Vampire - In the Beginning (Vampire Series Book 1) Page 5

  He thrust his stake into the hearts of them all, he watched and laughed as they screamed and writhed in pain and finally withered into nothing more than stark white bones. When the screams could be heard no more, he turned to Matilda, contempt and anger glowing in his face.

  “DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU HAVE CAUSED? I SHOULD KILL YOU…FOR YOU DISGUST ME…YOU WOULD SACRIFICE OUR CHILD FOR THE WANT OF JEALOUSY…YOU WOULD DO THIS IN FRONT OF A KING…YOU FOOL!”

  Matilda crept along the stone floor towards him, her head bowed low, “Forgive me, my love…I’m a fool, but I love you so…and I'm afraid of losing you…please forgive me…I beg of you!”

  Matilda had reached Robert, she bent low and kissed the stone at his feet.

  “Please, my lord?” she whimpered. Without warning, he kicked her and she flew back from him, crying in pain.

  “I advise you to stay away from me for a good while, if anything like this should happen again…I shall not be responsible for my actions…DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, MATILDA?’

  Without waiting for her answer, he walked towards me, picked me up, and carried me to my room. For once, I didn’t question him, instead I clung to him, and curled up in his arms, for in his arms was the only place I felt safe.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was unable to attend the last banquet of the royal visit, my ordeal of the night before had made me ill, and I shook and shivered, tears constantly forming in my eyes, and falling in a downward trail that I could no longer stop.

  I slept, but awoke screaming with the vision of Edward’s sad eyes boring into my soul. In my dreams Tom and Edward became one, and I begged and begged for their release, and cried when I saw their corpses hanging dead and lifeless.

  The days after the royal visit became a blur, and other than my dreams, the only thing I remember is the kicking of my son. His kicks were painful, but the pain assured me that we were both alive, and this was a comfort, for although I wished to die, I wished my son to live. All that I had been through, now and in the future was for him, and it was imperative that he should survive – otherwise it would all be for nothing, and Tom and Edward’s deaths would have been in vain!

  The pains started on the last day of November, at first just cramps, but they progressed rapidly, and I was soon writhing in pain and agony, although not once did I scream. Agony sliced through my body, but strangely I felt appeased by this, at last I felt a little of the agony that Tom and Edward had faced, and this agony somehow washed away some of the guilt I carried.

  I saw Tom beside me, his sweet smile encouraging me, his voice whispering that I must not give up, our son must live. Edward was on my other side, his soft loving eyes telling me that he would always stand beside me, and that he would never doubt me again, for he now knew that I had tried to save him. I was relieved that I was going to die, relief that I would not be an animal that feasted on human blood to survive. I would join the people I loved, and my son would survive, and just maybe, with our silent guidance, he would turn away from the evil that beckoned.

  Through the long day I talked with them both, they eased my mind, and lulled my pain, but I was scared also, I would leave my son, but I would also leave behind the man I loved above all others – for I now realised that man was Robert. They quelled my fear, they said my love would live on, and I could watch him from afar, but remain protected from the evil that our union would become, and so I waited for my death, I welcomed it.

  The day had passed into night. I heard Matilda’s voice in the distance, asking if I would survive, and if the child was still living. I knew he was, I felt him move, and I would live until he was born. Several times, I heard Robert’s voice, I could not understand what he said, but I knew he was there and I smiled in approval of his attendance.

  The morning had once more dawned when I heard Matilda say, “Cut her, I don’t care if she dies…just get my son out of her…remember, Robert must not know of this…but we must save his child!”

  I felt the knife enter my abdomen, I felt the blood flowing from my wound, and I rejoiced for I knew that I was going to die. I heard my son’s lusty screams, and at that moment I closed my eyes, I had done what I had set out to do, and now I could rest, it was in that glorious moment that I felt my heart shudder, finally stop, and I entered into the tranquility I desired.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I awoke sometime later. At first I thought I was in heaven, for my body felt refreshed, more than refreshed, it felt alive. I could hear the scurrying of a mouse somewhere close by, and the far off voices of people chattering and laughing. Everything seemed clear and bright, my senses were alert and I knew that I was stronger than I had ever been before.

  I sat up, and realised I was in my bed in the manor – and then I knew! Robert stepped from behind the curtain, and gently perched on the side of the bed.

  “I was afraid I was too late…but it seems my fears were for nothing…I managed to save you.”

  I placed my head in my hands, he had saved me by making me into a creature I despised - I hated him at that moment!

  “How did you…I died…I remember dying?” I saw the sadness in his face; he knew that I had wished to die, and that I hated the creature I had become.

  “Yes you did die, but my blood flowed within you,” he said with a sigh, he then continued, “Just enough to keep you going until I reached you. To become a vampire my blood must flow into your mouth in the exact moment that your heart stops, but the small amount of my blood in your system must have prolonged that final beat. I entered the room and you had drawn your last breath, I couldn’t let you die, Gwen, and so I placed my wrist to your mouth and my blood flowed into your body. I still thought you would die, and so I waited to see if you would survive…hoping that you would. I prayed that I would not lose you, Gwen!”

