Blink of an eye

Memories

Damien

Spending the night at Catherine's had been great. Her body felt like it was made to be mine. She relaxed in my arms and curled closer to me at some point of the night. Holding her made me peaceful. Only one person had ever made me feel like that, my beautiful wife Dinah. She had been the light of my life and the reason for my existence. We had known each other since we were children and our parents thought that we would make a great match. We were so fortunate to actually love each other instead of marrying someone we didn't even know. Our life together had been blessed but there was one thing I know we both missed - children. I had dreamed about having a son who would have carried my family line forward. Nothing wrong with daughters either, it was just a common thing back then. Unfortunately we were never blessed with a child, no matter how hard we prayed. Maybe it had something to do with her illness which eventually ended up causing her death.

My life went downhill after losing Dinah. I wallowed in sorrow and was ready to die as well. It was a small miracle that I lived as long as I did before I met the one who changed the course of my life forever. Suicide wasn't exactly approved in the community I used to live in. I had been drinking a lot of alcohol and ended up fighting often. One night I challenged someone I thought would be strong enough to kill me. Constant drinking had made me weak and I was sure I could finally join my beloved wife. The fight was short but brutal. I got several broken bones and internal damage and was left to die in a gutter. The smell of my blood must have lured Chayim to me and he drank my blood enthusiastically. For some reason he never killed me. Maybe he thought that I'd die anyway or maybe he pitied the broken man I was.

Shifting was painful, the pain was something I had never experienced in my life. I managed to crawl in the forest and eventually I found a small cave. I stayed there for a few days until the agony of my shift ended and the thirst of blood awakened. Feeling the thirst for the first time was something unexpected. I tried to resist but the pain turned out to be unbearable, it burned my veins and made my brain foggy. My instincts were better than earlier and I was much stronger. Without knowing what actually had happened to me I killed three men I faced in the forest. Their end was fast. My mind got clearer after getting some blood into my system and I finally realized what had happened. I cried in pain and lost my mind, I had never killed a man before. I threw myself off a cliff to end my life because my soul was lost already. At that point I didn't know what I had turned into so my attempt was obviously pointless. I ended up at the bottom without a scratch. Chayim must have followed me during those days because he finally came to me and introduced himself. He explained what he was and what I had turned into. First I couldn't believe him. Vampires, blood sucking demons, were just tales for the weak minds. They didn't exist... Then my thirst returned and I had to admit that he might have told me the truth anyway.

Chayim stayed with me for a while. He told me about our kin and the more he explained the more I started to hate him. He had stolen my humanity and condemned me to eternal grief. I'd mourn forever because of him. His name, Chayim, was just a cruel joke. It meant 'life' or 'living' but he was nothing but death itself. He taught me everything I needed to know to survive but there was only one thing I was interested in knowing - how I could kill myself. I could still hear his hollow laughter in my mind after I had asked about it. With that he just vanished leaving me alone. I couldn't get revenge on Chayim so I killed the next best thing I could find, the one who had managed to hurt me enough making me an easy target for him.

I stayed a few years near the place I once called a home. Finally I realized that staying close to home only made me suffer more. I ended up wandering across the country until I found a place big enough to keep me fed without problems. Time went by and I spent a few hundred years around the same province. I ate whenever I faced people alone and made sure that I shifted no one. I couldn't think about making anyone live like I did. Slowly my grief started to lessen and I became more interested in the world again. It never faded away completely but I was able to concentrate on other things. During the 17th century I had enough of my old life and decided to sail to the new world, New England. That was how I ended up in America.

Living on another continent made my life easier and I finally found things I enjoyed. Life wasn't that bad anymore. I met others like me and realized that not all of us were that bad. I was able to create a career and make some money. Our community adjusted slowly and moved to feed on animals which made me feel better. Everything rolled on smoothly and I didn't feel lonely at any point. Founding company was never a problem. Now I realized that I had been missing something and that something was Catherine.

I could have stayed there forever unless my phone didn't vibrate as a signal of a message. It was Dimitri telling me that Stefano had been seen a couple hundred miles away from here. We couldn't let the opportunity slip away from us so I had made sure that Catherine was still asleep, wrote her a note and left.