The Depths of Darkness

by Laurie Bowler

  “No love,” he laughed, “we’re the dead ones.”

  His words slowly sunk into my subconscious. I was vaguely aware of a transformation recently taking place in my body, flourishing into another part of something but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. I was now the leader and the one who would make the decisions on the lives of others, both animals and demons and occasionally a mortal when they crept through the doors, but they were usually better at hiding their own defects and troubled lives than demons were.

  Everything around me was so loud, the echoes of voices somewhere, Darcy’s and Benjamin’s as they played and argued over a card game. Someone was cheating but neither of them would admit who it was and constantly accused each other. I could clearly hear everything as if they were all say in the room with me; it was disconcerting but at the same time fun and an excitement into another world where no one had been. It was tempting and beckoning me to taste more.

  “You can’t keep it Luke,” I said firmly. “It has to be sent back with the Meniagier. It wouldn’t be right keeping it alive here, and if it ever got free there would be bloodshed and I cannot allow that to happen. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at me, uncertainly and a little anger flared in his eyes when he realised I was firmly stepping into the shoes of the high almighty and readying his thoughts of keeping an animal that had been summoned from hell here on earth.

  “Very well,” he breathed deeply in the aim of self control. “It will be sent back as you wish.”

  He accepted his fate, the fate of the maker who now had to stand beside me and rule but without making verbal decisions. I would need him to make decisions with me, and together we could rule but the only voice that would allow to be heard would be my own. The realm would never accept Luke’s.

  “Take a look then,” he waved me away with a wink. Letting me know he wasn’t angry with me in the least and accepted the fates befallen to us both.

  I heard the excitement in his voice and the happiness, the bonds of my immortality were being sealed. Together we would now be equal with each other without any laws or silly rules breaking us apart. We would now be able to live in harmony untouched by the realm and anything they tried to do to break us apart.

  I looked down at my hands in the light, silver veins and white skin, deathly pale but the silver veins were a symbol of vampirism, the magical beauty of their veins as they’d transformed over time. For centuries they’d been merely recognised by their eating habits but as time evolved so had their race. Their veins now mimicked silver tracks that ran through their bodies, it couldn’t be visible to the naked eye and only a trained witch could increase the possibility of visual effects on their skin to determine who was who whenever he/she needed to know.

  “Luke,” I gasped, “it's beautiful.”

  Radiantly I twirled, ecstatically happy with the new found vampirism that was flowing through my veins and creating a beautiful vampire and lover for Luke; I only hoped I would live up to his expectations.

  “Of course you will,” he gently chided capturing me in his arms and holding me tightly. “You will always live up to my expectations so long as you never stop being yourself, and don’t turn into something like Lilly or get too greedy.”

  “I’ll never do that,” I said backing away with shock. “She was evil and beyond anyone’s control.”

  He released me and I stood in front of the panes of the mirror, inspecting my skin, inch by inch marveling at the radiant beauty that I was seeing.

  “This is amazing,” I whispered again.

  The chuckling from downstairs snapped my head around the same as the sudden conversation.

  “I’d better go and speak to the others for a minute,” he said turning to the door, and quickly turning back to me, “will you be ok for a few minutes?”

  I laughed and waved him away, my new found happiness was the unexpected turn of events that allowed me to live, but now I was living in an entirely different way, seeing the vampires first hand and from a different perspective. It was new and exciting, a whole new adventure but this time, it would be an adventure with someone who I loved and I hoped loved me in return. Although he’d said it before, I began asking myself if he really mean it.

  “I cannot believe I’m a vampire,” I whooped on the spot with the sudden joy that appeared somewhere deep inside of me; it was the most magnificent dream, and I hoped it was real.

  “I think she’s just figured it out Luke,” Benjamin laughed. “You’d better get yourself back up there.”

  “I think she’s going to make an amazing high witch, after all. Who better than an immortal to rule everything inside the realm? And someone with so much power like she has; she doesn’t even realise her own potential.”

  “Now you two,” Luke reprimanded, “she can hear you.”

  A chorus of laughter rang out and reached me; I chuckled softly to myself still standing in front of the mirror and holding each of my hands in turn to the light, mesmerised by the sight of such glorious beauty like my silver veins.

  The sun seemed to expel the radiance of my new state all the more, creating a dazzling site of silver light that bounced from the walls, blinding lights but still the most beautiful I have seen in all my short human life. No one inside the realm could ever compare their records to the one that I would soon begin to write.

  “You look stunning,” Luke said as he stood against the propped open door. “I knew you would. Now tell me, are you angry with me for turning you?”

  I considered my answer. I wasn’t angry, shocked but not angry. Right now I felt happiness spread itself through me, lighting me in ways I had never known could exist.

  “No,” I shook my head my hair swayed gently with the motion. “I’m not angry. How can I be when you’ve given me a new life, and I know I’m technically dead and all that,” I added quickly, “but I actually love what I have become, and the fact that I have a second chance makes it twice as good. So no Luke, I’m not angry with you.”

