“Don’t, don’t eat me. Please!” he stammered in his native tongue.
It was doubtful whether he realized that, normally, Erica shouldn’t be able to understand him. The truth was that, despite understanding what the man was saying, Erica didn’t care at all. With one swift move, she sunk her teeth in his neck, seeking the fluid that made her feel so good. The young man shrieked and tried to escape, but her grip was far too strong; soon, he stopped struggling.
Erica’s senses quickened; a wave of euphoria washed over her. The blood flowing inside her throat wakened her whole body. It was like drinking liquid flame, each cell of her body being on fire. A tingling sensation was followed by the need to laugh for sheer happiness. She pulled her teeth from the young man’s throat and bit him again, better and deeper this time. She was sucking the blood from him, drawing his life, and it felt beautiful. Drop by drop, the now lifeless body soon dried out. So, she let the body drop to the ground and took a couple of stumbling steps backwards. Never before had she felt like this. She wiped her mouth, drenched in blood, with the back of her hand. She stood still for a moment, staring at her fingers. Her skin now seemed lighter, compared with its usually olive hew, while her nails were somewhat longer than she remembered; they looked sharp. The blood began to dry, but she still stared at it, enthralled.
Slowly, everything around her calmed down; her body was satisfied. She felt a bit warmer but knew that she was still freezing. Her mind was now able to think clearly and her next thought did not please her in the least: she was a vampire who had just killed to feed on blood for the very first time. She got out of the cabin and began running.
She had left from Baranof Island, where the town of Sitka was located, in the same way she had arrived there, accompanying the knights: by boat. Fortunately, there was a ship departing that night, and she managed to get on board. With her new powers and the speed that came along, she managed to cross the entire forest, quickly enough to catch it. The tricky part came later. After disembarking, along with some other passengers, she found herself in a desolate place. The port here comprised nothing more than a couple of closed stores and a dock. Using her powers again was impossible. Even if she did it discreetly enough so as not to attract attention, it was more or less certain that some security camera somewhere would record her moves and she didn’t want to reveal to the world that vampires were very much real. Especially now that she was one of them. She had to protect her secret.
She cast a look around; by now, she was alone. The other passengers had disembarked their vehicles from the ferry and were driving away. The crewmembers were looking somewhat suspiciously her way, but were readying the ferry to head back to the island.
“Going somewhere, lass?”
She turned and realized that some guy from a car had spoken to her; he looked like a common criminal and his arms were covered by tattoos, which reinforced her initial, if somewhat stereotypical, perception. She could even smell the illegal substances in his vehicle. She didn’t need to listen to his thoughts to confirm that he was a drug dealer, in fact she could detect signs on his body that he was under the influence of those substances, albeit lightly.
“My boyfriend stood me up… Could you give me a lift?”
She gave an intentionally coy tone to her voice and forced herself to sound as silly as possible. The man in the car laughed loudly and beckoned her to get in. She obeyed and sat in the passenger seat. Immediately, the guy grabbed her leg, but Erica managed to resist her desire to rip his throat there and then. She almost scared herself, with her willingness to kill.
“Where are we going, doll?”
Erica looked towards the sky and immediately, as if instinctively, knew exactly when dawn would break. She didn’t have much time.
“The closest hotel, stud”.
The man, laughing, said that they were going to have an amazing time together. Erica knew that their encounter would not end pleasantly for him, but said nothing; she merely smiled.
The bed was covered in blood, the sheets were soaked, dark red, and she was a mess; again. The drug dealer, or rather his body, was lying next to her and with some disgust she shoved it off, dropping it on the floor. The moment they had walked in the room, Erica had drawn the shades; the sun was almost up. Seconds later, her teeth had sunk into the throat of that man, killing him. He had tried to resist, but with a slap from the back of her hand she had dropped him, almost unconscious, on the bed. For a moment, she thought about sparing him that pain, but only for a moment. Eventually, she wanted him to realize that she was taking his life.
She closed her eyes. The sun, outside, was causing her discomfort. She felt an intense desire to sleep, but at the same time she knew she didn’t need it. Much had changed inside her, but she wasn’t even a normal vampire. The blood coursing inside her held too much power. While the sun was forcing her to sleep, something was battling that need, allowing her to resist it. She recalled the words of the Ancient: that the one who would kill him, would inherit his legacy. She panicked, when she realized that she had left the sword of Saint Peter behind, at the ruins of the mansion. She jumped up and started pacing around the bed, trying to think. There were far too many things she hadn’t taken into account. The Order of the Silver Sun may have suffered a terrible blow but some members, however few, had survived, those left behind as guards; people who, up until yesterday, she was proud to call friends; knights and priests who, upon seeing her, would charge to destroy her… or, at least, try.
She went next to the body and searched the pockets, until she found what she was looking for. She opened the man’s cell phone, pressed a few buttons, followed by the call button, and waited. The moment the line connected, the call was immediately terminated. She had to wait but a few seconds and the cell phone began ringing. On the screen, the number was listed as blocked. She picked up, but heard nothing.
