The Sanctuary 2: The Vampire's Passion

by Athena Blackrose

  “I bet Addy can’t make pie that good.”

  Again, I heard her voice clear as day but her lips weren’t moving. I shook my head, trying to clear the voices. It must be guilt, I told myself. I’d done a horrible thing, leaving Ma like that and I knew it. I’m just hearing things. There’s no way in hell I was reading her thoughts.

  “Ma, I gotta go,” I said, pushing the plate away. “Thank you. Again, I apologize. I’ll take Bessie now and you can get some rest. I’ll come see you again tomorrow, okay?”

  “Alright, son,” she said, smiling up at me as I walked to the door and grabbed Bessie’s leash. Bessie danced at my feet like I’d just given her the biggest bone she’d ever seen. “I’ll let you go if you promise to come back tomorrow.”

  “Of course, Ma,” I said. “And no more running off, I promise.”

  “I love you, son,” she said.

  “I love you, too, Ma,” I replied, kissing her on the cheek. I leaned down, clipping Bessie’s leash onto her collar.

  “Yes, yes, yes, oh my god, yes, yes, yes, yes, outside, outside, outside.”

  I froze in midair, watching as Bessie looked up at me with excited eyes, her tail wagging ecstatically as I heard another voice chanting, clear as day in my head.

  I shook my head again and tried to clear whatever cobwebs had formed in my brain.

  “See you tomorrow, Ma,” I said, opening the front door and smiling back at her. Bessie ran out into the sunshine ahead of me and I turned back to Ma. She looked happy and that made me happy.

  “You’d better,” she said, smiling.

  “I will,” I nodded. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said, before pressing her lips together.

  “I’m not worried because if you disappear like that again, I’ll snatch the hair right off your head!”

  My mouth fell open. I’d definitely heard that, in her voice, in her words. And her lips had remained tight as can be.

  “B-b-bye, Ma,” I said, suddenly itching to get away from her.

  I wasn’t sure what any of this meant, but I needed space. I opened the door of the car and Bessie hopped in, perching herself in the passenger’s seat as I slid behind the wheel.

  The heat was incredible today, leaving all of Portland in a wilted, heated fog. We weren’t used to heat like this. We were used to mild wet weather ten months out of the year and the remaining two weren’t very hot at all. Apparently, we were experiencing our one requisite heat wave today. The leather seats in Addy’s car were scorching and I winced as I touched the steering wheel. I laughed to myself when I remembered that all the jokes about Oregonians being vampires and hating the sunlight when it finally came out weren’t so funny anymore.

  I started the ignition and turned on the air conditioning.

  “Oh, yeah, cool air, I like that. Where are we going? Where have you been? I know you love that old lady but she doesn’t give me near enough exercise. Please don’t leave me with her again. Oh, yeah, cool air, cold, cold, oh god, cold, yes yes yes.”

  I stared over at Bessie, her eyes bright and happy, her face turned to the air vents as she stood in her seat, her huge tail hitting the head rest of the seat with each wag.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said out loud, staring at her in awe. She looked over at me and pounced on me, licking my face over and over.

  “God I missed you you taste so good why didn’t you taste like this before oh my god you smell so good where are we going where have you been do you have any food for me god the air feels so cool this fur is so hot oh my god why do you taste so good.”

  I pushed her off me, my heart beating wildly as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. She whimpered and looked at me with disapproval before shoving her snout into the air vent again.

  “Oh god cold cold cold cold yes cool air oh my god yes yes yes…”

  I put the car in gear and pulled out of Ma’s driveway, my head spinning as Bessie’s constant chatter filled my ears the entire drive back home.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ADDY

  He’s out there, I thought. Wandering around in a new world, seeing it through new eyes, eyes that I’d given him. I was worried sick about Leo. Worried he’d become too tempted, that he wouldn’t be able to resist the urges.

