B - Angel's Blood

Immortality: cold, hard, eternity. Alone in the dark, alone in your
head. Dancing in the dusk, watching the ghosts of the present, crying
for the past, resigned at the future. Immortality, a hideous and
terrifying prospect, but death seems even worse. A drug once conceived
ever sought. Hated, but not as much as the unknown.

Immortality: the curse of my kind.

And the other, the other better known. Death. What we fear and loathe
even above immortality. But this I not our death, but theirs. To
sustain ourselves, to keep from falling to unknown depths, we thrive on
death. To live, we take life. The echoes of screams, the sobs through
the centuries, the last haunting looks. Looks of anger, of fear, of
blame, of forgiveness, of resignation, and worst of all, of acceptance.
A thousand deaths, and hundred years, with no choice but to continue.
It drives us mad. The insanity of sadness, of malicious anger, of
anything. We were once human, those that forget are the more inventive
killers, but those that remember are the better skilled.

Death: the sustenance of my kind.

Do you know what we are yet? More names than any could ever have
counted, more languages than any could speak, more tales than any could
ever recall. The sadness of Dracula, alone in his castle; the arrogance
of Lestat, making and shedding friends more easily than he should; the
seduction of Carmina, walking her home for centuries. Do you know what
we are yet? Of course you do.

Vampires: the latest label of my kind.

Walking the darkness like a nightmare, hiding the shadows like a fear
unknown. Used to cover fears known, to hide them under a veneer of it
could be worse. The living always fear those they perceive to be
dead.

Is it arrogance to say I alone know of our making? Is it arrogance to
speak of it? I've heard more tales of that than any other has. I have
yet to hear the correct one. But why speak of it? Why tell it to an
uncaring audience? But then, why continue existence in this torture?
Lestat had something when he sang, when he declared to the world who
and what he was: The Vampire Lestat. Dracula had no fear of his tale
being published, he craved it. And why? Because the more people know
the less believe. Because the louder you shout something the more
people cover their ears. Because the world has enough terrors caused
and created by humans, without ours added to it.

I read over what I have written, and I wonder at it. I never realised I
wrote so that others may read. Perhaps if I had known I would have kept
the audience more in mind, kept the ranting to a minimum and introduced
myself first. But then, why should I publish this? I shall write it,
and leave it somewhere, some park bench, some flowered grave, and
London doorstep. I shall write it, and another will take it for his
own. Or her own, in this time. I read over what I have written, and I
keep going. And the beginning? Perhaps it should come now...

I do not know where I was, what part of the modern world it was.
Perhaps somewhere in Europe, perhaps America, perhaps Asia. Somewhere
where the snow came in winter, the sun in summer. I was a simple being.
This was before Rome, before Athens, before Egypt. Perhaps even before
Atlantis, though I've never had the heart to believe that tale. This
was before cities, when we lived as families in warm huts.

Perhaps it was England. I recall much, much later the stones being
raised. But then, I had left my home island and wandered for about a
million years before returning. I'm not even certain it was the same
island, but it felt like home. We were the people before the Celts, I
know that much. This island has been invaded so many times it welcomes
strangers now, most likely sharing the same ancestors. The language of
this isle has grown and evolved like all other living things. But then,
the language was different. When the Celts came, it was wiped out with
my people. Do you know what remains? Eeny Meeny Miny Mo. We used those
words to count, I read somewhere, but I'll be damned if I know what we
counted.

This was before Islam, before Christianity, before Judaism, before
Sikhism and Buddhism and Hinduism. Before any surviving religion. We
worshipped nothing, but believed in everything. They find masks
sometimes, these modern archaeologists, and claim we thought that when
a man wore a mask he had become that animal. We believed that no more
than a child believe a pantomime cow is a real one. But we believed in
magic, as it is now known. The seasons came and went, the moon changed
shaped, the day gave way to night and back again. One day I will
explain our beliefs concerning all these, but not now.

It was the tail end of an ice age, I think, and there were still a few
Neanderthals hanging around. When I say there was sun in summer, I do
not say that it was warm. We hunted and gathered, and occasionally
thought to farm. I tended a few berry bushes in front of a river valley
each autumn, harvesting their crops for my family and myself though
leaving enough that there might be more bushes next year. Though in all
honesty, I really had no concept of next year, or even of tomorrow. I
just knew that if I took everything there would be nothing left.

