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  I burst out into the sunlight, pausing only long enough to allow my eyes some semblance of adjustment. We were indeed at the local lord's house, on a hilltop overlooking the village. I hid my face deep in the cowl of the cloak and set off down the hill, my eyes on the small church, gleaming white and bright in the day. I walked with great purpose and dignity, though the sun brought back the searing pain. Down the hill I went, through the town and up into the church. I pushed open the doors of the sanctuary and the Hunter in the pulpit, my friend from the street, turned somewhat pale. I locked the doors behind me and he seemed somewhat green.

  The entire congregation, some sixty people or more, not counting the children, looked at me in horror. I must have been something of a sight to be truthful, my borrowed cloak thrown back to reveal my long black hair filled with mud and blood, my face contorted with the Change and rage, the dead Rebeka in my arms. I laid her gently upon the altar and looked up at the Hunter. He was the one I wanted first, the one who I would hold responsible. The hunger within me was insatiable, fueled by grief and anguish and anger.

  Two of them came at me, I suppose in hopes of containing me. The first died when my hand wrapped in his hair and brought his bulging jugular vein within reach of my mouth. I bit viciously, drank harshly, and dropped him, still very much alive and bleeding to death slowly. The second actually took a shot at me, swinging his dagger at my throat. My knee in his groin and a fist to his face sent him to his knees and I fell on him, opening his throat as I had the other's and letting him bleed to death.

  The white marble altar was already stained red when I pulled the stake from Rebeka and faced my new enemy. He paled further yet and backed away from the altar. “I might have left this place in peace,” I said as I approached him, the sound of my own voice cold and hissing through the fangs. “I might have gone anywhere and left these people to live out their lives in ignorance. Now … now I cannot. You have taken my Rebeka from me and for that you will pay.” I held the stake between us, prepared, it seemed, to use it to end his life.

  Instead, I took his shaking hand and held it up between us, turned it over and slowly licked his wrist. It was salty with his fearful sweat. I could feel my heart speed up, keeping pace with his. I took my time, savoring his fear, that of the entire room. They were helpless, watching me. I bit slowly, watching his face, at first afraid, then pain, then the dizzying ecstasy of that kiss as I drained his life away, and, against the flow of blood, forced something of myself back into him. So caught up in the moment was I that his memories, his life passed with little notice, save for the briefest image, a child, a familiar face. It seemed disconnected somehow and more my memory than his, but it passed quickly and I saw only his face as it was now.

  I watched that closely, the look in his eyes as he became aware of his dying body, as his heart slowly stopped its beating … as the blood went cold in his veins and the hunger was born in his gut. I pulled away from the bloody wrist as it filled him, and the first Change, uncontrollably strong, took him. I could taste his hunger and his revulsion at it. I grabbed a young girl from the first pew and brought her to him, baring her breasts and holding her lithe body tightly against his. He was awakened to the scent of her, the smell of her flesh, her blood … the sound of it rushing through her frightened body. I bent her neck and bit it tenderly, opening the wound and pressing it toward him. It was more than he could resist, with the Change so newly upon him, and to his own dismay he found himself drinking hungrily from her, draining her life as I had his and dropping her from numb fingers when he was done.

  “There is nowhere for you to go now,” I said. “The sun is high outside and you will die if you step into it. Feed now, and feed well, for tonight you must run, far and wide, for I will find you. And I will kill you then.”

  I watched him fall to his knees and begin praying, an odd thing for one with blood across his face and clothes and the Change so full upon him. I left him to it and returned my attention to the people. They were dumbstruck, or crying, looking at me as though I were a monster, which I was that day. I dropped my cloak to the floor and beckoned a young boy to me. He came hesitantly, his mother clinging to him. He bowed nicely, but I could taste the fear in him.

  “What is your name, boy?”

  “Nathan, I am Nathan.”