  And now that he’d killed Dane, now that he’d seen that dark death with his own eyes — even worse, at his own hands — I knew that the urges would just get stronger.

  I saw it. I saw the change in his eyes, felt it in the way he’d taken me. He’d found his strength, he'd found the darkness that I’d implanted inside of him.

  He’d tasted death, and it almost tasted better than blood.

  The surge of adrenaline, the tingling excitement rushing through your veins, the power, the sheer force of the power that lies in your fingertips….it was more addictive than any drug.

  I’d seen it ruin vampire after vampire.

  That’s why I feared for Leo now. These are the things I knew was coming.

  Becoming a vampire was a quick process. The dying, the rebirth. But it was living as a vampire that took time to settle into. Most of the changes come quick, but it’s the slow ones, the ones that take a little longer to manifest, those are the ones that can become your undoing.

  Anything could happen to Leo.

  He was strong, sure. But there were stronger vampires out there. Smarter ones, too. Vampires who had been vampires for hundreds of years and knew so much more about themselves, about the world, about their own capabilities.

  Leo was young, naive, compared to them.

  He needed to lay low, he needed to go slow. I’d hoped that he wouldn’t experience killing another vampire for a very long time, because now his trajectory was fast-forwarding way too quickly for my comfort.

  He needed to evolve into an adult vampire gently, not be catapulted into the darkest depths of our depravity.

  I sighed, my heart heavy with worry.

  It was too late now. What’s done was done. Dane was gone, finally. Leo was on his own journey.

  I sat on my couch, sipping on my favorite beverage — organic, free-range, grass-fed Bison blood. It was hell getting it out of the meat myself, so I’d become friends with a rancher that sold his meats at the farmer’s market every week. A while back, I’d made up some elaborate story about an ancient blood soup recipe from my Polish great-grandmother that required lots of pure blood and he’d been saving it for me every time he slaughtered a bison and selling it to me in bottles ever since.

  I’d learned lots of life hacks over the years and befriending ranchers was one of the most valuable. Modern day farmer’s markets made that a lot easier these days and I was beyond grateful for that. Keeping myself well-fed kept a lot of those urges at bay and I was hoping whatever Leo was experiencing, his desire to feed off humans, his desire to kill other vampires, would fade and eventually the fresh animal blood would be enough.

  For now, though…well I saw that look in his eye.

  The look of raw desire.

  Like an addict who’d just had his first taste of heroin, I knew he’d be searching for more soon. That taste, that feeling of pure power, wasn't easily forgotten. The memory seeps under your skin, burrowing into your consciousness until it was like a ticking clock that never let up.

  I remembered the first time I’d seen it up close. The first time I’d seen a vampire killed and the aftermath…

  My life was never the same after Bernard. Oh, how I hated him for tearing me away from everything and everyone I’d ever loved. I wanted to kill him, but in the beginning, I hadn’t even known that was possible. He’d taught me so much about being a vampire in those first few years, but he conveniently left out the fact that there was one way to do away with us. I think he knew I’d try to kill him, of course. And I would have, in a hot second.

  I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated Bernard.

  In the beginning, I ventured out every single night, alone, trying to find a way
to escape him, to escape what he’d done to me. I wandered the streets, night after night, searching for something I hadn’t thought of yet, or someone to help me. I even tried explaining my situation to a few frightened souls, but I always ended up having to escape before they locked me up in a straight jacket.

  In the end, I realized that there was nobody I could tell, nobody I could trust, nobody who would ever understand.

  Except Bernard.

  My creator, my own personal devil.

  In the end, I always went back to him, my heart full of shame for needing him.

  He wasn’t nice. In fact, there wasn’t a nurturing bone in his body. He was rough and harsh and I’m pretty sure he regretted the fact that he’d ever turned me in the first place.

  I was a burden to him.

