I had unknowingly decided that I wanted to keep her. Initially, I merely wanted to investigate my feelings further. There was so much I didn’t understand. So much concern that she brought forth in me. In my experiences, I had come to accredit myself with a superior understanding of the world. Humans were such an insignificant part of that knowledge that I hadn’t bothered to observe them in any way less than predatory. Generally, they all act the same way, with various diminutive differences among them, adjusting their behaviors in conjunction with the habitual cycle of change in the universe. They are no more sophisticated than the animals they call wild. They would have been better off remaining in the Dark Ages. I pity their struggles to coexist amongst themselves. Eons of warring over petty religions, squabbling over money, and killing for power have degraded their kind. The lot of them, a cankerous infection on the Earth. Little are they aware of the beings that are truly responsible for the epic discoveries in technology and the sciences. If it weren’t for those of my kind who dare to associate with and live amongst the humans, they may very well have been living in a mediocre, medieval world still today.
There was a time that we of higher abilities and intellect had contemplated the fate of the human race, much as I did so with this single girl in the early hours of the last day of her mortal life. Legions of my kind gathered to debate the humans’ subsistence. Though aware of our own need for them, many of the oldest vampires felt the need to eradicate their actuality; they suggested concentrations camps for easy access to our most valuable commodity. Others were quick to protect the sanctity of human life, feeling more akin to them than we should. They fought for the humans, believing that the natural evolution of humankind would someday prove to be vital to our own existence. Of course, they were correct in thinking so. We are an advantageous breed, having the good fortune of true soothsayers able to enlighten us on our decisions before they are made. Still, the eldest of the elders were not convinced. They could not see that humans would cease to procreate without their social environment intact. They refused to show a weakness for humanity. The rift among us nearly brought forth a war of our own, until I cared to involve myself with the trivial matters they were so affected by.
I am the only one of my kind with the gift that was given to me by Azoroth, my maker. The two of us could have dominated the world, and that was his plan. My agenda, well hidden from him, was quite antithetic from his. He was stricken with a thirst for power that scaled far beyond his desire for blood. He would have desecrated our race along with the lowly humans, with me at his side of course. He couldn’t do it without me. He spent his entire immortal existence searching for and training me so that I could aid his eternal takeover. When I deciphered his teachings, when I cracked his theories open like a fragile egg, I knew I would have no part of his realm. His omniscience died when he succumbed to my power. He had drastically mistaken my ability, a fault that cost him everything. I had been careful not to think of my discretions; his mind was a formidable opponent. He never allowed a break in his armaments. He was an impenetrable force, except when enthralled with brainwashing me, his lone apprentice.
Azaroth was capable of mind melding. He could take over and contort any being’s mind he coveted. Every vampire I’ve acquainted was succeptible to him, save for the elders that created him. Born of four vampires, rather than one, he harvested the strongest of lineages. He could not control those who made him, but he soon learned that I could. He planned to use me for his own amelioration, then dispose of me as feverishly as he had created me. I would be no one’s pawn.
We had travelled deep into the caverns of Sarma of the infamous Caucuses range to do our bidding. It reaches far beyond the nearly 6000 feet explored by humans. The insurmountable heat billowing in the depths of the hollows would have caused our internal organs to exacerbate, if not for our lack of them. We had taken the spelunking as a precaution to secure his plan, which only aided me in his takeover. He knew so little of the mastermind he had instilled in me. My brute force, though quickly surpassing his own, was not enough to relinquish his power. I had to be patient. I had to wait for the precise moment in which we were mentally in sync. Once he locked into my cognitions, he was at his most vulnerable. We would take up camp and begin the ten hour practice of becoming one mental force once we reached the inner caverns, those never touched by humans.
Preparing for the mental break was torment. Though I had to be prepared for my counterattack, my mental blueprints had to be well hidden and disguised. New thoughts created new pathways in our brains, the only adaptive part of a vampire’s entirety. The smallest development in my mind would be a bump in his mental pathway, one which he was capable of exploring without boundaries. Once our feet hit the ground, I had seconds to physiologically change all of my most prevalent thought patterns. I wasn’t even sure it was possible; he’d surely kill me if it didn’t work. As we moved adjacently, he began to fish throughout my thoughts, searching for any discrepancies. I felt his mind pervade my own; he slithered his way just before my hands touched the blistering smooth surfaces of the cavern floor . He was uncannily anxious. I couldn’t allow myself to worry, he’d feel it now. His incessant rambling poured into me, his salient whispers deep into my ears, his prophetic imagery of death overwhelming. He would nearly wipe out our kind.
