Sea Stolen

Chapter 6 - Fang

Fang was born in London. Fang grew up in London. Fang lived in London. Fang died in London.

And even after that Fang had still inhabited London.

Not even death could pry him away from the greatest city in the world.

But Charles was an ever more powerful force than death.

So now he was traipsing along another little beach in another little coastal town. Past flocks of stupid, beady eyed seagulls; abandoned buckets and spades; a white beach shack that looked ready to collapse; and mounds and mounds of sand. And what was all this misery in the name of? Mermaid hunting. A species that were long since extinct.

The heart numbing pain of being stuck in this rural, touristy hell for the next fifty years was nothing compared to the loss of his father’s love. For Liam had been right, and Byron new Charles would never be able to look at him the same way again. Not with his newly discovered gift.

A couple and their young daughter passed by him. The mother straightened up slightly and pulled her little girl closer to her. Fang doubted it was the sense of danger and otherness vampires awakened in some humans, rather the slant of his eyes. Another reason he yearned to go home.

He had been killed in the twenties. A robbery he happened to have walked into. The thieves were fleeing, he had been making his way down the street, hunched shoulders, eyes on the ground. The police shot him in the neck, mistaking him for one of the escaping criminals.

But stumbling down an alleyway, blood spraying out his neck, life slipping away he’d fallen at the feet of Charles Smithson. Quite by chance. Quite by coincidence. In his short twenty six years of life it would be the best thing that ever happened to him.

When he awoke a vampire the first thing Charles, his new father, asked for was his name.

“F-frank S-smith,” he had stuttered out as his eyes tried to comprehend the impossible detail flooding his vision, the feeling of every hair on the carpet below him, the rush of a million sounds from every direction.

“What is your name.” It wasn’t a question. It was a command. A command with the voice of centuries of power behind it. A voice which said I know lies and I never tolerate liars. 

There was another name. A name his mother gave him and his father told him to forget. A name expunged in order to fit in. A name he always called himself, but told no others to call him.

“Fang Ziu.”

And then he was given nod of acceptance and welcomed to the world of the creatures of forever.

That was his first memory as a vampire, and one of his favorites. Yet now it was forever tarnished by his banishment and the look in his maker’s eyes as Liam oh so casually, effortlessly and eloquently told the guild of his gift.

Byron scrunched up the thought, locked it away and stared out at the sea. He tried to see behind the blue bulk of water at the amazing, briny glory Charles would sometimes begin to speak of before he caught himself then stopped. It was bluish green, wet, salty, but . . . he couldn’t see the brilliance. The ocean was something entirely other than the city, he supposed something old and ancient and forever.

He wondered if that was why vampires couldn’t enter it. Couldn’t cross it either. Could barely even bare to be near it. There were tales of a few vampires who entered the waves or the rivers, thrown or dragged in during the olde days by wolves or mermaids. They had drowned.

It was a strange weakness afflicted to vampire kind.

Afflicted to all, but him.