Delcaos (Darkest Night Collection) (2 page)

What happened next I cannot really say. I don't really recall. It was a very dark time, confusing, I didn't know what I was doing for many nights to come. It seemed I was in a daze, it was all too much for my mind to comprehend, so I wandered.

I tried to ignore the hunger too, I did not want to be a murderer, I did not want to kill another mortal
. Yet every night the hunger became worse, and I found I became even more animalistic when I eventually did kill. Being a starving vampire, well there is truly no sophistication to feeding in such a condition.

But despite my wandering far away from where I had lived, I could not be rid of this guilt and shame for taking the life of my darling Diana.

I found no peace, no solace for what I had done, but what I continued to do was leaving less of a mark on my conscience. I found I cared very little for other mortals that I killed.

I travelled the world, from country to country I roamed and each time I took a life, it got easier. I was getting comfortable with it, I found that I quite enjoyed it. I loved the hunt, searching out the scum and the thieves, following them somewhere secluded and soaring down upon them like an eagle taking its prey. Well that's how I started, drinking the blood of thieves and lowlifes but it didn't stay that way for long. Sometimes convenience led me to take whoever was easiest or with the least amount of risk of being caught.

Sometimes I would pick someone in a crowd and follow them, play tricks on them in the dark before I killed them. I really have no preference to who I choose now, male female, young or old, it is all blood to me. It depends mostly on what mood I am in, whether I want to charm a young lady or chase a strapping young man for sport. If I am feeling lazy I might pick off someone old and fragile.

But for all the enjoyment I made, it didn't last long. I was alone.

In Venice, at the time of Carnevale in 1556 I wandered the busy streets, losing myself in the sounds and smells, not looking for anything in particular.

And then I found her, this fabulous woman with
long curly black hair, a purple gown showed the tips of her shoulders and of course she was wearing her golden mask.

I followed from the rooftops as she walked arm in arm with her gentleman friend through the crowds and the noise.

Then, they paused, the lady must have been wearing poor foot attire because she bent down to adjust her shoe. Forgetting the cumbersome mask she stood up to remove it and I could see her face, sumptuous rosy cheeks and she reeked of youth.  I wanted her, the faint smell of her perfume was infesting my thoughts and I could see nothing but her.

Her blood would be
one that I would savour, the feeling would remain with me for some time and all others after would be inadequate.

But how to get her alone, well that was easy, I would just have to kill them both.

As they passed into a quiet street, perhaps to share a secret kiss, I had my opportunity. I jumped down in front of them, startling the pair. The male uttered something about playing tricks and made to move passed me, the woman in toe. I did not move. ‘Out of the way’ he shouted at me. He tried again to barge passed me but I was immovable. The annoyance grew in him, fear in the woman. This time as he came towards me, I lashed out, pushed him to the side and back handed the woman. She crumpled to the floor and I turned my attention to the male. Unceremoniously I grabbed him from behind and crunched my teeth into the flesh of his neck.

As the lady stirred I sped to her, with one hand behind her back, I lifted her to me, her hair was left to dangle in the breeze and her arms fell limply down. With my other hand I began to trace the outline of her form, from the curve of her nose and soft lips, over the bump of her breast and down the slimness of her waist to the fullness of her hip and I was taken.

I pulled her close to me and let my teeth sink delicately into the skin of her neck, she stiffened her body against my attack and grabbed hold of my arm. It only excited me more.

As I was draining her body I could feel her strength weaken, I felt her heart slowing, she was dying in my arms and it thrilled me.

But suddenly I pulled away from her, she was limp and so very pale and in that moment I saw Diana.

Gently I lay her on the ground and I did to her what had been done to me those many years before. Gnawing into my own flesh until I could taste my own sweet blood I then forced my
wrist into her mouth. I felt the pulling on my skin as she strengthened her grip, which grew more powerful with each gulp.

There was regret. When I saw her lying there in pain, her body changing before me, I couldn't believe what I had done.

Whatever her mortal name was I didn't care to know. Perhaps it was because of my actions that I named her so.
Lucretia
, I whispered into the air
and instantly she opened her eyes. Her eyes that had now changed to a shade of burgundy, more so than my own and she looked to me as a child to a father. I would not disappoint.

She was the first and only dark child I was to create. My beautiful dark child, my angel of death. I was the master, she the student and such things did I teach her. Such bad, terrible things I was to show her and make her do.

We did such...unimaginable things
, but those were some of the best years of my immortal life.

It was she that gave me my name, my name as she saw it. For it was true, I came from chaos, I created chaos wherever I went and inflicted it on those around me.   

We went from place to place, country to country, leaving masses of bodies in every town. We terrified the locals, set fire to churches, broke into banks and stole whatever we wanted.

In the beginning
, we both enjoyed it. You can never know the sweet seduction of mortal blood, the exhilaration of the chase, of sinking ones teeth into sensuous mortal flesh, unless you are one of us. That was something we shared, the thirsting, needing and the wanting, this was what kept us together so long.

Ah how wonderful it is to taste someone young. The beautiful always please me most. Their skin is supple, the blood flows so strongly around their divine frames.

Oh to be with a young attractive female or male, rippling muscles that quiver with my touch. I worship them, undress them carefully, caress their flesh and gently stroke the hair, how easy it is to control them.

I liked to keep them, just for the night. Well, sometimes more but I was not like that beast who created me. No, I treated my victims well, I sometimes fed and bathed them. I have
even been known to take them to dinner and let them feast well, buy them new clothes. I find they always taste better with a full stomach.