  “Phew!” he wiped his brow in the pretence of being worried, “I’m glad.”

  I walked across to the other side of the room to change my clothes, aware of his eyes with every step I walked. I felt the powerful strength I’d read about that vampires possessed with every stride that I took and the more I tried to walk like a human with exaggerated carefulness the more I failed. I ended up running in a bizarre rapid whirl across the room.

  Groaning loudly when I realised what I’d done and the look on Luke’s face, he was enraptured and amused. It was a different side to him, or maybe that part was my imagination considering I’d only just been turned into this wonderful state.

  “We can work on that,” he said laughing when I collapsed in a heap on the bed. “I promise you’ll fit in just fine,”

  “I guess it takes practise,” I said. “And anyway, I have an entire lifetime and then some to worry about, don’t I?”

  “I guess you do,” he replied.

  The easy conversation was one that only seemed to pull away from the real factors of our relationship. Love was the main concept that plagued my mind and I needed to know whether or not it was in fact true and that he loved me, like he said he did.

  “Luke,” I began hesitantly. “Did you mean what you said earlier?”

  “Which part?” he asked, smiling slightly his brows knit together as he began to retrace the conversations inside his mind.

  “The part when you said you loved me?”

  “What do you think?” he asked exasperated when I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “You might have said because of the heat of the moment and all that, but did you really mean it?”

  For a long time he studied me, his eyes scrutinised me where I sat and still he said nothing. His lips remained tightly screwed up, sealed without anything coming out. I could hear his breathing, or his pretence at breathing as surely as I could hear the ticking off the clock and the laughter that streamed from downstairs, the quiet
talking that I couldn’t be bothered to decipher from somewhere in the house.

  The mews of the Meniagier brought my attention back to the present. Maybe this wasn’t the time to be asking him so many questions when I had forbidden animals patiently waiting to be returned to their own worlds where they’d come from. The Cerberus would have to go along with them; Earth was no place for either of the kinds to live and remain.

  It would certainly terrify the humans if they so much as glimpsed them, and it was something I didn’t have to want to explain from the depths of the realm.

  “Your parents are here,” he said quietly, “And yes I meant every word of what I said.”

  My jaw dropped, and I stood gaping at his departing back, my parents had arrived, but why? He loved me, I could sense it, taste it and feel it surrounding me. He’d opened the private doors to his vampire emotions and had allowed me to enter into his own private world, the one where it belonged to those the vampire thought were worthy of the privilege to be allowed entry.

  I heard my mother, her soft sobbing and my father’s deep gruff voice from downstairs, their cries when they saw the devastation of the house and all that seemed to be remaining of the grounds of the once magnificent and expensive dwelling of a lonely vampire.

  I gathered my clothes and threw them on with hurried blurring movements. The vampire’s strength and speed was rather something that I had to learn to get used to, and slow down my movements and actions for fear of scaring someone.

  “Mother,” I exclaimed when I reached the top step, “Father!”

  My feet hurried down towards them, and their quick concerned looks to each other conveyed worry and then a knowing recognition of something they saw differently in me.

  “You're alive,” mother cried hurrying towards me, her arms flinging around my neck. “Thank goodness,”

  I stood, fearing if I touched her I would hurt her with the power I had. It was frightening to think that I could be the one responsible with enough speed and strength to hurt a human. It was against all the regulations and codes I’d been brought up with inside the realm, and no way was it going to happen to me.

  “I’m ok,” I said stepping out of her embrace and standing rigidly still. “How are you?”

  The last time I’d seen this woman she was crying rather loudly and pretending to be the one injured and ill, her own outlook on the realm, creatures and demons was rather bleak. I was certain it was something she’d tried in vain to forget existed over the years.

  The room began to spin rapidly around me, it was frightening and yet, I felt exhilarated by the fearsome approach my mother felt. Her eyes watched me, the fear began to build and she didn’t look at ease with me like she had before. Her face fell, a million images passed through my mind, sending me the distinct messages that she was confused by my reluctance to embrace her, to send her the message of love that she’d sent to me. My own confusion was the one that I didn’t know about, how to deal with a human. Her own precious human body would surely break beneath my embrace which was detrimental to her human form and something that I wouldn’t do to her; it was wrong and beyond the ideal situation.

  “Oh,” she said her hand flew to her mouth in shock.

  She knew without a doubt what I’d become. She felt the coldness in my skin, the desolation of my approach to her; it was weird to think the two people that had brought me up were now the most desolate ones in my life. They didn’t belong here in my world anymore; they belonged in another parallel world, which no longer included me. She watched me, the terror built quickly in her eyes. My father pulled her close, protecting her from the unknown and treating me like an enemy which I was to a certain degree. My own stance remained relaxed,.I didn’t want to hurt them, but their smell, the blood I could smell running through their veins, wishing, hoping I could have a small taste but knowing it was the sure change of the vampire state I have now become. Luke seemed to sense how I was feeling and came instantly to the rescue, standing beside me and ushering me into the study or what remained of it anyway. His face masked with concern and his voice dripped with the emotions of the one person that would endeavour to see me through this small section of my new life, the section that was probably the worst and one I would be glad to be rid of, and override.

