Illusions of Soul

Now I can see it, what Haydn saw. I can see that I deserved to be abanoned.

What I had seen in Paul, the animal just beneath the surface, she saw in me.

She thought that she had created a monster. A common vampire. Those were the traits that I showed to her. And she didn’t want to stand by and watch me become that. It is not what she had sired me to be.

The look from that night lingers in my consciousness. It is my compass now. Before I take a single step, I think of whether it could earn that look of disapproval from her.

While I couldn’t comprehend it at the time, I understand now what she was thinking, and now every time my memory returns me to that night, to that encounter in the doorway, I hear Haydn’s silent question.

What have I done?

You would think that I would hate her, the way that she left me alone in an existence that I didn’t understand.

But I could never hate her.

Never.

She abandoned me. I was furious. I was willing to serve her, to learn from her, but she left me to find my own way, with no guidance at all.

Was there no loyalty amongst vampires?

The answer is no. There isn’t. So, she expected none from me. I understand that now.

And she may have been right, because, while I wanted to follow her anywhere, my most base instincts would have led me to defy her somewhere down the line. She knew that then, even if I didn’t.

But she didn’t think me a lost cause either. Something must have given her hope. Something held her back. She may have abandoned me there to fend for myself, but it was completely within her power to just kill me.

I left Helen in the room with her dead parents. She was no longer of use to me. The only one I was concerned with was Haydn. Her abrupt departure had shaken me. Her disapproval had done far more damage.

I was hers. She made me. How could she not want me?

I followed her scent, so enticing, and caught her at the edge of the road. She shook me off like she would an insect. And, to her, I was.

She regretted it. I could see it clearly in the full moon’s light. But she didn’t try to hide it either.

“I should have killed you,” she said.

Then she hit me. She hit me so hard I flew back and slammed into the front of the cottage. It didn’t knock me out, but it stunned me enough to give her time. When I finally made it to my feet, Haydn was gone.

I had drained Helen’s father dry, taking from the side that wasn’t so charred the skin hung off of it. Helen just sat in the corner, watching me drinking of her mother. She was crying, but her tears were silent. Only the tiny sniffs that I could easily detect now gave her away.

We were in those positions when Haydn appeared in the doorway. I felt her presence as surely as if she’d announced it.

She looked around the room at my handiwork and I was quick to fetch Helen from the corner. I held her out to Haydn. My offering. Haydn stared down at her. And then she looked up at me.

Those things I long to forget that I never will? The look on Haydn’s face is the foremost one. I had tried so hard to prove myself to her, to prove she had done the right thing in turning me, and for her to look at me with such disgust? Such revulsion?  A biological parent’s rejection would hurt less.

She didn’t say anything. She just turned and walked away from me. Left me in my chaos, with my gift to her now sobbing in my hands.

I was right. It was a test. And I had failed miserably.

She took me to a house to drink. It was a family that I knew well. The lady of the house had cared for me from time to time when my parents had to be away, and I, in turn, had cared for her young daughter, Helen.

It was a test, and I knew it.

I rapped softly on the wood shutter of Helen’s window. She was a brave little girl, not the type to scare easily, and I knew that she would answer and let me in. She thought it a game, a late night play date, without her parents’ permission. All in good fun. And it was. For me.

I dragged Helen through the tiny cottage by her hair. Her parents were up in the kitchen, having late night tea. It was strange. I expected them to be sleeping. They were shocked, as one might expect, by my sudden appearance in their kitchen. But not too shocked to react.

If I’d come in peacefully, they might have been more receptive, but they looked at me holding onto their daughter and jumped to their feet.

Helen’s father grabbed the metal pole for stoking the fire and came at me. I tossed Helen into the corner and plucked the pole from his hands so easily, it was as if he was giving it to me by choice. Even weakened, I had so much strength, they didn’t stand a chance.

I pushed him down. He fell into the fire. He struggled to get up, but my foot against his cheek kept him firmly in the flames. The screams, they were like a symphony for me.

His wife tried coming to his aid and I ran her through with the pole, just below her ribs and straight back into the wall. She hung there like a decoration.