“Wounded eagle”, she said, as clearly as possible.
She knew that a machine at the other end of the line was recording her voice and then feeding it to some software which would compare it to a database. The moment the software would recognize her as Erica, daughter of Sir Angelus, it would connect her with the leader of her shelter. Indeed, a few seconds later, she heard a clicking sound and the voice of Sir Philip.
“Erica?”
She cracked her voice a bit and pretended she was breathing hard. She remembered that she had spoken the coded message clearly and immediately staged her performance accordingly.
“It’s me, Sir Philip”, she said, pretending that she was trying to speak up, and then broke into tears.
There were no tears whatsoever flowing from her eyes but Sir Philip, who simply listened to her, couldn’t have known that.
“Erica, my child, praise the Lord! Are you all right? Don’t cry! We’ve been trying for hours to contact either your father or someone from the party, to no avail! Calm down! Please, calm down and tell me what happened”.
She kept on pretending to be crying, realizing that her body was responding immediately to her commands. A big change, compared to the situation she faced when she woke up, after her transformation.
“Erica…”
Sir Philip sounded broken, disheartened. Probably he was thinking that she was somewhere, alone and helpless. Surely he would be blaming himself, for not being able to do something in order to help her.
Erica felt a tinge of guilt, for deceiving him in this manner; after all, Sir Philip had always treated her in the best possible way, but what she was doing at the moment was essential.
“They’re all dead… the fiends killed them…” she replied.
Sir Philip said nothing. He had just received the news he suspected, but didn’t want to confirm it.
“The Ancient is dead, my father managed to slay him with his dying breath”.
“He died a martyr”, said Sir Philip, hoping that his comment would hearten her, and continued: “Where are you? How did you manage to survive?”
At th
at point, Erica forced herself to start crying, again.
“… I fled… I’m sorry, but I fled… They were all dead…”
She was sobbing loudly now.
“Please, my child, don’t cry. You did well, you did well. Come, please don’t cry. You couldn’t have done any more. Tell me where you are, and we’ll come to pick you up”.
Immediately, Erica felt a wave of anger swelling inside her. They’d come to pick her up! The software would have begun tracing the call the moment the line connected, and even if the battle brothers had abandoned the shelter, the mobile unit had the same equipment. They were trying to feel her out, see if she had become a vampire. The fact that she had called during the day was a positive sign to them, but surely by now they would have traced her call to the hotel. Her one advantage was that they didn’t know she possessed the powers of the Ancient. Regardless, she would have to pick carefully her words, from now on.
“I’m at the ‘Black Bull’ hotel… Sir Philip… I did something wrong…”
She sensed at once the change in the voice speaking from the other end of the line:
“What did you do, Erica?”
She didn’t respond immediately.
“Erica! What did you do?”
“… I stole… I had no money on me… I was hungry and I wanted to get away from that cursed island so badly… I’m sorry, Sir Philip… I’m sorry! I’ll find that man at the earliest opportunity and give him back the money, I promise!”
She started to cry again, but at the same time she was watching carefully the reaction of the man she had been talking to. She heard him sigh deeply, with relief, and she almost laughed with her successful deception.
“Oh, Erica, dearest, please don’t worry. We’ll find that man. We’ll send a team over to bring you back”, said Sir Philip, now reassured.
She had passed the initial test, but she still had a lot of work to do.
“Sir Philip… We may be facing a problem… Before the final stage of the battle, the Ancient hinted that he had informed the other Ancients on the location of our shelter… I don’t think it would be safe for us to head back…”
Again, silence. The man on the phone was thinking about what to do. Erica could only hope that he would draw the conclusion she aimed for. A few moments later, the man seemed to have made up his mind.
“Erica… I am sorry for what I’m about to ask you, but… we don’t have many battle brothers at our disposal, now. You must rise above. Do you think you can manage?”
Erica sniffed, for effect, and pretended she was struggling to hold back the tears.
“Yes. I do”.
“Excellent, my dearest. I want you to rendezvous with the team I’ll be sending at the port, opposite the island. Have you got enough money on you to spend another night there?”
She said that she did, so the man continued:
“Good, we must clean up the mess over there. With the Ancient’s demise, all vampires in the vicinity should have perished, but even if some fiend has survived, they won’t dare stay at the same lair. You’ll be safe; after all you’ve been trained on facing common vampires. We must make sure that the people there won’t discover something that they mustn’t know. However, you’ll have to visit that place, again. You are the only one who has been there and speed is of the essence”.
“I’ll manage, Sir Philip. Don’t worry”, she said; her voice was colored with certainty.
“Bless you, Erica. Don’t worry, soon you’ll be back home”.
