by Kristen Reed
And I may be half-monster.
“I’m sorry that you had to witness the coven’s savagery.”
“Why would Emmanuel bring me to something like that?”
“He probably thought that witnessing the feeding would awaken your thirst for blood.”
“Well, it didn’t. Maybe I’m not a dhampir after all.”
“The feeding didn’t affect you because they spilled human blood. Only vampire blood will stimulate your thirst at this point since that’s what you have to drink to become a vampire.”
“Then let’s settle this once and for all. I don’t want to waste my time agonizing over this stupid prophecy if I’m not even a dhampir,” I said. “How much vampire blood would I need to be around for it to have an effect on me?”
“Only a drop or two.”
“Being around it wouldn’t make me a vampire, right?”
“No, only exchanging blood can trigger the transformation, but you’ll crave vampire blood as long as it’s in your presence. After it’s washed away, your thirsts and appetites will return to normal.”
“Do you have anything sharp?”
“Always.”
Augustus stood up and I lifted an eyebrow when he pulled a six-inch knife from his sleeve.
“Has that been on you this whole time?”
“Yes, I’ve learned over the years never to leave my home unarmed,” he answered nonchalantly. “Now, even though I’m only going to draw a little blood, it will still affect you. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Very well then.”
Augustus took his knife and pricked his left index finger. The instant the blade pierced his skin, a bittersweet metallic aroma filled the air and my pulse quickened while my mouth parched as if I hadn’t had a drink in days. My entire body buzzed with energy and my hands trembled slightly as I grabbed the side of the nearby tub and pulled myself to my feet, watching the burgundy bead burgeon from the tiny incision.
When I stood up, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and that frightening sight was enough to stop me from closing the little distance between us. My eyes were black just as Emmanuel’s had been when he first revealed his nature to me. Thankfully, they bled back to their normal dark brown hue as soon as Augustus turned on the faucet and rinsed the blood from his healed finger and the knife.
“It’s true,” I whispered. “I’m a vampire.”
“Not quite. You are only a dhampir,” he reminded me, putting the knife back in the hidden sheath. “Furthermore, you have a higher calling than your own appetites and desires, which is more than I can say even for most humans.”
Augustus unlocked the door leading to his room.
“Follow me.”
I glanced at my reflection again and wrapped my quaking arms around myself, still haunted by my briefly yet disturbingly changed appearance, before following Augustus into his room.
“While I didn’t have any luck finding a physical copy of the Bible, I did manage to download a copy to my ebook reader.”
Augustus picked up the device and handed it to me along with its charger.
“Hopefully this will be the catalyst that drives you to make a decision now that you know what you are and you’ve seen a glimmer of the coven’s perversion.”
“Hopefully,” I echoed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I couldn’t muster up a smile of appreciation, so I simply took the device and retreated into my room. As I passed through the bathroom again, I hesitantly glanced at my reflection and thanked God that I was at least half-human.
Being a human or a dhampir is bad enough. I can only imagine how much more difficult following God would be living as a vampire. Their lives literally depend on hurting other people.
Once I was in the blessed solitude of my room, I sat at the small table by the armoire and opened the ebook. Since I rarely used the Bible app on my phone, reading God’s word from a glowing paper white screen felt incredibly strange. Instead of lamenting the loss of my well-worn ESV study Bible, I poised my pen on the pad of paper at my desk and began perusing the Bible. I had read the entire New Testament in the past year, so I had a general idea of where I could find some useful passages. Alas, finding verses that really spoke to me about my situation still took some digging.
As I thumbed through the book of John, two verses stood out to me.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (John 3:36)
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24)
If not being or becoming a vampire was an essential part of the gospel, wouldn’t it be in here?
Next, I scanned the letters to the early church. As I read the verses I’d underlined during past studies, two more passages caught my eye.
“And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)
Several times in church and in community group studies, people had quoted those two verses to remind us that we couldn’t lose our salvation. The Holy Spirit dwelling in me was evidence that God had forgiven me for all of my sins and that there was a spot in Heaven with my name on it. Unlike in the Old Testament days, the Spirit would never leave me and neither would my salvation.
So my salvation won’t be in jeopardy if I become a vampire … I’ll just be on earth longer than I’d planned, I thought, but is becoming a vampire considered sinning or is the sin in how vampires feed?
Those thoughts inspired me to do a quick study on sin. Though Romans 3:23 and Romans 7:18 spoke to the fact that everyone is a sinner, I still wondered if becoming something that fed on the blood of humans would make my nature more sinful than it already was.
