• Part 3


    "Jake! Welcome home!” Vladimir said warmly, “Have you completed your assignment?”

    “Yes sir, it was too easy.”

    “And where is the girl?”

    I closed my eyes and tightened my jaw, “She wasn’t there.”

    Vladimir was still sitting on his throne, with only one woman sitting on the armrest.

    Vanessa.

    Her eyes were just as red as the rest of the vampire females.

    Seconds later, ten women started entering the room with a man they had captured, there necks all broken.

    “Jake you know the drill. You lead.”

    I gestured for the females to follow me as I took the body of the old woman upstairs.

    In that room a wooden floor surrounded a window-screen, sort of like a shower drain, covered hole. Underneath is a tunnel that leads to Vladimir’s feeding chamber.

    I placed the body on the drain, pulled out my pocket knife, and cut the woman’s throat, wrists, and thighs. The women mimicked.

    The blood went through the small holes into the funnel, making a sickening sound when it landed and spilled into the other room.

    “Tracy! No snacks. We all eat as a family!” Vladimir’s voice bellowed from a speaker in the corner of the room. Another surveillance system in this room too.

    A blonde woman looked up at the speaker startled, “I’m sorry Master,” she said as she licked off her fingers.

    “Into the dining room,” I said once all the body’s turned pale.

    Vladimir wanted to keep the mansion as normal as possible, even though we lived in the middle of the woods. There was a living room, where we hung out after hunting, the dining room where we feed, the chambers, where we slept (but I’ll get to that later), and throne room, which isn’t really normal for a house but more for a castle.

    We walked through the gigantic throne room to the last doorway on the eastern wall. In there was a table twelve feet long. There sat bowls and campaign glasses filled of blood.

    “Sit, sit!” Vladimir beckoned.

    I sat on the opposite end of him on one of the fancier chairs. Rosemary sat on my right side and a man across from her on my left side. He was blond and muscular, and the only male beside Vladimir and myself.

    “Who is this?” I mutter to Rosemary.

    “A friend I met the other day,” She replied.

    Rosemary wasn’t my “blood” (no pun intended) sister but I had a weird instinct to protect her.

    “Derek,” He said as he extended his right hand. He smiled but his brick red eyes were filled with worry, or was it hunger?

    I glared at it, and he slowly returned it to his side.

    “I would like to welcome Vanessa and Derek to our extended family. Please, ‘pig’ in, as humans say nowadays,” Vladimir chuckled.

    “Alright!” Derek picked up the whole bowl, which was filled with the same amount of blood of an average man, and chugged it down. He was a little slower with the campaign glass, very careful not to spill not one drop of the warm liquid.

    Vanessa drank the campaign glass of blood first and used that to fish out the rest of it out of the bowl. She was very nervous. Why don’t girls like eating in front of people?

    Rose and I mimed Derek’s method of feeding ( “Hey! No copying!”). It was a lot faster and closest to the natural way. We all smiled to each other.

    At the end of the dinner, Everyone’s skin looked paler in the dull candlelight, there lips stained red.

    Vladimir pushed his chair back and got up. The females were instantly at his side, surrounding him in a beautiful cocoon. They left into his chamber.

    “Derek, follow me!” Rose giggled as she danced up the stairs and out of our sight while Derek and I followed behind her at our own pace.

    “You know what the price is for being one of us, right?” I asked quietly so she wouldn’t hear from the floor above.

    “I was already addicted to every drug out there. Had more needles in my arm than everyone in the hospital,” He looked at his arms and shook his head in disgust, “I had straight A’s and then I got involved in the wrong crowd, dropped out of the high school and my parents kicked me out of the house at sixteen.

    “When I wasn’t high I was thinking, ‘Damn Derek, what happened to you.’ I wanted to kill myself for the pass 3 years. Then when I was hanging with some friends, drinking some beer and getting high, I met Rosemary. I guess I wasn’t as drunk as I thought I was, ‘cause I told her my whole life story. She told me she could fix me, all I had to do is trust her, so I figured, ‘What the hell‘.”

    We climbed into the upper level, “You’re going to watch everyone you know, friends and family, die right before your eyes.”

    He suddenly turned and glared at me, his voice hard, “What friends and family? They all abandoned me.”

    “Hey, sorry man. Chill out.”
    “Sorry.”

    “Derek, in here! You’re sleeping with me,” Rosemary called.

    “Should I be concerned?” Derek laughed.

    “Don’t worry, she sleeps like a baby,” I smiled, “Besides I bet you like her, too.”

    He tapped his fingers together, “You‘re quick to your feet, eh?”

    I followed him into Rosemary’s room where she had a bed fit for a king. She patted a space next to her, indicating him to sit, “Well, I’ll leave you to love birds alone for the morning.”

    “’Night Jake,” They both said.

    Across the hall, was my room. It was painted turquoise with windows that were normally closed. I sat on my queen-sized bed and pulled out a photo album from the 1940s.

    Part 4


    I was eighteen and human. I lived in New York City with my father and mother.
    In one picture, my father was leaving on a boat for the war in 1941, he was a pilot in the first World War, and he wanted to serve for his country. His uniform was brown as I remembered, the picture was black and white. He had left me and my mother behind, promising to come back.

