taste of me. But then her eyes began flickering. Glow in the dark blue to her normal blue. She raised up on all fours, fangs extended, and slowly licking my cum from around her lips. Then she lowered her chin and ogled me like she was going to eat me alive. I scampered to the headboard and pulled my knees into my chest, terrified of the lecherous demon that was in my bed. But in a blink of an eye, Cece yanked my ankles so I wa s on my back again, spread my legs open, got on top of me and pinned my wrists to the bed. She stared me deep in the eyes with her luminescent fanged face and asked,

"Are you afraid?"

I couldn't move… I couldn't breathe. All I could do was stare back into the glowing lights that pierced into my eyes. She used the back of her cold hand to stroke the side of my face.

"You don't need to be afraid, Emily."

I swallowed, trying to find what little air was left in my lungs.

"I… I'm not afraid."

"Don't lie to me either. I can smell the fear reeking from your pores."

"Please. Just please don't hurt me." I began to cry.

"I could never hurt you, Emily. I just want to taste you," she explained, still just an inch from my face. "I want to feel your warm blood drip down my throat." Then she ran her tongue along the thickest vein on neck.

"You're a vampire."

"I am. And your scent… it's so appetizing. I need to taste you, Emily. I need it." She breathed deeply into my neck and kissed it, aching to tear me open.

I swallowed again in between gasps.

"Do it." Just as I got the words out, Cece reared back, hissed toward the ceiling, and dug her teeth deep into my neck. I wailed and moaned at the dagger-like pain she was causing me. She drank and drank, swallowing me by the mouthful. I dug my nails into her back in agony, "Please, stop! Please, you have to stop." Finally, she relinquished my neck and pulled away. She breathed heavily on top of me, blood dripping from her bottom lip.

"Fuck," panting, "I've never tasted a human like you before."

I was completely weakened and couldn't see straight. The entire room was tilting.

"Here, drink." Cece bit open her right wrist, lifted up my head and put it to my mouth. "This'll heal you."

I drink from her wrist. Her vampire blood was bittersweet. I felt my wooziness go away and the room stopped spinning.

"There, there. You're gonna be just fine," she said while she cradled my head in her arms and watched me drink from her.

Before that night, I had never felt so alive. The pain, the rush, the fear. I reveled in it. There's no other feeling like being on the edge. And that's where Cece brought me. Eventually, I found myself craving her teeth in my neck. I liked the feed and coming so close to death. It's volatile and raw. It's something my mundane 19th century life couldn't give me. I wanted something more than farms, house chores and finding the "perfect husband." Cece offered me a life of passion, love and danger. I seized it at the first chance I got. It was a dream. And I was living in it. But it didn't last long. Not so long after, the dream ended and the deaths began. The monster was born and the Massacre of 1898 happened. But I can't… after 117 years I still can't think about it. Not now and not ever.

I shook my head to come back from my nostalgic trance. I'd been to deep in thought that I almost missed the "Welcome to Rosewood" sign. I pulled my Corvette over to the side of the road to get a closer look at the sign. It was navy blue with white lettering, maybe a decade old. It read "Welcome to Rosewood. Population 7,987." I smirked and squinted.

"Not anymore." I boasted.

I bit open my wrist and used the blood to write an eight over the last seven. I may be a soulless murderer, but I take joy in these little things. They're some small habits I do before raising hell in a new town. I wondered what the number on the Rosewood sign would read after I leave here. But this is supposed to be different. I want to find my humanity again. If there's still love somewhere inside me I left it here and I can't ruin it by let it happen again… it just can't.

I lit a cigarette and took a couple drags before heading back to the car. Now, I just need a place to live.

House searching is the least fun of starting over in a new town. Vampires can't enter a human's home without being invited in first, so I can't just rip someone's head off and declare a house my own. Usually I look for foreclosed homes. There's technically no owner, so I can enter without that annoying invisible force field. But anyway, I drove through Rosewood for about 20 minutes without any luck. Needless to say, I recognize nothing about Rosewood. The past century only changed one of us. Eventually, I decided to start looking deep into the woods. It's more fitting anyway for when I take a human home. I don't want their screams to be heard.

I then came up to lake with a crop of about 5 abandoned houses encircling a medium sized lake. The entire area was surrounded by tall trees that pointed inward, some of which hung on top of the houses. The lake was completely transparent and the dusky sunset shimmered off of it. I looked in it to see my reflection. Staring back at me was a tall, tan brunette dressed in tight, dark clothes and deep, brooding, brown eyes. They say I'm stunning, but I didn't really see what all the fuss was about. But perhaps I'm bias. I looked over to my left to see a sign attached to one of the trees. It read "Kissing Rock that way" and a huge arrow pointing inside the woods. Lovers have been going to that rock to kiss for hundreds of years. I never got the chance to, though. And I probably won't ever.

One of the lake houses was wooden and bungalow styled. Quiet looking and dark. I liked it. I grabbed my bag from the car, went inside uninterrupted, lit a few candles and muttered to myself, "I'm hungry."