Then again, part of accepting Christ as my savior meant believing that he died for all of my sins — past, present, and future. Even if biting people and drinking blood to survive is a sin, Christ already paid for it. If there is a way around drinking blood, God will help me find it.
That brought to mind an old memory verse that I had learned.
“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)
Although I felt as if I’d found some sound reasons not to fear becoming a vampire, I still wasn’t exactly sold on the idea. Yes, I wanted a long, happy life on earth, but I knew that the world had its faults. Any happiness I experienced would pale in comparison to the joy I’d feel in Heaven and the troubles I faced in my earthly life wouldn’t follow me into the afterlife. Being a vampire also meant that the trials that came with life on earth would stretch on for centuries instead of decades. My eternity with God would also be postponed indefinitely thanks to the agelessness I’d be granted.
I rested my head in my hands and groaned quietly as I tried to stop my mind’s endless spinning. I could come up with a million reasons not to become a vampire, but none of them seemed right. Once I crawled out of that rabbit hole again, I turned to the Book of Psalms. In the month before my capture, I’d begun praying through a psalm a day thanks to a suggestion from my community group leader, Lisa. It had been a powerful addition to my daily routine, so I picked up where I’d left off in Psalm 31. About halfway through the psalm, two verses piqued my interest.
“But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!” (Psalm 31:14-15)
Reading that prompted me to look for another familiar passage, s
o I swiped through the psalms until I found what I was looking for.
“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
(Psalm 139:13-16)
Those two psalms reminded me that my time on earth rested in God’s capable hands. He knew how long I would live before I was even born and he created every inch of me … which meant that he had intentionally allowed me to be born as a dhampir and led me to become a Christian. Surely, I could use being a vampire and spending more time living on earth to glorify God. Whether I was destined to live seven decades or seven centuries, God wouldn’t end my life until he saw fit. I had to trust his perfect plan for me and be a good steward the life he’d given me instead of worrying about how long I had to live.
As a Christian, I was supposed to put others before myself and serve those in need instead of living with a selfish consumption-driven mindset. Though I’d literally be a servant if I chose to live as a mortal, I would serve the men and women in captivity more by surrendering the human life I cherished and giving them freedom than I would by folding sheets and mopping floors.
I have to do this, I decided. I can’t stand by and do nothing when I have the ability to fight for and help the slaves. Even if the prophecy isn’t real, I’d have a voice in the coven. I would be the only person here on their side after Augustus leaves, but that’s better than the slaves not having anyone.
I took a moment to weigh my decision and let it sink in, and I felt peace for the first time since I awakened in that dingy cell. I turned off the ebook reader and walked through the bathroom to Augustus’ door, which he answered before my second knock.
“I’ll do it,” I announced, “but I have some questions.”
A smile dawned on his handsome face and I returned the grin with a genuine yet fatigued smile of my own as he stepped aside and let me enter his room.
“Ask me whatever you need to,” he said. “I will be completely honest with you.”
“What will happen when you turn me? Will I actually die like people do in movies?”
“Not exactly. When a human is changed, a vampire has to drink all of his blood and feed him vampire blood to begin the transformation. Of course, substantial blood loss can claim someone’s life, but the new vampire is only dead until the next sunset. Since you are a dhampir, you will only be exchanging a little blood. While you’ll fall into a deep sleep so your body can change, you won’t physically die as a human would.”
“That makes sense. Does it matter who changes me?”
“You will become a vampire no matter who you exchange blood with. However, there is an unbreakable bond between vampires and their makers. Part of that bond includes the inability to kill your maker and a strong desire to obey and please him.”
“How strong? Would I be forced to obey whoever changes me?”
“No, but you will want to. It’s a very strong bond.”
I nodded and mulled over this new information as Augustus continued.
“Emmanuel is excellent at using the sire bond to his advantage. A maker can tug on his offspring’s heartstrings as much or as little as he desires, and Emmanuel is a virtuoso at playing with his coven members’ hearts.”
“Did he turn everyone in the coven?”
“No, there are two or three members who were sired by different vampires, but they have pledged their allegiance to him by drinking from him soon after being changed by the other coven members. Being a new vampire’s first or second drink also inspires loyalty but to a lesser extent.”
“So even if someone else changed me, they’d probably manipulate me to please Emmanuel because of their connection or make me drink from him so he could control me.”
“Precisely,” he confirmed.
“What about you? You’re probably my best choice, but I need to know more about how you operate as a maker or whatever before I make that decision.”
