The Truth
I came back to myself and whimpered.
“What is it?” Duke asked, watching me with confusion as pink tears rolled down my cheeks.
I brushed them off onto my hand, staring at the color with disgust. What had I become?
“A monster,” I sobbed, increasingly more pink tears falling. “I’m a monster.”
Duke grabbed my shoulders, and wiped away all my tears. “Why would you say that? You are not a monster.”
I shook my head slowly, and pulled his arms off of me. “You didn’t see what I did. I-I killed three more,” I whispered, feeling as thought my mind was millions of miles away from my body. “They knew me, and I killed them.” My voice sounded odd, and I saw a red tint in my eyes in the window of the cottage.
“Tammy, you didn’t kill them!” Duke said, looking worried as he stared into my eyes.
“Don’t tell me I didn’t kill them!” I screamed, my eyes now bright red and my fangs bared. “I know I did! I remember!”
Duke grabbed me tightly, but I couldn’t feel a thing. My body wasn’t my own right now, and neither was my mind. The monster was taking over.
“Damn it Tammy! They are fine! Stop being a drama queen, and calm the fuck down!”
In the few days I have known him, Duke had never talked as he did now. His words shocked me back into myself, and a shiver went through my body.
“They’re okay?” I asked quietly, and Duke nodded.
“You heard somebody coming up the tunnel, and dropped the boys. They’re home right now, sleeping.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and got up from the ground. “Thank you,” I whispered, and started walking the few feet to the cottage doors. Tears were running down my cheeks, pink tears that I didn’t want Duke to see. They were tears of gratitude and pain, tears of love and loss.
I couldn’t pull away though, when he grabbed me. I was too weak, he was too strong.
Duke turned me around, and hugged me tight to him. My body responded immediately, melting into his embrace as more and more tears fell. He rubbed my back slowly, whispering It’s okay over and over again.
We stood like that for several minutes, until my eyes were dry because my tears were gone.
I guess you could say, that that’s when I started to fall for Duke.
---
We spent many days together, him teaching me all the things an Amatores Sanguinis can and cannot do. He taught me how to cloak myself so I was visible to none, he taught me how to control my thirst, and he taught me how to make my senses focus on a single thing.
When he wasn’t teaching me, Duke would take me to different places in the underground city. Each place was more beautiful than the last, because there were many Amatores Sanguinis from all different locations who brought a piece of their home, to the city.
“Tell me about your home?” I had asked Duke softly, the day after I had the breakdown by the cottage.
Duke had sighed and pulled me tight to him, his eyes lost in the memory of his youth.
“Italy,” he murmured, a slight accent appearing as he said his home country. “It was in the time, where there was no time. Animals were free to roam where they chose, and people lived in homes created by the trees. We were all no better than animals ourselves, although we claimed to be.
My mother, she was a beauty. Long black hair, bright and intelligent green eyes, all the men were after her. My father, well I was never told what happened to him. I had never asked either, because I could see the loss in my mother’s eyes.
When I was a kid, it was the women who held all the power, not the men. The men would be there for muscles, the women for their intelligence. We had no need for armies then, for there was nothing to fight over. Everyone had an equal share of things, whether it be food or supplies.
I had an older sister, Eva. She looked nothing like me, but everything like my mother. She died at the age of fifteen, from what I now assumed was cancer. It was a hard time for all of us, she had been liked by everyone.
We did not fear the animals that walked among us, nor did they fear us. Fear was a concept we did not know, or understand. Why waste time fearing things, when you didn’t have to?
The world was no more than green trees and bright, sweet-smelling flowers. We did not know that any others existed, we only knew of us. That is, until a man who called himself ‘Dracul’ arrived in my town.
He stunned the woman, my mother included, with his tales of the world and his looks. He had thick blonde hair that went to his shoulder, tan skin, and golden eyes. Still today, he’s the only man I’ve ever met with golden eyes. The first time I saw him, I did not like him.
