The Turning of Zachary Degaud (A Witch Hunter Saga Short Story)

by Nicole R. Taylor

  Zac glanced into the shadows where his vampire eyes saw Victoria lingering, watching him with an air of approval.

  "Do it," he heard her whisper and he turned, following the woman up the stairs.

  Once on the landing, the room opened out into a small, but lavishly furnished bedroom. Looking around he saw no other entrances, only a window on the wall behind him, the drapes closed tightly. As she lit a lamp on the dresser, he idly wondered how many men she brought here and if she'd been happy.

  "Now," the woman purred, standing before him. "Where were we?"

  As she reached behind herself and began to unlace her corset, he could only see the pulsing vein in her neck. His eyes came up to meet hers as he felt the slow burn in his throat. Just the thought of her blood made him hungry and the more he dwelt on it, the more it seared.

  Then, it was as if someone else was controlling his movements, awakening the predator inside. Stepping forward, he reached around and grasped the woman's wrists and pulled her hard against him, burying his head into the crook of her neck.

  "Oh," she exclaimed. "That's more like it."

  He breathed deeply, inhaling the promising scent of blood, his lips brushing against her skin. As his vision began to blur into darkness, he knew it was too late. He wouldn't be able to stop this now. He didn't want to.

  He began to kiss her skin softly, her breath hitching as his hands lightly traced the outline of her arms, then burying into her hair. Gently tugging her head to the side, his teeth began to ache and he could draw it out no longer. Biting down into her jugular, he tore at her flesh viciously, her blood beginning to pour from the open wound.

  The woman let out a shriek of horror, her frantic sobs grating on his nerves. He clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the annoying sounds as he pulled the life from her in heaving gulps, the coppery tang of her blood overwhelming his senses until there was nothing else. When she began to still, legs crumbling beneath her, he gently lowered her to the ground, cradling her body as he drunk the last drops, her heart slowing and finally stopping. It was only then he pulled away and looked at the corpse he now held with black eyes and a bloodstained mouth.

  Monster.

  Zac was suddenly aware that Victoria was standing over him. Looking up, she shook her head, a sly smile playing at her lips.

  He'd killed before, but this time it was different. This time there was no going back. He'd killed and he liked it.

  "Let her go, Zachary," she murmured and he looked at the woman in his arms with sudden distaste. He stood sharply, dropping her lifeless body onto the floor. There was blood everywhere.

  "What have you done to me?" he whispered in horror as his eyes began to clear.

  "I've done nothing but help you to survive," she said.

  "You've done nothing but make me kill."

  Victoria snarled and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards the window, flinging the curtains open wide. Pushing him into the dawn, his skin began to sear and he cried out at the sudden pain.

  "Stop it," he sobbed, trying to control himself. If she held him there for much longer...

  "You have to understand Zachary," she hissed into his ear. "I'm the one with the power here."

  "Please."

  Victoria hauled him into the shadows and he fell to his knees. The pungent smell of burnt flesh began to dissipate as his skin healed.

  "This is what you are now," she said, looking down at him with disdain. "There's no going back. It would be such a waste if I had to let you go."

  His eyes snapped up to meet hers. "You wouldn't."

  "Oh, my dear. I would in a heartbeat."

  Zac knew she would. She would kill him in an instant if he was no longer useful, if he could no longer serve his purpose.

  Victoria was every inch the monster she had created in her own image. The monster she'd turned him into.

  There would be no going back. Ever.

  The one thing Victoria wouldn't give Zac were answers.

  She was extremely secretive about her reasons for turning him and would dodge his questions, sometimes slapping him across the face, splitting his lip against his teeth. She would tell him that they would be together for eternity, that they were going to do great things. What those things were didn't reveal themselves to him until weeks later, when they travelled to Louisiana.

  Victoria found them a house in New Orleans, where she left him for days at a time, seemingly off on some undisclosed business. All in good time, she would say when he enquired. He didn't dare leave the house at night for fear he would be recognized, having spent much time here when he first enlisted.

  Zac became increasingly agitated at his confinement and Victoria finally agreed to keep him company. They were in the parlor that night when she received a guest. A tall, well built man, dressed as if he'd come to a dinner party in a fine waist coat and jacket, stood in the doorway. Victoria bade him stay as she took their guest to the dining room.

  He knew the man was a vampire. He wasn't trying to hide it at all. Casting his hearing out, he heard the door close behind them. Stepping out into the hallway, he moved silently down towards the dining room and hesitated. The voices of the two vampires murmured on the other side. They hadn't noticed his approach. Leaning his back against the wall he listened.

  "When he is ready, he will be unstoppable," Victoria was saying. "He is still too new, too prone to the rage."

  "There is another who has their sights on the South, Victoria," the man replied, his voice urgent.

  "I know full well what we're up against. Zachary will bend to my will one way or another and he will be the cold blooded killer I am shaping him to be," she said with pride. "You should see him, Alistair. Even when he looses control, he's beautiful to watch."

  "If you're right, then together we will be forever safe from them," the man named Alistair replied.

  "That is the goal. After I let her escape in Paris," she sighed. "If we win the South we will have her. I know she's here."

