Absolution Read online

  The scorching pain of my venom as it hit her bloodstream was clear in her eyes. As were the useless pleas in them for the poison to stop setting fire to her insides. And then, as I began to drink, drag the sweet, warm blood into my mouth and down my burning throat, losing myself to the instinct of feeding, the corner of my eyes noticed how her mouth parted slightly, as though gasping in pleasure. Her eyes rolled back into their sockets before she closed them, content.

  The expression on her face was one of… something close to ecstasy.

  When others of my kind told me that humans enjoyed being fed on, I never believed it. But it seemed they weren’t exaggerating. I myself had not been fed on. I’d only been bitten. Once. Enough to inject the right dose of venom into my system to create a vampire. More than enough to wish I had never been born.

  Enduring that kind of burning for three whole days… I still shudder at the thought. The pain was just too much. So much that I knew I never wanted to do that to another human being.

  Never would I create a vampire.

  “What do you have against Ellie?” Selma’s question pulled me away from where my thoughts were heading. “What has she ever done to you? Who are you?”

  “Who am I?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Still can’t say the word, huh?” I chuckled.

  “No, I can,” the girl challenged. “You’re a monster, a demon. A - a - a vampire.”

  “Correct.”

  “But who are you?” she pressed, wanting to know my personal identity. “Why is Ellie your enemy?”

  “If I told you that, Selma, I’d have to kill you.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “That’s right. I am, aren’t I?” I laughed a little. Her last minute strength and curiosity was refreshingly different to her annoying pleas and cries. I decided to tell her the story.

  From the beginning.

  “My name is Christian Dorset. I was born in London. I was a simple young man, nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, some said perhaps I was too ordinary for I barely stood out from the crowd. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know I was doing it - if I was actually doing anything - but I seemed to blend into the background so easily. People never seemed to notice me turn up or leave, notice my presence at all. My father used to joke that I would make a great spy.

  “The joke became reality very suddenly, when I turned 20.

  “The year was 1911, the month February, when I was approached by an official-looking man who had supposedly heard about my uncanny abilities of going unnoticed for extended lengths of time. Before I could query whether he was playing a trick on me, I found myself privy to some of the most intriguing intelligence I could imagine. ‘You know too much now,’ the mysterious man said ominously, ‘so if you refuse to join us, it will be the last thing you do.’

  “Meaning, join them or die. I decided to join them.

  “When I learned the true identity of this group, that they were in fact a terrorist organisation, it was too late. And I was having far too much fun. Breaking and entering. Stealing top secret information. The odd assassination. Of a bad guy,” I emphasised when Selma’s eyes widened in horror. Clearly, she assumed I became a killer after I changed into a vampire. “I thought I was helping the government. Killing the bad guys. Enemies of the state. Turned out, I was the enemy of the state. Well, my employers were anyway.

  “I was one of them, and so I was a terrorist too.”

  “Did the terrorists make you what you are?” Selma asked curiously.

  I shook my head and she frowned. By then, she had stopped crying and was listening intently to my story. Obviously, she wasn’t enjoying it, disapproved of how fascinated she was by it.

  “It wasn’t just this underground terrorist organisation that had heard of my bizarre talent,” I continued thoughtfully. “News of my successes had reached the very organisation that my bosses wanted to bring down. I’d also made the mistake of voicing my desire to leave the group. If I’d just upped and left without telling them, I’m certain I would have very easily eluded them for the rest of my life. By then, my strange gift had started feeling… tangible to me. Something I could control and manipulate.

  “Perhaps because I had to consciously try to use it.

  “Fearing that I would walk out on them, get caught by the government and rat them out, my employers arranged for my assassination. As soon as I heard this, I ran. Running from two powerful organisations, I had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.”

  “So you went to the… vampires for help?” Selma enquired, gulping hard.

  I shook my head again. “It was the other way around. The vampires came to me. Well, it was just one. My creator.”

  Chapter 7: Angel

  The summer of 1911 was a hot one. An unforeseen heat-wave broke through and seemed to dry out the entire country, rinse it of life and colour. By then, I’d left London far behind. Never staying in one town or city too long. Perhaps I was being too paranoid? Maybe my pursuers gave up the search after I escaped their clutches in the capital, where both groups’ power was strongest?

  I don’t know, but I kept moving nonetheless.

  Had it only been February when my life had gone from mediocre to melodramatic? When I was unknowingly working for a group intent on bringing down the government, it seemed I’d been doing that my whole life. It had become my whole life. I couldn’t believe I turned my back on it before reaching the 6-month mark.

  “The memories I have of the day I was created is pretty much all… manufactured,” I explained to Selma. Sitting more conventionally on the floor before me, cross-legged, our knees were just an inch apart. Like two friends sharing a story before bedtime.

  Or mealtime, as in our case.

  “You see, our human memories do not come so easily after we change. It’s as though we didn’t really experience that life. It’s all very blurry. Years later, and if we really concentrate, we can sketch it out in our heads, like I did, but most of us shrug and get on with the new existence.

