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@oopsprompts
You’ll understand when you’re older.
I am twice your age.
Life is a fickle thing.
One day, you’re a ten-year-old boy, playing in a park. It’s near dark, sure. You shouldn’t be there, sure. But your house is across the street, and anyone could hear you shout. Playing on rusted swings and waiting for the call from your mother to come home and have dinner, bathe, and head to bed.
But destiny, it seems, has other plans for you. Destiny, it seems, plans for the man… no, the creature… dressed in black and hiding its face to attack you. To rip open your throat and drink deep of your blood and leave your body – little more than a lifeless corpse – behind for your mother to find not long later.
Without a chance to scream, or cry, or do little more than gasp as you die.
But destiny is not finished with you; for within your fragile husk of a form a few drops of blood remain, and your heart beats still. Weak, but enough to allow a strange change to occur. The change, of course, kills you first, so as when you’re found, your ears are death to your mother’s screams, to the ambulance, to the morgue. A closed-casket funeral in a funeral home barely worth remembering.
Indeed, your body sleeps for a long while, before the curse goes to work, knitting flesh and repairing bone. Within time, you awaken, coughing up the dust that had settled into your lungs, opening your eyes in the dark, six feet underground. Screaming and crying, beating your way into the lid of your coffin until it breaks with your unholy strength.
Crawling your way through the dirt, until you find yourself in the darkened night, a ghoulish sight. A gravedigger spots you on your way, runs over to you, trying to assess the situation. His death is quick and decisive, his neck broken and his blood drained as you come to terms with the situation.
Leaving his corpse behind, you flee into the night. For thirty years, you hide from your former life, learning as you go, learning to drink as you need to survive, and finding kinship with small clans – groups of interrelated vampires who have learned to survive on the bare minimum in the modern world.
I survive.
I watched. I watched as my mother and father came to terms with their grief; indeed their love perhaps kept them both sane. Ten years later, they have another child, a daughter this time. For nineteen years I watched, kept an eye on my sister, first out of jealousy, but soon for a sense of the life I could have had. From a distance I watched as she played in the same parks, this time with my father nearby at nearly all times. I watched as she went to school, all the way from elementary to high school.
She was nineteen, and I watched from the shadows as something from a nightmare I once had returned.
She was walking alone at night, from the community college she had been going to – an easy way to save money that she could use when transferring later on. I saw it then – a creature whose form seemed a distant memory. I was a distance off, shrouded from view with both shadow and a mild illusion.
The creature to whom I owed my existence.
I had learned in my time, of the different types of vampires.
The wandering clans of vampires were the most common – survival works best in groups, after all. They fed as necessary, typically, and murdered rarely if at all. Their desire for blood was tempered with a sentiment that could probably be called humanity.
Then there are the sedentary vampires – usually loners, and in big cities, these creatures feed as sparingly as possible – but are more often killers.
Then, there are those who vampires call ghouls. They are vampires who murder with each feeding, who travel from place to place and kill as they please. Though one only needs a couple pints of blood every couple of weeks to keep going, these creatures feast and over time, become more bestial. Their fangs – which every vampire possesses, one of the few actually true legends – become elongated and larger, their other teeth fall out and are replaced with pointed hooks. Their skin becomes more and more pallid, and hair begins to fall out. They regenerate health at a rate that makes death through typical injury next to impossible, but their weaknesses are more pronounced as well.
An average vampire can go out in sunlight, but it causes weakness with overexposure, akin to heatstroke but can only be cured with blood. One who goes out for eight hours a day, sometimes called Lifers, would have to drink a pint of blood every couple of days to maintain their charade of normalcy. Lifers are notorious for turning into ghouls, because of their tendency to overfeed.
A ghoul cannot go out in sunlight for more than a couple minutes without their cells degrading and the resultant failings resulting in death.
An average vampire is capable of entering the dwellings of whomever they please – they aren’t bound by the superstitions of men, and do not require invitations.
Ghouls were cursed in ancient days to never be able to enter a home without an invitation. To do so results in madness and death.
Vampires can use their limited magical abilities to remove recent memories from the mind of a mortal, knock them unconscious, and even heal wounds to a limited degree. Making one go unnoticed by mortals took little will.
Ghouls’ magical abilities bleed from them like a noxious gas. Mortals in their presence are often paralyzed with fear.
This was clearly a ghoul, and a familiar one at that. After the initial trauma of the transformation, I had done my research. I found others like me, learned the basics of my abilities, and learned self-control. But I sought my sire – for knowledge or revenge, I had known naught. I found his trail – of a sort – after almost a half-decade.