  “You have no reason to fear me, Nathan. I shall not hold you accountable. Tell me, who else here deserves this fate?” I asked him. He shook his head.

  “No one, ma'am.”

  “Come now, child, surely other men have done the things this one has, or condoned them, urged them on. Tell me who.”

  His eyes stole to the lord, an earl if I recall, by the name of Sardone. His eyes grew wide as he realized I was looking at him, but I wasn't prepared to make such a pompous ass into an immortal ass. No, I had a better plan for him. Beside him his young daughter sat, a lass of perhaps sixteen, with beautiful brunette curls and green eyes, a smattering of freckles across her tiny nose. She was nowhere near as hauntingly, achingly beautiful as my Rebeka, but she was a pretty thing. I pointed to her and gestured for her to come to me.

  The earl shook his head no, tried to talk me out of my course of action. I smiled, which must have been a frightening sight. “Sit down, my lord. I wasn't speaking to you. Come here, child.” She seemed more frightened than the boy, but came, slowly, resigned to her fate, or at least faking it well. I had her sit beside me on the cold marble steps, laid her across my lap and covered her face with one hand as I bent to my task. In minutes, she too was enjoying her first meal as a child of the night, her own father.

  I was cold, calculating, starving. I fed greedily, and created monsters of the children of the town. Anyone older than fifteen might be made immortal or taken as food, whichever suited me. The room was filled with the stench of blood and dying. It overwhelmed even my reluctant demon-priest, and I found him feeding most voraciously as the day wore on. All in all, that day I created nearly twenty new children and I fed on more than I ever had since the days I celebrated the festival with Crenoral's clan. I was strong, terrible, and evil, and I reveled in the release of it, in the heart of my true being allowed at last to be free.

  By the time the sun began its descent, the only thing living in the church were my prodigies and myself, and the three or four young children that even in my debauchery, I wouldn't kill. As night fell I gathered them to me, inhaling the bloody scent of the new made. Then, I pulled the priest to me, the Change still upon me, the anger gone cold in my stomach. “Go now, Hunter. Run into the night. Go far and hide well for the time will come when I will hunt for you. On that night, when I find you once more, I will do to you as you have done to me and mine.” Somehow I had no doubts that he would somehow survive, despite his hatred for what he now was. I knew we would meet again.

  The Change drained out of him. He left that place a ruined man and disappeared into the night, leaving us to finish what I had begun. In the center of all the death, Rebeka lay, her body gone nearly to skeleton, upon the altar. I kissed what had been her cheek tenderly and bid her farewell, then we set fire to the building and my new children and I left.

  We swept through the deserted town, cleaning house, so to speak of those who remained, those who had somehow escaped the church that day. It was the darkest of nights I can ever recall. No stars, no moon to light the sky, only the burning of the church behind us as we made our way to the former seat of the earl. Most of that night was spent in the blind fury that had brought me to such deeds. We took possession of the town, of the manor house, of whatever we desired. Come the dawn, we made our bed together, in the very dungeon cell where Rebeka had died.

  Chapter 10

  I sent my children out into the next nights to find any hunters we might have missed. For several nights we cleansed the surrounding area of those who would defy us, or who could bring the wrath of the Church back to haunt us. It was cold, harsh. I lost myself in it, in the mind-numbing fever of killing. I took comfort in the days, wrapped
in the arms of my children, hidden in the darkness of the dungeon where once I had been prisoner.

  I lived darkly in those days, reining in the bloody horror of my dark children, who would become heartless monsters beneath my tutelage. My sin in their creation held me a long while. I let my own self-pity and anguish for my two lost loves drive me deeper into that side of me which Crenoral had loved, partaking in an evil far greater than even my former Brethren had been guilty of. Unwittingly, I had been cause for a transgression beyond even Bestin's at the time of the Birth. Born in that dark, auspicious moment, upon holy ground where even the most innocent of my kin would dare not step foot, but which offers me little detriment, they were robbed of the very nature of their own being, and lost those few bindings of their predecessors. I loosed then, upon the foul night air, a creature unstoppable by the means of modern man to know. Gone were the afflictions of holy water, crosses and whatever other relics might hinder those more naturally made.

