Requiem of Humanity

by Catherine Stovall

  “As the weeks flew by I began to feel thirst and at first I was badly frightened. I would salivate at the smell of any human. I almost attacked the children and I struggled constantly with the burning pain in my throat and innards. Augustine came every night, always bringing a donor with him. The human would be placed in a trance and then their veins would be opened for my eager mouth. Sometimes he would share the feeding with me and the sheer pleasure of it would cause me to swoon in ecstasy.

  “When my eyes had begun to change and my strength had increased to that of any man, it was time to complete the change. I was half vampire and half human. Only his final kiss was needed. We sat in the downstairs foyer surrounded by the light of hundreds of candles. A blaze much like the one you see now burned before us. He was always so fond of fire. Augustine took me into the finality of my life with a gentle swiftness. I had changed so much from the constant exchange of blood between us it only took moments for him to complete the final steps.

  “I lay in his arms with his bleeding wrist pressed tightly to my lips as he drank from my neck. I could feel the very essence of my soul being brought into him with each deep draught he took from me. At the same time, I could feel his blood filling my body with the miraculous elixir of eternal life. Every cell of my body burned with pleasure and pain. I felt more alive in that moment than I had ever before. At last, he lifted his head and gently pried my hands from his arm so that he could remove his wrist from my hungry mouth.

  “I moaned in bliss and confusion. I needed more blood; I thirsted worse than ever before. The desire was so great that I thought I would go mad from the pounding need of it. Then suddenly Lucy appeared in the doorway only feet from me. I hadn’t realized my own new strength or speed and perhaps Augustine had underestimated it himself, or perhaps it was exactly what he intended. I shall never know.

  “Before Lucy could take another step, I was on her. I crushed her fragile body into mine, delighting in the sounds her bones made as I crushed them. I forgot all the lessons that Augustine had taught me. I forgot to feed gently, to allow the heart to pump the blood for me. I drained her in less than thirty seconds. As I released her precious body and it landed with a hollow thud at my feet, the monster in me quieted. I saw immediately my error. I screamed and began tearing at my own flesh. I opened a large wound in my arm and began trying to force it into Lucy’s mouth. My own red tinged tears fell onto Lucy’s face and ran into her eyes.

  “All along Augustine watched quietly, even when I begged him to assist me. His eyes took on a dead, disinterested look as if he were saying to me that I made the mess and I would be the one to clean it up.” Belle’s face was a mask of pain and confusion as she relived the pain of the moment.

  Jenda slowly began to rise with the intention of wrapping her arms around Belle and allowing the woman some comfort from another soul. Before she could completely stand, Matteo placed his hand gently on her arm and quietly shook his head. Jenda almost jerked away, she almost went to Belle’s side but at that moment the older woman’s downcast head raised, and Jenda could see the hunger burning behind the blackened eyes. With a gasp, Jenda sat back roughly in the chair. Staring into the black, fathomless pits of Belle’s eyes, she was frightened.

  Belle’s thick voice filled the void between them as if it were a tangible thing. “You see dear, taking Lucy’s life was a grave and heinous mistake. I cannot remember the moment without triggering the deepest of our hungers. The blood of an innocent is a powerful temptation for me and hers was the crème de la crème. It’s ironic that the blood you want least to take is that which you crave for eternity.” Belle looked knowingly at Matteo before continuing.

  “Augustine pulled me from her lifeless body. He threw me across the room and screamed at me to stop overreacting. I was in shock with pain and grief before, but standing there before him as he ranted about the nature of a vampire pulled me into a darker place. For the first time since my life with him, I hated Augustine. I hated him for the loss of Lucy, I hated him for making me a monster, and I hated him for being cruel.

  “I fell into a heap on the floor by the fireplace and gave into my overwhelming despair. As I wept, Augustine removed Lucy’s corpse. Many hours passed as I lay there in my distraught state. I stumbled in and out of consciousness until my enhanced senses began to burn. The smell of lamp oil filled the house as if it was saturated with it. I sat up in alarm to find Augustine standing in the corner watching me, as if I was nothing more than one of our experiments. He came to me then, all the old passion and concern returning, and he lifted me up to meet his stance. That’s when he told me his plans.