  "I hope you are right, Victoria. For all our sakes."

  Finally understanding, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. Victoria had turned him to help her win the South for her own gain. He had been a Captain, who'd commanded respect; a respect that drove thirty-five men to their deaths unquestioned. Fighting and killing was second nature to him as a human. As a vampire, he would be capable of much greater horror. Victoria was using him.

  When she finally came back to the parlor, closing the door behind her, she saw the hatred in Zac's eyes. Sitting beside him, she forced his face towards hers. "What is it, my dear?" she asked.

  He stood abruptly; wrenching himself free, pacing over to the fireplace, "Tell me the truth, Victoria."

  "I have always been truthful to you," she smiled, standing.

  "You're a masterful liar," he scoffed. "Tell me the truth." When she didn't reply straight away he spat, "You're training me to do your bidding."

  "Not mine, Zachary. Ours."

  He shook his head in disbelief, "I never wanted this!"

  "Dear, Zachary," she caressed his cheek, attempting to calm him. "You will kill for us. It's the only thing you're good at."

  He let her go, his expression falling into resentment. Victoria stepped into him, resting her head against his chest, her arms circling his waist.

  "I won't let you use me," he whispered into her hair. "I am not your puppet."

  She smiled up at him, kissing his cheek. "Oh, but you are and forever will be."

  Her hands reached up and grasped his face as her expression contorted into malice. She was too quick for him. She had broken his neck before he could pull away, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

  It was around midnight when he finally woke, sitting upright, gasping for breath. Looking around wildly, he realized he was alone. The house was empty.

  "Victoria!" he roared, but knew he would receive no answer.

  Standing, he paced back and forth, rubbing his nec
k. Where could she be? He knew nothing of her dealings, other than what he had overheard. Stopping abruptly, he realized that Victoria would teach him a lesson for his defiance. The only thing she knew he cared about was his family.

  Ashburton was thirty miles to the northwest. His family's manor and plantation about twenty-four miles. If he ran as fast as he could, he would be there in less than an hour. Bursting from the house, the street outside was empty. He was across town in five minutes, moving so fast, the humans he passed thought they had been buffeted by a gust of wind on an otherwise still and humid night.

  Pushing himself harder and harder, not caring who saw him, he ran and ran, hoping he would make it in time. Victoria would kill everyone he had ever loved to teach him obedience. Perhaps she already had, waiting for him to show up to rub it in his face. Or maybe she would do it in front of him, to wrench the last piece of humanity out of an otherwise empty body.

  As he turned up the long road that led up to the main house he smelt the blood. Unable to control himself, his eyes misted into black pools of nothingness, but he didn't stop. He couldn't.

  Skidding to a halt at the top of the driveway, he heard the screams. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he listened for his parents and his brother. He couldn't lose control now, not when their lives were at stake. Then he heard her musical laughter on the air, drifting from around the side of the house.

  He ran towards the sound, coming to a complete stop at the doors to his fathers study, an invisible barrier stopping him from entering. The floors and walls were splattered with blood and he couldn't get in. Willing it to be a bad dream, he saw his mother and father on the floor, the life having ebbed away from them. The sickly scent of their blood hung thickly in the air, threatening to take his sanity, but his grief was enough to hold him.

  "No," he whispered, unable to move.

  "Zac?" came the familiar voice from across the room.

  "Samuel?" he cried, his head snapping up from the gruesome sight before him, seeking out his little brother.

  He stumbled from the shadows, his eyes flickering to the bodies of their parents and up to those of his older brother, whose eyes were eerily black. It was then he realized Victoria was behind him, staring over his shoulder into Zac's eyes, the bloodlust etched in her once pretty features. They'd invited her in.

  Zac saw the blood in Sam's mouth, dripping from his lips. Victoria had fed him her blood, she intended to turn him.

  "No," he pleaded. "Not him, please not him."

  She stood behind his brother, grinning maliciously. "This is what happens when I'm defied, Zachary."

  Sam gasped as she snapped his spine, his legs crumbling beneath his weight, useless. Then she bent down and snapped his neck before he had a chance to cry out.

  "No!" he roared, lunging for Victoria, his eyes black with rage, all the human occupants of the house now dead. She had taken everything from him. His parents, his brother, his home. She even took his death. He should have died in that pile of corpses and remained that way.

  His hands grasped empty air as she disappeared, laughter coming from behind him. Snarling deep in his throat, he swung around to find her on the verandah, just outside the open French doors.

  "Come and kill me, Zachary, or help your little brother change," she sneered at him. "It's the only choice I will ever give you."

  His eyes shifted down to Sam's limp body. In this moment he hated Victoria more than he ever thought possible. She had forced him to make a hopeless decision. He would either have to kill his brother or turn him.

  Unable to control himself, he rushed Victoria, wanting to tear her to pieces. If this was the one thing he was good at, then she would bare witness to it first hand.

  She ran, luring him into the surrounding forest, but all the training he had in the army came as second nature out here. He cornered her in a small gully, where the old cave used to be. They were surrounded by rock, Victoria's back against a fallen boulder. Her eyes widened slightly as if she comprehended the monster she had created. His rage was all consuming, all reason lost. Lunging for her, his hands grasped her neck, squeezing.