    He never did.

    Next to this picture was a newspaper clipping telling of the story of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. entering the war.

    I turned the page, there was a picture of me and my childhood friend and fiancée, her name was Amelia, and she had the most beautiful chocolate-colored hair and the bluest eyes I have ever seen. She was beautiful.

    She died from an influenza in 1942, They couldn’t save her. Shortly after my mother died from the same illness.

    Then, a picture of when I left for the war in 1943, leaving nothing behind. I wanted to die. To be with her.

    I was always eager for a fight, killing as many Nazis as I could, to get rid of my depression, to build my confidence. I was a killer even before I became a vampire.

    Then in one battle, a sniper took out my comrades, my only friends. I found him instantly on a cliff nearby. I fired at him with the machine gun I was armed with. He fell to the rumble below. I ran to him, oblivious to the bullets nearly taking out my limbs. I stabbed him with my hunting knife, not once, but multiple times. I cried, taking out all my sorrow, all my anger on him. He was the reason everyone I loved was killed. He was the reason I was all alone in this battle-scarred world.

    I stood, covered in blood, I dropped the knife beside the body. I turned around and started to walk back to my post when I felt something cold and metal up against my temple.

    “Auf Wiedersehen,” He laughed.

    “Thank you,” I whispered, tears still falling from my face.

    He pulled the trigger.

    I blacked out. I was dead.

    Or so I thought.


    “Hey kid, wake up!”

    “You figure he’s dead?”

    “Of course not, I saved him right before it killed him. The bullet went through one side of his head and came out the other, but it didn’t hit his brain.”
    “Wow, small brain. Maybe we need to slap him? Let me slap him!” a girl giggled.

    I opened my eyes. There stood a man and a girl around my age, Rose and Vladimir.

    “Look, you scared him,” He chuckled.

    I sat up, and looked into the palms of my hands. They were pale, bloodless. I clenched them into fists.

    “What’s you’re name?” Rosemary asked.

    “Jake Alford,” I uttered, “Where am I?”

    “France!” She smiled.

    Vladimir tightened his jaw, “You’re pretty lucky we found you. You would have died for --,”

    “What the hell have you done!” I yelled, I grabbed his shirt aggressively, “That was my only chance to be with her!”

    “Be with who?” she asked nervously.

    I glared to her (this is the first time I scared her), and let go of his shirt, “Forget it.”

    “Well we better get going. The boat is leaving for New York City soon, and then we can discuss what you are.”


    On the vessel, Vladimir told me about himself and Rosemary, and there goal to live as normal as possible in America. Vladimir had lived in Romania, and Rosemary in London, England.

    “Where are you from?” Rose asked.

    “United States, New York City.”

    “What’s it like there?”

    “What is it like in any other overcrowded city?”

    “Touché.” She laughed.

    Vlad told me how he saved me, “I infected you.”

    “Infected?”

    “Well, yes. Rosemary and I visited the battlefield after the fight. We were looking for freshly killed body. When I tried to drink your blood, I accidentally infected you, I didn’t know you were alive because you’re heartbeat was so slow.”

    “W-wait! Drink my blood? Are you insane! What is the matter with you?”
    “Well, how else are we suppose to survive? We’re blood-drinkers, or vampires.”

    He explained to me about some special abilities vampires could get from something they were doing before they were transformed.

    He had this theory that since I killed, I was stronger and faster then the rest. I could be one of the rarer vampires. The ones that can turn into wolves. I could also have special abilities that can come out the blue.

    Vladimir wanted to save people. That, he believed, was his reason for this blessing.

    Rosemary was dying of tuberculosis. She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t have anything to live for. She was an orphan and unwanted by any of the adults that visited her shelter.

    “I was told I was ugly.”

    “But, you’re beautiful!” I protested.

    “Aw, thanks Jake,” She smiled, “I guess I have to thank Vladimir for that.”

    “Come, children, we need to rest. We need to let the blood flow through our veins.” Vladimir ordered.

    As we were walking to our cabin, I asked, “What do you mean ‘let the blood flow through our veins’.”

    “Well, vampires don’t have blood for themselves, which is why we take the blood from others. Then we rest for it to go through our bodies. Without it we would eventually dissolve into a motionless mess and die off. The blood eventually dries, and we need to feed again. You can tell when you’re thirsty when you are slower than normal and you’re throat is dry.”

    Now that he mentioned it, my throat was dry. I looked to him defeated.
    He laughed, “We actually got some for you.”

    On Rosemary’s bed was ten two-liter bottles of the red liquid. I dove in.
    “Alright, after that, go into the other room and sleep it in.”

    We arrived in New York in the next few days, and actually ran up north to some wooded areas. We couldn’t melt from the sun, Vladimir informed me, but the night is an easier hunting time and it is less noticeable in the dark with our pale skin. Besides, the morning is a great time for rest.

    We found an abandoned mansion near the border to Canada covered in vegetation.

    The following night. Vladimir brought home a woman from the club downtown. She was the first female to join our “family”.


    I closed the photo album and shut my eyes.