“Clearly not,” Rose said, looking at me as if she were sizing me up. “What is it about you? It’s like there’s a whole devil inside you just bursting out.”
I smirked. “Do you find the devil… attractive?”
“Very,” Rose said, sipping on the martini the bartender had placed in front of her.
I grabbed my drink, dropped Nico’s twenty-dollar bill on the bar, and took a sip myself. “Holy shit,” I said. “This tastes like ass. But I love it at the same time.”
“Welcome to the world of martinis,” Rose said. “No one really likes the taste—but something about it draws you in, something inexplicable.”
“Is that how you feel about me?”
“Well, there is something inexplicable that draws me to you. But I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy the taste…”
I smiled wide. “Me too.”
“What the… What is wrong with your teeth?”
Shit. I wasn’t thinking. Closed-mouthed smiles, Mercy. “I’m sorry. It’s a bit of an unusual defect.”
“It’s sexy,” Rose said.
I almost chuckled. I thought she was about to cut and run. But instead, even exposing my fangs drew her in more…
“And your eyes,” Rose said. “So beautiful. In this light they almost look red.”
In this light… I could work with that. “Do they?” I asked. “That’s interesting. Yours still appear blue to me. Unless the light deceives me, I presume that’s your natural color.”
“It is,” Rose said. “And what color are yours, naturally?”
There was nothing about me now that was natural. What was I? Unnatural, or supernatural. I wasn’t sure. But I knew I wasn’t plain old natural. Still, I knew what my eyes had been before.
“My eyes have always changed in the light. Sometimes they look green, other times more brown. But if this light makes them look red, that’s certainly a first.”
“I like it,” Rose said.
Of course she did. I was beginning to think, now that I was a vampire, even if I farted people would find it… irresistible. It was like I couldn’t turn this girl off if I wanted to. Not that I wanted to… I was getting hungry again, after all. I’d barely gotten a taste of Edwin earlier tonight—and that was not enough. Just an appetizer.
I grabbed my martini and downed it in a single gulp.
Rose raised her eyebrows. “Martinis are for sipping, dear.”
While the drink burned on its way down, I really felt nothing much different. How long would it take for the alcohol to have an effect? I mean, clearly Nico would have anticipated this… I was half afraid if I got drunk I’d slaughter the whole room, one at a time, until I couldn’t drink any more. The whole place, after all, was something of a buffet for a young vampire like me. I’d have to sample everything just to know how it tasted.
I ordered a second martini. Again, I downed it in a single gulp. Again, I felt nothing.
Rose raised her eyebrows. “For someone who doesn’t know her drinks, you sure have some impressive tolerance.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps I’m a natural.”
“Honey, that’s not natural,” Rose said.
“Then… supernatural, perhaps?” I asked with a wink.
Rose smirked. As she smirked, it looked like her hair turned to snakes. A hundred of them slithering together, as if she were Medusa. I looked across the room at Nico—and where his head should have been, I saw a horse’s head in its place.
Maybe I’d spoken too soon about my tolerance for alcohol.
The horse—the one that must’ve been Nico—looked at me and shook his head. He came over and grabbed me by the arm.
“I’m Rose, by the way,” she said, extending her hand to him.
Nico shook it politely before looking back at me. “You’re seeing things, aren’t you?” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded.
“Alcohol affects us that way. I should have warned you. But usually it takes greater quantities that I’d expected you’d indulge in…”
I giggled. Yeah, I was downing this stuff like water.
“Just remember, what you’re seeing isn’t real…” Nico gave me a nod and returned to the lady—an older woman, beautiful no less, but refined and dignified. She was the wife of someone. I could just sense it. And her husband didn’t know she was here. She was looking for something exciting, something taboo… She was going to be in for one hell of a surprise.
“Who was that?” Rose asked.
“Oh, that’s just Nico.”
“A boyfriend?”
I shook my head.
