Survival

Did you miss me? I know you did. I can see it in your eyes. I assume that I need no introduction, and that you have all waited with bated breath for the continuation of my tale.


Where was I..ah yes, I tasted something wet upon my mouth. It was, at once, sweet and tangy and I felt something come over me as I reached violently for the fount of this liquid ecstasy. Latching onto my sisters hand, I drank of her deeply. It was like life itself I was drinking. I felt my body changing, strengthening, and feeling every emotion and torture that Karissa had been put through. Never before had I felt as close to her. My only thought was a prayer that it would never stop. But stop it did. Karissa violently pushed me away. I lay on that rough ground, my sisters eye's upon me and I became…. no word was available to my ninth century mind to describe the exact nature of my new found disposition. I was the same but changed. I had never felt so strong. I could count every creature in that cell just by taking a breath. I ran my tongue across my lips, feeling the sharp fangs that had grown from my teeth. I was broken from my reverie by Karissa grabbing my hand and rushing me from the room. We made our way through the the master's house and out into the city, beyond the gates of our prison.

It was in these dirty streets that I learned of my true nature, and felt the thirst that rule my existence for the first time. I followed my sister through the streets of Rome, silently watching the reactions of the people around me. Pulling my hood closer around my face, I did not walk long before she led me down an alley telling me to wait. She returned in a moment, her arm around a very tall Roman. I remember murmuring some nonsense at the time as to why she had brought him here. She lifted him like a doll in her one hand while he beat and kicked upon her chest. I heard her laughing softly, then saw her sink those evil teeth into his neck. The man went limp as she pushed him in my face. I was repelled by her, but the scent of blood filled my nostrils, my body vibrating to the rhythm of that incessant beat. When he was completely drained, Karissa unceremoniously dropped his corpse onto the ground. She embraced me as the heat of blood warmed our cold flesh. Taking me by the shoulders, she started spouting plans of escape when suddenly he walked into the alley, his cold eyes upon us. Grabbing me by my tunic, and giving my sister a heated look, he hauled us back through the streets to his home.

I find it hard to speak his name even now, some fifteen hundred years since his ashes have been scattered to the wind, the one who brought this curse upon us. Even the thought of him brings his ghost, and that strange atmosphere of so long ago, to my eyes. I lived in dual states -- burning thirst and ecstasy. He kept me in a coffin for long periods of time. I remember breaking the nails from my fingers, scratching at the lid, and how the pain of hunger clawed at my insides. When I thought I would go insane, my lid would open, and soft flesh would be pushed into my mouth, filling it with sweet human blood. Perhaps the thirst saved me from this dark time. I was never allowed to become strong or to be completely full. But I did see my sister occasionally, when he was feeling giving and would allow my presence for a period of time. As evil as he was, he did love my sister. And the affect of his love was madness. When I was with her, she was lucid at some moments, but the majority of the time she would murmur insensibly, her eyes lost and tragic. We used those moments when my sisters eyes were clear to plan our escape from his hold.