Ensanguined

Chapter 1

Tonight’s meal left Col in a trance. He struggled to remain conscious, but there was no fighting it. Soon there was nothing to fight. He floated in vermillion emptiness and waited anxiously for his sense of feeling to return.

It is part of a vampire’s existence to confront weakness. The sun burns the skin, holy words and items shrivel the soul; but unlike these well-known hindrances, the trances were supposed to be something a vampire could overcome. Col had learned to do this from his Master, the vampire who had changed him.

‘You have been born out of the light and into the shadows,’ the Master had once explained. ‘Your blood lies chill, your heart dormant. Your body no longer follows the will of nature- it follows your own. You will see, Coldrain, and in time you will become greater in death than anything in life.’

'The trances will decrease and then cease once your soul has recovered from the transition to unlife. Until then, you must be careful to feed only when you are absolutely safe'

 Yet, despite the Master’s promise and five decades of training, Col found himself in his present predicament. If he had been out skulking for prey, he would be a madman stained in blood, crouched over a senseless victim. A monster at the mercy of whoever passed by.

It seemed hours passed in red purgatory. Then, like smoke in a breeze, the trance dissipated. Col realized he was still atop his lovely prey.

Her jade eyes were clenched, her gentle chin trembled. Her body rocked with his movement. Sweat glistened on her alabaster flesh. Tiny crimson rivulets crept down her shoulder and into her sheets. He thought to lick them from her skin, but found that they had dried.

He had waited for this one. Many a long night he had stood patiently by her side, playing the boyfriend, fighting against his hunger. For reasons he did not care to acknowledge, Col had refrained from feeding from her, and instead had sated his hunger on the blood of silly, half-drunken women.

All the while, he had only allowed himself to taste the enchantment in Kandais's brilliant emerald-green eyes. They drew him like witchfires in the night. They held him captive.

Col put his cheek to hers; his lips were at her earlobe. He had only moments before she would awaken from the feeding rapture, so quickly concocted an explanation for the puckered bite- wounds upon her throat.

“You left your keys in the apartment,” he whispered softly. He spoke into the shadows of her mind. His words would cloud her memory by placing new images over the old. It took Col a moment to recall the fake human name that he was currently using; “It was too late to call a locksmith, so you went around to the alley to climb the fire escape. When Mark grabbed the ladder it slipped from his hand and crashed into your neck. Darned thing is always tricky. You went in, one thing led to another, and then he left, promising to call soon.”

“MMMM..?” she replied. He left a kiss on her throat.

He stepped over the army of stuffed animals on the floor beside the bed and approached the radiator beneath her bedroom window.

Kandais collected various small figurines and had them displayed on every free inch of her apartment. Col found those sitting atop the radiator to be most interesting, for the others littered about the apartment were simple and crude moldings of men and women. He paused and smirked at the dragons and many-headed hydras and other strange beasts lying there beneath the window.

He picked up one of the smaller dragons. Its back and wings were colored a near-black shade of green, its position suggested that it was about to breathe a cloud of flames. He thought of pocketing it, but decided not to. Then he dressed, opened a window, and let himself out.

After dismounting the innocent fire escape ladder, he made sure to bend it slightly so that it would lower with an unexpected lurch. That way, if she had any doubts about his story, 'Mark' his current human persona would have a way to prove that what she recalled was true.

This alley beside Kandais's building was as dark as anything got in the East-End. The few florescent boxes, bolted high up on the red brick, had either been burned out or smashed some time ago. The only light filtered in from unseen street lamps on either end of the passage. Two large metal dumpsters sat against the far wall, packed full of fat trash bags. Forgotten bits of advertisement, yellowed and fissured with age, stared sullenly down from the red-brick.

In the alley gathered a small group of men who Col figured to be no older than twenty, and from their smell, had been smoking something that definitely was not legal. They took turns eyeing him and nudging one another.

Col checked his clothes: black cargo pants, dark blue shirt that screamed “Metallica” across the front and displayed the cities visited on the bands 1998 tour in white embossed letters on the back. Over his shoulders was a black leather trenchcoat. His hair was once carefully combed, but now clung tiredly to his scalp.

The teens showed broad smiles. Their eyes narrowed mischievously. One of them carelessly tossed a glass funnel into the piles of trash. They organized into a sloppy line and started toward Col.

“Hey, dug, you ever tried to drink from your own faucet?” said one from the middle, who looked to be more than a foot taller than Col’s six-foot stature. His voice expanded from his chest in a baritone sound of ships in a fog. “Cuz we can get you all stretched you out, y’know, limber and s**t. You’ll be down on that baby faster than a muh-fuckah.”

A few snickers rose from the crew. They were still advancing, and had now adopted a sly rhythm to their step. There was an odd glimmer in their eyes, like the silver-blue of a cat's gaze in the dark.

“Rokkit,” he said then cursed under his breath. Something about that d**g made him very uncomfortable. Even being around users made his skin crawl. He knew what it was- all but what it felt like. He knew the odd shine in their eyes was sign of their partaking and wanted nothing to do with it. The young men continued their slow, purposeful advance.

Col glanced down. He spread the fingers of his left hand apart, swept it over his shadow, then closed his eyes. “That s**t’ll kill you, kid.”

“What, you mean the rokkit?” said the leader. Col and his shadow had seamlessly switched roles by the time the young man finished his question. The man continued speaking, but since it is hard concentrate on remaining in shadow-form and listen at the same time, Col wasn’t paying any attention. Col snuck out of the alley, following the line of shadows along the brick.

A copy of him remained. It possessed an identical likeness to him, but could not move or react at all. It stood in his place as the young men approached. When the first of them reached out to touch it, the shadow-copy vanished.

Col slunk down a line of shadow to where his motorcycle bathed and sparkled in an oblique pane of streetlight. He double-checked the brooch that fastened his coat across his shoulders then threw a leg over the bike. He looked up to a black expanse of sky and frowned at the thin haze of blue on the horizon.

“Time to check in with the Master,” he murmured. He patted the deep purple of the bike, grinned at himself in its mirror, then sped off.

---

The intense effect of Rokkit blunts most emotions; So when Col’s shadow-copy vanished at a touch, the young teens were hardly surprised. They were somewhat disappointed by this turn of events and said so in soft curses.

A dark velvety voice spoke from behind them. The teens turned to face an old man, frail body tucked into a heavy black robe. The smiles returned to their faces. They didn’t remain long. The loud roar of a motorcycle drowned their short, gurgling screams. By the time Col’s ‘cycle was out of earshot, the teens were no longer able to make any sounds.

The robed one checked the sky and decided he had time for a little more fun. His bone-knife rose and fell over the weeping flesh until there was little left to discern one feature or one body from another. His smile revealed crimson fangs. He slunk into a shadow and disappeared