Chapter Twelve

Major Whitlock

I checked to make sure she had gone before taking the journal from my pocket, well I'd learned something new about my ancestor and was beginning to see him more as a man than just a page from history. He was an empath and a vampire. How it must have tortured him killing innocent people and feeling their terror and pain, I wasn't sure I could have survived such torment and appreciated his inner strength a little more.

I ate the food grateful it wasn't more blood or corpses and then lay on the bed to read Major Jasper Whitlock's journal. It ran for many years, sometimes with few entries in a year, sometimes with many, but each one cut me to the heart and made me realize I was the lesser man and unfit to judge him.

"I have no idea why I write this except to remind myself of what was, when I was human and proud of my achievements. All that is lost now as am I, lost in a world that knows only violence and bloodshed, using my skills not to protect the innocent and vulnerable but instead to prey on them. To make new soldiers for Maria's army and to cull those no longer useful.

With every death I lost a part of me, I became more the killing machine she wanted me to be and I can see no way out.

I thought she loved me, I thought her depraved notion of love was the real thing but I was wrong and I feel it more and more each day. Forgive me God for the monster I have become."

I know now only one thing for certain, I will never be free, Maria has such a hold over me that try as I might my body betrays me. I am her creature.

I changed another human today, nothing new I know but this human spoke to me on a level I thought lost forever. Peter was his name and I crave forgiveness for snatching away his human life.

Peter keeps me sane, grounded, and able to continue functioning but he has found his mate in another we captured and changed, named Charlotte. I see the way they look at each other and I understand what I feel for Maria is a monstrous caricature of love which sickens me more with every day. I don't know how much longer I can go on like this.

She knows, Maria knows I am slipping away from her and she set me a task, to show my loyalty, kill Charlotte,. If I do so it will kill my friend but if I don't...

There was quite a gap before he wrote again and I could tell by his handwriting that something terrible had happened to him,

"I could not go through with it, so I let them escape with my blessing and I paid the price, two months in hell, in the pit. I hoped to die but even that is beyond me, I must suffer until she finally decides to kill me and be done with it. Day after day I begged for the freedom of death and day after day God denied me. Am I so wicked that even he has turned his back on me now?"

Maria takes Nathan to her bed thinking she is punishing me but I am grateful for that, I don't think I could pretend any more. Peter and Charlotte come back to beg me to run with them and I fear for their safety but I am terrified of leaving this place, it is all I know. Yet I feel that Maria both fears and distrusts me, if I don't escape or kill her she will destroy me."

When I remember all

The friends, so linked together,

I've seen around me fall

Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed!

Thus, in the still night,

Ere slumber's chain has bound me.

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

I recognized the last as a poem by Sir Thomas Moore and understood my ancestor may have been a military man but he was also a literary man, not the ignorant farm boy who through luck as much as courage made it to the position of Major as I had arrogantly assumed.

That was when the entries stopped so either he had escaped or was dead and by Bella's account he still lived so he must have run with his friends but what kind of a man would he be after so much pain and suffering, a very dangerous man to friends and foe alike I thought yet a man who deserved a second chance.

I thought of the date in the pit 1863, and the year of the last entry in his journal 1938. Seventy five years living this hell yet according to Bella he not only survived but managed to start afresh and even coexist with humans, which spoke of incredible courage and strength of will. Could I be the same kind of man? Well, I'd soon have a chance to find out but I doubted it somehow. Heroes are born not made, The Major was born a hero, I begged his forgiveness for the paper I had written slandering him, and I was most definitely not.

I spent the night trying not to hear the screams coming from the compound although my imagination filled in the sights I could not bear to witness. This was hell and I was about to become a part of it. I wondered what had happened to Bella and prayed she had returned home safely. Would she know what had happened to me? Yet even if she did there was nothing she could do to help me, she was, like me, a human unable to fight vampires and yet I remembered she had once tried. I saw again the scar on her wrist where she told me she'd been bitten by a vampire and how she had been saved from becoming one when her boyfriend sucked the venom out. It gave me some comfort to know that at least one person would know how I met my end. Or at least the end of one life but would I meet her again in the next? If so I would probably kill her to feed on her blood. Was it possible I could emulate my namesake and get through this, hold on to my humanity and my sanity and get free somehow? I still had no idea why I'd been snatched but I suspected it had something to do with The Major and not that it was Maria looking to resurrect her lover in his double. Still I would find out eventually if I didn't go mad like the monsters outside ripping humans to pieces for a meal and fun.

I expected to be taken at any moment, to find myself changing into a vampire but I remained here in The Major's cabin safe and untouched which begged the question what was Maria waiting for? Did she think to wear me down? I may be a coward but I'd rather die than sleep with such a creature. If not then was she waiting for a command decision? And if so then who exactly was behind all this? My last thought as I finally found myself drifting to sleep through sheer exhaustion was, did The Major know of my existence and if so had he read my paper? If so I'd made a serious enemy before I even met him.