Beneath The Pale Unfeeling Moon

Beneath the pale unfeeling moon, the night claimed another life. He’d been a drunk, a ruffian from a local village on the borders of a bleak forest where dark superstition made its home. No one, not even in the comfort of a carriage, dared to enter those shadowed borders at night, but he’d been drinking hard and not a soul cared enough to stop him. He had stumbled from the path into the brush and continued on into the deep woods, cursing and mumbling as his eyes squinted to relocate the road that was far behind him now. He had not come alone, though he made far too much noise to hear the soft immortal footpads stepping lightly up behind him. Not until death’s icy fingers took his throat and death’s long teeth found a hold in his flesh.

Some vampires enjoyed good clean blood, but this fledging relished the swoon brought on by the drought of an addict. Alcohol didn’t work on him anymore, not when taken straight from the bottle. When strained through a mortal filter, however, the fledgling could just barely remember what it had been like to defile himself with the Devil’s beverage of choice. He drank deeply and throttled his prey, wringing the drunk out like a wash rag. When there was no more, the vampire peeled back the flesh and the meat and lapped at the remainder to be found. He hadn’t learned his mistress’s refined nature yet. He was new to his fangs and more than eager to use them.

“Pity,” he mourned when he saw there was nothing left. The fledgling dropped the corpse and bloodied the back of his pale pink hands by wiping at the stains on his cheeks and chin. He still had a bit of a fleshly pallor about him, one that would deepen as his victim’s blood seeped in beyond his belly, or whatever organ performed the stomach’s function now. He stood and stretched, threw back his head and sighed into the chilling air, laughing at how his breath left no mist on the wind and spread his arms lovingly to the moon. He was a lord of the night.

A nearby crack in the brush was easy to detect to ears that could hear the toe-tapping rhythm of a mouse’s heartbeat from one hundred paces away. The musky odor of canine came wafting along on the breeze and the vampire’s nose wrinkled with it. He had no taste for animals and a plain dislike for dogs, ever since as a mortal child he’d been bitten by some mangy stray shadowing the town’s borders long ago. A heavy cloud steamrolled the bone-white moon, obscuring the forest in deepening darkness; yet to the vampire the woods never grew darker than a very light shade of grey. With eyes that cut through shadow like a flame through cold he turned his gaze downward in a steady sweep of his surroundings. Sure enough, he saw a four legged figure loping through the undergrowth, gradually coming towards him and his kill.

The fledgling bared his fangs to the dark and hissed loudly. It was enough to scare away any natural predator, but the dog kept coming. If anything, it seemed to pick up its pace. “Away,” the vampire called, “before I dine on you too. The meat here is too dry for your taste. Hunt elsewhere. Away!”

The dog paused, and he felt it watching him. Lingering human fears set a prickle coursing along the tops of his arms and up his spine. The animal was close enough now so that the fledging could get a much better look at it. The creature was larger than any dog he had ever seen in this region. Larger even than the wolf hounds that the village’s old mayor used to keep. Its shoulders were too broad and its chest too round and the fledgling could now detect a hint of old blood in the animal’s scent. The young vampire was on his first lonely hunt, away from the protection of his mistress. He remembered now, she had warned him about the woods. A low ominous rumble issued from both the sky above and the creature in the brush. Slowly, in an almost mocking fashion, it stood onto its hind legs. A nearing storm gathered and the young vampire hadn’t the time to scream as an old nightmare sprang to life and came tearing through the weeds towards him. And the rain came down.

The blood of your prey sustains you for another night.

Roman felt, rather than heard, the words which were etched into his accursed soul. The vampire popped like a bloated tick and with the first drought of mixed mortal and immortal blood the Beast receded into the back of Roman’s brooding mind, leaving the more rational human in control for the rest of the night. With the blood, the world seemed to open up before him as it had every night after the ninth hour for the last seven years. His vision sharpened against the dark, drawing out the colors and shapes previously obscured by shadow. His bones hardened beneath his flesh into a steely frame. His thick skin toughened into a resilient armor which had nothing to fear save for weapons of a metal finer than steel. Roman felt all the little internal rips, tears, and breaks from the night’s shifting mend themselves and disappear. He was a new creature, reborn in immortal blood.

Old meat and fresh gore made a mixed taste on his tongue that was neither pleasant nor repulsive. Roman dropped the twice dead man to the forest floor for the sun to take. Vampires made poor meals, better to drink than to eat. There was very little meat in them and they tasted too much like ash and carrion. The forest was full of deer and boar. Hapless travelers littered the nighttime roads. Roman was certain he could find fresher fare somewhere else. Dropping to all fours he turned away from his kill and left at a steady lope along the hidden trails known only to the beasts of the land and to murderous Cain who forged them in the childhood of the world.