  “We would burn down the house, with the remaining children inside. We would leave the body of a woman recently used in our experiments next to them. The authorities and all the people in that tiresome little town would be convinced of my demise. After all, there had been questions lately surrounding the disappearance of my ‘lovers’. It was time to go and embrace my new life and to free myself from the past.

  “I agreed without conviction. The lives of the other two children meant nothing to me. Lucy was always the one I had treasured. I asked only that the children be drugged so that they would not suffer when the flames consumed them. After packing a few trinkets and my hidden box of money, I was safely stashed away in Augustine’s carriage as he completed the deeds that needed to be done. We drove the carriage away as the orange and yellow flickering of flames ignited the dark sky. It was the closest thing to a sunrise I would see in over fifty years.” Belle sat silently for a moment and then flashed her most engaging smile. Somehow, that smile never reached her eyes and Jenda thought that maybe the woman was not quite as heartless as she originally thought her to be.

  “I know this has been a long story my darlings and I assure you it’s coming to an end soon. You must forgive an old soul for dallying in a past that has not been re-told in so many decades.”

  Matteo, perhaps sensing the same longing for his past, gently patted Belle’s hand and whispered something in Italian that Jenda did not understand.

  Belle answered him in a pure and kind voice, “Yes, quite right my dear friend. Let us continue because the end is near at hand and there is still much work to be done.”

  “Augustine and I traveled the world for the next fifty years. Celebrating eternal life and eternal love in every possible way you could imagine. We met others of our kind and we continued to work towards our ultimate goal. We were going to re-claim our right to the world. In many remote places, we found that others still reigned as gods and goddesses, just as we dreamed. We learned from them, shared our own stories, but in time we moved on. We were always searching for better ways.

  “In 1963, Augustine and I were frequently in the battles of Vietnam. The spoils of war for a vampire are much more fruitful than those of a mortal man. Augustine’s dreams of conquering the world were beginning to wear on our relationship. I wanted to end the constant madness and searching. Wanted to enjoy a life that I had always dreamed of and he wanted nothing. He could never find what he was searching for and we fought heavily.

  “The last straw came when we created a band of Vietnamese vampires from the soldiers in the war. It was a fun game for us to turn soldiers into vampires and let them loose after being starved for days. These creations knew no sides or loyalties and they would shred everything in their path. We were watching the commotion our little band was causing from the shadows of the jungle when we finally made our biggest discovery.

  “We had loosed the fifteen men into an enemy encampment and were laughing in glee as we glutted ourselves on the blood of any soldiers that might escape our pets. Suddenly we heard a woman’s scream so clear; it was as if the light of heaven had shattered our perfected and cozy hell. We ran to see what mischief our men had made to find a young girl, around your age Jenda, kneeling over the body of a Mahayana monk. She cried to heaven, calling out various names of Buddha and cursing the vampires that were circling her.

  “The vamp
ires were frightened and afraid to approach the girl. Maybe it was some spiritual barrier or maybe it was just their past beliefs surfacing through the blood lust but they would not approach the girl. After only a second of hesitation, Augustine broke through the circle and pulled the woman to her feet. His teeth were bared in a ferocious snarl and it was clear that he would destroy her for ruining our fun.

  “The woman fought valiantly to break from Augustine’s grip and screamed at him that he was a ma quỷ, a devil, and that her god would destroy him. This did not deter Augustine, he believed in nothing but himself. He drained the girl in seconds and as soon as the last drop was consumed, he began slaughtering our fledglings. Of course, I immediately took up his efforts. It was not unusual for us to destroy our little toys as soon as they were no longer of use. After all, you can’t just leave packs of ravenous, newly made vampires wandering around unfettered.

