Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence

by Am Hudson

  She died as I ejaculated. She died and left me with a hunger so insatiable I abandoned her body and went in search of another. I craved not the blood or the sex, though. It would not be enough for me to lure them and bed them. Not anymore. Not after experiencing death and sex. For now, for the first time, I craved the hunt.

  After that entry every one following was titled with a name. No more months. Just names. I flipped forward and read them, sometimes two or three per page. Bethany. Alice. Ginger. Fanny. So many. There were just so many.

  So I went back to the first kill after Mary. I needed to know what led to David’s steady decline in sanity.

  Caroline:

  A beauty so fair it seemed a sin to kill her. Or perhaps a sin to allow her the passage of time—to age and wither as beauties often do. Her hair was blonde like my Aunt. Her lips red and so full, so soft around my dick that for a moment I reconsidered her death. Until I finished in her mouth. Until she looked up at me from where she knelt, sweet as a summer rose, expecting something more from me.

  I brought her to her feet. I could feel her pulse in her wrist, see her blood moving through her veins. I had not used any kind of compulsion. I simply smiled at her, and she was putty in my dangerous hands.

  Gently I cupped her neck, pressing the heel of my palm against the beat of her pulse, and it quickened. When I gripped her throat tightly it quickened in an entirely different way. I looked into her eyes then—saw the fear as she noticed the sharp fangs beneath my grin; felt the realisation as she recalled the rumours she’d heard—of a man, a killer, leaving his naked victims drained of blood.

  There is a moment when a kill sees their own fate and accepts it. The only fight they put up is to see that there is no sense in fighting, and they give in—allow themselves to die without the stress of hope. I saw this in her a second before she screamed, throwing me completely off guard.

  I released her as men came running, dogs barked, and the quiet alley where I believed we’d be concealed was no longer a safe haven.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I told her, and her knees buckled as I slashed her throat cleanly open with a jerk of my hand.

  As the grip of death consumed her last hope, her mouth fell open, losing the remains of the cum she’d clearly stored in her cheeks. The dirty whore hadn’t even the decency to swallow.

  I twisted her head then, taking it off her shoulders, and threw it up the alley, as hordes of valiant knights came to aid the damsel no longer in distress.

  I waited until the very last second before leaving, holding the wide gaze of an old man for just a moment long enough to reveal the true evil inside me, then leapt into the air and escaped over the rooftops.

  I felt alive.

  Sarah-Anne:

  Arrived in the city today—a sack over my shoulder, eagerness for battle in my eyes, and with a brother on my right. He took in the tall buildings with boyish enthusiasm, smiling and nodding at each man who passed. The city folk were not quite as accommodating here as they were in our town, and by the time we settled at the barracks I knew Jason’s spirit was low. Until we met Drover: human, witty, downright arrogant, and just my sort of man. He’d travelled from Connecticut, leaving behind a mother, father and a wife that he’d married merely so he could fuck her. He wasn’t going back to that shithole town, though. As far as sweet Fanny was concerned, Drover aka John Prince was a dead man. And little did John Prince know, that slutty photograph she gave him settled her fate. Fact was, one of us would come home from this war alive and go to find her, and I was willing to bet my immortality it wouldn’t be him.

  As I sat relishing in my own contemplations, drunk and dizzy at the back of a seedy bar downtown, in walks Sarah-Anne. Never a finer broad had I seen. She was fair-skinned, just the way I like them, dark-haired and… those eyes: purity, innocence. She viewed the world with a kind of naïveté I found instantly refreshing.

  “Tom,” She said as she walked right up to the bar and slammed her money down. “That should cover anything he drank today.”

  “Not likely, Miss. Still a week’s worth’a lager from last mon—”

  “I’ll cover the rest later,” she said, wrapping a fat old man’s arm over her shoulder. “Just give me a week.”

  “Allow me.” I appeared at her side, startling her a little, and relieved her fragile, feminine spine of the burden.