I had brothers, a great many, though only two I knew well. I had no
sisters, my mother had been somewhat cursed in that respect though my
aunts had not. We did not mate within the family, my brother would go
out each autumn and seek out other families that they might spread
their seed. Other people's brothers came to our family.

It was late one autumn when my brothers were returning that the two I
knew best, and it is terrible that I can no longer recall their names,
and we set out to gather the last of the berries. The first snow had
fallen and my fur slipper-boots left soft imprints as we walked. One
brother became distracted after a while, finding a trail of paw prints
in the snow, dotted with fresh blood. He followed them and I believe he
found their maker, which he took home to share. I know not. The other
brother stayed at my side a little longer and we reached the berry
bushes together. I plucked as many as I could find and he carried them
in a great sack towards the family.

I know not why I tarried. Some my call it fate or destiny, working its
will on me, but I have no faith in such things. Perhaps I do have some
idea why I tarried; I had been desperate to relieve myself but would
not do it in front of my brother. I feared rape, to be honest. He had
not found a mate this autumn and exposing him to a chance at a chance
to reach female sexual organs would have been too much for him as it
still is for many males now. Had I mentioned I am a woman? Or perhaps a
girl still, I was never certain. But still, not so fateful, eh?

I felt I could not wait until he was out of sight and I quickly
descended the cliff obscured by the bushes. It was dangerous and risky,
especially with the ice, but I could not shake my need. I was half way
down when I saw a ledge upon which I might squat. I climbed onto that
ledge and was preparing to undo my clothing when I saw something
pressed against the hollow of the cliff that made my bladder empty
sooner than I had prepared for.

In the hollow was an angel. Not an angel as depicted in books and
bibles, but an angel was we knew them then. A real species. The wings
were not feathered but bare skin, like unto a bat's, and the face was
strangely pointed. The hands were on the ends of the wings, rather than
on arms, and the feet were curved so that the creature was unable to
walk on level ground. I had seen angels before, and it was not merely
shock that caused my to lose control of my bladder. They ate flesh,
frequently human flesh.

I stood there; conscious that my trousers would soon freeze in this
weather now they were so wet. I trembled like a fledging bird, staring
at the creature in front of me. It made a move towards me and I stepped
backwards off of the cliff, not meaning to but desperate to get away.
It was a short way to the ground and I broke nothing, but I hit my head
and left my body.

When I returned to it I was in a worse state than before. I could feel
the cold working its way into my trousers and knew that I would die of
the cold. It had begun to snow gently. I was lying on the frozen
surface of the river, ice cracking around my. The scavengers, the
wolves, a mountain lion and even a scattering of bears, surrounded me.
I thought all these things with great clarity, but I felt that none of
them were my worst fear. The angel was crawling headfirst down the
cliff, claws clinging to the rock.

My trousers had frozen to the ice, and I couldn't move. I sat up,
ignoring the pain in my head, searched for something I could use as a
weapon. On the frozen ice, nothing. Looking up again, I realised that
as the angel crawled towards me across the snow it was leaving a trail
of scarlet on the white. One wing was badly torn.

It raised its head suddenly and let lose a piercing cry. The ululation
echoed through the valley with its cheer cliff walls. The animals fled
from the unearthly sound. I sat alone on the ice and wept.

The angel crawled awkwardly across the ice, clearly in pain. It was so
light his weight didn't cause the cracks that had formed around me to
extend further. Angels were so delicately made that shortly after death
they dissolved to dust. None have ever been found, save one, and that
was so close to disintegration that it was mistaken for a giant bat. It
reached me and the tears that had frozen to my cheeks were melted my
its breath. Angels were hot creatures, poorly adapted for this ice age,
but even worse for the coming warmth.

Its arm was not broken, only the membrane that served as wing torn, and
using its breath to melt me from the ice it dragged my towards the
shore of the river. I began to crawl myself, as its slim bones could no
more lift me than dig for grubs. We were almost at the shore when the
ice tipped up and sent us both sliding towards the water. In its panic
the angel flapped its wings and tried to take off, grabbing me round
the waist. It managed as well, flying us both to the shore less than a
foot away, but at great cost it itself.

I found myself on my hands and knees in the snow, the angel on top of
me. I stood carefully and lifted the body knocked out by pain. I
carried it back to the cliff face. Laying the angel down carefully I
collected wood and tree branches for a fire and shelter, aware that my
trousers were beginning to freeze again. I knew that I was merely
putting off death.

