Path of the Vampire forum

(( Continued from here ))

Robert left the strange woman, leaving her behind babbling something about him needing to drink human blood. He chuckled softly, shaking his head as he left the building and simply ignored her words, quickly forgetting them. He gave a little sigh as he thought of her, feeling sorry for the poor mad thing that she was. He decided that her disease must have been affecting her mind, making her paranoid and dellusional. He was however, glad that he'd not killed her. Body disposal was always difficult and time consuming and he'd been glad that he didn't have to drag yet another body out to the wilderness for the animals to dispose of for him.

He had to admit that she was right about one thing, he was feeling hungry - very hungry in fact. However he didn't have time for finding food. He looked up at the sky and saw that the sun was nearing it's time to poke it's head up over the horizon and he yawned. His hand reached for the bag on his hip and he considered his options. Either, he headed back to his corner in the warehouse to sleep through the day as he normally did - or he ran to the Blood Thief HQ's to try and sell the blood he'd collected and then headed home.

With the way he was feeling, and the time he guessed it was, he decided that for now the best plan of action was to head back to his corner to sleep off his weird, weird night. His feet sped up on the pavement and it wasn't long before he saw his warehouse and slipped in through a broken doorway. He headed to his 'home' under the large metal staircase and hid his blood bag in a crevice in the wall and covered it with the trash that was lying around - hoping that if a random thief happened to come across him then his blood might be safe from theft.

He removed some of his clothes and put on a light T-Shirt, frowning at the ragged scar on his arm and the Pi symbol on his hand. He lifted a hand and felt his neck and the bite mark there and sighed. Yes, it had been a very strange night - and if he hadn't been so tired he'd have tried to dress his wounds. However, that growling hunger in his stomach was distracting him and he decided that the best thing to do was to simply sleep and ignore it all. Once he woke - he'd find himself some food and medical supplies to sort out his body, and then he'd head to HQ and make his sales.

He felt a movement beside him and looked up from his scars to see his sister. He smiled and lay down, pulling an old duvet over himself and held it up for her to climb in with him. Once she was under the duvet, he wrapped her up and pulled her close. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head and wiggled into a more comfortable position as he spooned her, keeping her safe and warm.

"Love you Diane. Don't worry - it's all fine."

He yawned and drifted off to sleep, ignoring the shaking body of his sister as she cried - because he thought she was crying in relief that he was ok. Not that she was crying for his loss and for what he'd become - because he had no idea what he'd become.

He woke up the next evening and stretched, once more kissing his sisters head to rouse her. She stirred and got up, smiling sadly down at him. He looked up at her with a raised eyebrow as he slowly sat upright and stretched again. His whole body ached as if he'd gone 10 rounds with a giant and he groaned softly.

"Don't look at me like that Diane. I'll be fine. Just wait and see."

He looked down at his wrist and was surprised to see that it was fairly well healed already. His hand reached for his neck and again, it was all but healed too. He checked his palm, but the Pi symbol was still there, red and angry and 3D on his palm. He curled his nose in disgust as the opposite thumb ran over the symbol curiously, wondering why it was there, why the man had put it there and what it meant. His stomach growled and both his hands clutched at his torso as a hunger pain gripped him, making him almost double up.

"Urgh! What the hell...."

He got up and headed for the barrel he had set up under a dripping pipe. Quickly completing his evening ablutions he dressed himself in his normal smart, dark attire and retrieved his blood bag from it's hidey hole. Another hunger pain racked his body and he doubled over once more, feeling his sister at his arm to support him and give him strength. He gave her a small smile and pressed another kiss to her forehead, starting to move off.

"Love you Diane. Don't worry about me - I'll get something to eat after I've sold this blood and got the cash I need. Join me?"

She shook her head at him, then paused and looked at him with big wide eyes and nodded instead. He put the bag over his shoulder and then looped his arm around her shoulders and led her off. He walked through the streets, keeping to the dark alleys and shadows to avoid the police that roamed the streets looking for the gangsters like him. It was ridiculous, in his opinion, that him killing off known criminals and gangsters to make the buildings safe for his clients was seen as criminal and made him a wanted man. He was doing the city a favour!!

Lost in his own thoughts, he found himself at the HQ for the evening and walked on in. As soon as he walked in the atmosphere changed and everyone slowly stopped talking and turned to look at him. He paused and unlooped his arm from his sister, pushing her off to a shadowey corner and muttering,

"Hide!"

As a number of the larger members of his gang stood up and removed knives and guns from their hiding places and began to advance on him. He tried to back up like a cornered animal but found that his escape route had been blocked by a couple of burly men. His head jerked from side to side, moving from one determined face to the next as they circled him and kept on coming closer with a hungry look on their faces and malevolent sneers on their lips.

"Guys! GUYS! It's me! It's Robert...... What.... What's going on? Why are you looking at me like that?"

A gunshot rang out and he gasped, crouching down into a foetal position and hiding his head with his hands, burying it in his knees as he shook in fear.

A voice rang out over the grumblings of the room, a woman's voice loud and strong and seemed to demand respect. Slowly the wall of men parted to let the woman through and she stood in front of Robert as if protecting him.

"**** right off guys. It's just Robert...... changed. But it's still him. He's one of us and you will NOT harm him or I will ******* gut you all!"