  “You know when you watch a less-than-average film and forget most of it soon after? Then a friend talks about a scene that you just can’t recall, but you can picture it in your mind because you know who starred in the movie, the setting… That’s how my last day as a human will always be to me. A story told to me, which I now believe to be my own memory.”

  “The storyteller is also the creator,” Selma guessed correctly.

  I nodded, stifling a laugh; the girl couldn’t verbally refer to the process - my transformation from human to vampire. After everything she’d been through, she still feared what was in the past.

  “It happened on a Sunday, in the city of Liverpool. The day became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ because of the bloodshed during a demonstration-”

  “I remember that,” the girl interrupted, eyes eager. “Well, from history lessons,” she continued in a murmur. “The police apparently just started attacking the crowds of people who were demonstrating to show support for the transport strikes.”

  “I didn’t see any of this, or so I’m told. I was hiding away in someone’s cellar, afraid of drawing attention to myself. The house above me was empty that day. The cellar was dark, damp and filled with hot musty air. I do remember thinking that I could suddenly smell roses. I thought I was going crazy. And I swear the room’s temperature dropped ever so slightly.”

  When the girl became perplexed by my last two sentences, I held my wrist to her nose. Instinctively, she sniffed. Then she gasped. Before she could say anything, I twisted my hand and touched my palm to her cheek. She recoiled immediately. Up until that moment, I’d refrained from touching her with my bare skin, always wearing gloves, and maintained a good distance between us, so she didn’t know I was ice-cold and didn’t smell human.

  “You don’t smell like roses,” she murmured distractedly, rubbing her cheek.

  “No, we all have a different scent.”

  My creator smells of roses with a hint of peach. The human senses I
possessed back then weren’t unparalleled as they are now, so I didn’t detect the fruitiness to her natural fragrance. I didn’t hear her enter the cellar, but she lit it up when she did.

  When I saw her, my breath caught.

  Her beauty, I remember. That first sight of her, I don’t think I will ever forget. Luscious white waves floated like cotton-candy around her pale-skinned face. Mesmerising, her hair seemed to have a life of its own, like rolling clouds beside her chalky cheeks, swirling and whirling around a moon on an overcast night. Though her face was youthful and flawless in its features, it was hiding secrets I could only speculate on, and I’d learned many secrets in my short career in espionage.

  Tiny in terms of height and weight, her limbs were thin and elegant, her flowing white dress almost too big for her. But she exuded such an aura that I felt small and meaningless in comparison.

  I thought I was in the presence of an angel.

  It took me a while before I could put my finger on what was wrong with her. Well, maybe not wrong - because how can anything so beautiful be wrong? - but there was something that didn’t fit the angel theory. I had to scrutinise every inch of her face before I made my mind up.

  The eyes.

  This amazing creature’s eyes were the wrong colour.

  Everything about her was white - her hair, her skin, her clothes - but the eyes were the strangest shade of deep crimson I’d ever seen in my life. It was as though someone had injected blood beneath her irises, and far too much because it seemed to be overflowing as she watched my own eyes bulge in surprise.

  As I gulped in shock, she said, “Thirsty?” Her voice twinkled in the darkness, calming me momentarily. “So am I. Here,” she said, handing me a metallic pitcher with ice-cold water, “drink this or else your blood will be too thick. I hate it when it’s that consistency.”

  I was seriously dehydrated. The heat was scorching and the only time I could eat or drink anything was when the small family who lived in the house above went to sleep and I could sneak into their kitchen. I’d already downed all the water I brought the night before and my throat was burning.

  Not like it burns now, obviously.

  Unable to help myself, I gulped down the whole jug and didn’t mind it when some of it trickled down my throat. It cooled me down instantly. I gave no thought to her blood references.

  “Who are you?” I asked as I handed back the empty pitcher. She already seemed to be a hallucination. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever seen. So beautiful…

  “My name is Lydia,” she told me. “I have come to take you with me.”

  “Where?” There was no question of not going with her. I didn’t care whether she worked for my ex-employer or the government or some other ruthless organisation. I would go to hell with her if she took me.

  Turns out, she did.

  Her answer to my question though, was, “Eternity.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sorry, my love,” she said with a smile, “no time to explain now. We must leave at once, while the family from upstairs are still out demonstrating. Come.”

  Like a dream, our departure from the cellar was instant. One moment, she was reaching for my hand with hers, and the next, we were jogging down a lonely street lined with dirty-looking houses.

  At the time, I must have given myself over to the belief that I was dreaming or hallucinating. There was no way I could have known that she had picked me up in her arms and ran out of that house, that street, so fast that I didn’t even know we’d even moved.

  Memories of the transformation, and the moments just before the first bite, are the most vivid ones we have as immortals. No one had to tell this part of the story to me.

  “My creator took me to the bedroom of a house on the outskirts of the city,” I continued the story out loud for Selma. “I know nothing of how it looked, how big or small it was, whether there were others present. I only had eyes for her. Her pale white perfection filled my vision. Fascination with her bizarrely disturbing eyes consumed my mind. We stared at each other a long moment, me practically shaking from anticipation of what was going to come next.