I don't know why I did it, but I tended to that angel, binding its wing
with the herbs I knew to help healing and making it as comfortable as
possible. It was a predator, one that I knew well. Its torn wing was
testament to my family's discovery that spears could be thrown as well
as used as hand weapons. It had taken my mother's second daughter,
killing the babe. I felt no anger at the death of my sister though, and
I tended to that angel.

As it slept I studied its face. It was male, that much I was certain
of. Angels wore no clothing, their hot blood keeping them warm enough.
It shared the same male organ as humans and Neanderthals, and I blushed
to look at it. Its, no, his face was long and pointed, the nose sharp
and the eyes slanted, the mouth a mere slit. And yet I found it
attractive. Against all reason and against all nature I found it
attractive. I stroked its bald head, and then its downy chest, and then
I let my hand wander lower.

I still so not know why. I had feared my brother's touch, yet I was
willing to accept that of this angel, who was another species
altogether, a predator that had carried off my sister. As I felt
between its legs I blushed a little with the guilty pleasure. I watched
the organ grow erect and the angel stirred. His eyes opened; a
glittering blue. And then he spoke, and I shall never forget our
words.

"Human female? Mate male angel?" Our language was simple; a few verbs,
a few nouns, and little else, no question words, no adjectives or
adverbs. As and angel, the fact he spoke any was amazing to me, that he
spoke it near perfectly was astounding.

"Human female mate male angel." I replied. "Want."

"Human female want human male. Male angel want female angel. Human mate
human, angel mate angel."

"Human female want male angel!" I cried, growing angry. I never felt
the desire to mate before, and it was overpowering. "Human female mate
male angel!"

"No." No was not a concept my people had found yet, but I understood it
completely. I found a new concept to go with it;

"Yes!"

And then, "Yes? Want?"

"Yes!"

"Yes! Want!" And he did. His organ made it hard for him to deny it. I
knew love for the first time, with one I never should have. I knew love
and I returned it.

Later, we lay together under my shelter. A little snow had crept it and
it melted to nothing as it touched the angel. His skin was thick, but
the heat still touched me through it. My clothing was scattered around
our dwelling but I felt no need of it. His thrusts had touched me where
I thought never to be touched, his heat had filled me.

"Human angel baby?" he asked softly.

"No. Human angel mate?"

"Mate? Human angel mate, human angel mate? Mate, mate, mate?"

"Yes. Mate, mate, mate. Mate, mate, mate, mate, mate, mate, mate.
Yes!"

"Mate, mate, mate?" he asked with a laugh. I hadn't even realised that
angels had a sense of humour. "Angel can. Human can?"

"Human can? Human can! Angel?"

"Can!" By we didn't. Not again. For as he rolled to mount me a second
time his wing brushed the branches and uncovered a small gap. The
sunlight streamed in and he screamed.

Angels were a nocturnal species. The reason being their blood. They
were hot blooded, not warm, but hot. This meant any kind of heat could
cause them to spontaneously combust. This is why they died out as the
climate grew warmer, because not even the caves were cool enough during
the day. I trembled as he pulled back, his other wing taking half of
the unsteady shelter with him.

He screamed even louder as his skin began to blacken from the heat
within. I grabbed him and pulled him to the better shelter of the
evergreen trees, where the shadow was almost complete. He buried
himself under the snow, which promptly began to melt. He whimpered like
a small child as I threw more snow over him.

But I too was encountering difficulties. Stark naked, the cold was
already beginning to affect me, making me sleepy and pleasantly numb. I
just wanted to lie down in the snow and sleep, even though I knew I
would never wake up. The angel grabbed me with one long wing and pulled
me down beside him, so that I was wrapped in his warmth.

Under his wing, I could see that all this sudden movement had reopened
the wound that kept him ground-bound. Blood trickled from the jagged
tear and unthinking I kissed it. I kissed it, and took some of the
angel's blood into myself.

After that followed the most painful moments of my life. If you are one
that believes vampires are dead, than they were the last moments of my
life. I could not take my mouth from his wing and I sucked harder as
the pain took me. Like fire, his blood coursed through me, destroying
my digestive system. The pain was terrible, as if my entrails were
being burnt by fire. I gasped it and breathed some in, and it destroyed
my lungs and airways, with the same pain. But in doing this, I little
entered my bloodstream and the agony truly began.

The angel's blood flowed through my, consuming my own. My heart beat so
fast the word was just a buzz, and then stopped all together. I thought
I had died as the blood reached my brain, but it was not so. Visions
overcame me, bright lights and warm voices, beautiful music and
laughter. I cried out. Finally, the pain from the rest of my body
became to great and I fainted.