Lucretia said it was a cruel game that I played on them. She would call me a snob and laugh at me because I could never drink from a dirty human. Perhaps she was right, I can be quite finicky at times. But then again, I do like my games.

Honestly, I did enjoy tormenting them, the men and women I would find. They would think me the kindest stranger. It excited me to think they believed every word I said when my motives were oh so sinister.

And yes if I had a hotel room or was boarding somewhere, I would take them there. I would keep them there, lay with their succulent selves and gorge myself upon them. It was always satisfying
to leave them clinging to life. They would stare you see. Up at the ceiling or to me if I were hovering over them. The ones that prayed, that entertained me most. I laughed in their faces. How pathetic to think that someone, God, could help them. No one could stop me, I’m too powerful.

With Lucretia, I became something else, somethin
g worse. The games got worse as I grew to greatly hunger for the pleasure of the sadistic torture I could inflict.

She began to become uncomfortable with what we used to do, the torture and suffering we inflicted on our victims, the disturbing games we played with them or more to the truth, she began to hate the way I would pay more attention to my victims than I did to her. The time I spent with them was so intimate, I took my time and she became jealous. She was madly in love with me after all. Though I never felt such a thing for her, what was she to me but another toy to play games with?

I treated her badly, I owned her after all, she was mine to do with as I pleased and if she disobeyed me then she would have to be punished.

And so she too became part of my games. Her disapproval only fuelled me on. We began to fight and argue after I had fed, she began to no longer stay with me but left to hunt on her own. So I began to make her get rid of the bodies, how she detested that! I would make her drag the carcass to some distant place and have her bury it.

It didn't help that I constantly compared Lucretia to Diana. I would shout ‘You’ll never be as good as her’, just to cause hurt.

In quieter moments
, she would say to me that I was obsessed with Diana’s death, the one death that meant so much to me. But she could never understand the agony and guilt felt from such a loss. She recalled nothing of her mortal life nor the pain or death she had suffered.

Perhaps I was obsessed. Diana was and had been the only thing I had loved in this world. Nothing or no one else mattered and I treated Lucretia in kind.

She was becoming increasingly angry with me, with the things I made her do, she became more like my servant than a companion. As the weeks went on I could feel her loathing for me intensify and though I enjoyed our ever increasingly violent ‘discussions’, I began to sense that Lucretia wanted to leave me.

I couldn't
accept that. I didn't love her, at the time I wasn't particularly concerned with her happiness, nor did I care if she was alive or dead. Yet I didn't want her to go. All I needed to do was come up with a way to stop her leaving, some way she would always be reliant on me.

I made her an addict. Addicted only to me.

You see vampires’ blood to another vampire tastes exquisite. The older the blood the better. If you ever want another vampire to stay with you, you simply supplement mortal or animal blood for your own.

The blood of the one that made you can also be quite beneficial, aiding in speeding up recovery from wounds. More useful information my maker gave me.

Addiction came quickly for Lucretia. It wasn’t long before she no longer went out to hunt. She stayed with me eagerly awaiting the time when I was to feed her.

She became so good at being addicted that I started to question what I had done. She wanted the blood in ever more increasing quantities. Longer and longer she would drink from me and I would have to physically push her away, sometimes so hard that she hit the wall leaving my arm torn open and her snarling at me from a corner.

She became violent if I said no to her feeding on me. She would break chairs, smash windows, drawing attention to us so that it threatened to expose what we are.

She left me with no choice.

I had to put a stop to it. Well I had to try to lessen her addiction somehow so that she was more controllable. I tried restricting the blood I gave her, I tried locking her away. I found boarding houses with cellars and I would have to barricade her in with items of furniture. Sometimes she would break out and we would fight, she clambering to get away, me desperate to keep her in. Anywhere we stayed was ruined. Any conversation we had turned into a fiery argument. We were just as bad as each other, both of us flinging objects and furniture at one another.

Despite all this, despite knowing how desperately unhappy Lucretia was, I never once suspected that she would want to leave me nor that there was anyone out there who would take her from me.

Lucretia had changed much in the years we had been together. Her hair no longer shone in the moonlight, now it clung to her ever paler skin looking frayed and unkempt. Her eyes were empty wells sat amongst red clouds. Her skin tightly pulled around her bones, every corner was sharp like rocks in the sea.

She couldn't leave me though, not now. I was all she knew. In so many years we had not encountered another vampire. It was me or be alone
, and Lucretia could not stand to be alone. I had found me the perfect partner, or so I thought.

Life with Lucretia was almost intolerable yet each night we went through the identical arguments and familiar hatred. How I wished to end her and her ungratefulness. I gave her this life, I should be the one to take it away but every time I grabbed her throat in my hand, something stopped me.

And then one night that opportunity was taken away from me.

Lucretia left the Parisian hotel room we were staying in whilst I was out hunting, she was gone when I returned. I waited until dawn but she never returned.

When I awoke the next evening from the chaise lounge, a stranger stood in my room.

This upstart stood leaning casually, one arm resting on the mantel of the fireplace in
pathetic eighteenth century clothing. His olive green velvet frock coat and knee length boots made him look as if he were wearing fancy dress. Golden blond, wavy hair and green eyes were set in his angelic looking face.

He began playing with his manicured nails
. “What do you want?” I asked him.

He tapped the mantle and walked to the other side of the fireplace before turning to me, one hand behind his back. “She's not coming back. She doesn’t want to.” His accent struck me as strange at first but was quickly forgotten.