Souls of Ashes

Chapter IV

     Something was happening to me, I could feel it deep inside like some sin, no, demon trying to escape from the deepest wells of my heart and ravage existence. Each day my horrid abnormal strength grew to peak new heights, and my mind was fed constantly with Abel’s murderous brother, Cain, from the Bible. I had heard the warped story a multitude of times so that I had the entirety memorized and engraved in my now-impressionable mind before the first week was out.

     “The Church is deceiving the people,” the more handsome demon, whom I now knew as ‘Sire’, had said; they mention nothing of how the race of vampyres came about, yet they are so eager to kill us.

    After Cain killed Abel, God set a mark upon him to distinguish him apart from the others as a punishment for his sins. He was to be an outcast from society, and different from all the rest. He was the first vampyre, a life of eternal damnation, but like any other former human he got lonely so created for himself three companions. These were the beginnings of the different bloodlines, the most feared of which I had apparently been born into.

     My true gifts were unknown to me however, and besides the abnormality of my strength I knew nothing on the matter.

     I was instructed by my Sire to feed off of animals: bats and small rodents easily found in the forests beyond our ‘sanctuary’.

     “No mortals for you yet,” he had said, and I had to force myself to not think on such grim topics while Drusdell seemed to frequently haunt Halls other than our own.

     During the day I was forced into an unnatural sleep in which my most recent sins haunted my already fevered dreams.

     It had been weeks since I had been ‘born into Darkness’ as my Sire put it, though how much time exactly, I knew not. My intuition told me it was about fourteen days or so. Drusdell had been gone consecutively for half that period before he suddenly appeared again in the early evening.

     “It is time.” The demon’s words were uncharacteristically calm, though that hinted at an underlying emotion- perhaps excitement?

     “Time for what?” My own voice was ragged and rough through lack of use, and though I hadn’t left the cave since I was brought here oh-so-long ago, my Sire told me that I was coming along nicely. My hair, he said, was softer and not in the least bit greasy. My skin had a slight pallor to it and was unblemished, smooth. And above all my voice, though I hadn’t noticed it over the course of fourteen days, had become more connected and supple; the timbre deeper, almost as if I had become a man and had come into my own.

     “It is time for your true test into the Darkness.” I glanced over to where my Sire sat as he spoke, sitting at a deep wooden table before he arose and glided silently to Drusdell’s side. It left me gaping rather foolishly at them both.

     "But I was led to believe that I was already..." My hushed words were cut off rather forcefully, of course by Drusdell's heated temper and impatience.

     "You damned fledgling, have you learned nothing? If one does not feed off of mortals within the first full moon, he will forever remain weak."

     I glared at the foul thing which stood before me in all his abhorrence, before my Sire broke the tension.

     "Children, come. We must depart before the night is wasted."     And reluctantly, with both a fuming and melancholy heart, I was led to their whims like cattle before the slaughter.

     In an agreeable amount of time we came upon the sleeping, seemingly humble village. The lanterns and other such things were no-where to be seen, even missing outside the dilapidated Inn. I was well aware that superstition run amuck during this time, and maybe because I knew I was now an outcast from the mortals I felt detached somehow, my mind almost enveloped in a foggy haze, but not quite.