Vampires itw - Chapter 1

Chapter 1.

         

A vampire, a soul. The two can never be one. They lie in complete opposition to one another, always in turmoil, conflict. They collide, the dance ghastly, leaving carnage in it’s wake. Carnage so apocalyptic, they leave the bearer of both traits weary at first, but the post events usually end in a being completely wasted and broken.

Thus was the inner torment of one being: Lazamar. He stood in the open window, with a glass of his favorite wine, (a tinge of blood from his lips from last night’s…. kill? No. sacrifice.) He stood there, looking down at the populace of the busy city. Manhattan was his home, living high atop at the highrise on 5th avenue. Near the grand hyatt.

He remembers last night’s sacrifice, how the man and lady had invited him into their room, at the grand hyatt for dinner, after having concluded some business with them. Being one of the eternal vampires of the older ages, he was a businessman, and a very smart one at that. He looked like a man of middle age, with a chiseled face, and a cut body. All the vampires were extremely good businessmen, having the ability to look into one’s soul,  spotting the lies of their own greed and corruption. This, of course, made all the vampires extremely rich, and literally impervious to any sort of fraud that any human could incur; and they were smart people. Leading incredibly rich lives, nobody could touch them. A hundred dollar bill to a police officer here, a favor of stature there. They kept Lazamar’s little hobby quiet, although he was warned to keep his hobby from getting out of hand. Sure, there were the regular amounts of homicides reported, but some of the police officers took care of it. Lazamar made sure they did. Some were murders, some got cleaned up as lunatic suicide pacts by some crazed cult.

Lazamar hardly ever did kill though. Sometimes he would leave his victim lost and bleeding, because of the mercy of the soul that seeped back into him. It was a sad event for a vampire, to not complete the sacrifice. To not do so would mean he has committed a very serious crime, to not have completed his sacrifice. This was, however,  something most of the elders understood about Lazamar. Once a vampire is transformed, on his birth, and if the soul is not extracted and destroyed, it stays to haunt the bearer for the rest of eternity. The host vampire, although new to his new enhanced body, cannot immediately understand the evil  that enters him, and the battle over the soul begins.

Some vampires lose, some win this battle. Lazamar lost this battle. Each vampire has to give himself freely, hence his complete surrender of the soul. His soul remained, and torments him even to this day. The sacrifices he makes are to make sure the soul stays contained. Albeit an effort so extreme to initiate the sacrifice, the soul seeps back into a corner, granting the host vampire a little peace. All the elder vampires thought he had  a very strong inclination toward good, thus a  very strong soul to begin with. Thus his defeat when he transformed. 

Most of the vampires transformed are select people. They are invited to give themselves freely, at rituals that would boggle the mind of any theologian or cultist watching, ensuring eternal life. Sure, there were many transformations that took place every few years (a casual four to be exact. On the leap year. The leap year signified the ancient tradition of the time period that would allow people to hunt freely, where the world in itself would belong to the underworld. But only for a day every four years and there were many.

Lazamar too was invited to freely embrace the eternal life of the immortals. But, in some cases, at the surge of the evil through most of the hosts, they fight back. He was well aware of the evil spirits surging through his mind, body, soul and spirit, but he resisted. The impeccable horror that embraced him was just too incredible for such a man to bear, and through soul, he fought and having lost the battle to fully transform, his soul stayed.

He took one last look at the streets below him, and decided to go take a shower. His clothes, even though he his very efficient in his kills, (he did not enjoy them because you could call this damnation, for he had to kill. Just business, he used to keep reminding himself) were covered in traces of blood. Overcoats come in handy in new York for a few more reasons that just one, he  had thought to himself earlier in the night.

Lazamar threw his coat on the bed in his apartment, and went to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror. Getting old are we?  He splashed some water on his face, and he reflected on what happened earlier tonight.

The people were of middle-age, and were extremely rich and powerful people. He had to sign a business deal, and although it was difficult for the police to cover up such high profile “accidents” (tonight’s sacrifice was an “accident”) the police adequately covered the murders as an accident, reporting to the press that the couple, in their drunkenness had left a cigarette which had lit a curtain or perhaps the carpet at the hotel.  The fire had consumed all evidence of anything that could be otherwise be called a murder, all save the teeth and the few remnants of the charred bodies of the victims.



Lazamar had went up to their hotel room after being invited for dinner as an act of a coincidencial meeting. At least the people he was meeting thought so. He was following them through the streets of new York, and met up with them right outside their hotel. They were old clients of lazamar, and the business he ran was something that Lazamar wanted to remain discrete. This discretion that allowed him to safely deal in pharmaceuticals, and although not illegal, there were people that showed up with the oddest of requests.  Sure, they used to bring requests for the ingredients of such:  cocaine for instance.  And some clients required “dealing” with. Hence these chance meetings and of course, his useful application of his tracking sense. He could smell his target from a mile away,  so to speak. Lazamar, along with just about any other vampire, were able to track people down at the drop of a hat. Somehow, they could sense, read thoughts, and even better, subliminally suggest messages into a persons mind. Thus their victim’s lack of ability to fight off their attacker. The vampire victim would go into a trance like state, mesmorized by the beauty that stood before them (the vampires were incredibly beautiful beings. Eyes and a face of depth, and bodies reminiscent of the statues  carved by michaelangelo.)

Tonights clients had an odd request: they wanted a recipe to make aspirin. This request could very well be a valid one, with the clients so innocent even cows would be shamed.

