Evanescere: Origins (7 page)

“Salome, there is only
one who may have the answer but I am unsure if it would be wise to try to wake
him this early,” he left off in mid-sentence. I was intrigued by this sudden
mystery.

“Who?” I asked.

“A very old friend. He
wakens for about two months out of the year and has done so since his
creation,” he broke off and said no more.

I did not push him for
more details. I figured when he is ready he would tell me. I realized the less
I questioned Jack, the more excited I felt whenever he finally told me whatever
it was he was keeping secret. Just like he kept the cottage secret. I loved
that he knew how to surprise me. I sensed with this one I would have to be patient
for a while. I could feel the excitement begin to build within me.

ACK AND I WALKED OUT OF
THE sewer, my hand in his. After my self-realization, I knew I had to focus on
keeping my thoughts away from Jack. I knew he was growing to love me, but I was
not yet ready. I did not want to tell him I heard his love for me in his
thoughts because I did not yet know if this new emotion was real or if it was
our blood tie that binds us together. I had finally found my way to him and I
knew I was bound to him.

We slowly made our way
back to the cottage, taking time to feed on a stag or two. This did not satisfy
my hunger much, but I did not complain. The hunt was always a thrill and the
very moment when you give into your instinct and let nature take its course was
a feeling I could not describe. To be open to my nature was in itself a thing
to fear. You forget who and what you are. It is a very Freudian moment.

It was easier for me to
feed on wildlife at this moment. It made me feel human for some odd reason. Maybe
it was because I did not want to be what I was. I mourned the animal that gave
its blood. A part of nature is the circle of life. You are born, you grow and
you die, that is how it is within the animal kingdom. That is how life is
supposed to happen. The blood of an animal tasted very different than human
blood. I think because it tasted much more wild than human blood. It was just
as warm, but it did not keep me full long, that means I would have to hunt
again soon. One day I would embrace my nature just not today.

*****

Just being near Jack
caused an electric current to run through me. It burned to my very core. I did
not yet want to reveal this to him. I wanted to be near him and feel his arms
around me. I craved Jack’s affection but I was not ready. I was still mourning
Axel and my family. When I do decide to give in to my own desires I wanted to
make sure it was not just to forget what I had lost.

As a vampire I had not
yet experienced that one particular event. The atmosphere around me was
electric that I could feel it. If I was still human I would bet that the hair
on my arms would have stood up. Being this close to him while we hunted with
our animal instincts so strong, I was afraid that I would cave. So lost in that
feeling I was close to giving in. I had to control my thoughts. I had to
control my very core that screamed for him. I thought of the hunt, the warm blood
of the stag beneath me filled my mouth. These thoughts did not quench this new
hunger. I did not know how to quench this hunger without losing my mind. If I
had a beating heart he would have heard it. If I could blush it would have
given me away. 

I turned my thoughts to
my own humanity. Compared to some of our kind, I did not ask for this new life
and I chose to not be the monster that society portrays us to be. I did not
hunt humans often. I only hunted those whom I felt were a danger to women like
me. I tried to avoid drinking human blood if I could help it, but there are
always cracks in the system. Nothing in life is perfect. We all fall every once
in a while, all that mattered is what you decide to do with that knowledge. I
could choose to turn off my humanity and forget my pain, but I do not think I
would have survived it. My humanity is what keeps me close to my human family.
It is what keeps me from endangering them. They are my weakness, my Achilles
heel. To lose them would be my own hell, my own destruction.

As we continued to make
our way back, Jack and I did not discuss my time in the sewers, we were silent
most of the way back. It was only later that I did tell him I would invite him the
next time I was out. I wondered if he realized, this was normally a time for me
to be alone with my thoughts, to further learn our ways, our differences.

In my time with the old
ones I had learned that some of us are civilized, live amongst the sewers, and
are nomadic, but to me, we are fascinating creatures. No two vampires are
alike. The way we think, act, our hunting preferences are all different. I
studied our kind to try to understand myself. I wanted to learn more about all
I could do. I slowly beginning to grow into myself.