  “We were in a bedroom. It was just the two of us. The door was shut - she’d been the one to lock it. If there were others nearby, there was no way they were getting in. Something would be happening between us, something special.

  “Finally, she began to come towards me. I think I stopped breathing. Stepping up close, she lifted her elegant hand and curved it around my neck. It was ice-cold but somehow I was already accustomed to her body temperature. She stood on her tip-toes, her beautiful face moving closer to mine, and I thought she was going to kiss me.

  “The last thought I had as a human was, ‘Please let this magnificent creature kiss me.’ But I didn’t get my wish.”

  Which turned out to be my dying wish.

  “She bit you instead,” Selma surmised, gulping.

  “She bit me instead,” I confirmed.

  Chapter 8: Abilities

  “It was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced. Vampire teeth are sharp! They’re hard as marble. Coated in venom. It sucked the breath out of me when Lydia’s teeth sank into my neck. I realised then, that I had never experienced true agony in my life.

  “I wanted to die. I wondered why I wasn’t dead from the searing heat that coursed through my body, paralysing me. The way I felt, I thought I was going to be burned from the inside out. It should have killed me. I wanted it to kill me. The burning was all there was. On fire, her icy hands on me didn’t cool me down.

  “And it got worse.

  “All she did was bite me, once, but that is all it takes. Enough of her venom infiltrated my body, soaring through my veins and incinerating everything along the way. When she let go of me and stepped back, I collapsed to the floor. Uselessly, I tried to get up but I couldn’t control my limbs.

  “Not that I was motionless.

  “I convulsed uncontrollably, my body jerking and flapping about in pain. Screaming without knowing I was doing it. Crying for the first time in my life. Begging for death to claim me for the flames lapping at my veins showed no signs of dying.

  “Lydia stayed with me during the three days it took for the venom to spread and change me completely, but she wasn’t there when the burning stopped. When I could actually concentrate on something other than how I was alight with flames, I realised I was alone in the room.

  “Then I thought I was going mad.

  “I heard voices, chatter, conversations and laughter, so vivid and so close to me that I became certain that whatever had happened to me had made me delusional. There was not a soul in the room but I could hear so many different people speaking. I could hear them walk and talk. Hear them cook, clean, eat, drink, and anything else they were doing. I heard so much!

  “And I could smell them. Smell everything. Particularly their blood. The scent of human blood was the most potent of all, the sweetest. The most appealing. It made my throat burn and I just knew that the burning would be extinguished only by drinking blood.

  “It was pure instinct.”

  “So, you realised you were a… vampire?” Selma asked wearily.

  “I had no idea what I was. Whether I was even sane anymore. As I shifted in the bed I’d been placed in, the door to the room opened. Lydia had heard the movement and was there in a flash.

  “I remember that moment as being the most beautiful of my entire existence. Lydia, standing in the doorway, a crooked smile on her face, was a sight to behold. I knew she was stunning, but appreciating her with my improved vision, my upgraded brain, I found her to be breathtaking.”

  “You fell in love,” the teenager said, a hint of a smile on her lips. Girls love their romance.

  “I definitely fell into something…” At that time, I was sure it was love of the strongest kind. The kind that lasted an eternity.

  Turns out, it wasn’t love. And it only lasted half a century.

  “I knew at that moment th
at I would follow her everywhere. Do anything for her. I was hers. And she knew it. Knew it before I even said it because she’d seen the future.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. As a human, she used to have very strange dreams,” I explained. “Premonition-like dreams. When she became a vampire, this gift of hers magnified, intensified, like all our human abilities do after we change.

  “At first, she had premonitions lasting no longer than a couple of seconds. Some were simply static images, like a photograph of a future event. But our gifts develop and strengthen over time - the only thing that grows after we become frozen in this unchanging state - so now the visions are longer. She can sort of hold on to them, stop them from fading away and see more of the future. Provided you’re a vampire, of course.”

  “Huh?”

  “For some unknown reason, there is a strange kink in her talent. She can’t see humans. If a vampire’s future is closely linked to a human’s, then she can’t see that vampire so clearly either, and definitely not events that involve the human.

  “The human muddies the water.

  “She can see vampires while they’re still human, meaning they will soon become one of us, but the vision is still of the future vampire. Not the current human.

  “What annoys her most however,” and I chuckled as I said this, “is the fact that most of her premonitions are still just as random as when she was human. They just come to her out of the blue. She can’t induce or trigger them, though she tries. It takes a lot out of her too, if she chooses to focus on one particular vampire’s future.”

  “She gets tired?”

  “No, we never tire. All that happens, much to her dismay, is that she’ll miss a few of her usual random visions. Focusing on a specific immortal’s every move, cancels out the premonitions about other events and future vampires. Since her job is to source potential new members of our world, she very rarely fixates on one individual.”