  And to me, he was pure hell, but he was all I had then. I didn’t know how to survive, I didn’t know how to walk in this new world, where everything was dark and turned upside down and nothing made sense anymore. I spent long nights watching my family, longingly staring into the windows of my grandmother’s cabin, following my father, watching Brady fall in love with another woman…all the while wishing I could go back, wanting more than anything to turn back time and reclaim what was rightfully mine — my family, my life, the love I’d felt in my heart.

  Everything was replaced with misery and death.

  I was death.

  Bernard was death.

  And yet, we breathed. We walked, we talked, we argued, we fought viciously in the forests, terrifying all the wildlife with our savage battles. I kept trying to kill him, but he just laughed at me, because he’d still not shared the secret with me.

  “I hate you!” I’d shout, a great big roar that resounded from my mighty lungs, night after night.

  He’d sneer and laugh that horrific laugh that would haunt my dreams for years. He taunted me, teased me, made me believe I had a chance at hurting him, that I was strong enough to overcome him, if I just fought a little harder.

  It was never enough, of course.

  I was merely a pawn in his sick game, prey that he played with to gain some sick satisfaction that I’d never been able to understand.

  “Hate me all you want, dear,” he’d say, “and keep that hate close in your heart. Hang onto it, darling. It’s the only thing you truly possess. Everything else comes and goes, but that hate? It’s always there, lurking, waiting to pop its pretty little head out and show you where your true power lies.”

  “I’m not a monster!” I’d insist. “I don’t hate things! This isn’t me!”

  Hate had been a forbidden word in my household, my mother insisting it was way too strong a word to use in everyday language. She abhorred negativity of any kind and I was never allowed to even use the word. Now, I hurled it at Bernard with a ferocious violence that I’d never felt before.

  “That’s your mother talking,” Bernard would reply, infuriating me even more. “That’s the human you talking. But darling, the sooner you accept what you’ve become, the easier everything will be for both of us. You are hate. You are darkness. You are death!”

  “Just because I hate you with everything inside of me, doesn’t mean I am you!” I spat. “I can be better than you! I don’t have to give in and become a monster like you are!”

  “Oh, my dear, are you forgetting that you don’t have a choice? Your destiny has arrived! You are forever, you are forever darkness. It’s a gift, don’t you see!?”

  “A gift?” I cried in disbelief. “You’ve taken away everything I love! How is this a gift? You’ve ruined me!”

  “I’ve only ruined who you used to be. What you become now is up to you,” he replied, pausing thoughtfully. “You know, darling, vampires used to be so much more savage than they are now. I suppose we’re evolving over time, becoming more passable, more friendly, in order to integrate into society. And I think we’ll keep making progress. Maybe you’re right, dear. Maybe your generation will do better. Maybe you can find some light in this never-ending darkness.”

  It was a rare moment of lucidity for Bernard and I cherished his prediction. I longed for him to be right. If I couldn’t undo what I’d become, I wanted to at least make the best of it, whatever that looked like.

  Of course, if you’d told me then that in a few hundred years I’d be buying bottles of animal blood from a rancher to survive, I’d have never believed you. Vampires back then hadn’t even thought up the concept of integrating, or of the sanctuary, or even that we could survive without killing and terrorizing humans.

  It was a far-fetched idea at the time.

  A light in the darkness? How absurd, I’d thought at the time.

  But he was right. Today, I sat on my couch, in my comfortable, normal home, appearing, for all intents and purposes, a normal person. I did normal things now, like walking my dog or going to work or shopping at the market. I didn’t spend my nights chasing terror-filled, screaming humans through the forest just to get a taste of the blood pumping through their veins. I didn’t sleep in a coffin, I didn’t cringe at the sight of a wooden cross, I didn’t hide from mirrors or cameras.

  I was normal.

  Whatever that was.

  As I waited for Leo to return, I desperately hoped he’d be able to find his normal, whatever that looked like for him.

  I loved him deeply and the lingering shame of what I’d done was something I couldn’t shake. But it was also something I couldn’t change, just as I couldn’t change what Bernard did to me so long ago.