  “When the slaughter was complete, I turned to him to ask that we move on. I had tired of this country and the paltry squabbles of war. Instead of finding him there beside me, he was gone. I searched for him for hours but as dawn approached, I knew he would be in no danger so I stole back to our little cottage. We had dug the earth beneath it into a comfortable chamber filled with silks and cottons for us to sleep away our immortal slumber of the day. We knew no one who entered there would find us because the entrance was so well concealed that only vampiric eyes could find it. As I closed my eyes with the first rays of sun, I had one quick, prophetic glimpse of the woman screaming over and over again before I was lost in darkness.

  “When I woke that evening it was to find Augustine sitting outside our little hut staring dumfounded at the sky. I asked him if he was well and he did not answer. I was filled with terror. I grabbed him by his shoulder and shook him so hard that I would have decapitated a human with the sheer force of it.

  “At last he looked up at me and I stumbled back in fear. His once emerald eyes were now clouded and misted over in a blind haze. I reached one cautious hand towards him with the intention of touching his face. I was terrified of what could have caused this. What could have taken the eyes from an immortal being? Before my hand could reach within six inches of his face, I felt Augustine’s hand cruelly enclose my wrist and he shoved me away.

  “I pleaded with him to tell me what had happened and tried to reassure him that there was nothing done that couldn’t be undone. Finally, his strong voice interrupted my incoherent babbling and its reverence silenced me immediately.

  “He told me of his wanderings. He described how, after he drank the blood of the holy woman, he had felt a despair weighing on him so great that he had thought to take his own life. He had gone to a cliff near the river, determined to wait for the sun to rise and end his unholy existence. He said the woman had issued a curse upon him in her dying moment that he, a monster of the night, would be reborn to God with the next rising sun.

  “I tried to interrupt him, to tell him that the dying ramblings of a woman consumed by the false beliefs of a god, other than himself, were nothing. He stayed me before I could finish and bid me to listen before he spilled my blood. He had never threatened me with such things and despite my rage at being spoken to that way, I listened because my fear was stronger than my anger.

  “He said as the sun rose on the horizon he did not feel the coma of sleep descend upon him as it had for the previous three hundred years. His natural vampire reaction to bury himself from its killing rays did not take over. He merely stood there waiting for his demise. Within minutes, the sky turned from black to blue, then purple. Still he did not feel the need to cover himself. The rose tint of morning came upon the hills and the golden rays of day began to chase the shadows across the horizon. Yet he stood without pain and without fear. He watched the sunrise and he had survived. He was caught up in the magic of a new day, something he had not seen in more than two centuries. Then without warning, his eyes began to burn and the woman’s words came back to him.

  “He told me this was his burden, his restitution for the evil that he was. He had been given the gift of light only to have his eyes taken so that he could walk in the sun but never again see its beauty. He was doomed to live in the dark while he walked the landscapes of time for eternity.

  “I wept more then, begging him to understand that we could find a way to lift the curse. He only shook his head. He had lost his desire to be the Lord of the Night. He only wanted to share one final gift with me. That is when he took me in his arms and we shared a lover’s embrace. We shared our blood like we had so many times before and in his I saw the sun rise in his mind and I knew peace and fear, awe and loathing. Just as quickly as it began, it ended. He whispered to me that I should walk in the sun and he was gone. I never saw Augustine again.”

  25

  Soborgne was still testing her new strength with the zealousness of a child when she heard it. Thrum…thrum…thrum…someone was coming. It was a human; it was blood. She no longer could distinguish the two. No one was a person, they were blood, they were food, and they were salty sweet oblivion. She pressed herself against the wall of her cell. Waiting patiently as the sound of the heartbeat came closer. She felt a sharp pain in her jaw and a tingling in her teeth. Raising one hand to her mouth, she realized that her canines had lengthened. They were not the lethal points that she had seen in the man’s smile but they had grown. She was salivating so much now she had to use the sleeve of her shirt to wipe away a line of spit that had seeped from the corner of her mouth.