“A shame,” Rose said. “I thought you might be up for a party of three.”
Of course she found him alluring, too.
“He’s just something of a mentor to me,” I said.
Rose looked at me incredulously. “And you aren’t sleeping with him?”
“God no,” I said. “Why would you think that? Gross. That would be like doing my own dad.”
“Just a question,” Rose said. “You can see why a girl might think that. You’re both exceedingly attractive. Both around the same age.”
“No we aren’t,” I said. “He’s older than he looks. A lot older.”
“If that’s the case,” Rose said, “he must’ve found the fountain of youth. What I’d give to live young forever.”
I narrowed my eyes. Could I change her now, too? I wouldn’t mind having a pet… a young vampire of my own… especially one so beautiful. “That’s good to know,” I said. “Might I beg your pardon for just one moment? I’d like to inform my… mentor that I suspect we might be leaving together tonight.”
Rose took a sip from her martini. “Of course,” she said with a wink.
I strolled over to Nico, whose head appeared normal again. Thankfully, it seemed, alcohol-induced hallucinations wore off rather quickly. “Can we change her?” I whispered in his ear.
“What? No. That’s not why we’re here.”
“But I like this one!”
Nico turned to the woman he was courting. “Excuse me, madam. I’ll be just a moment.” Nico pulled me aside, around a corner. “You’re too young.”
“I’m nineteen!”
“No you aren’t. You’re two nights old. Human years don’t count. You’re like a child again. Changing a vampire is a great responsibility. You shouldn’t even attempt it until you’re at least two decades old. And even then, it’s a bit young to assume such a burden.”
“Am I a burden to you?”
“Of course you are,” Nico said. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t willing to accept it. I hadn’t sired a new vampire in some time. But take it from me, from someone who once sired more than he could handle, it is not a responsibility to take lightly.”
“Well why not? Seems like fun to me.”
“If you sire someone, it is your responsibility to help them master their cravings, their bloodlust. Like it’s my responsibility to do that for you.”
“Say I was going to sire someone,” I said. “How would I do it?”
“It’s notoriously difficult,” Nico said. “First, you must drain them of every last drop of blood. And then, by some miracle, they must survive the transformation. Most humans, by bleeding out, are already dead before the transformation even begins. Most of the time when we sire someone, it happens by accident. It’s such a rarity for one to survive when we drain our victims that we can never count on it. Not unless, as was in your case, some kind of magic is sustaining them.”
“Well, how convenient,” I said. “I happen to be a witch.”
“Mercy, don’t do it! I’m warning you. If you change her, you’ll both see a stake before week’s end.”
“You wouldn’t!” I said.
“Not from me,” Nico said. “From the hunters. Two unrestrained vampires… bodies start piling up, people with inexplicable blood loss… it’s just a matter of time. That’s why you need to be cautious, at least until your cravings are tamed.”
“Fine,” I
said. “I won’t change her. Not this one.”
“Just be sure to feed in moderation. Remember, we don’t want to leave bodies behind.”
I walked confidently back toward Rose. A burly man had taken my seat and had his hand on her back. “Excuse me, sir. That’s my spot. She and I were having a conversation.”
“I’m not leaving. But you’re welcome to join in…”
“You couldn’t handle me,” I said, spurning the man who, besides being completely unattractive—hairy, too old, and smelling of beer—had an alcohol-induced ego that needed cutting down. “I’m going to ask you one more time, sir. Please, get off my barstool.”
“Make me,” the man said, belching in my face.
I smirked. “As you wish.” I grabbed the man by his collar, and not even knowing my own strength, threw him across the room. His body smashed into a large mirror mounted on the wall.
I heard screams and shrieks. The bartender was staring at me, jaw dropped and speechless.
Rose was almost laughing. “What are you, girl?”
I looked back at her and narrowed my eyes. “I’m a nightmare.”
“Then put me to sleep, and take me into your dream world.”