“I don’t utilize the sire bond unless I’m in dire need of assistance or one of my progeny is doing something foolish.”
“What’s your definition of foolish?”
“One of my offspring, Christoph, was a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. When I learned that he had been working with one of Hitler’s generals and was planning to create a squad of vampire assassins, I used my influence to thwart his plan. I killed the vampires he’d created for that purpose and wiped the memories of the general and the other humans involved in the plan.”
“Nazi vampire assassins … That sounds frightening.”
“It would have been disastrous. Christoph thought that if the Nazis were victorious, they would allow vampires to come out into the open, but vampires are meant to flourish quietly in the dark, not to dominate in the light. If we exposed ourselves, humans would have united and hunted us with such fervor that they would have made the Salem Witch Trials look like a casual game of hide and seek. I didn’t want to put our race at risk because of one vampire’s foolish aspirations.”
“Isn’t that also why you’re anti-slavery? You don’t want humans to find out about you.”
“Yes, as a lord for The Vampire League, my job is to protect our kind by enforcing the laws that we’ve created,” Augustus reiterated. “That usually involves ensuring that my constituents are being as discreet as possible, and our discretion always benefits humans in the end.”
“As noble as that sounds, I don’t think that our interests would always match up,” I said. “Can I have your word that you won’t use your power over me to make me do something that goes against my beliefs?”
“I can’t give you my word that I won’t, but I can promise that I will only exert my influence when it is absolutely necessary. I have access to scores of loyal, fearsome vampires that I can call on, so the odds that I would ever need your assistance in any matter are very slim.”
I mulled over Augustus’ honest but not exactly desirable answer for a moment. If my assumptions about keeping my salvation and The Holy Spirit were correct, God’s influence would outweigh his. After all, who had a greater claim on my life than God did? He’d purchased my salvation with his Son’s life. Nothing trumped that.
“That caveat aside, I am still your best option,” he continued. “Emmanuel and his coven members would force you to commit acts of violence and perversion that would fill you with more self-loathing than you could ever imagine.”
“I know. You’d have to change me during the eclipse, right?”
“Yes.”
“What day is the eclipse?”
“October twentieth.”
“That’s in four days,” I realized. “I only have a few days left as a human.”
“And only a few days to plan our little coup d’état,” he pointed out. “I already have a plan in mind, but we would have to get the slaves to participate.”
“Spill.”
“Vampires traditionally celebrate by going outdoors during the height of the eclipse. It’s the one time we can go outside and feel a little sunlight on our skin without risking death. If the house is ablaze during this time, their only options would be roasting in the sun or burning in the house.”
“Couldn’t they just put out the fire?”
“Yes, but that’s why the fire extinguishers will have to be removed. In addition, we will use enough flammable materials to create a fire that they can’t extinguish with water alone. Direct sunlight also can be nearly paralyzing when vampires don’t wear protective clothing, so they’d be weaker and slow
er than humans.”
“If the house is on fire, where would we go to escape from the sunlight?”
“I will create a shelter for us to stay in until dusk. The vampires wouldn’t be terribly suspicious at our absence since most makers tend to lie with their progeny before and after exchanging blood. While Emmanuel does have some questionable practices, I don’t think he would deny us privacy if he believed that we would truly be intimate with one another.”
“What’s your plan for making him believe that,” I asked hesitantly. “Are we supposed to jump up and down on your bed and make obscene noises every night?”
Augustus chuckled and shook his head.
“No, our work will have to be more subtle. Besides, the rooms here are soundproof and Emmanuel doesn’t have any audio or visual surveillance equipment on the property. However, vampires have a very acute sense of smell. If he detects our scents on each other and sees that you’re becoming more comfortable around me, he may believe that you’ve developed a soft spot for me and that our fondness for one another has inspired a few private displays of affection that haven’t crossed that all-important line.”
That part of his plan sounded feasible, but I was still skeptical.
“How do you plan on making us smell like each other?”
“By sleeping in the same bed going forward,” he suggested. “If we shower before dawn and sleep in each other’s arms, then that will be enough. You storming off during the performance is the perfect prelude to us spending our first night together. Emmanuel saw that you were visibly distraught and that I came to your aid. It’s not terribly far-fetched that I would attempt to console you with something a little more intimate than words.”
“And if I act a little flustered when we eat together tomorrow night, then that would make it more believable. After all, what woman in my position wouldn’t be a little ashamed after falling off the purity wagon with a vampire?”
