Keeper of the Dead Chapter Four

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Chapter Four

“Many, many years ago, when human beings were aware of the existence of vampires, they hunted in mass numbers. Large covens were the only way to survive. Yet the humans were phenomenal at killing them off. Quickly human kind learned to four ways to kill a vampire; exposure to the sun, exposure to fire, a stake through the heart, and decapitation. They were quick and efficient with destroy their most threatening predator. Very few survived that time. Within a generation or two the vampire passed once more into myth. Vilgal was once of a Nordic tribe when made immortal. He was on of the ‘lucky’ to remain intact through the period of extermination. His loneliness gave way to madness within a hundred years or so of seeing no one of his own kind. Finally, Vilgal found the cozy little village of Hannau, Germany that appealed to him. In Hannau he reside for several short but happy years in the guise of a mortal man. Vilgal obtained friends, lovers, and his sanity. Here he derived how to see through the endless years that lay before hi. Vilgal sold all his belongings and his estate to move to Berlin. Here he acquired great wealth from means I have no knowledge of. After fifty years of diligent work to this task he was possibly the richest man in Germany. Vilgal change his name to Fredrick to better fit the times and his newfound German heritage. Then the grand scheme went into action. He presented himself to be an old money aristocrat and set to courting the loveliest people he could find. Fredrick would take them to the opera and to lavish dinner parties. But within weeks he would simply lose interest and use them as his needed nourishment. For years this went on and Fredrick began to tire of his own game. That is until he met my brother. My brother was young and fresh-faced with a continuous rosy blush to his cheeks. Being in a family of moderate wealth, my brother had never worked a day in his life, nor did he intend to. I was the eldest of us and was expected to carry on the family business. But I held no ill will for my freewheeling sibling. He was my greatest companion and my one true friend. One day my brother caught the eye of Fredrick and thus began the courtship of the two. Fredrick tried to win my brother’s affections by purchasing finely tailored imported silk suits and everything else that my brother could desire. But we were too close. For months they spent ever evening on the town having fun. But my brother would never go home with Fredrick, instead he would always return to me. I knew of my brother’s love for Fredrick, but I also knew of his undying devotion to me. It was right at a year when Fredrick contrived of his greatest plot of all. If he could not find an immortal companion, he would create one. Of course, my brother became his immortal bridegroom and he vanished from my life without a word or a trace. At once I knew it was Fredrick but could do nothing, as I had no idea where they might have gone. But my brother was saddened without me. My brother’s tremendous despair touched Fredrick and reminded him of his days without a companion. My brother sent Fredrick on the journey for which he will never forgive himself. One night Fredrick knocked on my door. At the precise moment the bolt was free be darted through and on top of me on the floor he tore at my neck savagely and lapped at the blood that so readily came to the surface.
“You are dying now Marcus. So I will give you two options. The choices are, one – to die now alone and cold on the floor of your home, or two – to come with me and join your brother in eternity happily and wealthy beyond your imagination.”
He could se the twinkle in my eyes at the mention of a reuniting opportunity with my brother. My eyes closed as the blood splattered quietly onto my lips. IT startled me and I immediately spit it away. That is when he told me what to do and bent down over me. Fredrick bit his tongue; his lips closed over mine and I graciously ingested the searing hot liquid that burned down my throat. He had lifted me to my feet by the time he pulled away. But as he did so he spoke and the resonant quality of his voice struck me in a new way, almost as if it was the first time to hear at all.
“Welcome to the New World, Marcus. Forgive my inability to complete your transformation as planned but I forgot to feed before coming tonight. Come; allow me to begin teaching you what you can do now. We will certainly surprise him.”
I followed and watched as he fed from two victims just as viciously as he had fed from myself. Promptly after each on he repeated the process of taking my blood and then giving it back to me. We were several days’ travel from where Fredrick had left my brother for safekeeping. It was when I woke on the second evening to a full and bright moon that I fully realized what I had done. I had sold my soul to the devil and left my parents without child all to see my brother once more. There was a terrible pain in my midsection. Suddenly I realized that I had excreted all over where I was lying in my sleep. With revoltion, my body lunged from the hole that Fredrick had dug for me in the coming morning. There was a spring to my limbs I had never experienced, it seemed a previously untapped strength that snapped to life at my calling.
“What have I done?”
My voice sounded louder to me than ever before, everything was louder. But not just louder, it was almost deafening! Even my steps, which seemed to require no effort, were loud. My sight was impeccable! I could see well into the dense underbrush to examine the legs and iridescent wings of a feasting fly probably twenty yards away. But at what price? I had lost my humanity and my salvation.
“What have I done?”
At this second exclamation I saw Fredrick coming toward me. He frowned at the sight of my distraught behavior, as I turned in circles, uncaring of his arrival.