Hands reached down and gently stroked over his back before clutching at his arm and helping him to rise. Only then did he realise that he wasn't shot, wasn't harmed. He looked to the owner of the hands and saw Eagle there helping him up with a kind smile. She drew him through the men and women who were still eyeing him hatefully while fingering their weapons. She had him wrapped in her arm protectively and was roughly shoving those who were less inclined to move out of the way.

He was thankful to her for helping him as he had no idea why the others were acting this way around him. He was used to them all teasing him, bullying him, picking on him and trying to steal from him or beat him up. But the reaction there when he'd walked in was new and different in a worrying manner. However, what was more worrying was that when he looked down at Eagle he couldn't take his gaze from her neck and he was acutely aware of the blood in her veins as another hunger pain ran through him, making him once again double up with a groan.

She didn't let him pause however and forced him to keep walking with her, muttering under her breath in a forceful manner.

"******* move Robert. You're not safe here and I don't know if they'll appreciate what I'm doing. So move your *** before someone decides they want your blood!"

He stumbled along with her, doing as he was told obediantly but his mind was trying to tell him that something was very, very wrong in all of this. Something had changed and he had no idea what it was. He was still puzzling over this question when she led him into her office and locked the door behind them with an obvious look of relief on her face at having made it there with both of them in tact. She shoved him into one of the seats in her office and then perched herself on her desk, looking at him with what almost seemed like sympathy as he looked back in confusion.

Luckily, his sister seemed to have made it in with them and she hurried over and sat in his lap and he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close to his body as he looked up at Eagle and finally found his voice.

"What...... what was that all about? Why were they all looking at me like that?"

She just sighed and shook her head and answered him bluntly, ripping the plaster off in one quick motion.

"Robert. You're a vampire."

Robert sat there and looked at her as if she were mad, the silence between them seeming to go on for hours before he just burst out laughing.

"Are you mad? Vampire? They don't exist!"

He continued to laugh until his sister turned in his lap and took his face in her hands, cupping it gently and kissing his nose. The sadness in her eyes and the way she looked at him, made his laughter stop abruptly as he gazed into those sad young eyes. His eyebrows knit together as he looked at her, confusion and disbelief marring his features as he slowly shook his head.

"No. No. It..... it can't be true."

He looked from his sister up to Eagle, who's own expression mirrored the one on his sister's face. However, Eagle had something else on her features. Something that resembled pity mixed with guilt. As he looked at Eagle's face realisation struck him like a hammer to the head. She wasn't lying. She was telling the truth. He was a vampire. He sat there staring at her for a moment before the shock passed him by and fear took him over. He stood up, keeping a hold of his sister, and backed up against a wall - his face a mask of fear and panic as all the little things began to fall into place and he realised he'd been lied to for many, many months.

"What? I'm what? No. Why didn't anyone tell me what was going on? Why was I lied to?"

Once more those hunger pains came and after groaning, letting go of his sister to clutch at his stomach - he looked up at Eagle with a hungry, predatory look in his eyes.

"Look what you have done to me!"

He launched himself at her as she still sat on the edge of the table, hands outstretched, fangs bared and a snarl issuing from his throat. However just as he was about to grab her to pull her into his grasp and drink from her - she vanished into thin air, only to reappear a few steps to his side. Once more he lunged for her and once more she vanished. They repeated the dance a few times until he fell to his knees on the floor exhausted and weakened. He knelt there, weeping softly until Eagle came over beside him and sliced deeply into her wrist with her knife, offering him her bloodied arm. He looked at it in disgust, but something inside him over-ruled that disgusted part of him and made him take her arm in his hands and draw it to his lips. He looked into her eyes as he pressed her arm to his open mouth with a mixture of thanks and sadness - before he lost himself to his need to feed and that hunger that burned within him.

He only became aware of himself again when he suddenly found himself flying across the room and crashing into the wall with his back before sliding down into a heap. He groaned, feeling bloated, light headed, nauseaous and a sense of power he'd not felt before in his life. When the door began to shake and vibrate under the pounding of fists from the other side, he curled into a ball as he shuffled back into the corner with blood dribbling down his chin. Eagle's voice rang out - a little weaker than it had been before but still full of confidence and authority.

"****! OFF! I'm fine and you won't touch him because he WON'T harm me!"

The hammering stopped and he could hear the mumblings and murmurings from the other side of the door slowly retreating away in a reluctant fashion. His eyes moved to Eagle, still huddled in his corner, and took in her pale complexion where it had been rosey before. He frowned and felt ill, knowing he'd done that to her. He began to gag, thinking about the blood he'd just ingested and the fact he'd almost killed her by drinking so much from her. If she hadn't thrown him across the room, he dreaded to think what he may have done to her.

He felt her arms around him and tried to pull away from her in fear of what he was capable of, but she held him tight and close - not letting him move away. It was all too much for him to take in all at once and he held her tightly, sobbing into her shoulder and mumbling nonsense. All the while she held him in her arms, letting them stroke his back gently to try and help soothe him.

"Shhhh. Robert. It's fine. Come on now. We'll help you through this time. We can show you all you need to know, keep you safe. Don't worry about it. You never know - this might be the best thing that's ever happened for us. Just, give it time. Stick with me. I'll make it all ok."

On and on she crooned with her promises to the poor broken man, and she kept her word. She looked after him for those first few weeks, teaching him and guiding him in what it meant to be a vampire, opening her vein for him to feed from when he needed it and helping him find a place once more in the organisation. If it weren't for Eagle - Pi's wish would have probably come true and he'd have ended up a crispy critter, frying in the sun and vanishing to the shadows never to return. He owed Eagle everything.