Evanescere: Origins (4 page)

 COULD FEEL HIS STEEL
GRASP on my arm, in anticipation of what I was not sure. I looked at him and
for the first time I noticed his eyes were a golden brown. The also had green
specks in them. They were soft and warm. As he looked at me, I looked down at
my arm. He chuckled and gently told me it was just in case my instinct takes
over. I slowly nod my head in acceptance, not entirely too sure by what he
meant. I guessed I would soon find out.

Silently we walk, not knowing where, but I knew I
would follow him. Lost in my thoughts, I avoided the one thought, that one
emotion that would make me break. I looked to Jack, for diversion.

“Jack, how do we hunt?” I
asked him questioningly.

“Use your senses. For
instance, tell me what do you smell?”

“I smell azalea’s,
perfumes, the different muskiness emitting from the warm bodies of Bourbon
Street.” With that I caught a smell, a delicious warm scent. I closed my eyes
and I felt the soft beat of a heart. I made to go for my prey when I felt Jack
grab my arm before I had taken two steps. I snarl at him and he laughs at me.

“
Mon Cherie,
next
time. I want to take you somewhere as you recall, I mentioned having a gift for
you. I believe you will appreciate the gift I have for you. It took a day or so
to find it,” he told me in a playful manner.

I did not understand his
cryptic statement, but I was somehow sure I would soon find out what he meant. I
was curious about his surprise. In my previous life I loved to receive
surprises, which were rare, but I appreciated them so much more. Right now, I
felt scared for some reason, there was some sort of anticipation in the pit of
my stomach. I was unsure of my future. How would I continue without my
children? Maybe after I hunted and fed, I will understand why I am suddenly a
threat to my very own flesh and blood.  

I compose myself and
follow him. He looks at me as if I am about to shatter. I shake my head and
smile. He leads me to the St. Louis Cemetery. It is dark outside still but I
could feel the rays of the early morning sun not yet visible. I hear the
familiar creak of the gates opening. I don’t understand why he brought me here,
but the creaking of the gate was vaguely familiar. I unsure why it seemed so
familiar to me. It is so peaceful and beautiful.

We walk through the
cemetery in no particular direction, left one minute, straight for another.
Just walking in random and suddenly I catch the faint smell of blood and
Bleu
.

“No!” I gasp, as the
realization dawns on me. I am suddenly crouched near a vault afraid of what I
would encounter. The memories of my last night flooded my mind. I felt the men,
the pain I endured. I remembered the torture. I wrapped my arms around me legs
and felt the warm tears fall down my cheeks. I felt like a helpless child,
alone and afraid.

“Why have you brought me
here?” I demanded. I could feel the anger rising inside of me. I did not want
to face this. I was not ready to face my death just yet. I stared at Jack, his
eyes suddenly glazed over, like he was seeing something that was not there. He
snapped out of it, his mouth fell open, stunned. I was not sure, what happened.
Just as suddenly, he snapped out of it all together and was his calm, reserved
self. 

“Calm down Salome. I
promised you retribution. Now stop, close your eyes and tell me again what do you
smell?” He asked calmly.

“Blood,
Bleu
,
tobacco, maybe a cigar and a faint citrusy scent. Maybe a lemon tree nearby I believe?
I also smell the remnant of a strong unknown aftershave cheaply made,” I
responded.

“Very good. Now I want
you to follow the
Bleu
. Focus on that one scent and follow it,” he
directed.

I looked at him and he
nodded his head in reassurance. I did as he said. I walked several yards in a
straight line. I followed the faint scent to my unknown destination. So slowly
in anticipation. I approach the old mausoleum and touch the cold marble, only
it feels wrong somehow. I open the door and the entire frame comes with it.
There is a cloud of dust. I look to him for explanation.

“I forgot to mention one
detail,” he laughs at my expression, “as a vampire, you will have incredible
strength. You will need to control your strength in order to blend in with the
humans. Humans are not supposed to be that strong, you understand,” he
explained. He put his hand to my cheek and smiled at me. I noticed for the
first time that his gorgeous smile was slightly crooked. His teeth were a
brilliant white and they were perfect.