Called by some tabloids as ‘New Jack’ – for his brutal methods of murder – he went randomly across the US killing as he pleased. I was among his casualties. I regretted my first kill – but I learned to live with it. But Jack exulted in his murders. He wandered far and wide in his kills, far enough that few even believed his existence.
But here he was.
I watched him stalking my sister, at a safe distance of almost a block and a half. But he was nearby, and I knew a vampire with his abilities would be able to cross that distance in less than a second.
I watched, as she was listening to music on her phone. I don’t think she had noticed. Then, he stopped. He lifted his head and sniffed the air like a hound. He did this for a few seconds, then darted out of sight. I couldn’t see him, so I kept an eye on my sister until she had gotten a distance away. I was about to follow at length, when I heard the guttural growl in my ear.
“Hail, kinsman…” I felt my heart stop – or rather, the illusion of it stopping in terror, because it hadn’t beaten in nearly two decades. I turned quickly, trying to bring my arm down into his neck, sever his throat quickly. Maybe it would have been enough to get away.
He caught my arm in a crossblock near-instantly, and I heard a repetitive growling noise. He was laughing. “Well met, child. It has been too long since I have had the thrill of meeting another of my kind.”
He paused for a second, “I think they try to avoid me! It’s rather disappointing, to be frank.”
He sniffed closely at me. Though I was immune to whatever magical effects the ghoul possessed, I was still paralyzed in fear. I could barely move into an almost defensive stance.
“You smell… familiar. Have we met before?”
I was at a loss for words. Perhaps it should have occurred to me that even if my life had been so thoroughly altered by his presence, he may not even be aware I existed. He had, by my count, almost four hundred kills, perhaps more, in the past two decades.
“Or perhaps I met your sire? Tell me boy, who made you? Was it a clan? Or perhaps a wanderer – or maybe a ghoul like me?”
“I – I don’t-“ I was stuttering, trying for an answer that wouldn’t reek of suspicion, but was coming up blank.
“Ah, well. What does it matter?” The ghoul chuckled. “What were you doing here, stalking my prey, boy? Or perhaps this one is yours?”
“She’s….” I composed myself. If he didn’t recognize me, this could very well be an excellent opportunity. “Yes, she’s mine. I’ve been hunting her for a long while now, and I don’t take very well to ghouls attempting to horn in on my targets.”
The ghoul raised his hands in front of his torso as if in surrender. His hands were weatherworn and long-fingernailed. “I meant no offense, child. After all, one such as I can understand and enjoy the thrill of the hunt, and know what it’s like to lose your prey to another.”
He lowered one hand and closed the other, save for the pointer finger. “But if I may… suggest a mutually beneficial decision?”
I decided to raise an eyebrow as if in skepticism. It’d work better than outright hostility. I knew it was only by chance he hadn’t already killed me. “Go on.”
“I am… hamstrung… it seems, by my state. I cannot follow her, though together, we could lure her out and feed together. After all, your vengeance would normally put you at risk of becoming like me, and we couldn’t have that. So if you draw her out, you could drink your fill, and I’ll finish the job. We both have our prey, and we both leave in peace, never to see one another again. I’ll avoid this city, for I know it is your… territory.”
My mind was racing. If I took his offer, my odds of being able to protect my sister were greater, than if I said no, and he killed me as well. But all the same there were little odds of being able to put him down without her death. And that was truly unacceptable. My family had already lost one member to this monster. I wouldn’t let them lose another, even at the cost of my own life.
“By all means, I can wait. I’ll give you two days to decide, but after that I expect an answer. After all, I can wait to feed, but an ally… those take time to make. You can find me at night in the old railcar. Don’t disappoint me.”
And with that, he was gone.
Looking around for any sign of him, I turned quickly and then fell into a kneeling position. I was hyperventilating, an odd vestige of a mortal habit, as I didn’t normally breathe.
I had very few options. So I had to decide.
My odds were slim, of being able to defeat Jack, at least not without help. The wandering clans wouldn’t help me, even if they were near enough to get within two days. While killing a ghoul is permitted, direct interference was bad form, especially if he hadn’t broken one of their laws. Speaking of magical laws, there are a couple I should probably make you aware of.
Rule the first:
No mortal can know of a magical creature, be they fae, undead, or construct. To do so is to break the veil, and is punishable by death.
Rule the second:
While mortal death is permitted, slaying another immortal outside of your niche – a fancy term for species, or specifically clan, if you are a vampire or werewolf – is punishable by death.
The second rule wasn’t much of an issue, but the first… there were only a couple was around it.
