Illusions of Soul

At my order, we moved into their world. I with my army.

We integrated ourselves into their lives, into their city. Slowly. At first, they might not have even known that we were there.

It could have been any number of things engaging in the killing. Any manner of animal or beast. Of course, it would have to be something capable or cunning enough to get over the city walls or in through the gates.

That did narrow the possibilities.

It could have even been human. A human with inhumane tendencies. I’ve met my share. There were a hundred excuses for each body, blood-drained, that was found on the streets.

Excuses were safety for them. The real executors were the ones that no one wanted to see.
But it cost them. My, did it cost them.

The longer it took for them to admit to us, the more violently we demonstrated that we were there.

If this person is me, revisited, they have developed a skewed impression of my needs.

Tonight, as I walked the garishly lit streets, I couldn’t help thinking, why here? Why this city? If this is my life relived, shouldn’t it closely follow its course?

This is far removed from a bastion of culture. It’s more like Carnivale, with its dependence on flash and shock value. There is no depth, no truth. That isn’t what people here are seeking.

The similarities to Renaissance Florence are lacking, to say the least.

Then again, there is the laissez-faire attitude.

What’s that motto I keep hearing?

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

It might come as a bit of a surprise, but, in Florence, I’d found the same.

When I arrived in Florence, it was at the beginning of the Renaissance. There was such an obsession with beauty, culture, and knowledge, all things that, in my former life, I had yearned to experience. So much was the city overflowing with these fundamentals, once I saw the vibrancy of it, I knew that I would stay for a time.

Florence… my new home.

Florence.

There was a time when I looked upon it as the best period of my being. It was all still new. The strength. The craving. The eternal life. I was carnal. And I was free. I could take what I wanted, but everyone was so willing to give that I never had to. The power then… back when I allowed it… There are moments when I wish I still could. I try not to dwell on them long.

But, in Florence, I found my superiority over what I once was. I learned how to dominate without brute force. I learned to be new. I learned to be commanding. I learned that I could have anything, do anything, to anyone, without punishment or remorse.

…lessons that it took me hundreds of years to forget…

It was a time of great richness of being. The wrong kind of richness and the wrong kind of being, but still it was wealth, and I cannot discount it as a time without personal success. Or at least what felt like triumph at the time. Because I was creating, generating immortals by the dozens, and then the hundreds. Within a few weeks, I had numbers at my disposal that would give the greatest dictators in history pause.

And they were attached to me, dependent upon me. They would never leave me, unless I told them to. I would be the one doing the abandoning. But why would I ever? I had an army to do my bidding.

I remember that feeling, creating eternal servants, one right after the other.

And I understood then how God feels.

Paul Jr. was so eager to indulge my fantastic whims. So eager to bring me anything and everything that I asked.

So I asked for his sisters.

Like a dutiful puppy, he went to fetch them for me.

And I found his mother. Right where she should have been. In her bed, asleep. She gave a start when I awakened her, but one look into my eyes made her fear dimish instantly, her desire arise. I wasn’t unwanted. Which is why I made sure that it hurt. Pain is still pain, and a touch can become rapidly unwelcome when it causes enough. I caused her more pain than she probably ever thought to fear. She hadn’t only suffered enough by the time Paul came. She had suffered more than enough. She had suffered too much. She had suffered irreparably. Because I was still angry at her husband.

And that’s why I ordered Paul to kill his sisters, to drain them dry right in front of her. She was sobbing, trying to turn away, but my hand on her chin kept her face turned toward the sight, and human curiosity wouldn’t allow her to close her eyes. So she watched.

She was already torn and bleeding and afraid, and now she had to watch as one of her children gleefully took the lives of her other two. She had to watch, because I was still angry at her husband.

And when I was finished, when Paul was finished, when I felt satisfied in my revenge, I did the cruelest thing I could think to do.

I let her live.

I knew that Paul Jr. would be the easiest way in for me. I had some notion that he had a crush, so when I came knocking in the dead of night, it served his fantasies to let me come inside.

And he did.

He let me into his family’s home, into their place of safety, which I promptly took from them.

But first I took Paul. It was of no wrongdoing to him, the way that his father’s attempts had been to me, but I knew it would still offend his Biblical sensibilities to give in, for as long as his Biblical sensibilities were still intact. But they faded quickly, under my hands, and then I whispered the words and my daggers sunk in.

I still didn’t know what they meant then, but I found that I could recite the same words Haydn had recited over me instinctively. Then I drank until death was closing in on Paul. I could feel it as surely as I could feel his desire, and then, when I knew that he was almost gone, I pulled my daggers out and I kissed him. And the energy transmitted back and forth between us. And I felt him grow strong out of me.

Then, he looked up at me, and he was someone else, something else, and I knew that he would follow me as I had longed to follow Haydn. To have such a willing servant, it was powerfully intoxicating.

“Let’s go find your family,” I said to him and he smiled, his lips still smeared with his blood.

My family may not have been worth any extra effort on my part… but Paul’s was.

Perhaps I should have felt that Paul had already gotten his punishment, but that was Haydn’s rescue, not my vengeance. And my need for revenge had suddenly become something irrepressible, due, I’m sure,  in no small part to my new ability to exact it with ease.

And perhaps I should have felt that Paul’s family had no culpability for the actions he committed, but I still blamed them. I blamed them for letting him pretend that he was safe, that he was righteous. I knew them all well and not one of them warned me against his dark side. Not one said, “He’s not what he seems. Don’t trust him.”

The argument could have been made that they weren’t aware of the dark side any more than I was, but it didn’t matter. The justification for their torment was enough for me, because I was now someone who didn’t need one at all.

I didn’t return to kill my parents. From what I’ve learned since, it’s the first thing that most vamps do when they’re sired. It seems that there is almost a maniacal urge to punish those people who have reared us.

But I never went back.

Why?

Was it because I didn’t hate them?

No. I did. As much as I don’t like to acknowledge it, even when I was human, I did hate them. I still do.

Was it because I didn’t think that they deserved it?

No. I thought that too.

As gloomy as it may seem… as unfeeling… as ungrateful… as cold… I didn’t return that night to kill my parents, because I simply didn’t care enough to spare them my energy.

I didn’t return to Helen. I’d lost my appetite.

And my soul.

I didn’t care that I had left her in a house with the bodies of her dead parents. No, not just dead. Decimated. What a pretty picture she was left there to look at.

They were out far on the edge of town. And there would be no agencies coming to the rescue. No children’s services. No police force. Not back then.

Not even neighbors. It would take someone finally noticing that she and her parents were missing for them to think to look.

But Helen wasn’t going to be high on the list of concern. Several people died that night, and more than one person went missing.

My disappearance was thanks to Haydn. As was Paul’s. The rest of the destruction was due solely to me.