“You will get used to it my son. Come let us make our way to my other precious child and your brother in the blood, shall we?”
‘Brother in the blood,’ he and I had always been that. However, now it took on a strange new meaning that I feared. My throat was choked. I felt a hunger that I had never experienced as a mortal man. Fredrick explained this a he explained everything. The man never silenced. Anyone could tell that he was starved for attention. He took me back into Berlin.
We waited in a crevice between two structures that I didn’t recognize, but they were old. The mortar between the dirt-caked and wind smoothed bricks was cracking and filled with the larvae of various insects. A young whore walked by where we were crouched, counting her money as she headed back to the tavern to collect another client. Fredrick pushed me into the street behind her. I knew what he wanted me to do. I caught her by the arm and whirled her around where I could fully embrace the width of her small body. She looked up into my eyes, without fear, though she could somehow understand that I intended to put her to an end. Slowly she lulled herself into my thrusting position as I pinned her to the wall. Her eyes never pulled away from my own. She knew I was going to kill her; she wanted me to kill her. I could feel the heat as it began to throb between her legs, see the sweat beginning to bead like tiny pearls against her forehead as they glistened against the bright light of the moon.
“I simply cannot,” I looked away but continued to use my arms to keep her where she was. Fredrick approached angered. “You must! Your brother did not behave this way at all. If you do not take this woman I will!”
I feared him taking her like he did; he was so savage and uncaring. But I continued to hesitate. Exasperated, he reached for her arm and tore a large gash into the inside of her wrist. She pleaded with me silently to get him to leave. For some reason he frightened her and I didn’t, though I had no idea why. My grip loosened from her. Urgently she reached out for me. He, the monster, was killing her. Then I realized what she wanted me to do. I bent down to my knees and motioned for Fredrick to stop. Then I gently lifted her dress to find her beautifully bare beneath the folds of the dress. Carefully, I chose a vein just above her left hip and sunk my teeth into her flesh. I expected this to be difficult, so I bit hard and without realizing my new sharpness bit all the way through the vein and blood gushed in all directions. I sucked at the opening hard and fast. The intake was more intimate and fulfilling than any experience as a human being. I had her within my hold and she could not resist against me. The thin warn fluid went into me and ran through my limbs colder than anything I have ever known. But the cold was invigorating and soothing. Fredrick touched my shoulder. The woman was dead.
I laid her elegantly to the ground, but before leaving looked at the bite I had made. The cut was huge and dry, even bigger than the one Fredrick made on her wrist. My mind at first thought of a vicious dog attack. I covered it once more with her gown and glanced to her face.
“I shall not deface another so hideously, I promise.” The whisper was under my breath, but he still heard it. “What, will a lifeless corpse hold you accountable to a vow?” he laughed in a low rolling thunder, “come, we must be on the move.”
The next two nights I woke with the same choking thirst. Fredrick explained that feeling was the body telling you that you needed to feed. Our new bodies lived off of the blood. It used every drop and then required more to function. I believed what he said; he was the one of us that was used to being this immortal being. I made certain to catch my victims from behind, for one reason alone. Every morning when I laid down, I would see the young girl. I would see her eyes, her dress, the dirt under her fingernails, the outline of the money between her breast and dress. Every evening she became more vivid and I became more frightening in my dreams. But I did keep my promise. The wounds that I made were significantly smaller than the first night.
The next evening when I woke Fredrick was standing over me, “Tonight we should reach your new home and your other companion, come on, you need to feed.”
By this the third night, feeding was an easier task. I finally had some control over the strength in my limbs. Also I discovered how to feed without mutilating, by using these new teeth to merely pin prick and slice the top of the vein to avoid the blow out gush. Of course, Fredrick found this to be a foolish and futile waste of effort, but it was the only way I could rationalize what I was doing to them. Then we continued on and my excitement continued to escalate; finally I would receive the payoff for turning my back on my eternal salvation.
I could tell that we were in Italy for all the open space, which would by day become bustling marketplaces. When traveling he had by the waist and moving at speeds I simply could not fathom. The power within his limbs carried us far. Suddenly we halted with a tremendous jolt in a local graveyard. There were sparse, unorganized headstones and several large family crypts. The grounds here were well kept it was beautifully serene.
“Here we are, home sweet home.”
Fredrick seemed to be beaming with pride, proud to live as a homeless and penniless hermit in a cemetery, “You cannot be serious.”
He seemed offended by my disgust, “What did you expect, to live in a normal home? There are too many traps. A vampire will always exist among the dead.”
Until he said that word, I never thought about it once. ‘Vampire,’ I believed a week ago they were nothing more than myth, this week I had become one. But I didn’t have time to think that through because my brother came running from a nearby crypt with arms spread wide and squealing with delight. He embraced Fredrick and promptly came to me, showering kisses on my face. “You are even more beautiful than I imagined you would turn out.”