  “Thank you.” She smiled, sweeping a lock of hair off her face—her whole demeanour changing.

  “Not at all,” I told her, then paid the remainder of the tab, took her father home and considered, for a second—just a second—leaving this girl alive. But, it was no use. I wanted her blood as bad as I wanted her body. And she was mine, from the first breath she took to accept my offer, to her every last in her bed, two doors down from her sleeping father that night. He would wake to find his daughter mauled, naked, and used in her bed. And though I would love to have stayed to watch him find her, I had about three hours left at that time before I had to return to base.

  I finished inside her—a sweet moment in her world where she hoped she might carry my child—and when she opened her mouth to kiss me, I leaned down and felt her breath on my face. It was hot and scented slightly with stale tea. But the warmth of her blood as our eyes met switched my focus. And like every other girl I’d come to love for a single moment, she was nothing then but a kill.

  I stuffed my thumb into her throat, pinning her tongue down so she couldn’t scream, then sank my teeth into her flesh.

  Oh, the blood. Even now as I remember it my mouth waters. My heart wants to beat, my breath moves my chest; my hands reach out to feel her soft skin.

  But she’s no longer there. And that is my one and only regret: that I cannot go back. I cannot relive that kill—cannot relive her. She, of the hundreds so far, is my favourite.

  I left her on the bloodied sheets, laid out like some piece of art: her hair softly splayed around her pillows, her eyes fixed and locked onto the ceiling, her tender, pale white breasts exposed—covered in blood. She was perfect. And she would forever be perfect in my memory that way.

  Sarah-Anne, I say her name even now. Sarah-Anne—the loveliest kill.

  I put nineteen-thirteen down and picked up nineteen-sixteen. It was as thick as the last one, but leather-bound, tied shut with a black rope wound three times around. I opened it up and, seeing there was another girl named Fanny in here, decided to start with her.

  My brother died last week. I attended a service for him today in the town where we grew up. It pained me to return there—to see the graves of my aunt and mother—to stand over them and farewell a man I knew was not dead.

  Uncle Arthur invited me for a drink to celebrate Jason’s first death. I declined. I had one thing in mind before I returned to duty—to wash out the vile taste of man. The flesh of man. The blood of man. It was all I’d eaten in nearly a year. We were not so lucky as to come upon a woman that I had time or chance to kill. I left the funeral and headed straight down to Connecticut. To Fanny. Dear, sweet Fanny.

  Drover, only weeks ago, had laid in my arms, his legs blown from his torso, and pressed Fanny’s picture into my hand. I made a promise to him that day that I would go to her, and I would see that she did not suffer a broken heart. No suffering at all, I swore—ever again.

  She is the first time I used a compulsion act. The first time I made a woman want me for the sake of the kill. And it will not be the last. She opened her legs for me and let me do things to her that no other girl has ever before, and as I drained the last of her blood from the soft flesh just beside her vagina, she moaned in ecstasy.

  It was the perfect kill.

  I have concluded that to kill a man is necessity; to kill a woman divine.

  After Fanny I had enough of his earlier years. I needed to see some progression—some hope that he didn’t start and stay this evil—some hope that the man I fell in love with was quite changed before he ever actually touched me.

  Nineteen-eighty seemed
like a good enough leap.

  Julia:

  Curly hair, denim jacket, and thick blue powder smothered on both eyelids. I attended a rock concert tonight. This music has been growing on me for some time, and I felt a new kind of exhilaration to see the artists perform it live. However, what I felt among the sweaty pile of bodies, gathered into one space, was an entirely different matter.

  The mass seemed to move like one unit, rising and falling in waves. I was pushed about and knocked aside more than once, and the stench was as unbearable as a rotting human. I turned to leave—to watch from the sidelines. And then Julia landed in a pathetic heap at my feet. I helped her up, because it was clear that either no one else noticed her being crushed there under their own feet, or they didn’t care. Looking around, I realised it was the latter; couples kissed, practically fornicating right there—in public, as casually as if it were a Sunday conversation outside church.