  I had to accept it and find the light in it.

  I was pretty sure it began with the love we felt for each other.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d gotten when I saw that look in his eye after he killed Dane. It was as if the seed had been planted and now it was up to me to make sure it didn’t get watered, that it didn’t sprout and turn my love into a true monster.

  I’d seen that look before. The first time in Bernard’s eyes, years later when he finally showed me how to kill a vampire. By that time, I was deep in the life. Killing Bernard no longer appealed to me, so he was safe and he knew it. He knew I’d never hurt him.

  He was still all I had. My only teacher, my only friend, my only confidante, my only enemy.

  But that night still rang clear as day in my memory. It had been during one of our battles, which we still enjoyed even though I’d given up on trying to destroy him seriously. Now, we did it to relieve boredom, basically.

  We were deep in a forest in Colorado, high up in the mountains, roaming the countryside as we did back then. We didn’t have jobs or responsibilities, we just traveled a lot, because it was necessary. Locals became real curious about newcomers back then, and as long as we kept moving, nobody asked too many questions about a skeletal old man traveling with a young twenty-something girl.

  That night, the forest was bone-gripping cold, a thick layer of snow blanketing the ground. The moon bathed the trees in a golden glow, the brightness of the snow below lighting up the night in an eerie ambiance.

  We fought up in the trees, soaring through the air from one branch to the next like a couple of hawks. We wrestled and punched each other, doing our best to knock the other to the ground, laughing and growling at the same time.

  We were so engrossed in our game, we were both startled at the sudden presence of another vampire. Tall and dark-haired, the woman was the most beautiful vampire I’d ever seen up to that point. She was older than me, slightly matronly, her ample curves straining against her fitted gown, her burgeoning cleavage threatening to rip the seams of her sweetheart neckline right open.

  The poor woman mistook our roughhousing for real violence and even now I shudder to think she was protecting me. She lashed out at Bernard like a mother lioness guarding her cubs, ferocious and savage, she cried as they fought.

  Bernard, being Bernard, didn’t try to stop to explain and my cries to do so myself were lost in the deafening roars of the two of them. They fought to the death, savagely te
aring at each other repeatedly.

  I looked on helplessly, unsure if I should try to protect Bernard or protect the woman. In the end, I didn’t intervene at all.

  I stood frozen in place, wondering when it would ever end, wondering who would give up first, just as when I fought with Bernard. One of us had to cry for mercy first.

  But they kept fighting. Battling like they were in a two-person war, they beat and bloodied each other. I cried and cried for them to stop.

  Finally, Bernard found a small, sturdy branch and when he picked it up, I almost laughed. What would a small branch do to a woman with such obvious momentous strength?

  But he showed me.

  In a quick flash, he sank it into her skull and she collapsed in a heap at his feet.

  Of course, there was no show of flesh breaking out into fire, no smoke and ash like when Dane died. Not all vampires disappeared into an evil spectacle of hell.

  This vampire’s body simply faded away into thin air after an hour.

  I sat at her side, crying in disbelief as her body slowly began disappearing.

  “What have you done?” I shouted at Bernard.

  “That bitch was going to kill me!”

  “Kill you! What are you talking about? Why have you never told me this was possible? Why have you lied to me, telling me tales of immortality and invincibility? You’ve been lying to me all this time!”

  “Because I knew you’d find out soon enough. It wasn’t time yet.”

  “You mean it wasn’t time because you knew I’d kill you if I knew!”

  “Well, yes, darling, that too. But do you honestly believe this woman wouldn’t have killed you? I was protecting you!”

  “No, she was protecting me!”

  “You go ahead and think that,” he spat. “But you’re wrong. You’d be the one fading into the ether if it wasn’t for me!”

  I looked up at him and that’s when I saw that look in his eye.

  He stared down at her, relishing his kill. Bright and alert, his eyes faded into a darker shade, the hunger transparent, practically glowing in his eyes.