She hang up and threw the cell phone on the bed. The truth was that Naram-Sin probably had said nothing to the other Ancients about the location of the various shelters. Therefore, she could have let them to return to their base, but the dilemma was very pressing to her. By returning to their base of operations, the knights would be in a position to strengthen their position, increase their ranks and possibly constitute a threat to her, at some point in the future. Now that they felt compelled to flee and hide, it would take them much longer to relocate, enough for her to stay safe from them. The dilemma, however, lay elsewhere. Her initial thought was to reassure them, to tell them that they were now safe, and then find her way into the shelter. Unawares, they wouldn’t be able to deal with her, so she could kill them. The idea had seemed so good to her, it had scared her. Now, killing was a source of pleasure. However, she wanted to draw some lines within. She didn’t want to kill the knights, at least not if it could be helped. They were the ones who had raised her and she still felt some connection to them. She walked over to the corpse of the drug dealer and stepped on it, forcefully. She heard the bones breaking beneath her foot and a smile crept on her face, as she realized that the extent of moral barriers was for her, and her alone, to decide. She returned to the bed and closed her eyes. She had decided to sleep for a while, until the sun had set from the sky.
She opened her eyes and saw that she was sitting in front of a massive table, set with all manners of food. Meat, fish and dozens of fruits lay before her. She was holding a peach in her hand; she looked at it and then threw it aside. She grabbed a pork thigh and bit it hungrily. She was starving. She wouldn’t stop eating, yet that sense of hunger would not let her be. Next to her sat two women, a young girl and an older one, both weeping as they were watching her devour everything. She didn’t care; she just wanted to sate her stomach. She ate as fast as she could, mostly without even chewing on the food. She grabbed a pitcher filled with wine and drank a hearty gulp to ease the food down; it mattered not what kind of food or drink she gobbled, she couldn’t feel it any more, as if it magically disappeared.
And yet, she could take it no more. She wanted the pain to stop. The young woman got up from her seat, approached her, kneeled and touched her leg. She spoke, but Erica could not understand her; the language felt almost alien, so she just kept eating. She felt the woman pulling at her, to attract her attention and with a massive effort she turned to look at her face. Still, she did not recognize her, nor was she touched by her face, wet with tears. Something else had piqued her interest: the veins on her neck. Everything else seemed to grind to a halt, all sounds ceased and the smell of the food before her seemed to evaporate. For a moment, nothing else mattered, other than the thin red lines she could see on the neck of the young woman. She did not attempt to resist temptation; she lunged, grabbed her and sunk her teeth into her neck. She felt getting hit, hands pawing at her, trying to push her away, but they were too weak to succeed. A few moments later she was letting the young woman drop dead to the floor and realized it was the older one who had been trying to stop her. With eyes shining from the hunger consuming her, she attacked her too.
Erica woke up with a start, dazed. She felt like she had been trying for a while to escape that dream. She touched her temples, trying to steady her vision, which had been swimming at that moment. “What exactly have I seen?” she wondered. Despite her dizziness, she tried to focus on the images she had seen.
“Father, what is wrong? Why can’t you stop eating? Please, stop, you’re scaring me! Father! Father, tell me what’s wrong!” had cried the young woman in her sleep; now that Erica was awake she could recall and understand her words. The next question, why the girl had said “father”, was equally simple to answer. She had seen a memory of the Ancient, Naram-Sin. In the same way it had happened to her, when she became a vampire, Naram-Sin had been consumed by his hunger when he was turned, thus ending up killing his own daughter and mother. Beside his powers, apparently she had inherited his knowledge as well. A torrent of questions flooded her mind: why didn’t she have immediate access to all that she had gotten from him? Why, in her dream, had she seen her own self in the place of Naram-Sin? Why were both Naram-Sin and her, consumed by an unnatural bloodlust? What exactly did he hope to achieve by giving her his powers?
A terrible, piercing pain spread in her head, violently returning her to the present. On second thought, she realized that perhaps she didn’t want to have access to all the knowledge of the An
cient, at once. Instead, she let her senses loose and felt the darkness around her dominating the day. She had work to do. Immediately, she jumped up and took off her clothes; she got to the shower and run the water. The hotel she was staying at was not, by any means, the best in the world, but it did have running water. She cleaned up as quickly as she could and got out. Noticing her bloodied clothes, she realized that she would have to find something else to wear. The body in the room was another obstacle. She sat still and focused on her hearing. She could hear everyone in the nearby rooms, as if they were standing next to her. With slightly more effort, she was able to determine whether they were men or women. She located what she was looking for, put on her underwear and trousers and got out of the room, closing the door behind her.
A little further down the corridor, she found the door to the room where she had located the person that interested her and lightly knocked on it. A few second later, a woman in her thirties opened the door. The woman was shorter than her and carried a few extra pounds on her body, but she would have to do. The woman was surprised when she saw Erica, but with a shake of her head she tried to regain her composure.
“Who are you? And why are you knocking on my door, shirtless?” she asked, angrily.
Erica resisted the desire to attack, realizing that she had some work to do on self-discipline, and offered her most charming smile.
“I could use some help. I bet you could help me, right? I’ve no clean clothes to wear…” she explained, in a calm and sweet voice.
She felt the blood cursing through her veins boiling, granting her the power to charm her victim.