I smiled slightly. It was a cheesy pickup line, but for whatever reason she didn’t find my sudden display of superhuman strength terrifying… she found it sexy. It must’ve been the allure, that draw we held for our targeted prey.
I felt Nico grab my arm. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
Then I smelled it… the smell of blood. The man I’d thrown into the mirror was bleeding.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Did I kill him?”
“Probably,” Nico said. “Not that he didn’t deserve it. But news of something like this… it won’t be long before it finds hunters’ ears.”
As I got up and followed Nico out, I was startled when I heard her say my name.
“Mercy?” Rose asked. “You promised me we’d leave together tonight.”
“Turn off your glamour,” Nico said. “Let her go. We’ll find a meal somewhere else.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know how I even turned it on… how I turned her on.”
“Fine,” Nico said. “She’s probably under your glamour until you bite her. After you feed, she’ll be released. We have to make this quick. Ma’am, please come with us.”
“Gladly!” Rose said as she stepped up, hooking her arm with mine.
As Nico pulled me along briskly, so I was forced to rush Rose along behind me. Nico pulled us both into a dark alley. “Okay, make it quick.”
“Good sir,” Rose said. “You intend to watch?”
Nico ignored the comment as I took Rose in my arms. She pressed her lips to mine, and I bit her lip, savoring an appetizer of her blood. Rose moaned in ecstasy at my bite. I lowered my teeth to her neck and bit hard. I drank deeply as Rose continued screaming in pleasure.
“Just enough,” Nico said. “Leave her just enough to survive, but drink until she passes out.”
How could I even stop? It was so delicious… It had a slightly different flavor than my brother’s blood. It was the soul cohering in the blood, the flavor of it. It tasted more… experienced, with a spicy hint of naughtiness. I relished it. Don’t get me wrong, the taste of innocence is great, too… but this was a flavor I could grow accustomed to.
I didn’t know how or when to stop. Stopping was the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t want to kill her, but I wanted all of her. I wanted more…
Nico grabbed me by the shoulders. “That’s enough!” he exclaimed, pulling me off Rose as her body collapsed in the alleyway. “Any more and you would have killed her.”
“But isn’t that best, anyway?” I asked. “I mean, if she remembers what happened…”
“That’s why I suggested you buy her a drink,” Nico said. “When there’s alcohol in someone’s system it will remain within her even as you drain her blood. Your bite filters out all impurities, leaving the alcohol behind. And with less blood in her body, it’ll be like she woke up from a horrible night of drinking. She won’t remember a thing.”
“But the bite marks?”
“See for yourself,” Nico said.
I looked at Rose’s neck. There was some blood there, but the wounds, the punctures were gone. “How the hell…”
“Even as your own body heals quickly now that you’re a vampire, the venom contained in your bite greatly accelerates the human body’s ability to heal.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “Couldn’t we heal all kinds of people, then? If our venom heals.”
Nico shook his head. “Trust me, I’ve spent a century or more attempting it. But our bite will only heal its own wound. And possibly another wound if in very close proximity to the bite. Provided the wound is fresh.”
“Fascinating,” I said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Back to the graveyard,” Nico said. “We’ll do the same thing tomorrow night. We’ll have to go somewhere else. Never go to the same place twice, not if you’ve claimed a meal there. Or in this case, kicked someone’s ass in public. But I know plenty of spots. One feed at a time, Mercy, and you’ll get this under control. Just remember: wait for me. And whatever you do, don’t go back home.”
It was like that every night for almost two months. In recognition of the fact that I was, apparently, a bit of an early riser, Nico was waiting for me at my grave every night. Just a little while longer, he insisted, and I wouldn’t have to use my grave as a bed. I could move to more hospitable accommodations. Provided, of course, the cravings were being effectively managed.
So far, so good. I’d become something of a master at seducing both men and women—so much so that I seemed to lure my prey even more easily than Nico. It got to the point that I could give someone a wink, nod to a dark corner, give them a shot of alcohol, and start feeding.
