A Beautiful Saviour

He was once again walking in the coldest parts of the world. Not only did he want to avoid the sun but he wanted to feel the cold harshness bite into his skin. He wanted the cold to gnaw at his bones and he wanted more than anything to be brought by down the ice in the air. He wanted to be overcome by weakness, to be dragged down to the floor like a mortal and to be forced to struggle for life.

                But Joseph wasn’t weak. He wasn’t born to be weak and he had not been raised to be weak. He had been trained, he had seen things, he had done things that meant he wasn’t weak no matter how he begged the world around him for such a luxury. Weakness meant he could get away from who he was, that someone would save him instead of him having to save everyone else. He wanted to scream at the world for the horror he saw and the horror he was.

                Two weeks ago Lily had given birth to her fourth child, a little boy and the babe’s blue eyes were so bright they had pierced Joseph. They had seemed to look into his very heart and like the other three had not managed to do, this fourth one had made him realise what a monster he was. And he didn’t have to be. But it was now in his very blood.

                It wasn’t the cold that brought him to his knees, it was a weakness of some kind, but his training made it so that even as he fell to his knees his back remained ram rod straight. His head was raised and his eyes stared forward. He bowed to no one. He bent his back for no one and as his knees touched the frosted ground he did not shiver. He showed no one the things that got to him. He screamed out, a terrible rumbling sound of anger. He let rip the emotions building and boiling inside of himself. He was a lonely vampire, he had fought in so many wars and he was a leader of so many regiments they literally called him now only when they went into battle. His tactics, his undeniable skill made it so they all called to him. He told them where to go, how to fight and left them with his instructions while he won the battles for him.

                He simply was good at what he was taught. An orphan himself, the lack of parental guidance had forced him into the world alone and despite his cousin’s influence and parents he had walked away from them; they were the family he wanted but could not have. He isolated himself from them and Perttu never gave up on him. But Joseph gave up on himself when he understood what he was becoming.

                Houses infront of him with their lights shining were like a beacon. Like fire in the pitch black of a forest they drew him in so his knees left the floor and his powerful figure was walking towards the life and warmth. He couldn’t stop himself from walking on; he didn’t really understand why he was entertaining this whim of his. He usually ignored what he wanted and went about in a cold and heartless manner to his destination. His life was one of battle, he travelled to get to battle and once won he travelled to the next. Never before had the light shining from a bedroom peaked his attention.

                His wandering feet led him to a village, a well off and yet not upper class sort of village. He turned his head abruptly at the sound of laughter coming from the town hall. There must be a gathering of some sort, the mortals did love to have organised dances together where they showed off their status. He shook his head, the skirts those women wore were cumbersome and annoying to him, he hated being around mortal women in such skirts, the vampire women managed both modesty and advantage very well.

                He shook his head wandering forward to the town hall and heard the violins playing there. They were high pitched, fast played; a waltz if he wasn’t mistaken. He shook his head again, he had never mastered the art of dance, he had had no father to teach him when the time had been appropriate and had ran away from Perttu and his father when they tried to teach him. The privilege had been his fathers, no one else’s in order to teach him and with no father he had dropped the idea of ever dancing.