When I came to the angel was leaning over me, his face suffused with
horror. He was stroking my cheeks and forehead, kissing my lips
tenderly and crying. He stared when my eyes opened and cried out. He
knew what had happened though I did not. The pain was gone, and I was
filled with warmth and an odd hunger. I kissed him as he stared, but he
made no response.

He stood up carefully and I saw that his wing was healed and his flesh
smooth again. He reached out and pulled me up. Stars oversaw our silent
parting and my tears as I climbed the cliff. The moon gazed down as I
wandered across the snow, still naked, barely lucid with pain, but a
different pain now. I wept for the angel, the angel that was no longer
mine. Male angel mate female angel, I thought morosely.

My brother found me, under the sickly lights of night. He had been
searching for me ever since I had failed to catch him up the evening
before. I had been right, at the sight of my naked body he raped me,
but I was beyond caring. My angel was no longer mine.

And them the hunger overcame me. The hunger that had slowly grown since
taking the angel's blood, the hunger that was now so intense it drove
out all reason. Using his own spear, I slit my brother's chest and
sucked greedily. He cried out as I took all but the last drops from
him. And then in my folly, seeing my brother dying, I gave some blood
back. Slitting my wrist without a thought I made him swallow my angelic
blood. And so the second of my kind came to be.

We walked slowly back to our family and crawled into a hut together, to
much disapproval. He felt, during the day, that he was hungry. I was
not and remained stretched out amongst the furs as he rose and walked
to the door of the hut. He stepped into the sunshine and screamed as
the day's heat caused his new blood to boil. I watched in horror as he
disintegrated to ashes, swiftly dispersed on the wind. And that is how
one of my kind first died.

The next night I ran to the river behind the berry bushes. I tried to
eat some of the berries, but after blood they were tasteless to me. I
clambered down and ran into the woods. Following the angel's hobbled
footsteps to the point where they disappeared I called for him. I
called the word he had said at his climax. I called what was complete
nonsense to me then, but to no avail.

* * *

I learnt most of what it was to be a vampire shortly after becoming
one. I found that I needed blood each night to sustain my body. Later
in my existence I have found that this need becomes less with age, or
possibly easier to ignore. I found that I had to avoid fire as well as
daylight, as the angels did. I found that I was immortal, or at least I
have been so far. I have found that immortality is hard to bear alone,
and I made others, but that immortality is even harder to bear with
company.

About 6000 years ago, humans tried to remedy the vampire situation.
They knew, by then, even though we were still a very select bunch. I
think I might have left a few of our kind on the continent by accident,
I was never certain how many I made at first. Sometimes I would dream
I'd changed someone, and wake to find they were still living as any
other human.

Anyway, 6000 years ago the stones were raised on Salisbury Plains. I
watched them from the shadows, but I won't tell you how they did it. I
rather enjoy watching the archaeologist try to figure it out. They're
not even close yet. The stones had been raised, and now that religion
had a semblance of organisation they used the stones to beg favours
from their new gods. Religion always interested me, we'd never had it
when I lived. I watched this little cult with interest.

Unfortunately, I lingered too long one night, and they found me. I
can't say if I was any stronger then than when I lived, but I know that
they caught me too easily. I had taken one of their kind the night
before, watching his beard slowly stain red. I can recall them all, you
know, every person over the years, the millennia. I am a murderess, as
all of our kind must unwillingly, or willingly, be. I diverge.

The priests, for lack of a better word, took me to a central stone, and
tied me there. I feared dawn more than anything else and I begged that
they release me. They ignored my pleas. They stripped me of my clothes,
for I had finally taken to wearing them again, and placed a stone
dagger at my breast.

Uncertainty filled me. Could a knife kill me? Superstition said I
couldn't, but I was not so sure. I found that I couldn't, to my relief.
They took the hot, hot blood that welled up from the wound, took it in
a stone bowl. I watched, worried. Surely they didn't wish to join me?
Apparently not.

I was untied before dawn by a wretched youth, clearly fearing for his
life. I left him, too confused to eat. I fled to a cave I had picked to
inhabit, to wait for the next nightfall. I returned to the circle,
keeping out of the way as mush as possible as the priests prepared
something. They had another bowl, a bowl containing the blood of a
mortal girl, a virgin. 'Marital status' always seems important in these
things, I don't know why. I watched them bring the girl and tie her to
the stone I had been lashed to the night before. She had deep red hair,
extremely unusual in these parts. Everyone else, including myself, were
dark, a remnant from our African ancestors. The pale people had not
arrived from the North yet.

