Recovery

I came back to my senses after 16 months in a state of apparent coma, in which my mind burned dystopian fever dreams, fighting without rest with each one of the human spirits I had consumed. Those vampire hunters who tried to destroy me, then had wanted to escape the consequences of that action. Failed in both. Bad, nasty, case of indigestion.

Their strength eventually was consumed. Their knowledge and their skills became part of me. Some of their mental resistance, born from the advanced practice of mental-shield discipline, I had learned in those fights. Most of their memories and skills was deep submerse in my being now, not immediately available to me, but accessible through meditation. I had learned a lot about meditation locked in the darkness of this room.

Empty room, naked walls, floor and celling of rough grey concrete. Brutalism in its purest form. Heavy vault door of steal blocking the only door. It was opening at the same time my eyes were.

The Extraterrestrial Elder Vampire, who dresses herself like a comic book character and wants to be called by the name of that character.

Her smell is on the walls. Part of me kept register of that, she came every day to feed me human blood from blood bags. This was to speed up my recovery. She dropped a few words about daily affairs every time. Now is not the time for that visit, she must have felt my imminent awakening.

I am not the same man I was when I left this house in Italy to take a private jet to Berlin. Not even the same one that barely managed to drag himself back to that plane and was carried back to the house by her.

It was a trap set by that Caroline Golden-Coin. She sold me to the vampire hunters, they where not searching for her. The Extraterrestrial Vampire Queen must have provided Caroline the information. However, the information was wrong, imprecise. The human hunters greatly underestimated me, they knew enough to pose serious treat, to came close to victory and would have destroyed me if I had decided against fight for my survival with all my strength.

My consort had sent me to a trap, but the trap was not intended to destroy me. It was intended to force me to unlock something. Stop holding back the most predatorial, merciless, aspect of my acquired supernatural nature.

Human hunters are the least adversary I will find in this existence, in power. Having seem this world through the eyes of the memories of several veteran hunters I finally understand.

They will come for me. The most powerful vampire houses on Earth will try to destroy me once they realize what I am. Some will risk everything, some will hide their actions behind proxies, but they will want me destroyed. Because that is the fundamental structure of reality on Earth. That is my natural position here.

If I endure that trial, then no one else will challenge my position. My vampire family will remain save, because all nocturnal courts will have accepted the fact that I am the apex predator, the vampires them will see me as humans see them. An inevitable manifestation of fate. However, the only path to reach that condition of stability goes through nourish tyrannic, merciless, cruelty in myself. The power hunger predator living behind the left side of my right eye.

It wants to destroy me, consume my entire identity. I must avoid that, but by tension and ties, because if any side ever achieves victory in this internal struggle, we are both doomed to destruction. My house and my beloved ones would pay the ultimate price short after.

She smiles back to me, with understanding. Until I see her eyes, I wasn’t aware that I was smiling.

“I betrayed you, told you lies and sent you into their trap”

“To force me to change. There was no other way?”

“No way that would be fundamentally different. Was necessary to force you to choose between suicide or paying the price for survival. All vampires have to make that decision, one way or another, eventually. It is the most personal experience one can have”.

“In that case, you have my gratitude.”

“Where we go from here? I kept our family low profile as well as I was able to, during those months. Managed to avoid attract attention from the neighbour families. Some particularly well connected and smart Vampire Cleric noticed the incident in Berlin, but have not yet connected it to you.”

“This Caroline. She sold the information she had about me, the information you gave to her, I suppose. In exchange for safe passage out to Germany. The vampire hunters intended to keep only part of this deal, they had plans to ambush and destroy her, but also imagined she was preparing a trap for them. There was two spies from different vampire families among the hunters, both wanted the vampire appriser destroyed but one didn’t wanted her destroyed by human hunters. Had plans to frustrate the hunter’s trap so his masters could capture and interrogate to renegade vampire lassie before destroy her. How that developed?”