  The dark haired girl appeared at the bottom of the stairwell. Soborgne knew her name but it was hard to focus now with the sound of her young heart beating so loudly. The girl approached the cell cautiously, her brown eyes watching carefully beneath their thick lashes. She stopped a few feet from the bars, staring right at Soborgne without a hint of fear.

  “Hello. Can you understand me?” The girl’s lilting voice cut through the hunger just enough for Soborgne to understand she was being spoken to, though it took a second for the words to seep in.

  “Yes. I can understand you. I am starving, not stupid.” Soborgne’s reply shocked the little Cambodian girl a bit. “You are Maya. You were a poor street kid and came here with such delightfully childish dreams of seducing a rich man. Now you are just a blood slave. I know you.” Soborgne didn’t know how she knew these things but she knew she was right.

  Instead of being shocked or frightened, Maya just smiled. “Nice little parlor trick Soborgne but you aren’t quite as clever as you believe yourself to be. In fact, I think I know a bit more about you and your little friend Jenda than you do. Now if you can behave yourself I might be able to make you a little more comfortable and clue you in on what’s going on here.”

  The shock of hearing Jenda’s name sobered Soborgne up even more. The human side of her was still dominant to the vampire side and it was now in almost full control, with exception to the gnawing hunger in her gut. “What do you know about Jenda and why would you help me? What’s in it for you?”

  “Let’s just say I have my own plans and your darling little goody two shoes friend is not part of that equation. So I help you, you save her, and I get what I want.” She flipped her chocolate colored hair as if this was no more than a friendly conversation being held in the mall.

  Before Soborgne could question her further or try reading her again, the girl produced a large and very sharp knife from the folds of her skirt and sliced her arm. The thick red blood rose in fragrant elegance to the surface and the vampire inside Soborgne shrieked in pain as the hunger over took her. Maya picked up a cup from the table near her, let the hot liquid pour from her arm, and collect into the glass. Soborgne moaned and licked her lips in desire.

  “I will give you this but you must help me close the wound. I have plenty of blood to spare but if you kill me instead, you will starve and your friend will die. Do you understand?” Maya’s voice was cold and calculated.

  “Just give it to me.” Soborgne couldn’t believe that was
her voice as she spoke. It sounded feral and rough, more animal than girl.

  The glass was almost full and Soborgne could not bear the scent that filled her nostrils as her throat burned with thirst. “Do…we…have…a…deal?” Maya spoke each word carefully, letting each one sink in before uttering the next.

  “Yes, yes. I will do anything, please just give it to me. I’m dying here you bitch!” Soborgne hated to beg, even in her old life, but now that is what she was forced to do. She was addicted, she was a junkie, and she needed that blood to survive.

  Carefully Maya extended the full glass to Soborgne. As soon as her hands grasped it, she gulped its contents down in seconds and thrust it back to Maya, her eyes saying what she could not. Soborgne needed more. Maya complied and neither spoke as the wound on Maya’s arm flowed like a fountain into the glass. Maya stared at Soborgne as Soborgne watched, transfixed by the sight of blood.

  The glass brimming full again, Maya finally spoke. Her voice was still clear but Soborgne could hear the weakness from the blood loss behind it. “Ok. Before I give you this, I have to stop the bleeding and I need you to help. They have changed you enough that your blood is mostly vampire. I need you to bite your hand and I need you to spread it along the wound. It will help it to close so I don’t stand here and bleed to death.”

  Soborgne stammered, the first glass had soothed the beast a little but she still craved the heart beating inside Maya. “I don’t know if I can. I mean I’m so thirsty. I don’t have a lot of control. I…I…might kill you.” A flash of the other servant girl lying in the cell bled out and her wide unseeing eyes.

  “You have to. Now do it.” Maya thrust her arm forward bravely. Soborgne bit into the palm of her hand and tasted her own blood. It tasted wrong. She then quickly smeared her hand up and down Maya’s arm, over the wound, once, twice, and on the third time, she snatched her hand back and screamed in frustration. It had taken everything not to rip the girl’s arm from its socket and suck the blood from it until it was nothing but pulp.