  His gaze was intense, and my anger evaporated, he had realised that he loved me, just as I had realised that I loved him in the last moments before I died.

  He pulled me into his arms, and his mouth sought mine in an intense explosion of love and tenderness. I knew straight away that becoming a vampire had heightened my feelings, I could love with a burning desire, but I could also hate with an intense wrath. I was to enter into a new phase in my life, one that I didn’t want or desire, but one in which I was capable of killing all that opposed me without guilt or anguish. This capability would be directed at one person! The woman who took my child for her own, the woman who tortured my friend, and the woman who decided to end my life and in doing so ultimately turned me into the animal I had become – that woman was Matilda, and sooner or later I was going to end her life.

  Chapter Fourteen

  2013

  I look back at this time in my life, and although it is nearly five hundred years ago, it feels like only yesterday. The sights, suffering, my feelings, love and joy, it is all so near – and yet it is so far.

  Did I really love and hate with such passion? Although now of course, with the hindsight of the passing years I realise that I blamed Matilda for simply being what she was, and I used her as a scapegoat; after all, she was just the puppet, and Robert was the puppet-master. My youth and my love wouldn’t allow me to see the vampire behind the man.

  Wisdom comes with years, and I have had plenty of them. For now, I will lay down my pen, and tomorrow I will re-start my story, for tomorrow a new phase in my long life begins.

  >>>

  Please read the first two chapters of Vampire – Child of Destiny.

  Vampire - Child of Destiny

  By Charmain Marie Mitchell

  Chapter One

  2013

  Once again, I take up my pen and recall the memories from my long life. It has been a while since I have attempted to write. Writing the first chapters of my life affected me much more than I could ever have known, and for weeks after I finished writing, I awoke at night screaming in terror, the sound of my baby's cries echoing around my muddled mind.

  I have therefore been afraid to write! I have s
everal times picked up my pen, but before my thoughts have been able to string together the first sentence, I have put my pen back down on my writing desk and walked away, my fear following me like a gliding poisonous snake.

  Oh, I am sure you read this with a mind that questions my writing, after all the entire whole world knows that vampires have no emotions and are evil creatures, do they not? Oh, if only that was the truth! How so much easier my life would be.

  How strange it is that I recall my first memories with a young heart and not that of a mind and body that has lived for nearly five hundred years. I had thought that reliving my memories through an aged and wise mind would make them so much easier to deal with, but of course, no matter how old we are, we never truly know the answers to all the questions we ask.

  It seems that in reliving my memories I have also once again found an affinity with the human race. I had lost that. I saw people as food, but since revisiting my past I have remembered how it feels to be human, to be scared, alone, and above all petrified of the animal that I had unwillingly become.

  I made this discovery a few days after I had finished writing. Actually, it was the morning following my first terror-induced nightmare. I was strolling barefoot along the soft warm sand at Pevensey Bay, a small and secluded beach near Brighton. I love the ocean, it is the one thing in my long life that never changed, for the ocean can never be tamed, nor altered, and I find I constantly feel the need to be close to the sound of crashing waves.

  After walking for a while I decided to sit down and look out to sea; watching the waves was hypnotic and eased the remaining fear from the previous night’s terror. I was so lost in thought that I failed to notice the young boy walking towards me, and it was not until the gorgeously intoxicating smell of fresh innocent blood assaulted my senses, that I knew he was almost upon me.

  I hate to admit that in years gone by I would have fed from this child. The taste of young untainted blood is irresistible. It regenerates the decrepit blood that circulates in a very old vampire’s body, eradicating all the sourness of the immoral beings previously fed from, and replenishes us with youth and vitality. I suppose in some ways, like humans, eating a healthy but delicious diet; that is what an innocent’s blood is to a vampire.

  I felt my fangs grow as the boy approached me, the sweet smell of his life engulfing my senses. I wanted his blood, and I knew at that moment that my eyes had glazed over with the familiar opaque look of a crazed animal, my fangs had elongated and that I looked like the beast that I had long ago become. I jumped up from my seated position, my body fighting an internal battle, my mind screaming, ‘NO’ but my body craving the elixir of the boy’s blood.

  I then did something that I had not done for centuries. I fled! I knew I could no longer feed on the blood of one so young, and for the first time in years, I felt disgust at the want of my desires.

  For miles, I scurried along the coastline, I say scurried because I feel that I was no better than a rat. Rats infect the innocent with a plague of death and debauchery, and I believe this is also an apt description of a vampire.

  Finally, I come to rest miles away from the boy and bury myself away from human gaze underneath Brighton pier. I writhe with the agony of self-loathing on the damp sand, pathetic, self-pitying sobs shaking my body.