“I don’t have details, but Carol escaped. She reemerged close to Stambul, where she was granted temporary sanctuary by a local family. The British managed to end that protection through political pressure in the Nocturnal Courts. Now my dear Caroline is in North Korea, trying to secure herself passage to the largest territory on Earth beyond the reach of any Nocturnal Court. Nice piece of land in the south east of Russia.

Least five dedicate assassins are hunting her, counting only the vampires older than the woman herself. Such has been her existence since her family was defeated in the survival game. I suspect she has the intelligence and cunning to reach her intended destination. How long she will manage to stay hidden there is a mystery.”

“I must go to North Korea them.”

“Must you?”

“We need her cunning and her vampiric powers in this family. She could end up destroyed, and all would be lost for us.”

“That is one way to see things. On the other hand, I believe you have more pressuring matters at hand here. The lassie can wait, she has managed to keep herself one step ahead of those trying to destroy her for long enough to be considered competent in that. Besides, her talents are rare, hardly unique. We could find the same powers in different ways, or equivalent portfolios. Would you trust her, anyway? Or are you planning to consume her and use her as a puppet?”

“No. And I am not sure”

“Your human family, and your friends adopted by your decision in our vampiric, they are the reason why you decided to start your existence as a vampire building a noble family for yourself. Keep them safe was your priority. How do you feel about that now?”

“Nothing has changed, about that.”

“In that case, you must stay here for some time. Share time with them. Almost all of them are still humans. They are not just adapting to life in the Old Continent, and material opulence. They are still digesting the fact that vampires are real. Laws and morality bonds beyond the reach of all authorities they believed in exist, and they are now separated from the world they used to consider as reality. Because that separation is the only way to keep them from being slaughtered as part of the human-cattle they used to be without realizing it.

I have been taking care of them, in my own way, but I am hardly the ideal maternal figure for moments like that. Our dear uncle Bob is likeable and friendly in the first hours of causal conversation, but he is even less adequate to babysitting than I am.

And both of us had to invest time in build the physical and magical defences in this house.

Your family needs a familiar face. They need you. This cannot wait, if you leave immediately the window of opportunity will be lost.”

“You are right”

“Besides, we have horses waiting for you in our stable. Your mind is stronger now, harder to reach, I can barely identify your immediate though reading through the noise of your mental shield. Despite being your lover, and having tasted your blood, you having tasted mine, this creates a special connection that facilitates mind reading.”

“That’s good news. If you can no longer read my mind easily, that means I am well protected against almost any human vampire who tries”

“On the other hand we have been talking since I entered.

You are still sitting in a very unnatural posture, naked, on the metal table where you have been unconscious for months. Your mind seems lucid, husband, or close to that state. On the same time you are barely aware of your body now.”

I immediately started to pay attention to my body. The lights where off, was completely dark here, we where in the underground. V didn’t need light to see, and apparently now I don’t need it either. I am no longer limited to the improved night vision of that cat I have devoured and consumed. I can see my hands and fingers now, clearly, in total darkness. My knees too. My penis also.

The metallic surface bellow me is cold, the air touching my skin is cold too.

I didn’t consume any vampire, yet, but my vampiric senses have improved. This must mean this experience unlocked something. I am not sure what else I got from it.

Move my arms and legs takes deliberation, feels artificial. Timing is wrong, the distances are off. My body has no balance. I am like a two years old trying to run on a tightrope with my arms tied behind my back and my eyes closed. Didn’t go well, my first attempt to find my feet. I end up managing to raise myself from the floor, and stand still. V embraces me, and her tong get lost in my mouth.

Of all things, that’s what feel real to my senses.

“Can you manifest clothes?” she asks.

“What? How I would…”

It strikes me. I have consumed those humans, the vampire hunters. With their clothes, their weapons the cables and nets they tried to use to constrain me. I should be able to push out any of that. Select what I want to keep at hand, available to me in the blink of the eye. I try to remember, try to access that, I cannot really choose anything at first, all is mixed in a blurry spot.