I don’t really care how you plan on paying the man,” the businessman had said. The female companion of the business man took out her checkbook, and gave lazamar a look. Lazamar returned that look. His memories were racing, and had second thoughts about tonights sacrifice. No, he had thought to himself. She is not the same being. He stopped and looked at her again. He was scrutinizing her, trying to make sense of her face. But good sense validated the fact that she was long dead. A being, a shadow, of the past. Another memory that would hurt, and tonight’s kill would hurt him too. Merciful tonight, he thought. 

“You sure you’re not trying to rip us off?” she smiled. Not too much of a joke, but lazamar laughed anyway. That was when, after his little laugh, he struck out at the businessman, taking him down to the floor. The female just watched, and as she was about to scream, lazamar struck again. His client was  on the floor, and the female was being seduced by his whisper into her ear. She passed out onto the hardwood floor of the hotel room, and went into a sleep that would be her last.

Lazamar walked over to his laptop, and sat down. His next appointment, according to his pda attached with the USB interface to the laptop, was not for another few days. He was meeting a prospecting client from hong kong, possibly to market a new pharmaceautical drug in the United states. Somebody who is not to be a sacrifice, he told himself. He sighed. Sometimes the thoughts every vampire gets would get to him. These thoughts, evil in their nature, were suggestions by the evil spirits to hurt more, to be more violent in the “cullings” of so many people. Lazamar used to admire the fact that he would be on the safe side. He sacrificed whom he thought were evil people. His soul, his mind, would fight against the evil that rose through his soul. The force that rose was directly proportional to how thirsty he was.

Lazamar walked over to the shower and started to undress. He was tired and still felt “dirty” like he always did after every episode of sacrifice. And would always rush home to take a shower. But tonight he waited a little. The female that was with the companion rang a very hurtful bell in him. She looked like somebody who he had not seen for a few hundred years. The years went by, but she was somebody who would haunt his dreams, and his waking nightmares for some time to come. Undressed, he  stood under the shower. The water cleansed him of the droplets of blood, that were the mark of just about anybody’s blood he had. Sort of an anointing in blood, after every sacrifice, by the victims themselves, as a “rights of passage.” He thought of that woman there, and how she was the being that was very familiar, yet vague, in his memory.

After the incident, lazamar had set the apartment on fire, after making sure both the business persons were dead. He walked out of the apartment, having put his coat back on after the kill. He moved down the hallway of the hotel, with the smoke starting to rise from underneath the door and into the hallway behind him. The alarms went off when he well on his way outside the hyatt. A police person, one of lazamar’s inside “guys” were informed of this incident. They covered up the fire as an accident.

Having exited the shower, lazamar, dressed, went out again. For a walk this time, his hunger oddly sated to an extreme degree tonight. He did not understand that. He blamed it on the fact that, even after a millinium of being a vampire, his hunger and how his body reacts to this hunger still surprised him. He thought nothing of it and walked on, down to central park.

The night, still young, with the scent of the same in the air, was a night he was trying to make more entertaining. After a little walk in central park, (and having seen no trouble at all in the night… a quiet night, he had thought then.) he moved toward one of the numerous movie theatres in manhattan, and settled to watch a decent movie. Sometimes he would go alone, sometimes with his vampire friends and companions. 



During the movie, his thoughts had lingered  back to the woman from his past. She was such a beautiful being, with her smile so incredibly brilliant. The two had met once, he remembered, and their meeting was that of fate, and by some other perspective, by chance. What had happened, before, was something that he never understood.  He had still remembered her face, with crystal clarity.  He smiled at the thought of this being, and it hardly seemed possible that anybody laying their eyes on her would ever forget that face.  He remembered her with mixed feelings. She had showed up in his life, a few months prior to his life being thrown into complete madness because of his vampire transformation. He had always thought of her being God-sent to help him from being turned into a vampire. If only he had met her as he had promised her where he was supposed to have. Fated to meet, or by chance. To this day he was still trying to figure that out.

After the movie had ended, lazamar walked back to the apartment. As he walked, he caught a scent in the air. His heightened vampire senses were always on alert. For some reason, he also sensed danger, and moved into a dark alleyway. He waited until the sense of danger alleviated. He continued walking home. The scent was that of blood. That blood was spilt tonight, and happened to be on the clothes on someone. Another vampire, possibly. he went straight home, and looking up to the sky, he saw it was almost dawn.

****. Chapter two, somewhere. Spread vampires over a few pages.



Most vampires burn in the heat of the sun, and as it so happens, so did lazamar. The incredible heat would dehydrate lazamar, and lots of hyperventilation would lead him to cough incessantly, and in turn, lead to blackouts and finally, whatever came beyond, unless he found or was taken to shelter from the sunlight. These symptoms were that of the blood boiling within him, and resembled that of cardiac arrest. All these vampires were bound with the same curse, of roaming the night and night alone, and of course the sun, never having seen the sun again. Borne to darkness, as they say about vampires.  Along with their heightened senses, he also had the power to heal incredibly fast. Their faces were kept beautiful because of the evil spirits. These evil spirits had “blessed” Lazamar with incredible prowess, five hightented senses along with a intuition for danger.

Tonight was such that his intuition of danger helped lazamar. The scent told him of another vampire nearby. Whenever that happened, he figured that he was obviously going to get in trouble with his inside people at the police force for being to “extravagant” tonight. He silently cursed the vampire and walked on home.

After a few steps out of the alleyway, lazamar was struck in the head. Somebody was already in the alleyway with him, and somebody had planted the bloodied clothes somewhere ahead, or possibly in the trash at the end of the alleyway.  The person who had attacked him obviously knew a thing or two about vampires. Lazamar tried reacting to the blow to his head and turned around, as he fell to the floor, and all he could do was get a good look at the legs and feet of the person that attacked him. Black leather and boots. Lazamar, was blacking out and blacking out fast, and his thoughts raced. Another vampire. There was nothing but dark a few seconds later.