Rising to darkness

by Lucia Guglielminetti

  “Ik will alleen gelaten worden... I want to be alone. Please."

  "We have no time! Like it or not, you are now a vampire, a newborn. You must feed! You should already be feeling your throat on fire; and, if you wake up thirsty in the middle of the day and you try to get out of the coffin, you will die within a matter of minutes! Do not force me to chain the lid of your coffin. Please, let's go hunting. You don’t even have to talk to me, if you do not want to, but put your clothes on and come out with me! Let me teach you everything I know, let me take you on this trip ... You have already wasted one life, do not throw this one away too. Not many people are given a second chance."

  I slowly raised my eyes to her, wiping my cheeks streaked with blood, and then stood up, straightening my shoulders. It was very embarrassing that she had seen me cry like that, but I swore to myself that it would not happen again in front of her or anyone else. This was not the case.

  "Give me those bloody clothes," I growled, and she smiled at me and kissed me on my cheek.

  Doing a little calculation, I was able to place the time of my transformation: June, 1705.

  Unfortunately, until now, the exact date is still lost in the mists of my memory.

  Summer is not a favorable season for vampires. There are more daylight hours than there are those of the dark and, as a result, the time available to us to perform our ordinary activities is very short. For this reason, Shibeen was in such a hurry: it was already two in the morning and within two hours we had to come back.

  A ridiculous argument ensued over the footwear that, according to Shibeen, I was supposed to use: the classic high heeled shoes with a buckle that were so much in vogue at that time. I hated them with a passion, I wanted my old boots back and refused to go anywhere without them. I realized I was being stubborn and childish, but it was my small and petty act of vengeance to vindicate what she had done to me. So I stood there, arms crossed, deaf to threats and injuries, even to begging, until one of the brothers left the room and reappeared a few moments later carrying a well-worn pair of boots and throwing them at me. Without warning, his snarling face was just few inches from mine, his fangs unsheathed. "If you don’t put these on, I swear, I'll tear your head off with my hands."

  To tell the truth, I was enjoying myself a lot, as if a goblin had awakened inside me and was helping me drive those poor bastards mad.

  Finally, we got out on the street. Shibeen and her brothers' huge house stood in a very exclusive and secluded area of London, but we needed to move to the slums where we could find some miserable creature out at that time, after a night of partying or because they had no place to go.

  "It's damn late, we'll have to run. I warn you, it is going to be dreadful. I'm sorry we can't take it more slowly, but you shouldn't have argued so much about a ridiculous pair of shoes."

  "They were awful."

  "No, they weren't! They were up-to-date. I spent a lot of money on them!"

  "Nobody asked you to buy them. My old boots were good enough for me."

  "Ungrateful ass! I..."

  "Enough! I swear I'll kill you, both of you, if you don't stop it with these idiotic squabbles! And you little shit - it was one of the brothers, which one I don’t know because I still could neither distinguish them well nor call any of them by their correct names, another thing that madly irritated them - stop acting like that or I'll break every bone in your body. Shibeen, among all the humans, why did you have to choose this one? Come on, move it… you deserve to starve! Asshole…” He gave me a push and I took off.

  And when I say "I took off," I mean that I flew like the wind, leaving them behind without even asking where we were going.

  Dear reader, it was fun!

  I ran as fast as I could with my new legs, wind whistling in my ears as houses blurred into one single dark spot with indistinguishable details. I laughed for the freedom I felt, appreciating for the first time the possibilities my new state had given me. I came across a couple of people, but they didn’t even spot me. I'm sure they got the impression that it was just a sudden gust of icy wind passing them by.

  Meanwhile, in my throat, thirst was making its way and my predatory instinct took over. I stopped and sniffed the air in search of a victim nearby. The streets were silent and dim, but I could see like it was daytime. Still excited about the run, I did not realize that I was about to kill someone and feed from him. Shibeen and her brothers were not even there yet. It was incredible how slow they were!