  Gradually the sobs subside, but it is then that I taste the presence of a human nearby. I glance to my side and notice an old man curled up on the wet sand. His hands lovingly holding an empty wine bottle as if it was a precious stone and although his body smelt like death, his soft snores proved he lived. The yearning for blood once more took over my body, but this time it was different, this was not innocence – this was food.

  I grasped the man and sunk my teeth into his neck. My thirst was so angry and intense that I did not stop until I ceased to hear the irregular beats of his failing heart, but then I flung him from me in disgust and his poor misused body fell in a crumpled heap. The pickled taste of his alcohol-infused blood stung my throat, and bending over, I retched and retched, until black cloying clots colored the sand at my feet.

  I flung myself on the man's body. He was dead, I knew he was dead, but I tried to feed him my blood, I needed to bring him back to life, to undo the evil I had done.

  "Please breathe!" I screamed to the wind. Sobs once again rasped from my throat, but to no avail. I knew that I was not going to be able to return to him what I had stolen. This man was not innocent, but he was defenseless, and I had taken his one magical gift, in what was a miserable existence, I had taken his life!

  Wearily I returned to my home, I was so close to stabbing a stake deep into my unfeeling heart. Thoughts of death rushed in a crazy spiral around my dazed mind. For hours I lay on my bed, a wooden stake held in my hand beside me. Several times, I held it above my chest; several times I came close to letting it fall into my breast.

  However, slowly a realisation came to me - I felt guilt. For the first time, in a long time I felt a human emotion. Maybe, just maybe, I am worth saving. Maybe I did have a reason to live. Yes, I had selfishly taken a human life, and there was no excuse, but now, just maybe, I could find a reason to live? The guilt I felt, a feeling that would remain with me, was a human reaction, and as long as I felt that guilt, I knew I would not be able to take another human life.

  I pulled my journal towards me and started to read. When I had finished I closed my eyes with a sigh, and I knew I would continue with the tale of my long life, it was a story that needed to be told. I needed the world to know the truth, and I needed to know the truth, because for the first time in a long time, I was finding Gwen - the real me.

  So once more, we begin...

  Part One

  Chapter Two

  1542

  Robert softly enters my bedchamber; even with the velvet drapes drawn around the bed, I know it is he. Although I am a young, inexperienced, and newly transformed vampire, my senses are astronomical when compared to when I was human.

  Sights, smells, feelings, everything is so much more intense. Colours are brighter, life is sweeter, and in fact, just everything is amazing. My senses are now so finely tuned, that I recognise Robert by the sound of his tread, his breathing, even the faint taste of his scent that seems to float on the air. I have the intoxicating feeling of invincibility, and although I am in truth dead, I have never felt so alive.

  "Boo!" Robert's head appears around the curtain, his smile, as always, hypnotic and mesmerizing.

  "I knew it was you!" I said, poking my tongue out, and faking disdain by turning my back on him.

  "Oh, did you indeed?" Although my back was to him, I could hear the smile in his voice. The bed dipped as he climbed in beside me, I could feel his cold breath on my neck, and my body trembled in response to him.

  "Well," Robert whispered into my ear, "Did you know I was going to do this?" His tongue slivered a delicious line along my neck. "Or this?" His voice deepened as he pierced my skin with his elongated and exquisite fangs. I sighed in ecstasy; nothing could have ever prepared me for the exquisite feeling of making love with a vampire. The giving and receiving of blood, two bodies entwined, emotionally and physically, combined with the heightened awareness of being a vampire, arousing emotions that can only be described, quite hypocritically, as heavenly. I had voiced this thought to Robert a few days earlier, and he had laughed his deep throaty laugh, and said, "Oh but thou knowest not what thou sayest!"

  "And my love, did you know I was going to do this?" Robert asked as he thrust his body into mine. I screamed with joy, and joined him in our mutual pleasure, love, life, blood, and power, building into a climax of ecstasy.

  A few hours later, lying in Roberts’s arms, my pleasure still sweet but fading, I asked him the question that I had asked him every day since I had become a vampire.

  "Can I see him today?" His sigh answered my question before he had even voiced it.

  "She'll not allow it, Gwen."

  I jumped out of the bed. I had known that he would
answer me in this way, no matter how I asked, begged, and cried, his answer was always the same. I paced the bedchamber, irritation causing my movements to feel aggravated and clumsy. I turned to face Robert, anger visible in my stance and the blaze of my eyes. "But why not? He is my son, Robert!"

  He remained quiet, watching me as I paced up and down, his eyes, as always, lazy and unconcerned.

  "Because, Gwen," he said quietly, "Because you agreed that Henry would become Matilda's child."

  I once again stopped my pacing, which I had resumed, and turned towards him. "But he is her child! That’s quite clear, is it not.....I have not even seen him, I have not seen my SON, I just want to see him, to touch him, surely that is understandable...Please, Robert, Please..."

  He arose from the bed and walked, gloriously beautiful and naked, towards me.

  "The maternal bond must be broken, Gwen. I have explained this to you countless times." His hand reached out to me, I shrugged him away angrily, and he sighed, dropping his hand down by his side.