Eternal Enemies 3

I can set a pile of wood in fire in the blink of the eye, if the pile is not too large. Hit moving targets is still tricky to me, but I can set the hear of someone in fire in a few tries. Not nearly enough to use this power in a fight against another vampire. For now, this is just for show. The Artifex seed, also, does not has practical uses. I can turn my blood into golden rings or pendants, silver, create bronze knifes of one single piece, handle and blade.

Should be possible to create any tool or machine I can visualize in detail. Of course, up to some limit of size and weight. However, I am decades away from anything like that. As for glass manipulation, I can turn a glass into a sculpture in my hand, but for now the only style I am able to achieve is abstract.

My achievements as a vampire gardener are even more frustrating. I can grow a tomato plant feeding it my blood. And stablish connection with this vegetal blood thrall, but the connection vanishes when I go more than 30 steps away from the plant. That way even the questionable utility of this thrall as point of reference to, so I can build a supernatural GPS limited to a urban area is not viable.

For all practical purposes, I am still where I was when I started representing the family in Festivals, as a duellist.

On the bright side, doble meaning intended, I am able to enjoy the sun for 6 hours a day now, every day. Improving fast to the full development of Sunflower Seed. When I get there, I will be a vampire immune to sunlight.

That will also make me immune to the only method available for human vampire hunters to permanently destroy a vampire.

They have to cut the vampire’s heart intact and expose it directly to sunlight. What caused the organ to burn into ashes, intense and hot fire, destroying the vampire permanently. Leaving a body behind, without hearth, that for all intents and purposes has no sighs of even have been supernatural.

Well, some physical deformities may remain, depending on the individual vampire. Still, nothing that cannot be accepted as some sort of genetic disease of mutilation.

I am certainly a more experienced fighter now, and a veteran killer of my own kind. Like all vampires I keep killing humans during the Hunt. Despite my intention to avoid doing so, sometimes it happens. Is out of our control.

In any case, I am stronger and faster now. My shapeshifting skills keep improving, my healing powers are close behind.

After decades asking and insisting, I finally got the permission to move from the family domains to an apartment in a human city. Big metropolis, as I wanted, albeit not any city I had visited when I was still a human.

I still expend most my time in the family stronghold, my room in the big house is still there, but now I can leave and stay here for some weeks at the time, after every serious fight. Rest a little from the craziness of Nocturnal Court. There is no real resting from being a vampire, that go without saying. Still, I have the rare privilege to be a vampire able to enjoy human food like humans enjoy it, and walk in daylight.

Uncle Johr has those same two blood seeds, and this created a sort of connection between us. He understand what means being able to share the human point of view better than most vampires ever will.

Just uncle Johr is over nine hundred thousand years old. He is close to broke the one million years mark, considering the scale of time in focus. Loves wine, fast-food, Rastafari Reggae music and country pop. No sky was ever as painfully blue as his eyes, but other than that he can be easily mistaken for a human. I suppose one can assume they are contact lenses.

Thanks to this shared blood seeds, and the opportunities that came with them for circulate around wild humans during the day, we started talking.

He then introduced me to some of those friends, and that opened to me a new perspective about vampiric society. There is much talk about the Disclosure that is supposedly about to happen, in half a decade or less. Vampires going out, all humanity getting the information about our existence and what it implies.

Those old vampires speak about times before the pyramids, about other stellar systems where humans and different species of intelligent prey live. About the race responsible for create our Universe. This Disclosure to them is one more, in a long list of similar events. Happened before on Earth, and on many other planets. Apparently, vampires often choose to alternate between secret and public existence in the open.

Uncle Johr had a blood thrall, named Neftali. How was presented publicly as his wife. She had been with him since the first cities in Mesopotamia. All blood thralls have strong feelings of devotion for their owner, comes with the territory, but I believe the feeling was reciprocated in that case. Despite being a blood thrall the gorgeous brown skinned woman was granted the same respect usually showed to vampires about the same age she was.

Neftali had an inseparable friend, Lucretia. A vampire lady, just twelve centuries old, much younger than the blood thrall.

One day Neftali was found dead, deprived of all blood, signs of fight. Short investigation revealed the murder was her friend, Lucretia.

A blood thrall has only a small drop of vampiric power. Was not hard for Lucretia to kill her friend, despite the difference in age in favour of the blood thrall. The reason for this murder was first presented as something political, a move from elders of other families against uncle Johr. Bellow that cover story improvised after the fact, it was apparently a passional act. Jealousy, arrogance, something like that.

Lucretia was a Sunflower, walk in daylight was not reason for jealousy from her part. Perhaps she missed being able to taste the human food like humans can. Or perhaps she wanted to be loved by uncle Johr like her friend was.

Most likely, was a combination between many factors. Real passion is never pure, there is always some combination of elements, some more important than others.

Whatever it was, the vampire woman must have realized the magnitude of the problem.

The head of her family, and the Elders of that family, they tried to shield that woman. Save her from the consequences of her momentary indiscretion. Ultimately, when push came to shove, and it sure came, every voice of reason decided that protect this woman was not something they wanted that much. When some vampire that old is adamant about get something, determined enough to even destroy himself, if necessary, is hard to exaggerate the possible consequences for those who choose to block his way.

