“Sorry!” she hissed as she climbed in beside him.
He shook his head and motioned for her to hurry and cover him. Once the cloth was in place and he was securely hidden, he lay panting from exertion, feeling weaker than ever, but his spirit felt buoyant, light, carefree.
He was going to feed at last.
“Good luck,” his sister whispered, and then left him to the muffled sounds of the yard.
Eyes wide, he lay beneath the musty smelling cloth, unable to see anything but the coarse brown of the material. Straining his ears, he tried to catch whatever sounds he could, hardly daring to breathe lest the rasping sound give him away and destroy his chances of finding his cure. Minutes ticked by.
He woke to the steady wobble and bump of the wagon travelling over the rough road and felt his heart start at the reality of what he was about to do. Without his sister to help him now, how was he going to make it out of the wagon without his family seeing him? Neither one of them had actually thought that far, but he refused to think about failing this attempt. He would simply have to work something out when the time came.
Neither of his companions spoke during the trip, so he had no idea who he was travelling with and the uncertainty had his breath coming in quick pants of fear that it could be his father. If it was, he was almost certain that he would be put under lock and key were he discovered. Katarina would never be allowed to visit him alone ever again, for it wouldn’t take much deduction to associate her with the escape.
If it was not his father in the wagon, then it would be his mother and most likely one of his brothers. What would they do if they discovered him? His mother only visited him rarely, as the sight of him seemed to cause her great distress, so he did not know how she would react. If it were one of his brothers accompanying her, he assumed they would react as his father would want them to.
If they did not notice his presence, would they leave the wagon unguarded whilst they traded with the humans?
The wagon seemed to move along at a snail’s pace. When it slowed even more, he became aware of a slight murmur, like many people talking all at once. He didn’t dare peek out of the cloth for fear he would be seen, but his ears strained to catch every sound. Scent was masked because of the musty reek of the cloth and he wished fervently that he could smell the fresh air, the scent of dew on the grass, anything that would confirm that he was indeed outside. Free.
As the wagon drew closer to the village, he realised that he must have been asleep for more than an hour as that was how long Katarina had told him the trip would take. The murmuring sound grew louder and he was able to make out snatches of conversation as they passed by some villagers. Cows mooed, sheep baaed and chickens clucked. It was music to his neglected ears.
Finally, the wagon drew to a halt and he heard a male voice say, “I shall be quick.”
“Do not hasten thyself, dear Patrick,” his mother replied, “for I will be viewing the wares of the weaver and may take quite some time.”
He heard his brother sigh in resignation and then their footsteps departed.
He lay there for a long moment, hardly daring to breathe. Were they really gone or was it a trick? Would they not just pull back the cloth to reveal his deception? Surely they would. With a surge of courage, he pushed back the cloth and looked around, eyes wide.
The village was teeming with life. Many a human male and female were trading goods with each other, talking and laughing, looking as if they hadn’t a care in the world. It was his first glimpse of human life and it left him envious. Especially as he spied a group of young children flitting about chasing each other, cheeks rosy and grins on their faces. What he wouldn’t have given to be that carefree, filled with energy, robust with healthy vigour.
Looking down, he took in his wasted limbs, so thin that the bones were clearly visible beneath the thin layer of translucently pale skin. What wretched misery. He must have done something truly terrible in a past life, if there were such a thing, to deserve the existence he had been given. Surely Fate was not so cruel as to bestow this kind of tragedy upon someone for no reason.
Feeling the weight of despair descend upon him, he shook himself quickly and forced his eyes from the sight of his withered body before he became lost in his own depression.
Moving towards the end of the wagon was a monumental struggle. Simply pushing the cloth away enough so that he could move without becoming entangled was half the effort, but finally, he reached the only part of the structure that wasn’t a raised wall. With a deep breath and a shot of courage, he rolled off the back of the wagon.
He barely felt the impact as he crashed to the ground, his bones miraculously intact. Instead, he focused all of his energy in dragging his sorry self towards the closest doorway. The dirt beneath his fingers was dry and fragrant, sparking a distant memory about his childhood of playing on the ground and drawing circles in the powdery stuff with his fingers. The hope that he might once again be that carefree and capable enabled him to continue to inch himself forward, even though he felt as if for every inch he gained he had to rest five minutes just to make it one more. His lack of strength would have been utterly humiliating if any of the humans had been able to see him. He had never had the opportunity to test out his invisibility with the human race before, but his sister had assured him that it existed. For the moment, it seemed she was right.
He had no idea how long it took him to claw his way through the dirt to the relative safety of someone’s home, but it must have been a decent passage of time, as he had only just made it into the darkness of the abode when he heard his brother’s voice, the male muttering something about their mother taking so long with the humans. As he lay panting with total exhaustion, he had only energy enough to make sure his brother could not see him before passing out cold.
