Tale of the Twins, Book One

Here is a free preview of Tale of the Twins, Book One: Gathering and Destruction:

I remember the day we decided to begin our plan like it was yesterday. It was cold in the cave, the kind of cold that chills the bone and freezes the blood. Luckily, my twin brother and I could not feel the icy air. We hardly needed to breathe, only needing the rich blood of humans to survive. We had been wandering aimlessly for quite some time, attacking whoever we came across, when we felt the need to. No one had retaliated, the prospect of facing two vampires deterring most.

The sun had begun to rise, so we took shelter. Leopold sat across from me, guns at his sides, his black clothes and blacker hair blending into the darkness of the cave, leaving the impression that only a floating face occupied the darkness. His blue eyes glowed in the opaque darkness, brighter than any time in our human years.

Our human years; three thousand years had passed since we could call ourselves mortal. But it seemed sometimes that no time had passed at all. I remember the day that set everything in motion as if it happened mere moments ago. We were six years old. I had just awakened at a friend’s house to find out that our parents were dead. Leopold had been at another friend’s house, giving our parents a night free from us. And what did they do? They got themselves killed. It had not been their fault; really, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That memory led me onto the years that followed. It seemed no one wanted to adopt us, even our own extended family made excuses. For four years we went from orphanage to orphanage until, finally, we were taken in. But fate has a way of turning a positive thing rotten, like a worm in a juicy red apple.

Our new parents berated us, not physically, but mentally and emotionally. They used our ages to get pity from other family members and to get money. They used us, when we became old enough to work, to get money. They took our wages and spent our hard-earned money on their booze and their expenses. We moved two months before our eighteenth birthday. I have learned that fate has a way of kicking you when you finally get back up.

The war started shortly after, and again, we were left homeless, this time because of fighting. We ran; that is all we could have done. We did not stand and fight; we would have been killed either way, and we did not want to die. We left the city, taking with us not much more than the clothes on our backs, our distinctive skills, and some money. Finally, fate smiled on us.

We had been travelling for months, exhausted from running and working with no permanent place to stay. One evening, bandits came upon us, threatening to kill us for what little we owned. We managed to fight them off for a while, but soon they overwhelmed us. Suddenly, a blur of motion began tearing through their ranks. I had been struck in the head; Leopold was run through with a sword. We knew nothing; we thought we would never know again.

We woke to find ourselves alive and significantly more powerful than before. Our naturally alabaster skin was paler; our naturally bright blue eyes, unnaturally brighter; and our untameable raven locks, manageable. We could see farther than ever before. We could smell the autumn air and noticed it was filled with death and decay. It dawned on us then what happened. We had become vampires.


The years passed swiftly. We busied ourselves with studying alchemy and magic. We learned how to use many different weapons, everything from the ancient bows and arrows to modern guns. Leopold developed a great weakness for these new weapons and began collecting every one he could find. We watched in awe as the world grew from one of farming and tilling to one of technology. Just as swiftly as it arose, it was destroyed by the third world war.

“Lysandra?” Leopold asked, curious.

I woke from my thoughts, staring into his vaguely worried expression.

“Sorry, Leopold. I was just thinking,” I replied softly, putting his mind at ease.

He nodded, knowing too well of my occasional ways of leaving the real world for one of memory and fantasy. He looked out of the cave and into the skies, barely visible from so far in the cave. A smile grew on his face and he laughed lightly.

“We’re really gonna do it, eh? We’re gonna get our family?” he asked, staring away from me.
I laughed.

“Yes. A family of darkness,” I told him, sensing that the sun was long dead.

The cave had been brighter when we first entered it. Now it was so dark, Leopold was reduced to a pair of blue eyes, hovering in front of me. He laughed again and stood. I followed suit and we left, two lone hunters on a new mission. A mission to gain the family we never had.

We left behind the oppression of travelling alone for all those years, travelling through the hell of the desert to a city. A city ravaged by the war with no hope left in its destroyed buildings and desperate inhabitants. Our dream was to bring peace, to bring hope, and to re-create the world after its final destruction in the nuclear war. We would start with this city, and move forward through the land. We knew not what the future would hold; all we knew was that we were tired of the desolation.
Far be it for us to know, our plans would not be so easily accomplished.