You may love me a little less when I admit that. I love me a little less myself because of it. Still, I must say. I was curious to see what uncle Johr would do with the murder of his wife, and blood thrall.

Vampire body can take a lot without die. Recover from anything that do not cause actual destruction.

To torture a vampire for the sake of torture itself. As punishment. I was not capable to imagine what that would look like.

That was the first time the concept of “feral vampire” was explained to me.

There are a few possible causes for this condition, by far the most common is when a vampire do not consume human blood, or do not consume enough of it, and remains active. Feeding only from other animals. Irrational, non-linguistic, animals.

This triggers a transformation. The vampire becomes stronger, much faster, and more durable. On the same time, loses all capacity to think by words or control its memory, make plans or communicate like people. Basically, reason is replaced by ram instinct, the vampire turns into a mindless beast. Extremely efficient predator, consumed by the thirsty.

Is possible to reverse this condition, but extremely difficult and far from guaranteed. The trauma leads to suicide as often as not.

Being turned into a feral is the ultimate humiliation a vampire can suffer. Worse than physical torture and public ostracism.

Actually, there is one thing worse.

There are a few vampire families, small and infamous in the Nocturnal Courts. They are considered unclean and indecent, because they specialized in the art of explore feral vampires. It is extremely dangerous, and difficult, but families like the Crimson Daise and the Chains mastered the art of keep feral vampires. Tame them.

Most use ferals as fighters, like humans do with dogs and rooters. The Chains are specialists in train hunting ferals, in addition to those. Mindless trackers who find and hold a prey, or bring it back to their masters. Perfect monsters to keep a property safe at night, and the human cattle locked in their homes, afraid to look outside. The Crimson Daises practice a even more difficult art. They shape feral vampires into lap dog pets.

That is the ultimate violation of dignity. Even in the remote case of a recovery, If the vampire is healed from the feral condition and regains its reason, the indoctrination into a pet never washes away. There is no chance for those vampires to ever return to society as respectable members of a Nocturnal Court.

Johr informed Lucretia of that fate after strip the woman naked and restrain her into chains and mind-control commands, to make impossible for her to escape as try suicide.

I was released to my normal obligations as duellist by the head of my family. To assist Johr, at his personal request. I didn’t understood why, exactly.

The transformation into a feral takes the best part of one year. It happened in the underground of a house the elder has in the city. A private fortress of sort. Two vampire lassies, member of CD family, visited us regularly to see the prisoner and give suggestions. Their blood thralls became constant presence in the house.

The idea of vengeance escapes me. I never understood why some people think it is rewarding, in an emotional level.

Of course, as a social instrument to make future violations less likely vengeance make sense. Same as Criminal Persecution. Those who see the punishment, or hear about, know they do not want to risk being the next target. Therefore, they should not risk to cross the lines that person in suffering has crossed. I understand that, in rational level, because that objectively makes sense. Would be stupid to deny it works, given the right circumstances and in some limited way.

Still, it is a nasty unpleasant business. Not a reason for satisfaction.

To me, anyway. Uncle Johr seemed to enjoy it.

After his enemy had lost her mind almost completely, and her moments of lucidity became so rare and brief that hardly allowed more than the exchange of a couple sentences. We moved to the Crimson Daise domain, next to DC in US. There the process was finished and the training itself took place.

I was there, isolated from the external world almost completely, learning about how to tame and keep feral pets. Listening uncle Johr talk for hours at the time, about his good moments with is beloved companion. Love of his life.

During one of those six years the Disclosure happened.

I lost the Year of Madness, for most practical purposes.

Was curious to find out how different the world would be, when I returned to it.

After all training, uncle Johr had one more request to me.

He wanted me to live in his house in the city, and take care of his pet, Lucretia. Renamed Lucy.

Now that his vengeance was consumed, he had showed Lucy around in a leash, in some fancy dinners. What was left for him was emptiness, and a tired hearth. Elders have their own way to mourn monumental losses like that. The Long Sleep.

It can take anything from five decades up to five centuries. In the case of vampires as old as him, the Long Sleep can take over a thousand years. There is no way to know.

There are dreams, healing dreams, confuse and chaotic. The vampire that awakes is different, more serene and more mature than the one who closed his eyes to sleep.

He decided to do that, and given my support as a good friend he decided to trust me to stay as the guardian of his feral pet. I should treat her as my own.

My family accepted to liberate me from duels to the death, at his personal request. So I could take care of Lucy without the risk of being destroyed at my first defeat in one of those fights.

My friend mentioned that in the letter he left for me.

“You will be losing your chance to get some additional blood-seeds, and over time you may hate me for take that chance from you. I hope to compensate you for this lost with my loyal friendship, once I came back. Meanwhile, I have managed to get you access to some of the secret arts of Crimson Daise family. It shall add a sharp edge to your public image, perhaps not something you would have chosen, but still, is a rare opportunity for a young vampire.

And, this is the sort of item in a curriculum that gives the heads of families reason to keep a vampire away from the frontlines. As much as possible.

Your most frequent complain about being a vampire is the need to keep fighting and killing other vampires, to not be killed by them. This improvement in your abilities should make that obligation less frequent.

I hope you will find some pleasure, over time. In the art of taming feral vampires”

Well, I hope that as well.

What else I could do?