-
The next day, I dressed in a grey hoodie and sunglasses, simple garb meant to disguise my appearance and protect me – somewhat – from the sun as I followed my sister into the city. She had the day off, and was stopping in where she worked to pick up her paycheck. I had her schedule memorized, and had no intention of letting her slip away.
I followed her, listening carefully to her conversation with her friend on the phone. She was discussing a soon-to-be arriving movie. Something to do with scifi. I don’t particularly know. When she had hung up, and was in a secluded enough part of town, I swept up close to her and dropped my illusion – she would be able to notice me. I moved faster than the human eye could process to be a few feet in front of her and facing her. She stopped suddenly, as one would, I suppose, if another were to appear in front of you, and began to speak. “Are you lost, kid? Where are your parents-“
I lowered my hood and took off the cheap plastic sunglasses I was wearing underneath. I looked up at her. She gasped a little.
Though I figured my parents didn’t talk much about it, I had figured she’d known who I was. Maybe seen a few pictures of me, and had asked my parents. I had even broken into their house a couple times to see what changes they had made. For a while, they hid my existence, but eventually, they displayed my pictures openly. They had learned to cope in a way that didn’t require blocking me out. I suppose that meant I was truly dead to them.
I put a finger to my lips as if to gesture silence, but then I layered my voice with magic and said a single word. “Sleep.”
She fell unconscious and I caught her before she hit the ground. Moving quickly, I took her to a nearby place where I’d often hidden. A darkened, abandoned motel. I had figured a way in long ago, and continued to be a very capable lockpicker. Laying her on a sofa that I had once-upon-a-time rescued from a curb, I waited for her to awaken.
I lit some candles, trying to be considerate of her mortal senses. After all, most weren’t as acute as mine.
My plan was simple – I would explain the situation, that a ghoul was hunting after her and that I could only beat him with her help, or rather, her cooperation – and there was only one way I could do that.
My only option was to make her a member of the vampire race – of a sort. While the only way to become a vampire was much the same as mine – drink blood until the target is near death, and let the transformation take hold. The creation of thralls, on the other hand, was something of a different sort. Feeding a target a few drops of your blood ushers in a different transformation – making the target bonded to you, and making it so that you can ‘break the veil’ as it were.
I watched her as she slept. It was strange, but as a creature that didn’t really require sleep, save for maybe the occasional hibernation of sorts, it was cathartic. She looked like mother, dirty blonde hair, similar facial features. I looked more like father, but I was young. My hair was darker, a brown.
After a few hours, she finally stirred.
She stirred slowly, stretched, and raised herself into an upright position. She yawned, then looked around. “Where am I-?”
She looked over and saw me, sitting across from her. “So… I suppose I owe you a bit of an explanation.”
She got up and started backing away from me.
“Amelie, please, let me explain.”
“No, you’re – Richard – you’re supposed to be dead – how do you look exactly like when – I saw the pictures – I even tracked down the paper with your obituary. How are you here? Are you a… ghost?”
She almost whispered the last word as if it was the weirdest idea.
“No, I’m not a ghost. For a start, they’re kind of a bunch of assholes.”
“But you’re not… you’re not?”
“I haven’t been alive since June fourth, 1987. It’s true, I am undead.”
She seemed confused by this.
“I’m a vampire, Amelie.”
“What? But that’s impossible. Vampires don’t exist.”
“Yes, well, you were the one who was willing to assume I was a ghost. So, please, keep up and treat all breaks in reality equally.”
“So are you… gonna kill me?”
She was whispering the last bit, and I shook my head in response.
“Actually, quite the opposite. I’m but to go into details, I’m going to need you do something that you aren’t going to really like, but believe me, it’s necessary.”
I bit into my own wrist and offered it to her. She stared blankly. I shook my wrist. “Drink, girl.”
“But, won’t I become a vampire?”
“For g-“ I cough a little bit, being incapable of saying any variation on the name of… well… whatever it is,” ‘s sake, if it were that easy, I’d be dead instead right about now. Once you drink the blood, you’re going to be a part of my world, it’s true, but you’ll still age. You’ll still be able to live your life. Trust me when I say it’s better than the alternative.”
She looked into my eyes. We had the same eyes, I now realized. “If you’re lying to me, kid, and I turn into a vampire, I’m going to use whatever superpowers I get to tear you a new asshole.”
“Yes, well, if I were lying, I’d admit I’d deserve it.”
She leaned over and put her lips to the wound on my wrist and drank a couple drops. I willed the wound shut.
Wiping her lips, she looked back at me and began – “So what happens n-ah!”