Helen wasn’t unconscious. Busy as I was with her parents, she had every opportunity to run. It could have been shock, but it wasn’t. As a child will, despite all the reason I’d given her not to, she still trusted me. I had always been good to her, close to her, and, if I was killing her parents right in front of her, they must have had it coming.

There was no weakness, not anymore. Depleted as I was, there was only energy, potent energy, of a kind I had never felt before.

And an incredible hunger.

Haydn lifted her head to look at me, as if she was searching for something, some assurance. What she saw, I don’t know. Some glimmer of hope? A bogus sign of success? And indication that everything had gone right?Or did she know right away that it hadn’t?

She traced her thumb below my lip and brough the leftover blood to my mouth. One taste and my daggers emerged, sharp and lethal. Later, Pavlov would study the effect in dogs. From that moment, just the thought of blood would instinctively bring forth my weapons. 

Haydn gave no indication that she’d heard my whispered plea. She spoke quiet words that made no sense, but were clearly significant for her, and then she broke skin. There was a twinge as her daggers entered my vein, and then…

Rapture. Ample, undiluted rapture. All good things flowed in. All bad things flowed out. The fear went first. Whether I lived or died was no longer of consequence to me. There was only Haydn, her lips on my throat, and my hand in her hair, where it had latched on to pull her closer.

When death is slow, you can feel it coming. I felt my body slacken, my ever-working mind go silent, and my soul drift away. Tranquility… I could see it there in the distance. But, before I could move in that direction, death left me. Haydn’s daggers drew away and I felt the sting, but only for the briefest moment. Then, her lips were on mine, and I knew a different kind of peace. I tasted my own blood, my own desire and her. Within that sacred trinity, there was strength, life, and boundless pleasure.

Paul thought that he was going to put up a fight. He got to his feet and raised his hands as if to shield or to threaten. He probably took one look at her and hoped he could manage a two-for-one. She waited for him to make a move, and when he finally lunged in her direction, Haydn didn’t even bother to kill him. She just tossed him back to a companion waiting in the shadows. The man dragged Paul back into the trees. If I couldn’t hear his screams, I might have pretended he had never been there.

Haydn looked down at me. She gave the tiniest bit of a smile and, in that instant, I was lost to her. By the time she lowered herself beside me, put her hand behind my neck and pulled me up to her, she could have done anything she wanted with me. I could feel her lips on my neck, small points against my skin. She could have drank her fill and left me for dead on the forest floor, and I would never have hated her for it.

But I had to ask. I’m sure I wasn’t the first, but I wanted it so badly.

“Don’t kill me. Please. I haven’t lived.”

I had thought of what it would be like, when someone touched me that intimately, of being wanted that way, of my introduction to that kind of yearning. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. It was always a dream.

This. This was a nightmare.

Paul. He was old enough to be my father. He had children of his own. He was a deacon.

And it was all for show. Because, not too deep down, he was like any other animal, and I had given him the occasion to take exactly what he wanted. He had every desire to hurt me, and I didn’t have the power to stop him. And after, I wouldn’t even be able to tell my parents, because I shouldn’t have been out in the world where he could get at me. I had gambled with myself and lost. I would never get back what he was going to take.

And he would have, if not for her.

Haydn.

I saw her there, in the shadows of the trees, before she said anything. She was so beautiful. I thought her an angel. A desperate hallucination.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” she said.

Paul stopped his drunken fumbling with his belt to look up at her.

I never mistook Haydn’s meaning to be that I didn’t belong to anyone. She meant, if I belonged to someone, it was to her. And I was fine with that.

We don’t talk much. What is there to say? There is only one reason she found her way back to my door, and only one reason I let her come inside. She wants to feel alive. So do I.

We’ve exchanged names, but we don’t even need that. It doesn’t change what’s going to happen.

The only thing she asked me is how I get by in the world with no last name. I couldn’t help but laugh at the question. It was so innocent. Like a child. She would have sold that trait for passage. Now, she is offering it to me. But I haven’t taken it. Not yet. I will though, because I know that she wants me to.

As for her question, people are so accustomed to sticking to the right path that they don’t understand it’s possible to make way down the wrong one. So I’ve given her what may be her first truly valuable lesson.

If you pay in cash, you don’t need a last name.