Nico typically required at least a conversation before his victims would be enthralled by his allure, his glamour. That is, so long as he insisted on keeping the hunt civilized. In the old days, apparently, some of his earlier progeny used to hunt by stalking alleyways, breaking into homes by night, hijacking stagecoaches along the road… but these methods lacked discretion. They led to mass hysteria.
And eventually they led to the rise of the hunters. They called themselves the Order of the Morning Dawn. Their stated purpose was to eliminate vampires from the face of the Earth. Their preferred method: a stake to the heart. That would incapacitate the vampire. Then, they’d eviscerate or burn the heart. That would do them in for good.
They executed their kills at the morning dawn, hence the name of the Order. It’s the moment when a vampire is weakest, when the sun rises and the vampire is resting from the exploits of the night before. Didn’t strike me as particularly honorable—but truth be told, if they encountered us in the heat of the night they’d never stand a chance. So, they had to play the coward and kill us in our sleep.
Cowardly or not, they were a threat. And until we could identify where they were from, or who their leader was, we had to play it smart. Avoid detection. Use a combination of alcohol and our allure to seduce our victims and minimize their recollection. And most of all, never leave a body behind. Always ensure the victim survived with enough blood that they could recover on their own.
The Order was one reason why Nico had stopped creating more vampires. Younglings like me were too careless, too reckless, and their actions put everyone at risk. Apparently, back in the Middle Ages, Nico had gone on quite a tear throughout Europe.
Under the cover of the plague, the “Black Death,” he’d been able to claim victims, create new vampires, and get away with it without much notice. Untimely deaths were common in those days—the plague always took the blame. But these were different times. Still, the larger contingent of vampires remained in Europe and followed pretty strict protocol for maintaining discretion. Expose a vampire coven to the Order and you were just as likely to be condemned by the Vampiric C
ouncil as you were to be brought to the true death by the Order.
6
AFTER ANOTHER NIGHT’S exploits—I’d made a meal of a fine young man, a sailor, in fact—I returned to my grave. I’d made a lot of progress over the last month or so. The cravings were fewer and further between. Nico didn’t feed most nights; he said he didn’t require it. I wouldn’t either, once enough time passed.
Apparently, a remnant of every soul we taste remains with us. Over time, the souls build up and we need to feed less regularly. While even he hadn’t achieved it yet—and there was no vampire on Earth more ancient than Nico—he believed that given enough time, we’d never need to feed again. Once we’d acquired enough souls to effectively fill the void left behind by our own souls—the souls we lost when we became vampires—we’d reach a new apex of existence.
Also, over time the souls we’d acquire might grant us different abilities. Nico had quite a few, in fact. He had a strange ability to see future events. Not small things, but major events, things that were bound to happen in the broader course of human history. He said we were entering the bloodiest century of all human history, when wars would rattle the entire world.
But we were also entering a century of great progress, new weapons, new inventions that would change the course of human history. As vampires, he said, we had to be ready. He had a plan, apparently—a way to change the public’s perception of our kind, to render the horrors and legends concerning vampires that fueled the likes of the Order of the Morning Dawn inconceivable.
I wasn’t sure what Nico’s plans were, but they consumed his attention. When he wasn’t bothering with me, he kept himself locked away in a small motel room, working on whatever plan he was hatching. For now, he said, it served us well to be feared. But the time would soon come when fear was not enough. We’d have to convince the world of the opposite—that we were more human than not, that we should be loved, even revered. It sounded like a dream, but who was I to question it?
I was lucky I’d died—well, become a vampire—in the winter. The fact that my grave was still covered in bare soil, that grass hadn’t yet grown over it, made my nightly rising less conspicuous. All I had to do was ensure that I covered my casket with dirt, again, after I rose—and make sure I went back to my grave with enough time that Nico could replace the dirt over it before sunrise.
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 76