I was instantly appalled, “You wanted this to happen to me?”
He backed away, now I could examine him. His height and hair remained the same. However his eyes were no longer my brother’s eyes. They had been a brilliant sky blue and were now losing their bright luster and fading out. His movements were no longer fluid and graceful but clumsy. The sheer opaque quality of his skin was frightening; the blush of his cheeks had given way to a perfectly clear yet milky complexion. Then he smiled, exposing the tiny daggers of destruction and I concluded my brother was no longer the man of eighteen I knew him to be. His devotion to me was now complacent and without true emotion. Now he truly did belong to Fredrick.
“Ardeo, I am sorry. I’ve not yet adjusted to the change of becoming this – “I stopped, hesitated, so my brother Ardeo completed the thought in his version, “this supreme immortal being, this vampire.”
“Yes,” I bowed my head as I stepped forward to catch him in the most tragic embrace of my years. I had left all I had ever known for Ardeo. I had become a monster for Ardeo. He would never understand what I had given up to have him, only to find out that in doing so I would drive a stake into our relationship, only to discover that what I had sought to find would no longer be what I had grown up with. Now he was not what I had loved. As I grievously looked up Fredrick saw the defeat in my eyes and smiled victoriously.”

One evening I accidentally overheard Fredrick trying to convince Ardeo to leave me and to run with him. I was mortified. I had given up everything for him, I had forsaken my mortal soul to walk the earth endlessly an outcast and freak. Yet now he was being coerced away from me. That was the final straw. It was that night that I began conceptualizing a plan of my own, one that would do away with our vile creator. I began to piece together what the problem was. Unwittingly he made me, the older and less desirable of the brothers unmistakably stronger than my younger and more vibrant kin. This strength caused him to fear me, and rightfully so. For I overheard his insidious plot to steal my brother away from me.
In death, my brother was the only thing that I had to live for, the only thing I found solace in, and the only thing I loved. This plot caused me a fit of rage, such I have never seen in myself. My anger built up within my empty core as a raging inferno. So I decided to show this monster that threatened to destroy my kindred bond what I was truly capable of. Within a few nights I figured it all out. Our father always roamed alone at the moon’s first light and my brother would catch up with him about midnight. I would need to strike early. He taught us the ways we could die, indirectly he taught me how to kill him. This evil thing always said the most painful way for a vampire to die is to bleed to death. So that would the fate ordained him to suffer. There was nothing to wretched for him, he had destroyed my family and corroded the mind of my brother. Finally about a month later the time had come. I went searching for him immediately after I woke. He heard me coming, but expected nothing. I smiled politely and asked to hunt with him for the evening. Unsuspicious, he accepted. I followed closely at his heels watching and waiting for my golden opportunity. He was about to bite a young woman, the time had come. I stepped forward with a dagger and slit his throat before the young victim’s life force could cross his lips. He turned to me questioning the betrayal with his eyes and a gurgle of blood in his open and exposed throat.
“You will never take my brother away from me.”
I continued to slash at him, lengthwise along his arms and across the width of his chest. The blood poured from the cuts into growing pools on the ground. Screams escaped the lips of the would-be victim, as she remained staring in shock of the images appearing before her. I looked up to have our eyes meet and that was enough to send her over the edge. She ran and never looked back. My attention returned to Fredrick who had now fallen to his knees. I made a couple more slices across his chest. The amount of blood on the ground now was tremendous. The existing cuts no longer gushing but oozing.
In the distance I heard a heavy gasp. I looked up to see Ardeo with one hand covering his mouth and the other crossed over his midsection to clutch his side tightly. He slowly walked toward his immortal father, realizing that he was beyond saving now. Ardeo’s voice was low and small. “What have you done? Why?”
“This man wanted to take you away from me. I could never bear to have you robbed from my side.”
I saw his eyes well up with anger, “This man cared enough to bring you into this immortal world and make you-”
“A monster. I became a monster to be with you. And he wanted to steal you away.”
“You killed another vampire out of greed. You should have trusted me enough to know that I wouldn’t have ever left you. But you also should have had enough respect for me to know that I loved him as well as loving you.”
Then I realized what he was about to say. The pain of hearing it would be too much. “Please, Ardeo, understand…”
“Maybe Fredrick was right about you. You have become someone I don’t know. You are not the Marcus that I have always known and loved. Maybe we should part ways. Maybe you need to learn how to live alone.”
“Ardeo, listen to what you are saying.”
“No, you listen,” he was very upset, “you are now dead to me.”
With that his back was turned. He took several steps before speaking. He looked back, but only to the lifeless corpse now completely drained of blood.
“Someday I will avenge him Marcus. And you will pay, as I now must with the pains of solidarity. You will hurt as you have now forced me to.”

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