She stopped gripping her head. I suppose it hurts, to have your world change like that. The transformation isn’t as extreme as one of a vampire, but she was changing. Her senses a little more acute. Her mind a little sharper.
It only took about a half an hour before she was done gripping her head and crying, which I do feel guilty for, but it was the only way to keep her alive, I told myself. When she awoke again, she ran over to the empty kitchen area, with a sink and a mirror. Looking at her reflection, she opened her mouth and looked at her teeth.
“For the love of…” I stopped, looked up, and then looked back at my sister, “Amelie, what on earth are you doing?”
“Checking for fangs, asshole.”
“I told you that I wouldn’t turn you into a vampire!”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me that it would hurt like a bitch, whatever you did!”
“We didn’t have time.”
She turned back to me, apparently satisfied. “So, why did you do this now? You know my name, so I guess you’ve been following me for a while.”
“Well, yes and no…”
“Bullshit.”
I stopped and looked at her. She had pulled out a pack of gum and was unwrapping a piece.
“What – what do you mean?”
“You do the same thing my – our dad does, when he lies, I mean. You both look off into the middle-distance and fidget your hands.”
“Well… um… I,” this was awkward.
“Well, apart from you stalking us, what else have you done with your time? What’s being a vampire like, I guess?”
I shrugged. “It kinda sucks, but then again, I was only like ten when I was turned, so…”
“You don’t really look ten. I mean, sure, you look pretty close to the photos, but you’ve definitely aged a bit. You look… maybe thirteen?”
I laughed a little. “Oh, thank god, I look like I’m on the cusp of puberty. That’s a relief.”
“Vampires do age slowly until they look somewhere between late twenties, early thirties. But judging by this rate, I’m going to look like I need an adult until I’m in my eighties. Great. Just fucking great.”
“Hey, watch your fucking mouth, you little shit.”
“I’m the older brother, I should be lecturing you, little shit.”
“Yeah, well, who’s the one who’s actually been to high school?”
“Low blow.”
She continued chewing her gum and shrugged.
“All’s fair in war.”
She came back to the couch and sat down. “So, why’d you do all this? I’m guessing you had your own little weird non-interference policy until now.”
“Well, it’s the person who… who killed me. He’s back. And I need your help to kill him.”
“Why my help?”
“Well… it’s kind of because he’s after you now.”
She bolted upright. “Wait, what the fuck? Why is he after me? Is it something you did?”
I thought for a second. Maybe he had misunderstood why I was following her in the first right, and thought it would be fun to interfere.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, well, this is great. I have finals in a couple weeks, you know. I can’t just go around killing all my little –“
“- older,” I chimed in
“-brother’s enemies.”
At this juncture, her phone began to ring. She drew it from her jacket pocket and looked at the ID. I got a glimpse. It was David.
“Now isn’t the time to answer calls from your boyfr-“
She had already answered the phone. “Oh, hi, Davy. How’s it going?”
I could hear the other end too, but I blocked it out for the sake of her privacy.
I waited out the remainder of their conversation, listening to them talk about going to a movie on the weekend, you know, typical couple-ish stuff. Needless to say, I was sickened. After she hung up, I began again.
“Yeesh, what was that about?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.” She winked knowingly.
“I am literally twice your age.”
“Well, all’s the same. No more interruptions.”
“I’m going to need your help to take out Jack –“
“Jack’s the one after me?”
“Well, I’ve taken to calling him Jack. He’s a ghoul, kind of like a vampire serial killer.”
“So what’s his actual name?”
“Well, I don’t know. None of the clans I’ve talked to know who he is.”
“Clans?”
“Wandering vampire families. If I could’ve gotten one of them to help, I wouldn’t have dragged you into all this. But anyway, the problem is that Jack is… well… not going to be easy to kill.”
“Well, how can you kill a vampire? Stakes?”
“Well, shoving a piece of wood would definitely hurt, but ghouls are made of stronger stuff. We’d need a couple things. A silver dagger consecrated by a priest, a holy book once owned by a saint, and probably enough ashwood stakes to shish-kebab a small army.”
“Okay, where do we get that?”
“Meet me at 1211 Harker street tonight. I don’t think that Jack is following me, but if he is, we shouldn’t stay together long.”
“1211 Harker street… isn’t that the one place belonging to that crazy old lady?”
“Well, she’s actually a nature spirit, a member of the fae. Kind of lucky to have her around, really.”
“Any other surprising revelations for me?”
“Yeah, the president is a moleperson.”
“What? Really?”
“No, I just don’t like him.”