  This I was to learn shortly after it began, when they brought to me a Hunter, come looking for his lost brothers, clad in his holy armor and holding his mighty golden crucifix as if it alone might save him. They gathered around him, some twenty strong, youthful monsters with the Change full upon them to affect terror in the old man. He hurled great and mighty curses at us, beckoned his god to look upon his situation and deliver him as he had Daniel in the lion's den. I smiled from the small earldom throne, for I knew his efforts were wasted upon me. For many, many long moments, it did not occur to me that they were wasted upon my children as well.

  Marie and Édouard, the oldest among them and the instigators of most activities taunted the man, leering in his face as he recited his long prayers. Then he took the crucifix from the man like it was no more than the metal it was formed of. A fight ensued then, and the bunch of them fell upon the Hunter, each wanting some souvenir to claim as their own. Marie and Édouard withdrew, the crucifix held between them, watching as their siblings tore the Hunter apart. They huddled together, conspiring between themselves in the unspoken tongue of their kind until the man was dead, the ornaments of his faith scattered among the faster of them, or the stronger. It is an odd thing indeed, to see one still caught up in the Change and the gleam of a golden cross lighting his face from where it lay upon his chest. Perhaps that was the moment when I saw myself, my transgression. Perhaps that was the moment I began to pull away, unnoticeably for certain, for I was still quite enamored of them, and they needed so much from me at first.

  “Come now, children, there is no need to fight.” I rose from the small throne and came among them. “The night is young.” I put my arms around Marie and Édouard, wrapping my will and thought around them as well. “There are plenty more trinkets to be found. Let us go out into the dark.” And, we did.

  The beauty of the night graced them tenderly, turning barely mature features to perfect imitations of themselves, molding them forever in that place of absolute beauty between childhood and adulthood. They seemed so fragile and frail when absorbed in some task, or asleep in our family tomb, almost angelic … and demonic. The knowledge of death shone in their eyes, and their love of life lit up a room. It is hard, even now, not to smile when I picture their faces, especially in those first years when they were young, and so inspired by the night.

  They were, however, adolescents, children with the bodies of adults, forever locked in a state of selfish denial of the rest of the world, consumed only by their own lives and needs. Many nights I was forced to reconcile some petty argument, which had grown to a death struggle. There was no line they would not cross, no page of their former mortality they would not turn. Each developed into someone other than who they might have been, all perhaps but the small, shy daughter of the earl.

  Maryse was her name, a frail thing with no real will of her own, she often withdrew from the killing, and spent long nights alone in her old rooms. She alone retained some bit of humanity, some calm of her nobility. Occasionally, she would extend that influence upon her brothers and sisters. More often, she simply sat out in quiet protest, her eyes alone speaking of her shame. Always, however, she could be pulled into the fray, pulled along by the desires she despised, convinced by the others to partake.

  “Are we devils?” she asked me once, when we were alone in the dungeon bedroom we shared.

  “Devils? What makes you say so?” I asked, brushing out my hair. Her question brought back a twinge of myself, a piece of my conscience emerging.

  “We kill. We live in darkness and revel in our sins. Are we the devils the Hunters name us?”

  “I know no more devils, Maryse. They are all gone.”

  “Ah, then there were devils once. And we are all that is left of them.”

  “Yes, the progeny of evil. That is what we all are … us, and the humans as well. The good and the evil are no longer.”

  “Then may we all reap the rewards of our fathers.” She left then, and I sat pondering her, pondering all of them. She was, of course, right. Reward would come.

