River of Red

XIV

Nolan

I had been hunting a lot.

I had been hunting more than usual.

It scared me. This newfound hunger. It gnawed at my insides like an angry beast crawling its way out. My insides wiggled as though worms resided there, plotting, biding their time until their escape.

The blood.

The blood sated them.

It quenched their everlasting race for dominance. It stopped their endless chatter and ignorance. It stopped the pain.

So there I was, feeding on some girl I had picked up from the street. A regular prostitute. I hated doing this, it branded my mind with a white hot iron, but it was needed. I couldn't not feed, if I did my skin would sallow and sag, becoming wrinkled with age. My mind would go until I was just an empty husk of my former self.

Many had chosen that path.

But not me.

I fed every day and night, serving the little monsters with every part of my being. She had brought a newfound hunger out of me. It made my unbeating heart ache, my mind longing to be with her, but it drew out other hunger too. I wanted to sink my teeth into her soft neck. Her blood smelled amazing, like the fresh ocean shores dancing with the wind. Her heart didn't pump, but her smell was dizzying. I hadn't noticed it before, not until I tasted her neck on my lips, the skin had been so cold, but yet so full of life it was palpable.

I'd wanted to steal it from her.

To take away something so indescribably valuable, but them not feel anything but a pinch. I was a little more than tempted.

I pulled away from the girl, not wanting to take to much, as to not kill her. I let out a shrill help, as to signify anyone nearby she was here and needed assistance. I slinked myself away from the scene, watching as someone approached the girl, broken and bloody on the ground. They knelt next to her, and shook her shoulder, probably assuming she was passed out drunk or something of the sort. Then they noticed the blood.

The man, maybe twenty five years old, reared back, yelling, screaming, trying to rip the images of the bloody girl on the ground out of his eyes. I sank back into the shadows, and ran. Woods zipped in and out of my vision like hazy, blurred photos. With my hunger sated, I neared home.

Home, what a heinous word.

Home, definition: relating to the place where one lives.

Yes, I lived there, but it was not my home.

My home was on a grassy hillside. We knew not of the English, relying only on what we learned through experience and worship. There had been no God, no magical being, only us and nature. It had been simple times, true, but it had been worth it. My natural tan had faded, all the melanin gone, leaving me a pale, blue eyed version of who I was.

Only my dark hair remained.

I was the only one I knew of that had lost who they were, degraded to colored shells of who we were.

I was the only one.

Alone.

The word echoed in my skull, taunting me, teasing me.

I was alone.

No one else like me, no one to share my burden.

I was one of the oldest, most powerful vampires of this world. I've seen and done many unspeakable acts. I have seen Leif Erickson travel across the ocean, only to discover America. I have seen Europe go down with plague. I have seen countless countries fall, and so much more. These memories fluttered through my mind. 

Since Katrina had come along, the hunger grew, I had become more irritable, more deadly. My powers were being amplified like sound through a speaker. I felt my humanity slipping away, down, down into the pit, escaping me forever.

Thunder sounded in the air.

It rumbled, and sent a flash of lightning through the sky.

Rain poured down in bucketfuls.

I lifted my face to the sky, feeling the rain slam into my face. It was set at a steady hum, like soldiers marching in step.

Drop.

Drop.

I was a raindrop.

Falling forever, accepting the inevitability of our demise. Scared of the fall, but knowing it would pay off when we reach the bottom. That final splatter, then you find your friends again, you go home with all the other raindrops. Only your not a raindrop anymore, now you are one molecule, in a lake of molecules, working to stay whole.

Never being created or destroyed.

My knees slammed into the rough forest floor. Leaves crumbled beneath me, creating the next step for them to become soil. The soil I kneeled on, it was almost as old as me. Almost as old as earth itself, but it wasn't.

I stayed there, kneeled on the ground, until the rain left and the sun peeked out through the clouds.

I stayed.

I wondered about Katrina, if she was okay, but pushed it from my mind.

I was hungry.

I needed to eat.

No longer worried about killing, my mind had snapped. I was gone, only a husk, a colorless shell, my mind had packed up and left town, leaving the beasts behind.

And the beasts had no remorse.

No remorse.