After we recounted our stories, we looked for a place to take shelter during the day. Tomas loved hiding under water, but I could already imagine the three of us awkwardly staring at each other unable to speak until nightfall. This guy isn't really too bright.
Finally we found a hill where we could dig a tunnel, which we closed off with a rock in order to go unnoticed. Me and Amalia quickly started punching and clawing at the hill, while Tomas brought a large rock that he broke somewhere else.
Before he closed the entrance he allowed me to admire the great savannah landscape. That beautiful orange sky that exploded when the sun came out, and lit up the terrain with a reddish tone, while I could see how the trees and tall grasses were framing the gorgeous scenery before me. "Why didn't I come here before?" I thought as I admired the spectacle in front of me, with the animals passing by. A mother giraffe with her child faintly shading the rising sun, while on the other side I could clearly see a group of elephants marching in unison, as they shook the earth and kicked up dust.
The Siberian tundra had its own magic, I won't deny that, but I had spent so many centuries going through the same places over and over again, convinced by Od, that I never got to appreciate how marvelous the world is and how limited that man was.
"Here humans won't find us, here we are safe," he would mumble as we ran, repeating over and over his speech about our superiority as a species and how strict the Volturi were about not exposing ourselves. I just wanted to enjoy what my new vampire senses had given me, the smelling, looking, feeling and above all, tasting.
"What do you think of Africa? Had you been here before?" Amalia asked, as Tomas was already closing the entrance and we were plunged into almost complete darkness, leaving just a faint light.
"I had never been here before! It's wonderful! I only did my circuit through Siberia, and Europe every so many years. I've missed out on so much of the world..."
The only positive thing about having Gonzalo on my heels was precisely the new experience that the American continent was and its varied natural landscapes it had to offer. Od's death had been a terrifying experience, but at the same time liberating. The world is big, and now I can see it for myself, without ties.
"If I decide to leave. Will you pursue me?" I ask hesitantly.
"You're here because you want to purify your soul, we don't have you imprisoned like a criminal. You can leave whenever you want, but if you really want to change, I don't think you should do it alone. In any case, we'll always be here," Amalia says.
I notice how she emphasizes "you can leave" in her words, making it clear that she wants me to stay with them of my own free will, not by coercion or fear. I used to always play with my words to inject something that could change the people around me, a smile or gesture was enough to persuade others, most of the time.
But she was being totally sincere, I could feel it in the tone she spoke with. Firm, open, without quotation marks denoting double meaning, there was nothing I could interpret as persuasion or some message I had to decode. Od was equally sincere, but because he was simple-minded, Amalia on the other hand, spoke from the heart and with total honesty, there was a tone of honesty and quality in what she said, something I didn't know from any vampire I had come across, with the exception of Gonzalo, maybe.
During sunset, Tomas went out to hunt and me and Amalia decided to share more about our stories, especially mine, to get closer.
"Is Tomas going to take part in the sessions?" I ask.
"I think he'll mostly not care, let's leave it between us girls," she tells me with a slight mischievous smile, and then adds, "Tomas doesn't tend to be one for long conversations and gets bored very quickly. Don't worry about it."
So, I started to recount more of my story.
The first vampire me and Od accepted was a nomad of Persian origin named Darius. It was during the 16th century, while me and Od were traveling through the steppes of Scythia. Darius wore a kind of turban, which shielded his face from the sun and allowed him to traverse the steppes and desert during the day.
At first Od wanted to fight him and challenged him to a duel, Darius declined the offer. He wasn't a fighter, he enjoyed reading more and was obsessed with knowing the origin of our kind, he wanted to understand why God would create such a peculiar species as ours.
He would always say "I'm almost sure we come from angels" while looking at the stars and taking notes in a sort of book he was writing. He was the first man I was with since Od and I learned many things from him. I learned about the stars, writings much older than me, myths and legends from different cultures and different sketches he had of animals.
Od enjoyed the hunt, Darius saw it as a necessary evil, I didn't care either way. Somehow we could coexist in harmony, the three of us, and hunt together without major problems, for a time. They would always let me feed first and then basically Od would impose himself by brute force, so after a while hunting together, Darius preferred to go out hunting alone and come back to us once after feeding.
"What happened after?" Amalia asks, a little impatiently.
"I got bored of him," I tell her plainly, with total honesty.
Darius grew more and more distant as time passed and our relationship became more distant. Until one day he offered me to run away with him, and travel the world, leave Od. He wanted me just for himself, he saw Od as more of a nuisance than a companion."
"Your sire Od, wasn't going to want to leave his comfort zone, and Darius wanted a more intimate relationship with you," Amalia adds.
"Of course, but Od wasn't going to let his most precious gem get away from him," I reply.
Od eventually discovered Darius' plan and decided to confront him, Darius didn't stand a chance. I don't remember what became of the things he possessed but, he ended up in the bonfire, Od showed no mercy.
"It must have been very sad for you," Amalia says.
"I don't know, we had been growing apart little by little and he only came back to see me, I think he loved me more than I loved him," I answered her.
I remember that as years and more years passed by through the same places over and over again, I began to feel regret for not having listened to Darius and accepted his offer. During those passing years, I felt more and more that I had made a big mistake, a missed opportunity.
"I could have perhaps been happy, or at least, at least..." I would murmur as I stared blankly at the ground, tormented by the feeling of what could have been and wasn't.