  Tucked away in a dark hallway, walls chipped and mottled with moisture, I was watching with ecstasy the pattern of the stones that formed the pavement when I heard the upset voices of two drunks who had just taken the road. I smelled them too, their disgusting mixture of gin, vomit, sweat, and filth. Notwithstanding their stench, the flavor of their blood had stood out, pure and irresistible. Thirst, an unpleasant but controllable feeling until then, exploded inside me like a flash, a red flash. I leaped into the street just before the two passed by my hiding place and blocked their way. They were very drunk and did not realize their danger immediately; they froze and looked at me quizzically, giggling.

  "Hey, where did you pop up from?"

  "From hell" I said, and then jumped on them with a roar. I was getting more proficient at roaring and I liked it. It was incredibly liberating...

  The modality of my first, double kill was pretty confusing. I assaulted the first one in such a rush that I nearly tore his head off. As I couldn’t allow his companion to flee, I dropped my first victim and chased the other one for a short stretch of road, stifling his screams with one hand and sinking my teeth in his throat as I sucked with energy the warm blood that flowed deliciously into my mouth, as I almost reached ecstasy. His heart was beating as fast as a drum. Then, slowly, it began to slow down and lose rhythm. The intensity of the blood stream was waning too, but I continued to suck for quite a while even after, unable to stop. Shibeen and her brothers arrived at this time and they extracted me from my victim by force. "Stop it, he's dead! You must never drink from them when they are dead, you will be sick! What an idiot, why did you not wait for us? "

  I stood up, blood still dripping from my mouth, and was furious at them. Instead of congratulating me for my velocity and efficiency, they were criticizing me! Envy is such a sin!

  "Wait for you? You are so slow that I was about to take a nap ... And then, what are you talking about? I am fine," I said. A moment later, I was bent over spewing out my very soul, beset by cramps. I had never experienced such agony in my life, not even that time on the ship when I thought I was going to die. We don’t know why we cannot drink the blood of the dead, even when death had just happened, but that’s the way it is. As a result, I received a lesson that I will never forget and had cost me two days of terrible suffering and countless jokes and barbs from the brethren. They had to carry me home, cursing in their language, while I had to stop every few steps to vomit, dripping icy and reddish sweat. I was embarrassed and angry both with myself for my carelessness and with them for not having revealed in time that fundamental detail, and I refused to open my mouth even to let them know how I felt. At home, not only could they just throw me in my trunk and leave, but they also had to make sure to close all the blinds so as not to let the looming sunlight in. The brothers retired to their rooms, while Shibeen, as furious as I was for the fact that she hadn’t even eaten, was forced to take care of me for the rest of the time.

  "Am I going to die?" I asked, after countless hours of agony, almost wishing that I would. I felt more and more like an idiot, but I could neither apologize nor look into her eyes.

  "No, you stupid, you are not. I hope it will be useful to you the next time! You must put it in your head; you are unable to make it on your own, yet! You arrogant piece of shit, I hope you're going to be sick for a week! And running that way in the middle of the street! What if someone saw you? Our safety is contingent on being invisible! Humans must not know about us and not even... the others.”

  "Wh
o... who are the others?" I asked half choked, raising my head from the basin in which I kept puking. She dried my bloody mouth, reddening the towel.

  "Our only natural enemies... lycans."

  "I... I don't know this word. Who are lycans?"

  "People with the ability to turn into wolves. There has always been a millenary war between our races."

  "Ah... weerwolf... and who's winning?"

  "It changes from time to time. The one you had fought the last time at the Hammerfall was one of them. Do you remember his eyes? They were yellow. That's one of their distinctive features."

  "But... I wasn't a vampire, yet. Why did he hate me so much?"

  "Even among them there's the bad and… the worse. Anyway, he paid for his mistake. Rest assured that he paid. And the Hammerfall, that den of human waste, the fire cleansed it. "

  "So it was true about the fire. You started it."

  "Exactly. How is your stomach? I must sleep, I can't take it anymore."