Unfortunately for me though, he took a liking to my mother. After a week, they were inseparable. A month later, and they were what we now call married but used to call joined.
Dracul loved my mother, I could see it in his eyes, but it was as though he had her under a spell. She would do what he said, whenever he said it. And she started to have bite marks appear on her neck.
I worried that Dracul was slowly killing my mother, and I was right. He was, but she did not die until after giving birth to her third child, Lucina. My mother had picked her name after the Greek Goddess of childbirth, knowing that the name also meant light.
Lucina was anything but on the side of light though. She was evil from the day she was born.
She would set traps on innocent children, that would spring when you would least expect it and could do anything from break your bones, to leave you forever paralyzed. Lucina had no regard for human life, and she made that known to all who crossed her.
As she grew older, her tricks grew worse and worse, until the point where she would kill for fun. She would set brother against brother, compelling them to hate one another and fight until the last blood was spilled. She would send men to rape women, and women to kill their children. Lucina could make anyone do as she wished them to.
Dracul did not care that his daughter was terrible, she was his and that was all that had seemed to matter to him. He overlooked his daughter killing the village, turning it into a bloodbath of sort. As if, if he ignored it then it wasn’t happening.
On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Lucina grew sick. She coughed up blood for hours on end, and after seven hours, she died. Dracul blamed me for her death, as if I could prevent something that was as inevitable as her body rejecting the Change, and that is when I discovered that he was a demon.
His teeth grew long and sharp and his eyes turned a bright red. Then he attacked, breaking the bones in my body and then biting me. A terrible pain filled me, and my body started to shake. I was thrown against the floor, and fainted from the pain. I woke up days later, a new person. A terrible, bloodthirsty, person.
I killed many in the first few centuries as an Amatores, and felt no guilt for the deaths I caused. It was only when I met someone that it all changed.
She was a girl, almost seventeen, and the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I knew from the moment I saw her that she was mine. And only mine. To make that true though, I knew I would have to change her.
But I was afraid to, seeing what I had become. I was afraid that she would be as I was, and I did not want that. I wanted Kallisto as she was, not changed at all. But it took me only a week before I caved and changed her.
She awoke, and at first it was all okay. But then I noticed how she was not eating the meals I was giving her. I talked to Kallisto, trying to figure out why, when she told me that human blood repulsed her. And how she had found a new way to sate her thirst, animal blood.
I would have done anything she asked, I loved her so much, so when she said she liked animal blood better, I got her some.
It only took a couple days before I noticed how her temper was getting worse and worse, and the red would take over a lot more often. I did not know what was wrong with her at the time, I would only figure out until too late.
Then one night, s
he disappeared. I couldn’t find her, I only heard that people were turning up dead in our city. Three people the first day, then five, then almost twenty.
I knew it was Kallisto, I just didn’t want to believe it, and so I ignored the deaths. When there was no one left in our town, because they had either left in fear of the killer or were dead, Kallisto came back to me.
She walked into my house, her eyes a crimson red, and looked at me as though she was amused. She stayed with me for many days, and it was as though she had never left.
I was her source of food, giving her my blood whenever she was thirsty.
My world revolved around Kallisto, the beautiful goddess who was my love. Her bite, was my addiction.
When she left again, I stayed in my bed for weeks. I almost died from hunger, but I couldn’t do anything. Kallisto was not there to feast on me, to fill me with her love. I have never found her again, after all these centuries of searching. I don’t love her anymore, I have long since gotten over that, but I look for her so that I can let her soul free. I look for her so that I can get rid of the monster that was once my love. I look for her, so that I can kill her.”
Duke finished his story off by standing up from the soft couch we’d been sitting on, and walking away to another room. When he came back hours later, I did not bring up the subject. I could tell he would just leave again if I did.
And Duke angry, is a thing I have been trying to avoid for the last few days. I loved him as though our souls were created for one another, but I did not know if he felt the same way. Even if he said differently, his eyes showed his eternal love for Kallisto.