Naively, I assumed her terror was unfounded. After all, hadn't I been
released the night before? But it was not to be. I watched them force
the blood mixture down her throat. She twisted and struggled, but she
was not changed.

Apprehension filled me then. Surely, surely they could not be doing
what I supposed they might be? Surely not. One priest took up a dagger,
the dagger. Sudden terror filled me. What were they going to do to this
blood-haired girl? She screamed when she saw it. The priests, confidant
'til the last, plunged it into her naked breast.

She died, that night. The young woman, barely more than a girl but no
longer a girl, died with a dagger in her breast. The priests were
confused. They had not meant it to be so. I couldn't understand why. A
dagger in the heart is a pretty sure way to kill someone.

It was many years before I understood. Between those times, the Celts
invaded Britain. I fought as hard as I could to save my people,
bringing many of my victims to join me that we might fight the
invasion, but to no avail. The Celts came, and my people died. Their
druids brought a new, even more organised religion. I had never thought
that a god could be worshiped personally by a select few, and
impersonally by others through them. Priests in power.

And then the Romans. Th Celts submitted rather too easily, I thought.
Except for one woman, one flame-haired, blood-haired, Celt. The Romans
brought a new belief, as well. Women were the weaker sex. Women had
very little mind, very little intelligent. Boudicca, or Boudicea,
however you wish, took exception to this.

One night I went to her, but not to kill. By then I had found that I
could control my hunger. My kind were numerous then, even the Romans
knew them, even the Egyptians, the Mongolians, the native Americans.
Others bred more than I had ever dared to. But Boudicca; I went to her
and I told her my tale. I told her I could help her.

And then she told me her tale. She had not always been Boudicca. Once,
she had been Dakita. Once, centuries, millennia ago, she had been
Dakita. She had been a girl, a girl accused of witchcraft for her hair.
Her blood red hair. The leaders of the tribe (I knew they were not
priests as we know them now) had told her of the vampires. They had
told her how the vampires had killed one of their number. Then they had
made a promise to her: they would give her the strength of the greatest
vampire, they would give her the magic (what magic?) of the greatest
vampire, they would give her the immortality of the greatest vampire.
But she must be a virgin, she was a virgin wasn't she? good, and she
must fight as they told her too. She hadn't believed they could make
her immortal, and she hadn't wanted to be a vampire's predator. She'd
gone to the first man she could find, and offered herself up. She had
died neither maid nor mother nor crone. But the spell, the blood, still
had had power over her. She was a victim of reincarnation. I say
victim, because like an immortal she can never leave this plain of
existence, but unlike an immortal she has to go through the confusion
of babies, the pangs of adolescents, the torture of the old. And when I
died, she would finally leave too.

Dakita told me she had tried, once, to destroy all of my kind. For the
first thousand years or so, she had fought bravely. She had died so
many times back then, unsure of her powers. But she had made a
considerable dent on our population, I admit. But we had spread so far
that there was no hope of her finishing her task. She said she was
content, living a thousand lives. She had been man and woman, black and
white, slave and master, saint and sinner. She took her life when her
rebellion failed.

Since then, we have spread even further. While Dakita could now reach
all of our kind, we are too numerous to destroy. We are not evil
creatures. At least, none of us begin any more evil than we were when
we lived. It is the killing that pushes many over the edge. To have
that kind of power, it is intoxicating, it is to be a god. So many
humans seem to fall into the same trap, but for our kind we have no
choice. Not at first, and when we do, it is too late. And then there is
the immortality. To watch ones family grow old and die, to see
children, grandchildren, great-grandchild, grow old and die is to
suffer a deep torment. This always affects the females the most. It is
the killing that does for the males. So many of us are evil, but it is
being a vampire that causes it, not becoming one.

It is a common misconception that we shun the cross or crucifix. I was
born over two million years before Christ, before the crucifix was even
invented. It can not touch me. But there is one thing that scares us,
if only because I say it is so. It is angels.

It is easy to question whether my angels, the one I speak so freely of,
are the same angels that dwell in heaven. Angels or their like seem to
be a common phenomenon the world over, no matter what religion the
viewer is. Perhaps my angel was merely a sentient bat.

But I think not. For the word he whispered to me, the word he whispered
at climax, the word he whispered in a time of no religion, was...

'god'