When next he woke it was dark and his body ached from top to toe from all the knocks it had taken since he had left home. He wondered, as he lay on the cold stone, how Katarina was faring back there, deflecting his family from going to see him—not that they regularly did. It may well be a week or more before any of them realised he was missing, especially if Katarina brought him his meals and professed his exhaustion to them.
Movement to his right caused him to jerk in surprise, his head twitching violently towards the source of the motion. It was a human male, mid-thirties, with dark brown hair and a muscular body. The man was squatting before a fireplace, tossing a few thin pieces of timber onto the softly glowing coals. After a moment of watching the sticks alight, he tossed a few thicker pieces on and then sat back on a stool to wait.
Greyvian’s eyes never wavered from the man as he stoked the fire and brought it roaring to life, filling the room with a warm amber glow and a slow heat that nevertheless drifted straight out of the open door in front of which he lay. He wondered if the man had given any thought to closing the door but had dismissed it due to vampire Awareness tampering. He was surprised that it worked while he was unconscious. So far, everything Katarina had told him seemed true. After a while, Greyvian realised that whilst the man may not have been consciously Aware of him, subconsciously he knew he was there as he kept frowning and looking towards the open door as if he couldn’t quite understand why he wasn’t closing it. If he could have, Greyvian would have dragged himself out of the doorway and saved them both the draft, but he could no more lift his head than roll his body from the door.
Had he the energy to make the human Aware? Did he dare?
Minutes ticked by as he debated with himself over the matter. Finally, he decided to give it a try. Alas, raising Awareness was beyond him at the moment. No matter how much energy he put into wishing himself visible to the man, nothing happened.
Sinking back against the cold stone, he felt numb. Numb in body, numb in mind. He had come to the village to test a theory that human blood could be his cure, but if he hadn’t the energy to move from a doorway, how was he supposed to see it through? All he could do was long for the sweet embrace o
f death, to finally have his pitiful existence relegated to the pages of history, no longer a reality, only a sad tale that the others of his kind could frighten their children with when they misbehaved.
When would it happen? How long would it take?
Depressed beyond measure, he closed his eyes and drifted for what seemed an eternity. When next he became aware, the fire had died down to coals once more and the human male was nowhere to be seen. Closing his eyes, too tired to cry though he wanted to weep, he slowly became aware of a strange sound, a kind of rumbling murmur that came and went with puzzling regularity. Lifting his lids slowly, he tried to find the source of the sound and eventually managed to determine that it came from over by the far wall.
Minutes passed, and then he heard a rustle of cloth, the creak of timber, and a kind of snorting bark, followed by a brief cough as the human rearranged himself in his bed. Greyvian’s eyes widened as his foggy brain realised this was the perfect opportunity.
Whether he was strengthened by desperation or the hand of some benevolent god, he was able to move at last. He knew not how long it took and cared little, but slowly and inevitable as the passing of time, he made his way across the dusty floor to the side of the man’s simple bed. Panting like a dog and similarly begging for scraps, he tried to push himself to his knees but could not muster the strength.
Tears of desperation leaked out of his eyes. He was distantly aware that he was mewling like a newborn kitten looking for a tit, but he continued to struggle, to will his useless limbs to move. It was useless. He had not the muscle capacity to lift his chest from the rough floor—not with pectorals nor biceps.
Weeping openly, devoid of all hope, he rested the side of his face on the cold ground and wished fervently that Katarina had never raised his hopes to begin with. It was a cruel, cruel fate to be handed a possible solution and then to fail so miserably to see it through when it was a mere few inches away.
After a while, the weeping tapered off and he simply stared blankly at the thick layer of dirt beneath the human’s bed, too tired even to drop off into unconsciousness.
And then it happened.
The man rolled over on the mattress and his arm slipped down towards the ground, his wrist falling right before Greyvian’s eyes. He did not need a written invitation. Fangs extending painfully, he gathered one good burst of energy and lunged.
Warm, soft flesh gave easily to the sharp points of his fangs. Greyvian was not aware whether the man jerked with the pain, but the human did not move and that was all that concerned him as the first sweet burst of blood hit his tongue. Hot, metallically sweet, it slid down his throat, trailing fire as it went. He braced himself as the flow made it to his stomach, but there was no clenching refusal of the liquid, only a warm easing as years of starvation was finally appeased.
Mouthful after mouthful disappeared down his throat. The utter sense of peace he felt in those few minutes would stay with him for centuries. It was the first time he could remember that he felt not the gut-wrenching pain of starvation, the ever-present ache of a body that lacked sustenance. As the blood worked its way quickly from his stomach to his organs and on to his limbs, it created a chain reaction of healing and strengthening that had him sitting up without even being aware of the fact that he was moving.
When the flow finally slackened and would not continue, no matter how hard he sucked, he dropped the arm he had been holding in a death grip and realised with a distant surprise that the human was on the floor beside him, face twisted with the fear of death, sightless eyes imploring him to stop.