  How times have changed.

  I pulled the girl close, and when I bit her it was without the lure of lust or any care. She screamed, but it blended with the raucous cheers as the band came on stage again.

  Julia was my saltiest victim—the sweat and makeup souring the taste of her blood—while the exhilaration of murder in the public eye heightened my senses and turned me on in a way nothing ever has.

  I dropped her lifeless body to the floor and turned away.

  Others saw the blood and thought nothing of it. Nothing. I left the stadium and sat atop the scaffolding above the stage, watching as her friends later discovered her—half trampled by the crowd.

  The story was in the paper this morning. I know this because my uncle found it rather amusing to startle me by slamming the front page down on the table where I was enjoying my morning coffee. I was berated for failing to cover up a kill—warned that it would be my last mistake. If I were to act so carelessly again, he would strip me of my position on the council and see that I am imprisoned.

  I laughed him off at the time, but it was clear that he was serious. Julia, although she was my most exhilarating kill, would be the last of her kind.

  There was a section missing from the journal; halfway through it switched suddenly to nineteen-ninety-six. I flipped through the pages a few times to make sure I hadn’t missed it accidentally, but it was clear I wasn’t the one that missed something.

  The nineties started with a girl named Georgia:

  I always enjoy torture. I’m good at it. Made for it. Have the stomach for it, so they say. But Georgia is the first human I have ever tortured.

  I know the limits of Vampire Law. It allows us to scare the humans, hurt them, make them cry, so long as we kill them after. But even then there are a list of things we cannot do. Under any circumstances. And while I find myself to be somewhat of a perverted man, there are some things even I will not condone. Not on a human. Yet.

  After Georgia, I am now aware that this could change.

  Lucky for her, I wasn’t willing to risk my position on the council for the sake of seeing that mouthy little whore die in agony.

  My two years leave is up today, and had she kept her mouth shut as I said my farewells, she would have been left alive.

  If there was ever born a girl more stupid than that blonde cheerleader, I have not yet met her.

  Perhaps I should have restrained. Perhaps taking her virginity all those months ago and leaving her bound to me was my own undoing. She demanded I stay, love her. Threatened me if I refused. Stupid girl. I will not be told what to do. Not by a girl.

  I brought her here and led her to the cellar. She didn’t ask any questions as I strung her arms up above her head. She opened her mouth willingly as I gagged her with her own underwear. She pressed her breasts into my dagger as I traced a line between them with the tip.

  It may be possible this girl was as twisted as I.

  I had no intention of cutting her, but she clearly believed I did, and the fear she felt made her hot in places that surprised me. She wanted to be cut. She wanted to be hurt.

  I shoved my fingers into her wet genitals and pulled the flaps apart, driving almost my entire hand inside her. She didn’t scream. Didn’t cry; her head went back and she closed her eyes, moaning. At this point I was confused, not sure if her desire to be tortured turned me on or perhaps off. All that I loved about torture leaned perversely to the side of remonstrated harm—the screams, the pleas. The cries. If she was begging me to hurt her, how could I possibly enjoy it?

  Then, the idea of pain and sex tainted my thoughts. I’d heard of this before—heard rumours of submissive women that enjoyed being tied up, slapped, cut even. Among other things. Until now I had never encountered one. Until now I never thought torture and sex could go hand-in-hand. And now I couldn’t understand why I’d never placed the two together before.

  I slapped her around a bit; pulled her hair, fucked her roughly—perhaps brutally. But her yearning for more—the vile and depraved thoughts—annoyed me. As I felt the animal inside me awaken—felt it fall in love with torture and sex—something about her willingness to participate made my dick soft.

  I stood there staring at her for a moment, feeling a desire to perform an act that once induced my own nightmares.

