Fiction / Fantasy
When some see a Vampire, they see glamour and power. When others see one, they see only a monster. For either, there is usually only death. An exquisite craving for the blood of mortals and the mesmeric presence of a top predator makes them both feared and desired.
Once there were no Vampires. Now they exist, to prey upon the living with powers and immortality undreamed of. But who knows the tragedy in their pasts – or their existence?
This short companion book to the Chaoswar Trilogy, set in the world of The Serpent Calls and Notes on Dragons, is the story of their genesis. Their macabre fate. Their tragedy.
The story of the First.
For perhaps a week she lay there, unmoving, seemingly dead, but betrayed by the fact that she did not decay. No living thing came close. They could feel the horror of what had happened there. The bushes and trees were scarred and twisted, and the ground was ruined in a stripe running more than a hundred feet.
Eventually she began to revive. When she awoke it was with little memory and no coherent thought. A breath gasped, feeling oddly forced. She lay, pale and naked and somehow unmarked in the charred and shredded remains of clothes seared by the energies that had warred within her.
It was nearing sunset, and she blinked. Rising shakily to stand, she moved into a shard of fading sunlight which sent her screaming in agony to the nearest shadows, the flesh on her arm and belly smoking even from the brief contact. There she paused, caressing her wounds and whimpering. Something in her had altered, could no longer endure the sun’s rays. The light was a new enemy, but that was all her animal mind could comprehend for now. She was not even aware of how quickly she had moved.
There were only two drives foremost within her at this moment: to hide from the sunlight which had nearly consumed her, and to heal and feed. She felt terribly weak, and a hunger deeper than any she had ever known clawed at her guts, a need for fresh sustenance that the ruins of her supplies would not provide…
…finally she happened across a herd of deer and stopped, sensing their life, feeling a dreadful and unknown craving. As they stood watching her curiously, trusting and unafraid, she fell upon one before the fleet creatures could react, driven by an urge no Elf had ever felt, tearing its throat out with teeth no Elf had ever possessed and with an awful strength that should have been far beyond her mortal frame. The deer had no cause to fear Elves; they had never seen men or hunters, and lived with Elves for thousands of years without harm. They scattered, snorting screeches in alarm.
Never before had an Elf killed one of them, consumed its flesh…