  "How could you?" he heard himself saying. "Murderer. Murderer!"

  "You're a killer Zachary," Victoria gasped, her fingernails raking at his hands. "And you're mine. I made you. I made you!"

  "I'm not yours!" he spat at her, letting his rage overwhelm him. Feeling his fingers sink into her flesh, he tore her neck open, his fangs sinking into the open wound, tearing out anything they clasped hold of. With a roar, he tore her head clean off, casting it aside as her limp body fell to the ground, blood pooling in the dirt.

  He watched numbly as her body turned grey and withered, his chest heaving, covered in her blood. Victoria was right; he was good at killing. It was easy. A piercing scream brought him back from the edge of his frenzy. Samuel!

  Turning back to the manor he ran, needing to get to his brother before he did something he'd regret. He needed to explain to Sam, let him know his options. Give him the choice he never had.

  Running up the long driveway he saw his brother in front of the house, clutching a young woman to his chest, his head buried in her neck. Zac couldn't smell her blood, he hadn't fed yet. He pushed himself to run faster than his vampire feet had ever taken him.

  "Sam!" he yelled, but was too late. He watched helpless as his brother sunk his newly grown fangs into the woman's neck. Stopping dead in his tracks, he could only watch his little brother, twenty years old, toss the woman aside as if she were nothing.

  Sam looked confused as he stumbled down the driveway, blood dripping down his chin, the ground littered with the corpses of the massacred slaves and servants. Zac could only fall to his knees, silent tears streaming down his cheeks.

  "Zac..." Sam was gasping, clutching his chest. The change was on him.

  Roaring in pain, he collapsed, writhing on the ground, subdued by Zac's hands on his shoulders. When he finally slipped into unconsciousness, he let his grasp slacken. It was his fault. All of it was his fault. If he hadn't of defied Victoria then she wouldn't have come here. His parents would be alive and Sam would be human.

  Zac could only do the one thing that was left in his power. Picking up his brothers limp body, he carried him down the driveway and away from their home for good.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Nicole R. Taylor is an Australian born paranormal, fantasy and contemporary fiction author. She is a graduate of the University of Ballarat Professional Writing and Editing programme and is a former music memorabilia sales person and current grocery merchandiser.

  She currently lives in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia with a two year old rescue cat named, Burger. She enjoys reading, writing (of course!), travelling and a little too much chocolate. One day she hopes to sky dive, but has to work up the courage first.

  The first in her new paranormal fantasy series, The Witch Hunter Saga is available in e-edition and print.

  Learn more about her writing at:

  www.nicolertaylorwrites.com

  She may be contacted by email at:

  nicole.this.is@gmail.com

  BOOK ONE

  THE WITCH HUNTER SAGA

  I was born into the world covered in blood, and that's exactly the way I left it.

  Ever since, I have been damned to walk the boundary between life and death alone. Unwillingly turned and left to my nightmare, I have seen men commit countless horrors and committed many of my own.

  My origins shall remain unknown, my true self hidden. I have been called by many names, but in this life I am known as the Witch Hunter. I have been asleep these past 150 years, until I was awoken by a haunting call.

  Zachary Degaud was twenty three when he died. The problem was, he didn't stay that way.

  Present day, he's just another vampire with another unremarkable story. That is, until he manages to provoke a two thousand year old witch named Katrin, who wants to make him pay in the most horrible way imagined.

  Along wi
th his brother Sam, newly made vampire Liz and their only witch ally, Gabby, his only chance for survival is to summon the ancient and unpredictable vampire known as the Witch Hunter.

  Zac is just looking for a way out of his psychopathic witch problems, but instead will find himself falling head first into a blood feud that has stretched thousands of years.

  Aya has been asleep for the past 150 years, until she was awoken by a haunting call. The witch she has been hunting for thousands of years, Katrin, has resurfaced and marked a young, annoyingly arrogant vampire by the name of Zachary Degaud. Unless she does something, he will die a slow and painful death. He has given her an opportunity to end the witch, but does she want to help him or leave him to his fate?

  Zac will get under her skin like no one else has and she just might find herself making the ultimate sacrifice before he is gone forever.

  They will both have to choose sides and look deep within themselves before the end. But, what Zac learns about himself, will surprise him most of all.

  BOOK TWO

  THE WITCH HUNTER SAGA

  I've wandered my afterlife believing that I was the monster my maker told me I was. It was the only thing I knew. Not even my brother, Sam, could convince me otherwise.

  Not until her. Not until Aya. She walked into my life like a hurricane of destruction and nothing would ever be the same again. None of us could have known what would happen next. What fate had in store...

  I finally grew a heart, only to have it ripped out.

  Now, I will stop at nothing for revenge.

  Zac's afterlife is just going from bad to worse. He grew a heart only to have it torn out by the founding vampire, Arturius.

  Nobody is sure what he wants, but Zac doesn't want to know. He's more interested in finding a way to end him for good. But, it might just be that he's after Gabby, who's harbouring a secret of her own, one that Arturius would do anything for.