  Did I want to do to her what I witnessed happen in the cells when I was a child? Had it twisted my mind in some irreparable way?

  Those thoughts angered me. Angered me enough that I was perhaps a little unkind after that. I would not be made into a greater monster than I already was by the whim of a stupid human girl. She did this to me. She drew this side of me out with her sadistic ways.

  Even now, hours after her death, I know not the kind of man I am. Even now I can feel that monster alive in me.

  Truth be told, I kill without consent. I commit the most deadly sin every day without consent. I am starting to wonder how sex is any different.

  I do not want to be this way.

  “I warned you,” Drake said, snapping me back from the sound of David’s voice in my head.

  I quickly wiped the tears from my cheeks and closed the journal.

  “Those journals were hidden for a reason.” Drake sat down beside me so casually he reminded me of a high school boy.

  “Yeah, because he’s… so goddamn sick.”

  “Was,” Drake corrected.

  I just shook my head, looking away.

  “This is the David you changed.” He tapped the book. “The David I miss.”

  “Well, I don’t ever want to see that David surface.” I shoved the book aside carelessly and dusted myself off as though the evil might be catchy. “No wonder he’d never show me the ‘real’ him—the vampire. He was probably afraid he’d rape me!”

  “Precisely. And that is why you love him.”

  “Huh?” I screwed my nose up.

  “You know that the reason he would not show you his monster is because he was afraid of what he might do.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “He’s not all that evil if he feared the monster himself.”

  “No,” I said with certainty. “He’s worse than evil, Drake.”

  “That’s a very cold observation, my dear.”

  Yes. It was cold. Especially since I knew David better than that. I knew what kind of man he was. And while maybe he thought about raping that girl, that was an intensely personal confession in his own journal. I knew also that if I was to read a little further down, I would probably see him have a moment of clarity where he realised it just wasn’t in him. “That girl I just read about—Georgia, are they her bones in his cellar?”

  “One of many, I would say.”

  “Why would he do that—here, I mean? He knew it was against the law. I thought David was all about the law.”

  Drake sat back and smiled. “For the sake of bringing my beloved Anandene into this world, I looked the other way on many occasions when I should have had him arrested and locked up. It is safe to say, perhaps, that one of my best councilmen was also my greatest criminal.”<
br />
  “David the lawbreaker, huh?”

  “He never was one to practice what he preached. Not until the very end of the nineties. And then it all changed.”

  “How so?”

  “That is when the driven and headstrong upholder of law surfaced and he became the man many vampires feared and admired.”

  “What changed? Why the nineties?”

  “He just grew up, I imagine.”

  “It took him over a hundred years to grow up?”

  Drake laughed, then he reached across my lap and took the unmarked journal from the top of the pile. After flipping through a few pages, he nodded to himself and handed it to me—open toward the back of the book. “Today you’ve read the deep and unguarded thoughts of a vampire, Amara. It would be a very safe bet that my own journal would read in much the same manner. But perhaps this will restore your faith in the man you love.”

  I snorted at him, about to ask how that was possible, but he got up and walked away.

  When I looked at the page and saw the word “Emily”, I knew that I’d just jumped many years into the future. I knew this was the Emily we both loved.

  Emily was supposed to die today, but luck was on her side, and perhaps mine. She just happened to mention in passing that she’d told her mother who she was studying with this afternoon.

  Stupid little bitch. I should have killed her right there.

  Instead, I took the one thing from her she can never get back—binding her to me eternally.

  Delicate little thing. Fucks like a starfish, though, and cried after. But she was tight and wet and more willing than any girl I’ve had. And maybe just a little more irritating than others as well.

  I’d already seen this part of their story firsthand—through David’s memories. I didn’t need to read it again. And still, reflecting on it took my mind back to when I first met him at school and then to so many times we shared Emily’s company. All along, she was desperately in love with him and didn’t really understand why. All that time he knew the feel of her naked body against his—the way her skin responded to his touch, and he put those hands on me.