  After making sure that the shutters on the windows were sealed, she laid on her bed and fell asleep in at once. I fasted for almost two days, as I said, full of doubts and questions, but without the strength to ask them.

  2- ALONE AGAIN

  For a young vampire like me, 48 hours without feeding were plenty.

  I spent them in a sort of coma, dozing on and off between retches, but without really resting. At the end, I was a wreck with deep dark round circles, emaciated and with trembling hands. Shibeen had been quite nice, given the circumstances: she stayed with me for most of the time, going out only once to hunt while her brothers made fun of me and teased me relentlessly. I felt like a pressure cooker ready to explode at any moment.

  I absolutely needed to feed. This was a fact. I was weak and exhausted, and my stomach had finally begun to calm down just a few hours before. This was another fact. I was wondering why the night that would have eventually resulted in my expulsion, no one had made sure to see whether I was dead or alive when I heard shouting in the stairway: laughs, squeals, and shrieks. The brothers had probably decided to bring their dinner home. I hoped that they didn’t forget about me too because I was not allowed to go out alone.

  They had given me a nice room on the second floor of their huge mansion having as its only flaw the barred windows and the locked door, which I didn’t have the opportunity to discuss and certainly would not have accepted without having said anything. If only I could have had regained some strength...

  I encircled the room like a caged wolf, cursing the whole family reveling while I was starving, when the door opened and the oldest of the brothers, Seamus, the only one with a vaguely pronounceable name, shoved inside a giggling girl dressed in such a manner so as not to leave any doubt about her profession.

  "Have fun. When you're done, don't do anything."

  He shut the door without giving me the chance to reply and left with his merry party.

  A few candles scattered here and there lit my room; the girl looked no more than fifteen despite the heavy makeup or perhaps because of it, like a child who played with her mother's makeup, came waddling towards me, standing motionless near the window.

  "Damn, they kept hidden the best tidbit," she said, smiling mischievously.

  Beyond my door, the screaming began, in unison like a sign. Maybe the brothers were too hungry to take advantage of the other qualities their guests had to offer. There were terrible screams, shrills, accompanied by violent thuds and, more horrifically, by laughter. My girl whitened, staring at me with wide eyes. "What's going on out there? What are they doing? Hey, no, I don’t like this, I want to go," she said, backing away. Her secret scent had just reached my senses, putting them on red alert.

  I took a step towards her. Until that moment, I had not moved a single muscle. I felt like I had embers stuck in my throat now. When she looked at me straight in the face and noticed the peculiarity of my eyes and my skin, she began to scream too. She ran to the door and pounded on it with her fists, shouting and crying. Eliciting such a reaction from a woman annoyed me a lot. Within a second, I reached her and covered her mouth with one hand, forcing her to turn around and look at me straight in the face: "Shut up, now!" I yelled, and the volume of my voice was loud enough to make her cry again and collapse to the ground with her hands over her ears. Outside my room, the screaming gave no signs of coming to an end: dinner and show at the same time courtesy of the unwitting guests...

  A part of me, the hungry one, encouraged me to get it over with and attack her. Today I would not have hesitated. Everybody cries and begs for mercy if they can, it's part of the game; I soon learned not to listen to them and do what I've been given risen to do. However, I had been a vampire for barely three days, my only previous victims were two drunks who had not even realized what was happening, and there, at my feet, lay a little girl obsessively repeating the name of her 8-year-old brother in her head. It was then I found out I was able to read people’s mind; I soon realized that it was an ability to steer clear of when you were about to kill someone if you didn't want to go crazy from other people’s sorrows and remorse.

  "Please, sir, don't hurt me! My mother's ill, I've a little brother who..."

  "Shut up! I don't want to hear anything, I don't care!" I snarled, but that name repeating endlessly in her mind was maddening me. She cried even louder and covered her head with her arms, curled up at my feet as if she feared being beaten up. Who knows how many times it had already happened ... I felt mercy, no use denying it. And the thirst ... Maybe I could have endured it a little bit longer if I had not focused on her smell. Another thing that I found out that evening was the possibility of not breathing indefinitely. I had been doing it for a few minutes without realizing it, but, at a certain point, it became a conscious act, the only way to control myself.