“Do we have fangs,” I
asked, “like in the movies?”

“No we don’t. Our teeth
are normal, the portrayal of us if for media entertainment,” he responded. I
slightly noticed he shook his head in disbelief.

I return to my hunt and
again I smell the
Bleu
. The faint scent is so strong in here. I approach
the ancient bronze coffin. The lid is closed. I smell decay and suddenly I hear
it. The fast heartbeat, racing rapidly. The adrenaline makes the blood pump
faster. The smell of the warm blood, salty, and rustic begins to make me feel
savage. It is the hunger. The anticipation of the hunt. I hear the muffled
screams coming from inside the coffin. The weakened pounding coming from the
inside of the coffin. Someone is trying to get out, obviously that was not
going to happen.

I suddenly realize how I
came to be. The memories played back in my mind, like a recording, it was
fuzzy, as if I was watching it on an old television with bad reception. I
remembered the screams, the laughter, the pain, and the humiliation. I remember
tasting my tears only they tasted wrong somehow. I remember the rustic scent
only now I realized it was not water or my tears that I tasted but the blood. I
remember the burning of my neck. I remembered Jack feeding off of me and in
turn he fed me his life’s blood.

I snap out of the realization
and I remember the
Bleu
cologne the man wore. It hits me, his smell from
when he was on me, inside of me. I yell and attack the coffin in a rage. Pure
uncontrollable rage. When I rip the lid off, he sees me. Something has
frightened him. I hear the shock in his thoughts.

“Your dead, we killed
you, you Bitch!” he screams

I let out a maniacal
laugh. At this thought I calmed down long enough to whisper softly in his ear.
“You killed me, and took my family away from me. Now I will pay back the favor.
My family will never see me again and neither will yours,” I told him. I could
feel the anger, the hatred, and the rage in my voice.

I wanted this to last, to
torture him, to prolong the inevitable. Unsure of what I was to do, I gently I
bit into his neck and I felt the warm blood begin to hemorrhage down my parched
throat. I drank his blood until I could no longer taste the warm fluid going
down my throat. All the while, I heard his thoughts and it was agony. To know
this miserable low life has a wife and children hurt me to the core. The very fact
that he would do this to me and others. His wife was so clueless to the monster
she had really married. I get flashes of the others from that night. I know who
to seek.

“Salome, have you had
enough?” he asks, “I don’t feel you ache from hunger.”

“I am done,” I tell him.

“How do you do that? Most
young vampires such as you tend to be gluttons. But you have surprise me!” he
tells me. I could hear the wonder in his voice.

“Maybe I will feed again later,”
I tell him. We reposition the bronze coffin back in the mausoleum in silence.
This man is enclosed in a coffin with the loved one of another. Will anyone
know? I erase the thought from my mind.

Jack again reminds me that
we must also get rid of any evidence of us.

“Never leave a bite mark
visible. You must always seal the wound with your saliva. It will heal it. Then
you make it appear as though a robbery went wrong, or some drunken fool went
into the Mississippi. You must never kill the tourist. If you did no one will
come here anymore. We both know that New Orleans survives on the money that the
tourists bring in,” he explained.

I remember my final days
as a human. We were tourists here to. I wonder what has become of Axel in my
absence. This is something we have not yet discusses. It seems that it has been
an eternity since I disappeared. I was not entirely sure how long that was, or
what day it is. Axel must be going crazy with worry, if only there was a way
for me to get a message out to him. I wish I could be there to tell him
everything would be okay. I change the direction of my thoughts.

“So we kill the locals
then?” I question.

“No, we kill the evil
doers and rid the streets of New Orleans of the filth that pollutes her,” he
quietly tells me.

“You said there are
others, do they do this or is this your preference?” I question

“It is my preference,” he
answers.

“Why?” I ask.

