There was a long pause. The forest was silent except for bugs, frogs and a gentle but cool wind blowing through the trees. The fire’s warmth buffeted me like a river washing up my legs, bashing them around like logs on the river but the chill of the night was strong on my cheeks. I felt frail like an old man but strong as if I were paper wrapped around a skeleton of steel. I flexed my fingers against the warmth trying to work out an odd feeling in them, an odd stiffness that left the feeling off.
‘I’ve never seen anyone live through that,’ Ole John said staring at me with his crystalline eyes reflecting the fire’s glow. ‘If you weren’t looking for a camp what were you doing anyways?’ he asked.
‘I was just traveling through.’ I answered. A deep silence settled over the world as if we were the only two living creatures still awake. My companion settled down after tossing me some jerky to chew on. I gnawed on it as he lay down and closed his eyes. I watched the flames dance up and down a log and listened to my heart beating slow and steady. I was alive.”
My brother stopped his story for a moment as there was a knock and a woman’s voice at the door. He got up and retrieved a pitcher of ale through the door, poured us each a glass and sat back down. He even smiled as he sat the glass down in front of me.
‘The cold and the travel took it out of me but eventually strength returned to my body and then exceeded my former strength. It was not my own strength but the vampires who had fed upon me.’ He clenched and unclenched his outstretched fists in demonstrations. “I am the only man to ever survive being drained. No thrall sickness. No turning.” Then he glared at me with icy eyes. “Perhaps you could become like me. Perhaps our mother would have survived as well. She could have lived. She could have become an even more powerful woman.”
He gulped down several chugs of his beer. When he spoke again, he had calmed somewhat. I continued to sip my beer as he spoke.
“But then of course I never would have been feasted upon by those three foolish vamps. Old John would never have brought me here. I sometimes wish that he were still around.”
‘You have to understand brother, that when he brought me here for the first time none of this was here except for this farmhouse rotting in a tangle of weeds, and a plot of corn struggling to grow in the middle of its own weedy patch. There wasn’t anyone to be seen, but John knew where to find them. Just another scruffy bunch of men, women, and children. You know the type. A family gets together with another family, and then they grow until they’re no longer able to escape the vampires’ notice. Then the vampires find them, drain them, capture them and any that escape are scattered to the four heavens. There were two things that had saved these people up from that up until that point: the cold and their weaponry. They’d plant their seed and then head north, and they carried the finest arsenal I’d ever seen in my life. You could tell Old John loved these people though he was gruff and often called them idiots to their faces for coming back to the same area each spring. I think he admired their stubbornness, a trait he had in droves.’
‘The group wasn’t long for the world though, that’s what Ole John thought and you could see that it was true. The cold had kept the vampires unorganized and had reduced their numbers in these parts, but it wasn’t going to last. Each year there were more than the last. They’d learned to attack the group as they traveled north It was only a matter of time before the vampires destroyed the group, either in actuality or by simply making their life so hard that they gave up their farming and returned to fully roving. They were too stubborn to move on then as Ole John advised them despite their utmost respect for him and it filled me with incredible sadness to think that their persistence would drive them to destruction.” The door creaked open and a young vampire slipped in and nodded to my brother, his lanky blond hair falling in his eyes as he did so. “I decided to join them, and the rest is history.” My brother pushed his chair back with a screech ad stood. “No doubt you’ve heard the rest. If you haven’t then I’m sure someone can fill you in.” His eyes sparkled as he said that. “Now I’m afraid I’ve got things to do, but I’ll walk with you to your meager cabin. We’ll have to work on finding you a better place, especially before winter gets here, but they’re in short supply.”
I followed my brother out of the cabin and the gaunt vampire walked silently behind us scooping up a rifle that leaned in the corner of the hallway and nodding to the crazy old vampire that still sat atop his stool. A cold wind rippled across the packed earthen yard around the farmhouse and the vampires shivered. Though it was dark, the camp felt tense. People scurried along the edges of the buildings like rats, averting their eyes and not greeting us.
A woman’s shrill scream ripped through the night sending shivers running across my skin. My instinct told me to flee in the opposite direction as quickly as possible if I wanted to