  I leaned over her, squatting with my forearms resting on my knees, snorting. Gradually the girl ventured to lift her arms and her head and looked at me with eyes flooded with tears which had smudged her entire makeup. We stared at each other for a moment; then, I grabbed her by her arm, making her scream again, and forced her to stand.

  "Your friends are dead. I'll take you downstairs, but you must not tell anyone what had happened or who lives here. If someone comes looking for us, I will know it was because of you. I will hunt you down and rip your brother's head off in front of you. You got that?"

  She threw herself at my feet, hugging my legs and nodding frantically, stammering gratitude. I made her stand up again with a jerk, then I opened the door. The screams had ceased, all was quiet in the hallway, but two flights of stairs separated the girl from salvation. Preceding her on the way down, I arrived at the bottom of the stairs and waved for her to hurry. When we were only one-step away from the front door, though, I heard Shibeen's furious voice exclaiming: "What the fuck are you doing?" and I knew we were in trouble.

  We both turned around abruptly, the girl with a strangulated cry and me with a sigh. It all happened very quickly; Shibeen pounced on her and instantly reduced her into a rag doll, then she turned to me, transfixed by horror and surprise, and slapped me. It was becoming a habit I did not appreciate at all. Being so weak as a result of my prolonged fasting, this time I wound up on the floor a few feet away, but I got up immediately just as furious as she was.

  "What the hell were you trying to do? Are you planning to lead us to ruin? Are you a total dumbass or what?"

  Meanwhile her brothers were called back by all the commotion, coming down the stairs with identical scowls.

  "So what? Why were you trying to free this girl?" Shibeen hissed at me with her face just inches away from mine.

  I lowered my eyes in spite of myself, ashamed of the weakness that I was about to confess.

  "I pitied her. I couldn't do it, I'm sorry."

  Astounded silence from the entire company. Now they had surrounded me with their heralding stormy glances.

  "You pitied her," bellowed Shibeen.

  "He pitied her," the b
rothers barked in unison.

  "Yes, I pitied her, so what? Maybe I haven’t turned into a monster like you yet!"

  "See what happened? Can you see it? She's dead and you're still hungry. No human being who comes into this house gets out alive apart from the people who works for us, trusted servants who have been with us for years. What if she ran and tomorrow morning a bunch of good enraged citizens set our house on fire while we were sleeping in our coffins and we could not protect ourselves?

  "She wouldn't have done that. I told her what would have happened if she said even just one word about us..."

  One of her brothers, the one closest to me, punched me so quickly I didn’t even see it coming. I found myself flying through the marble hall and crashing against a column, slipping to the ground stunned. Being invulnerable to almost all wounds doesn't mean we don't feel pain, and that was really an excruciating blow.

  A moment later, the same brother grabbed me by my jacket lapel, lifted me up, and fed me to them. Shibeen did not take part in the slaughter, but she did nothing to stop it either. I felt like I was in that field again when I was a child with everyone beating me up without being able to react. At some point, I crouched on the floor in the fetal position, protecting my face as much as I could, and waited for the massacre to end, taking in every blow.

  Finally, the beating slowed down until it finally stopped. Shibeen bent down and, with a look hard to read, informed me: "I can't allow anyone to put my family in danger, and you're a danger. You are too impulsive and rash. I am sorry, but you are out. You must leave."

  "Now!" a brother hissed at me, bending down and glowering.

  Were it not for my clothes, now in tatters, no one would have guessed what had happened to me.

  Our wounds heal quickly, yet there was not an inch on my body that did not twinge as if still being stabbed. Thirst, though, was even stronger. I stood up with difficulty, holding on to the wall closest to me, and walked to the door without a word. Someone opened it for me and then I was pushed out into the darkness.