  I held them to me, my immortal children, I proved to be a poor mother, unable to give myself completely to them, once I had begun to recognize the evil of my deeds. I ruled harshly, imposing strict rules upon them to keep them and the small earldom we dwelled in, safe from the outside dangers and to keep them all well fed. They came quickly to despise my rules, and eventually, me. My dark side slowly released me, and the guilt of my actions drove me back to my formula and away from the gluttonous feedings we had shared in the beginning. I took my meals alone in the dark shadowed halls of our home while my children slept below me.

  My dark children derided me for my hypocrisy, much more entitled to it than my immortal brethren had been, and far, far crueler in it. They hunted the dark and increasingly unpopulated area surrounding us, occasionally bringing their victims back to taunt and tempt me. They despised me for who and what I was, what I refused to be, what I had made them into … and I deserved it all, accepted it all. It is common for one made to the night to despise his or her creator, to hate the one who gave them the cursed gift, for the nature of the gift itself lends it to such things. Mortal men were not made for immortal lives, nor the sacrifices required of it, and eventually, if even for a short time, all who are thus hate themselves for it, and that hate easily transfers to the true villain.

  The worst for it was René and his twin sister Racelle. They took greatest offense at all that had transpired and greatest joy in throwing their evil in my face. One night, closer to morning than was prudent for any of them to be about, they returned from a hunt with blood on their faces and clothes. They reeked of their dinners, a mixture of human and animal. They were loud and rowdy, like mortals after an all-night drinking binge. They woke me from my light slumber near the fire as they came in. Behind them the others gathered. Racelle laughed raucously as René stole the book from my hand.

  “I am given to believe in the absolute of evil, and thereby, of good. There is evidence enough of such matters as to make them seem beyond discussion. The existence of the Demons of the Hill is tolerated by civilized man simply by virtue of their opposites among us.” He snorted and tossed the book to one of the others. “Really, Mother. What dribble you read these days! What happened to those glorious accounts of the Family? The bloodbaths … the killing? Now, there is something worth reading.” He leaned over me and the smell of the blood upon him stirred the cravings I had been fighting. “Do you smell her, Mother? She was so sweet … a new bride, seduced from the arms of her groom.”

  “Enough, René. It is late. You should all be off to bed.”

  “We are not babies to be hastened off with the rising sun, Mother,” Racelle countered, joining René in front of me. “You surely must see that we are not children anymore.”

  I could smell the distinct scent of a man about her … the groom I imagined. “I hope you enjoyed him,” I said, seeking to rise and move away from the tantalizing scent. They followed me, knowing the struggle going on within and hoping
to drive me back to the ways of their youth. I reached for my bottle, hoping to stave off the worst of it, but Racelle grabbed it and danced away.

  “I did, Mother … I enjoyed him immensely, so much more than you will this … dribble.”

  “I enjoy my dribble just fine, Racelle,” I replied, attempting to avoid getting angry. I reached for the bottle, but she tossed it to René.

  “Come now, Mother, don't you crave the taste of the real thing? I can smell it in you … if there were a human among us now, you would kill.”

  The anger was rising in me now, and the hunger had grown with their teasing. “I said enough! You are making me angry. Leave now!” I stopped chasing the bottle and stood still in the center of the room. They too stopped their dizzying dance around me. I was breathing in heavy gulps, trying to keep down the fury that lay just beneath the surface, the sudden desire to teach the insolent creatures just who was in control. They stared for a long, long moment, then Racelle started to laugh. As René joined her, he dumped the contents of the bottle, creating a strange red puddle on the priceless rug beneath his feet. It was enough to send me over the edge.

  In one swift movement I grabbed René and pulled him to me, my fangs flashing in the dim light of the fire. The laughing stopped as I opened his wrist with those teeth and quicker than he could have imagined drained him to the point of collapse. He was right about one thing … she had been a sweet thing. I dropped him in a heap on the floor and caught Racelle as she would have fled. “Now, have we had enough games, or shall we play some more?” I asked. She quivered in my hand, no match for the strength of my years, my fury.