"Everything okay?" Amalia would ask as she tried to understand the babbling I did with my lips.
"Yes yes, nothing important," I'd answer her, not wanting to bother her with absurd thoughts.
Amalia paused and then asked me.
"Why did this Od not let you go, he seemed like a strong guy who could support himself without problems. If you didn't want to be with him. Why did he insist on staying with you?"
I answered her with a smile. "I was the bait, he was the fisherman."
Our modus operandi, most of the time, was that I would go to certain places and look for people with more appetizing blood for us, most of the time they were men, and when we found a candidate, I would lure him to a discreet place where we could deal with the prey and feed, I always had a good nose, Od on the other hand, was more in charge of making sure there was no "competition" nearby.
"He was a good fighter," Amalia inferred.
"The best I knew," I said seriously.
Neither me nor Od had any special abilities. Like most vampires, we had certain innate talents as humans, which were greatly amplified after our conversion. I, as you can probably already see, already came with very good looks. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but let's just say it was my most recognizable trait and what I used most for hunting.
"I imagine you didn't have to run much to catch your prey," Amalia jokes.
"They came to me! I just had to take a stroll through a couple of villages and they would do anything I asked of them," I smile as I explain.
"Like a venus flytrap," Amalia suggests.
"Exactly!" I affirm. "I was able to persuade, or at least negotiate with other vampires in case we found ourselves competing for the same prey."
"But you didn't need to because you had Od," she remarks.
"Of course. His main skill was his ability to fight. Od lived to test his skills and was constantly coming up with ways and styles to subdue and defeat his opponents. He killed his own sire in a duel, just to prove himself! I never saw the need to fight, I don't like it and I dislike having to subdue my prey with violence." I exclaim.
Od was obsessed with finding a worthy opponent, and he had taken down several vampires we came across, just for the sake of proving himself, it gave his life meaning.
"You would look for people who were appetizing and then share them with Od," Amalia adds, pensively.
"We thought that way was much more efficient and gave us better quality. Hunting was very chaotic and we could run into other vampires.
"Was there anyone else after Darius?" Amalia asks curiously.
With an almost monotonous sigh I tell her "Arthur."
After a couple of centuries making the same trips that Od loved to do, Od, upon seeing my monotony and perhaps thinking of the danger that I might end up leaving him, proposed the idea of looking for a human to turn into a vampire and see the experience through my own eyes.
Od took the initiative and proposed he would look for a candidate that suited us both. We spent centuries looking for the perfect human, since we both had different visions of what qualities a vampire should have. Od valued strength, bravery and fierceness, while I looked for someone handsome, well-mannered and humorous, qualities that were very opposed to what Od was looking for.
We wandered here and there, searched every corner of Europe and Asia, but we couldn't quite nail it, until around the 1940s, when Od and I came across a British man lost in the forest in Poland.
The man was carrying just a couple of weapons and clothes that definitely looked like a prisoner of war uniform. At first he tried shooting at Od, he didn't hesitate one bit. Arthur was the kind of person who shoots first and asks questions later, obviously the bullets bounced off Od and Arthur seemed to get more and more agitated.
Od thought he was a good candidate and me, tired of wandering, and curious to see how this whole transformation thing worked, decided to give in and let Od have the honors. Od had explained to me that the process doesn't always work and in many cases the person dies before completing the transformation.
"It's the most painful thing you'll ever feel in your life! Worse than a kick in the balls!" Tomas exclaims cheerfully as he enters the cave.
We burst out laughing after jumping a bit in surprise.
"Keep going, it was getting interesting," Tomas jokes as he wipes his mouth.
"A crocodile?" Amalia asks him.
"I can make you a purse for you and me, we'd look so gorgeous, girl," Tomas says as she covers her mouth.
Every time I saw him, I couldn't help but think of Gonzalo, it broke my heart. Retelling all of this and realizing the things I did for centuries made me aware of how wrong everything was, how selfish I was with everyone.
"Come on Barbie, what happened with Ken, I mean with this Arthur guy," Tomas insists.
"Okay, okay." I take a pause and continue.
Od decided to knock him unconscious and take him to a discreet place where we could begin the process. Od only bit him on one hand and one leg, and then observed. When I smelled the blood I started to get anxious and he firmly stopped me with his great strength, I didn't have a chance to move and attack Arthur, the man in front of me.
Having felt the transformation firsthand, that electrifying and paralyzing sensation the venom produces as it courses through the veins and arteries, plus all those emotions that came with the process, I thought watching it would be spectacular, but nothing was happening, this tall, thin, white man just lay there, motionless, as if dead.
But I didn't know it was just beginning. Arthur eventually woke up from his coma or faint and started convulsing and contracting, he moved from one place to another and I thought he was going to die. My concern grew greater when I could hear his heartbeat getting more and more agitated. If Od hadn't tied him up and covered his mouth, we would have been hearing screams of horror that would have reached the other corner of the world.
"It really is a unique experience, there's no way to recount it, it's something very horrible," Tomas expresses, now using a more serious tone.
"After three days, the transformation was complete and we became his tutors in this new life," I state briefly. "I think I've recounted enough, I don't want to seem like a parrot, so you guys also share your stories, I hate monologues."
After finishing my account, Amalia and Tomas began to recount their stories, I tried to listen, but I couldn't stop thinking about Darius, Od, Arthur, and above all Gonzalo, the only man I could never touch.