“If there’s any chance at all that this can be replicated, we’re obligated to do it. This is what humanity needs to survive. Others have failed but perhaps you are like me, and if so, our father will be and others as well. Then we will find them and move like a growing tide across the land. But if you fail then I will know that I alone can bear this power. Take him,” he finished with a growl.
I flung myself forward with all my strength pushing up against the table and kicked my feet against the third vamp that held them. A fourth vampire, the young vampire in the old man’s body approached my head and leaned over my neck. I struggled in vain against their hard-icy grips. The vampire’s stale breath washed over my face as he bent over my neck and huffed my scent. A drop of saliva fell from his fang onto my neck and I flinched. Other than his fangs his teeth looked little different than a human, if only more yellowed and in danger of falling out. To my surprise he didn’t plunge his fangs into my jugular instead he pulled a razor from a pocket and slid it across my neck. It cut with almost no feeling but as soon as the metal had passed a thin line of burning, gritty pain erupted along the wound as if it had been doused with alcohol but even more intense and similar to an itch. The vampires moaned as my warm blood gushed along my throat and ran onto my chest. Immediately the old one was lapping at my throat and I grew dizzy. I wanted to wipe the blood away, to wind cloth tightly around the wound to contain it but the vampires were still pinning me down even as they leaned over and joined in the feeding frenzy. After that my brother’s head floating in the air as if beheaded and covered with intoxicated grin that could have been mistaken for cluelessness was all I could see and whether it was real or imagined in a haze of lost blood and fear I’ll never know. One of the vampires wrapped his rubbery lips around the wound and I shuddered as he sucked up my blood, slurping like a child and running his tongue along the wound. Color faded to a continuum of grays. A ghastly hand, all knuckles and nails appeared and pulled one of the vampires away. The world spun slowly wobbling on an unsteady axis as another vampire took his place. My brother’s eyes blazed in the dark as he watched with interest as the rest of his face disappeared into swirling shadows. By the time another vampire had taken its fill all was dark except apparitions of their hungry lips as an unending line of the beasts approached. My body was dull and cold and then nothing remained but an unhealthy sleep that was deeper than death.
The next few days could have been months for all I knew. I passed in and out of red tinged dreams of my mother and my brother laughing at me while Mary lay on the ground in a pool of her own blood. I would awake briefly from time to time and sit up shivering against the cold winds that blew in through the chinks in the wall and then fall back into my half sleep without seeing anything more than dust motes creeping through the air of the cabin. I remember hearing the words thrall sickness and then waking up with face in a pool of saliva. I grew so warm that my lips cracked, and I threw my blanket to one side. Then I froze lying on the hard cot shivering curled up as if I were in my mother’s womb.
When I did finally awaken for good, I just sat up and stared. No one noticed my consciousness not even the guard whose shadow I could see pacing relentlessly just outside the door. My body was as weak as a newborn kitten. After sitting up for a few minutes I lay back down and slept again more peacefully. When I awoke my stomach was clenched in a painful knot and the light that slanted into the shack looked like the light of early morning. I called out feebly to the guard who stood outside. The middle-aged vampire who’d been part of the group which had initially captured me tromped in with one hand on his side arm. My mind was filled with so many things but the only words that came out when he stood in front of me crossly were “hungry,” and “thirsty, so thirsty.” I felt dry from my lips, down through my throat, into my eyes and out to the tips of my fingers