We had been through this many times before, enough for me to know the mental path he would take. His thoughts would eventually become my own, and I was to let them, as he had taught me to succumb to his nature. This would be the one time that I would not surrender. I had taken the last weeks to change some of my memories, those that he had made for me. I allowed his manifestation to link into my subconscious and move its way into the depths of my encephalon. At the brink of entering into my ego, his farthest reach into the minds of others, I moved to revert his intentions. I blocked his faculty with those of my own, the mental wall I had been constructing for nearly a century was unforeseen in all of his analytical planning. He was overwhelmed by the immediate sense of betrayal. In milliseconds, he was able to recognize his miscalculation and expeditiously resort to brute mental force. He threw at me, a psychological brigade meant to crush me. All of his control was vanquished as I permeated his brain. I seethed through the grimy egotism, the crude power that he had never truly encompassed. I swept past his mental barrier, instinctively set forth in his moment of weak understanding. Again, a wave of his shock coursed me, so pronounced that my physical being was jolted, though he could not take me. I was able to hatch open the most instinctual, reptilian aspect of his mental stasis, the pineal gland. No one before me had held the ability, and I would make it an indisputable facet of reality that Azoroth would never know such dynamism. My brain implant allowed him to believe that he was merely human, adjudicating his existence as a vampire. With a single notion, he lost the mental capacities that served his might, his intelligence, even his instincts. He was lost. I broke free of his feeble magnitude and without a need for haste, proceeded to dismember his granite form.
I chose not to use my powers on another vampire. I played with the humans, practiced, honed my skills to keep them sharp. They were infinitely unnecessary until the early 19th centrury. Hoards of my kind moved to congregate underground. They lamented and turmoiled for days on end. It was highly unusual for so many of us to come together for any reason…the implications had to be prodigious. Aware of the situation as I was, I chose not to appertain myself with them, rendering myself oblivious. When the arbitrary contention became too profound for me to withstand, I finally felt it necessary to intervene. My role was simple and I played the card without a single detection. There was no need to mingle or address the massive accumulation of vampires. I didn’t even need to be near them, I invaded their Chilean base from my home in Germany.
My clairvoyance was superlative, matchless even for my own kind. I was beyond invisible, scanning the oldest, most intense minds of my species. Their knowledge was my own with each brief scan. I learned everything about the world, the humans, the past I hadn’t lived, every life that stood before my astral projection. Remaining impalpable was only achievable through succinct contact so, I rapidly found the knowledge I needed from the day walkers, those that chose to mingle and befriend the humans. I plucked from them the ideology that was necessary to secure our future existence. The brainwash was effortless. I simply placated the group by allowing their ideals to coalesce into one. Taking from some, giving to others, the group was again amiable. I felt like the fabled Robin Hood, and mentally stepped away laughing at the reality of my own fabled existence.
Now I find myself in the most difficult predicament I have ever faced. I stood before my coffin, awaiting her revival. I had worked enthusiastically to replace the door’s accouterments and remove the lid of my sarcophagus. She laid their still; my heart dropped at the sight of her. Her tiny physique was crumpled into an exasperated fetal position. Her delicate face washed of all color, marred by ebony streams that had divulged from her eyes. Her manicured nails were in shambles, stained with her intoxicatingly sweet blood. Sadly she had clawed at the tomb, damaging nothing but herself. The lid bore not a single pock mark. If I had tears, I would shed them. My reminiscing had indeed allotted her the time to wake up, undoubtedly disoriented, and scream herself into oblivion once more. In theory, I could use my innate persuasion to make her more manageable before changing her. I could mold her into what I wanted her to be. Easy as it would be, I didn’t desire to change her mind. I relished the idea of teaching my newfound progeny. I would allow her to discover herself as a vampire, allow her to nurture whatever abilities I could convey. While waiting, I fingered for the key that I had slipped into an exterior pocket of her bag before my trip home.