I know that I surprised
Jack in a way that none of our kind has ever done. I surprised myself and the
old ones. They all agreed there had never been a vampire such as myself and
they all thought this was curious. Avitus believed I was more than just human
and vampire. In his three-thousand-year existence he has never seen a creature
such as I. He was unsure what this meant for our kind. I was a vampire anomaly.
I did not know how to take this new information. I wondered if I should be
worried or just happy that I was different from the others.

For a creature of the
damned, I did not believe I was truly damned. I mean I was saving people. I
know murder is murder, but would it not balance out if the murder was committed
in order to save a life? I wondered to myself. Jack and I had debated this
question many times even the old ones would join in the conversation. They did
not believe we were damned to hell, Hades or whatever afterlife there was. They
believed that we were both cursed and blessed by the Gods of old. We are cursed
in our very nature, but blessed to see eternal life, which in itself is a
curse. We would live to see our loved ones pass into that eternal slumber and
be no more. The old ones did not believe we were an abomination. The only one who
thought so was Leta. She had wished many times to walk the halls of Valhalla;
however, for us, Death was not an easy occurrence.

It is very difficult to
kill another vampire, so anything books say about destroying us is inaccurate.
First of all, it is very difficult for a human to capture a vampire. Second, it
is very difficult to know that we are different from humans. Leta is one of the
few who I know tried to end herself. The last time she tried, she set herself
on fire and found that she did not easily burn. I guess it would be safe to say
she toasted a bit, almost like a tan. It took days for her fair complexion to
return and she has not tried to end herself again.

We stopped again in
Cardinham Wood for one last meal. I stalked my prey a very large stag. I leaped
at him and before he could run I sank my teeth into the think fur. He smelled
very earthy and wild. He did not fight. He did not try to escape. Death was a
part of life and he accepted it.

“You know Jack,” I asked
after I had drained the stag,” if Lilith was originally damned to follow the night
then how is it that we can be out in the sun and not die?” I asked more out of
confusion.

“That is another story
unto itself and one that is not mine to tell,” he responded and said no more.
He knew I would continue to be curious about this fascinating puzzle. I did not
question him any further and I knew this was a question he chose to avoid for
another time. Even though he could walk in the daylight it was quite
uncomfortable for me. This was the time of day in which passersby would stare
at us. I chose to go out most nights and would rarely leave the cottage during
the day. Even though I no longer cared, I was still vain about my appearance.
My chalky pallor and newfound beauty was something to behold. I could not bring
myself to be that narcissistic about myself. I did not particularly enjoy the
attention I received.

We continued to walk
toward the cottage in silence. He could sense I was again lost in my thoughts.
My eyes glazed over in thought, but my body knew where I was headed. This was
normal for us. We could do many things at once. Our minds were fluid in this
way. This was all new for me and I wish that I could say I adjusted well
overall, but that would be a lie. I still had my moments of sadness. It was
these times in which Jack would leave me alone for days at a time until I was
able to get these moods under control. He could not bear to be within miles of
me during this time. It was the connection we shared. When I felt these moods
it affected him in a way he has never been affected. It was a good thing these
moods rarely occurred and lasted longer than a week. I suffered a type of
depression that I did not know vampires could suffer. I had not known any
others who had a family at the time of their change. I had discussed this with
Lorelei once and she too understood where I came from. She could understand my
pain but she could not fully comprehend it since she herself never bore
children. 

Over the next few weeks I
knew that Jack had toyed with the idea of travel to Italy to introduce me to
Ambrogio the Mad. Yet I was unsure of why he tried to keep his intentions
secret. My understanding of Ambrogio is that he sleeps and only wakes for the
harvest of his vineyard. He awakened for maybe two months out of the year. Jack
is hoping that my patience and compassion with the old ones is enough to wake
Ambrogio up.

I knew he was impressed
by me and it gave him some type of hope, but I was unsure what kind of hope he
was expecting. I would only get glimpses of Jack’s mind, and then he would shut
me out again. From what I could gather, Ambrogio had been Jack’s mentor and
friend for a while, then Ambrogio began to slumber more and soon enough he was
not around. Jack soon left Ambrogio’s company and that is how Jack found
himself in Europe and then New Orleans. These were times that Jack masqueraded as
one of the living and enjoyed the company of the finer nobility. That is until
he erred and ended up in New Orleans.