Sweaty and panting, lost in the memory, Greyvian came to an abrupt halt as he spied a dark figure not ten metres in front of him that exactly fit with his dietary requirements. Fangs already extended, he figured if he couldn’t outrun his memories, he might as well try to drown them out by succumbing to his thirst. But, as he fell on the man and sank his fangs into the soft flesh, the feeding only served to bring the more troubling of his memories from the depths of his mind.
After his first taste of human blood, nothing else seemed to exist in Greyvian’s mind. He no longer had a family, no longer slept, no longer ate regular food, nor cared that he was destroying countless lives as he worked his way through the village like the silent hand of death. Humans in those days clung to myth and legend as though they were a religion, and, since he was not the first vampire in history to go on a rampage, the idea of vampires in their midst was not beyond possibility in their minds—especially as he left his victims where they fell, shrunken and bloodless, twin puncture marks in their necks or wrists, the evidence plain for everyone to see.
They grew fearful within a day, for he had gone through a dozen in a matter of hours; the number of victims increasing as his body adjusted to the volume of blood it was now receiving. The acrid scent of fear permeating the air spoke to an evil part of him he hadn’t known existed. They began to lock their doors at night, venturing out only in the day as if they believed he was confined to the darkness. They soon realised their folly as he walked amongst them, taking whomever he desired, one after the other after the other until he was so gorged with blood that he couldn’t bring himself to swallow even one more mouthful.
It was only then, as he finally rested from his feast and took stock of himself that he realised that his clothing was at once too short and too tight, meaning that along with an increase in height he had also filled out with muscle. To a sixteen-year-old boy of any species, finally developing muscles after being stick thin was a hell of a thing! He couldn’t stop looking at his arms, at the biceps that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere.
At last, he was a man!
“Greyvian, is that you?”
His father’s horrified voice snapped him out of his self-admiration. Looking up, he saw that it was now nearing dusk, when before it had been mid-day. How long had he been admiring the changes in his body?
Focusing on his father’s face, he saw that the male’s expression perfectly matched his tone. After a moment of incomprehension, he realised that his father must be in shock from seeing his son so strong and healthy.
“Father! Isn’t it wonderful?” he asked, spreading his arms and smiling. “I have found my cure!”
His father slowly shook his head, as if unable to comprehend that the man standing before him was his son. “You have killed these humans?”
Were they dead? Greyvian looked around himself, taking in the twisted forms of a half dozen humans, their faces creased in fear, each reaching out in supplication. He felt a distant sense of revulsion, but the emotion didn’t touch him in his presently elated state of mind.
“I have fed, Father,” he replied simply, unable to understand why his father seemed so horrified at the death of a few humans. If anyone of his kind had little love for the human race, it was his father. Surely the male wasn’t upset by their deaths?
“On humans.” It was not so much a question as a statement of horror.
Ah, so that was the cause of his father’s torment, not the deaths in and of themselves.
“Yes, Father. It appears their blood is what I require.”
His father shook his head in denial. “How can it be so?”
“I know not,” he shrugged, taking a step towards the male. His father took a step back and all of his warriors bristled, their hands hovering over the hilts of their swords.
Greyvian frowned. “What is the matter, Father?”
“What has happened to you?”
Confused, he looked down at himself, at the torn and dirty clothing that was now a few sizes too small for his larger frame. “Oh, that.” Looking up at his father, he smiled. “It appears I have had a growth spurt.”
His father shook his head in denial. “Monster!”
Surprised at the name, he looked down at himself once more. Perhaps his father was talking about the blood? There was a great deal of it covering his shirt, after all, and his father had always been very careful with his clothing.
Irritated that his father would focus on a detail like that at a time like this, he took a few steps towards the male and came to an abrupt halt as he was struck by a realisation. Previously on the few occasions that he had been stood upright before his father, usually by his brother when it was time to bathe, he had been just below chin height on the male; now, he was eye to eye with his father, perhaps even a little taller.
The proof of growth was not lost on his father who took yet another step back, his own hand moving to the hilt of his sword.
Greyvian was astounded. His mouth dropped open in shock. His own father would raise a weapon against him? For simply growing taller and filling out?
“Father?” he questioned, his voice cracking, his eyes flicking back up to meet the male’s guarded grey stare.
“What has become of you?” his father asked once again, his eyes flicking briefly around the village before coming to rest on Greyvian’s once again. “Do you feel nothing for what you have done here?”
“Done, Father?”
“This!” his father shouted, sweeping his arm in a circle at the village.
Confused, Greyvian looked around at the squat buildings, taking in the silent forms of the villagers sprawled haphazardly along the street, in doorways, slumped against barrels. They had all helped him become what he should have been all along and he felt a gentle fondness for the gift they had given him. High on blood, gorged to a pleasant state of mind, he felt no remorse, no disgust and could see nothing horrific in the sight of the prone bodies, the dark blood that splattered the walls here and there, or the fact that there were no animals in sight, all of them having fled long ago.
“I have fed, Father,” he said, unable to think of what else to say to convince his father that this was a good thing.
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