  “I can’t go back in there with them,” I complained clamping my hand over my nose to stop the sweet smell of their blood. “Get rid of them please,” I heard myself begging.

  The nearest chair was the a hard backed uncomfortable looking thing, but I was glad to collapse into it all the same. My nerves were fried and on edge, never had I felt the parallel pull into the darkest world of the hated vampire thirst. It was the curse they had to live with, and now I had to find a way to override it and become something a little more stable before I ventured into the world and amongst humans again.

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured me gently. “Just try not to think about it; eventually you’ll get the hang of it. Anyway,” he smiled, “I think your father has something to say to you that might cheer you up a little bit.”

  “How can I go back out there knowing deep inside,” I thumped my chest area, “that what I really want to do is eat my parents?”

  He laughed suddenly, his old self shining through the one that had been covered with concern and the overhanging threats of Lilly and her antics for revenge.

  “I promise you’ll be alright.”

  He held out his hand, when mine met his I felt the reassurance in the gentle squeeze of his fingers, and the almighty smile and wink that he aimed at me before opening the door and facing my parents once more.

  “Mother, Father,” I said gently, “let's go into the front room where we might be more comfortable.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  I froze, my feet standing a small step apart, with my skirt gently flowing around me, floating and covering my scrunched up toes. I felt the impeccable pull to pound him, for some reason he made me angry with his insinuations of a breed of people that he had absolutely no idea about. His only inclination were the facts written in fairy tale books that always seemed to foretell the breed as ones that were night walkers, drinking meaninglessly but now he had to first hand experience. Whether he liked it or not, his adoptive daughter was now one of the them and proud to be joined as an equal in their race.

  “I am,” I replied spinning around to face him, my face inches away from his, causing him to stumble backwards slightly with the intimidation. “Does it matter what I am?”

  Luke cleared his throat noisily, reminding me of the new changes in my body and the power and harm I could potentially cause to a human, but I would never to do it to my father or my mother. Never would I want to cause them harm no matter how angry they made me, they were above all, despite their rather strange views, my parents.

  “Sorry,” I said weakly, my voice fading slightly when I realised what I was doing. “Shall we go into the room and then we can talk, rationally.”

  I raced ahead into the front room, my feet kicked up the pace, the flowing certainty that I could harm either one of them. I had become unstable and a strange phenomenon for them to understand; never had I been so thankful to have Luke’s calming presence around me.

  “So how did it happen and why are you alive?” my father asked, settling himself into the nearest chair grabbing my mother’s hand and pulling her gently down beside him.

  “I fought Lilly and won,” I replied steadily, gulping in the aroma of the flowers beside me to take my mind of away from the smell of their blood. The steady rhythm of the beating of their hearts was mesmerising and consuming the entire area of my mind that rang out ‘thirst’.

  “That still doesn’t tell us why you’re still alive young lady,” he gently chided as a father would. “According to what we were told by Matace you were made to die alongside her. At least that’s what he assumed would happen.”

  “Obviously,” I replied, “that’s why I was made but when hell opened up and consumed Lilly
it didn’t seem to like the taste of me and spat me back out. You want to have seen it; it was amazing to be in there, if not a little scary,” I quickly added.

  “So is that when Luke turned you?”

  To my amazement Luke approached my father and shook his hand. His entire demeanour relaxed against the attitude of my father who was treating him as if he was no more than a person who had an undistinguishable disease.

  “I turned her when she was at the edge of her life,” he said standing in front of my father. “There was nothing I could do to save her; otherwise she would have died.”

  “In that case,” my mother’s small voice spoke up, for once she didn’t appear to be fragile and under the ever controlling command of my father, “I want to thank you for saving my child. I know she’s not human anymore but still I get to see her for the rest of my life, and for that I am grateful. She is my daughter, my only child and I didn’t want her to die. But for her father, it’s a little harder for him to take in, so please excuse him for being so rude.”

  I gasped loudly, my father turned to his wife, a stunned expression and his lips pursed together, the exchange between them. Their gazes locked, a battle of wills had begun, my father’s impeccable record at being politically correct all the time against my mother’s once softer tones and her fearful manners of anything that was even remotely scary.

  “I see you fully support this wretched atmosphere here,” my father boomed angrily. “How can I disagree when you’ve obviously taken a liking to having a vampire daughter? I just hope one day you might come to your senses.”

  “Now don’t be mean,” she said gently. “It's our daughter but with a difference, she’s grown up and she can choose who she wants to be. I know she didn’t choose this but neither did she choose to be born and genetically made to fight and then die, did she?”

  He pondered, a deep frown crossed his forehead and his ramrod straight back relaxed into something akin to his demeanour, faltering against the walls my mother crashed through with her speech. I was fascinated and more than a little shocked with their exchange.