Then the shadows form around me the urban armour disguised and fashion statement. I am dressed like that first vampire hunter I have devoured. The mystically improved machete stolen by his grand grandfather from a vampire tied to my right thigh. Vampire bones hanging from my neck. Rings with the shields of different vampire houses around my fingers. The revolver at my back, the shotgun too, the smaller one hidden by my right boot, the two 9 mm pistols, the six grenades. Most of them had been used already, like most the ammo, by the time we looked each other face to face. Despite that, it is all here now.

Because it was his gear, I suppose.

He came into the fight with all that.

“I suggest you lose the rings, the necklaces and the tattoos. The words written on your jacket are a bit too confrontational as well, if your intention is not to pick fights with every civilized vampire who crosses your path. This was, after all, the chosen gear of some vampire hunter ready to ambush a vampire. I suspect it must feel comfortable, looks designed for furtivity as well, in an empty ruin late at night.

Would be conspicuous in an elegant restaurant or opera theatre, mind you”

Make things go away is easy, compared to push them out of my being and into physical reality. I wasn’t even aware of the tattoos until she mention it.

My reflexes are, completely gone.

I need days to get them back, but when it happen the best tactical skills among those hunters came along with their fighting reflexes sharpened by years or decades of experience fighting from a position of disadvantage against the most dangerous prey that exists on Earth.

During all that, my people is there. I take time to share their concerns and their worries. Enjoy their company. Watch them eat and drink while I consume elixirs that imitate the aspect of human drinks. We watch movies, I leave to hunt, because I must. We discuss that again after I came back.

Those conversations make me feel, like me. I feel like myself again.

For moments at the time.

Is little, but its there. Some of it almost lingers with me for hours after I leave to meditate alone, or to do the most disgusting exercises of my new powers.

We visit Venice, Rome, expend time in a yacht. We do sightseeing walks around Madrid, explore the streets in Coimbra, Portugal. I must hide from the sun during the day, and our steps are carefully planed to not attract unwanted attention from the local vampires who have claim over each one of those places. Still, the touristic flavour and the relaxed budget do make the sacrifices and the grimdark aspects of this existence easier to swallow for my human friends, and for my human family.

The fact that they are adjusting to all that without being destroyed by their new reality makes all that much easier to swallow for me.

I consume sharks, octopuses, bats for the sake of cliché. All that feels easy now.

Even hunting humans, innocent defenceless humans, knowing aways that there is a risk that I will lose control over my actions and kill my prey. Has not happened yet, but the shadow of that possibility is always present in my mind. I can live with that.

Because I must. There is no other possibility of existence for me, anymore.

Unfortunately this time of recovery and enjoyment of life cannot last longer.

The extraterrestrial vampire elder speaks inside my head, in perfect Italian. I got the understand of that language and a few others from some of those vampire hunters.

Linguistic skills are the easiest to acquire from blood puppets, apparently.

“Our human relatives must come back, immediately” says V. “One of the elders who had invested interest in the events in Germany managed to decipher enough clues to figure out the connection between you and the disappearance of those vampire hunters, including his spy infiltered in their middle. I made arrangements to transport them safely, but I cannot keep them safe for long outside our stronghold now.

You, on the other hand, should go somewhere else. His attention will follow you. I suggest Montreal, or Sidney. Both options would feed your predator a false sense of security without place you in his reach. Force him to call old favours, organize his local connections, without call for investment of his best resources. This strategy buy us time to consider our next step.”

“I am taking the plane to Canada, then. I was thinking about meeting some bears, eventually.

Cannot think about animal in Australia that would count as a weapon powerful enough to justify the trip.”

“I join you there, as soon as possible. Don’t use any vampiric powers, unless you must to fight for your life, and keep the use of those powers to the bare minimum even then. This elder will probably send some challenges to test you, that’s standard procedure when they are not sure about the lineage and the age of someone. But know they are not dealing with an ordinary lowlife.

With some luck we may still delay the official presentation of our house credentials to large vampiric community on Earth. We are far from ready, mind you.

However, if you must, use everything you have. Don’t let yourself be destroyed just to hold back our best cards.”

Nothing good lasts forever.