“I never wanted to be
this,
Mon Cherie
, so I make do with what has been given to me. I am a
police officer because it helps me find the evil doers,” he explains. “I give
justice when the justice system fails the people. It gives me some sense of
purpose if I make the city a little safer. I enjoy the idea of being able to
save people. There is no point in seeing humans kill each other off. It has
been an ongoing dilemma since the days of Genesis. There is no resolution to
stopping murders from happening on a daily basis. Murder is a part of human
nature; it is a part of the worlds natural design. There is no rhyme or reason
to it. It just occurs. Feeding off of a murderer or some heinous person makes
me feel a small sense of absolution. If my life were to end, then maybe I will
see heaven in the end. Maybe there is no heaven and life just ceases to exist
for our kind. We will never know what happens after death,” he explains.

I sensed his sadness, his
despair in his quiet voice. Maybe, now he was grateful to have someone to share
his thoughts with. I put my hand in his and looked up at him. I believed, that
had I met him in some previous life, I could feel safe to be with him. I saw
the corners of his lips raise to a smile and his melancholy had vanished just
as suddenly as it had appeared. I quickly changed the subject.

 “What is our hunting
area?” I ask. I knew most hunters in general tended to have their favorite
places to go. I knew people who had deer leases outside of San Antonio or on
into West Texas. I guess it was just preference. Personally, I would have been
the one trying to save the deer. I could not bear to see an animal suffering or
the light leave their eyes. It was heartbreaking for me to see. Surely this was
my hell. To feed off of humans and to see the light fade from their eyes.

“We hunt from New Orleans
on into Texas, Mississippi, and Mexico,” he tells me. “We go as far as we need
to go in order to remain discrete.”

“Also one warning, our
blood also heals. So if you were to only bite someone it will cause them
excruciating pain while we feed off of them. If you then feed your victim your
own blood it allows for the change to occur. Just because you feed off of
someone does not mean they will change. You have to feed them your blood as
well, thereby completing the transformation.

I tend to abstain from
biting someone whose torture I want to prolong. If you feed a victim very little
of your blood it heals them. As long as you do not feed off of them, the change
will not occur. As you learned I drank from you and in turn you drank from me,
this allows my blood to spread through you and create a new vampire. The blood
of a vampire kills the mortal body and the blood also revives it. There aren’t
many of our kind, as it is a difficult process to begin. Most of us generally
give in to our very nature and kill our prey instead,” he clarified. 

 “The sun is almost up,
let’s get you settled,” he tells me.

“What day is it?” I asked
him.

“It is Tuesday. You have
been out of it for about three nights,” he answers nonchalantly.

Three days, I had been in
excruciating pain for three days and now it is as though that time never
happened. It felt like an eternity, lying there being tortured all the while.
Not knowing if I was dead or alive, in heaven or hell. Together we walk through
the French Quarter only now it is quiet, all is still. The partying on my final
night as a human has long since died away. Sure there was a straggler here or
there, but it was mainly the workers of the French Quarter cleaning the filth
for another day.

We walk the streets in
silence. The birds chirping on occasion to break the silence. The cicadas
singing in the early morning. I see the early morning rays of sunshine. It is a
new dawn. I have been reborn. The beginning of another life. One without my
family. One where they are no longer a part of my future. When I fed of that
man in the cemetery, I finally understood why I could not be there for them.
They are human and I am not. The instinct to feed overpowers me. It is one that
cannot be controlled at the drop of a hat. There is no on and off switch. I had
to concede that they were better off without me.

We approach Jack’s house
just as the sun begins to come up. I walk over to a nearby bench and look at
the sun as it rises from the east. I see the bright orange and yellow of the
sky and I remember how beautiful it looks. I turn to look at Jack and realize
he does not sparkle, like glitter, nor did we ignite into flames. He had a certain
glow about him. The kind of glow that gave him a certain mysterious aura. It
was so strange. Only in the sun did I notice how different he appeared to me.
His skin so pale, chalky, almost sickly.

Jack had explained that
naturally people avoid us and most do. However, some people still tend to
disregard that little instinct that screams danger. We are able to live amongst
them as friends, coworkers, and neighbors. He did inform me that given my “recent
departure” as he put it, that there is an active missing persons’ case on me.