The Death of a Vampire

3. Bitten

Two red, swollen bite marks on my neck stared back at me from the bathroom mirror. They looked deep, and they hurt like hell when I did what anyone would instinctively do – press them with my finger. I swore out loud, not caring if my voice carried through the thin walls to the ears of my ever complaining next door neighbour. She was an old lady who seemed to be disturbed by any and every noise she happened to hear in our building. And she grumbled a lot, as the old building's soundproofing wasn't up to modern standards.

I swore again when the bite marks began to bleed at my touch. I knew I shouldn't have left the balcony door open at night, but what else could I have done? We were in the middle of a heat wave and my little flat had no air conditioning. It was stifling in there. It was cosy enough in winter, but during a hot summer I had to sleep without a blanket even with the door open, if I wasn't going to spend all night in a pool of sweat.

I took some cotton wool, moistened it so it wouldn't get stuck on the half-dried blood, and wiped the blood off.

"These are huge! I just can't believe the size of mosquitos these days..." I announced to the mirror while wiping my neck. Then something strange about my reflection made me stop.

I stared at my hand in the mirror, bending even closer to see better. Then, suddenly fully awake, I realized I didn't need the mirror to have a closer look.

"What the hell?"

A ring. Being left-handed, that's the hand I had used to clean the blood away. That upraised hand now had a ring on the ring finger. A ring I had never seen before, and one that had definitely not been there the previous night when I went to bed. It was a golden ring with old-fashioned filigree swirls surrounding a dark red stone in the middle, a stone that had to be a ruby. A giant ruby.

"What the actual hell?" I repeated, even louder.

The previous evening had been quite ordinary. I'd spent it at home as planned, researching the Amarna age for my next book until midnight. Then I had gone to bed and I certainly hadn't put a ring on my finger. Not this ring, not any ring. I didn't wear much jewellery anyway. No one else could have put there, either, not unless they could scale walls. My apartment was on the third floor. My brain scurried around the thoughts but nothing was making sense.

Of course, the first thing I tried to do was to get the ring off to have a better look at it, but it was as if it had grown into my skin. It refused to budge. It's the heat, my analytical mind told me. No wonder. The finger had swollen up because of it. I turned the tap on and waited for the water to run cold before putting my hand into the stream of water. That'll bring the swelling down, I thought. When my hand felt cool, I tried again. Nope, it was as if it was glued to my skin, making the skin stretch when I pulled it.

The insect bites on my neck were throbbing and had started to trickle blood again. I reached for a bottle of disinfectant, and patted it gently on the bite marks, swearing as it stung. It was the end of July; the dog days of summer. Old people said wounds got infected easily this time of the year. Dog days...

The name came from the rising of Sirius or the Dog Star after it had been absent from the sky for 70 days, in ancient Egypt at least. According to Homer, Sirius, or the Dog of Orion, appeared at harvest time as a sign of evil times ahead for mankind, my subconscious dutifully lectured me.

"Oh, shut up!" I told my mind out loud.

I decided I had probably been so tired I had simply forgotten about finding the ring somewhere and putting it on my finger. I would figure the whole thing out later.

Stepping into the shower, I sighed with pleasure when the cold water touched my skin. I washed my hair and left it wet, so it would keep me cooler for a little while longer. I had closed the curtains to stop the sunlight from entering my little sauna of an apartment, and so I could walk naked to the kitchen. I put the coffee on, took a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and poured it into a glass. I loved orange juice. My mouth felt dry as sand, and I took a long sip of the juice – only to spit it out immediately. It tasted horrible.