From what I could tell
Ambrogio’s mind broke when he lost the love of his life. After which he was
never the same. He would be quick to anger and these days he spent his time in
slumber. Modern science would say he is depressed and needs Zoloft; however,
this does not work on us.

I knew that Ambrogio
lives in an old Roman Villa with a beautiful vineyard. He came from a family of
one of Rome’s finest winemakers. He himself is kind when he is lucid. Which he
is rarely ever. Amborigo’s recipe for wine is a family secret which he has
perfected with the passage of time. He continued with the tradition of making
wine the ancient way. Every few centuries he establishes himself a new. He
continues to live in the villa of his family. Which in today’s age has modern
amenities. His villa has been featured in several magazines and the humans know
him to be reclusive. The do not know that he is a vampire. 

Most of Ambrogio’s time
has been spent on making paintings of the love he lost. He painted her as he
remembered her and would paint her in the fashion of that era. After a time, he
would then disappear for decades, centuries lost in his despair. I never knew a
vampire who had loved the way Ambrogio had loved. I think Jack was hoping that
in some way I could help Ambrogio, but I was not sure how.

While I toyed with the
idea of travel to meet the mysterious Ambrogio, I could feel my own despair
deepen. I tried to keep busy as much as I could. I bought new books to read and
I devoured them ten a day. Jack and I discussed religion, philosophy, science
and math. Math is a subject I came to understand even though I despised it as a
human, yet in my new life I was quick to understand the complexity and the
beauty of it.

Jack was baffled when I began
to study the stars at night. It was strange to be able to actually see the
stars without the use of glasses. Astrology is something that as a human had
never intrigued me. Now, I was learning at a rate I did not know existed. I
learned the names of the stars, the galaxies, and the comets. The first time I
saw the Milky Way I was enchanted by the beauty of it. I had never seen it so
up close. The clusters of our very universe fascinated me, it was difficult to
imagine a beauty beyond our own world if you have never experienced it here.

I loved to run to and
from London, the crisp air felt good on my skin the way the air blew my hair. I
loved the freedom it gave me. I loved to go shopping in London, unfortunately I
had to take the car whenever I did go. Jack and I argued about this, but I was
not entirely sure why. I knew he was definitely keeping something from me and I
did not understand why he would not tell me.

“Salome, please if
someone should see you running with a bunch of shopping bags what do you think
that they would think?” he questioned. “You must remember we have to be careful
about revealing ourselves,” he said.

I found the idea of a
vampire running at the speed of light with a multitude of shopping bags funny
until I imagine being spotted by a human. That sort of put a kink into my
argument. Running is much more exhilarating than taking the car, and faster, in
order to play it safe I gave in. I would just take the car if it made him feel
better.

During my last visit to
the old ones I overheard them discussing something that had them troubled. I
did not want to intrude, but it looks like they heard my approach. Avitus, is
the one who looked at me and beckoned me towards him.

“Child,” he began. His
raspy voice full of concern. “We have a problem and we are watching the situation,
but…” and he left off.

“But what?” I demanded, a
bit harsher than I intended.

“It seems that there is a
killer on the loose we don’t think it is one of our kind, but we are still on
alert,” he explained.

He handed me the
morning’s paper. I read it and reread it. All five sentences the headline
captured my attention:

“KILLER ON THE LOOSE IN
LONDON: 5 WOMEN DEAD”

I was stunned. The women
were all young, from different backgrounds with nothing in common. Maybe
different suspects. No cause of death was released at this time, all the while
Scotland Yard continued to investigate the murders and no further details were released.
We all agreed, had it been a newborn there would have been a trail of blood and
more bodies. We pushed the issue aside, but deep down we were all concerned.

We stayed in London for
some time and eventually Jack again brought up the idea of going to Italy. I was
thrilled with the idea of going. As a human I had always dreamed about going
there on vacation, but it just never seemed to happen. Now I was finally
getting to go. Jack finalized the details of our trip to Italy and we so we
said goodbye to London.