Hrmmm… if you know me, you know how much I hate vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Can’t stand them these days, but that’s because they’ve oversaturated my interests, or they’ve ruined my interest (keep in mind, I grew up reading “Salem’s Lot” and watching “American Werewolf in London”). But a few weeks ago, I suddenly had three pretty good ideas for vampire stories.

My vampires… they aren’t angst-filled teenagers who never actually do anything except pine for whomever they are in love with. I’m a bit old school when it comes to Vampires. Stay tuned for more chapters =).        

          I.

“Sir,” Manfred said, poking his head around the doorway into the library. “Davis is here to see you.”

“Davis?” I asked, looking up from the history volume I’d been engrossed in.

“Yes, sir. He states that he is in distress and must speak to you right away.”

“Very well,” I said, closing the cover of the thick tome and laying it on the small end table next to my chair. “Show him in, please.”

“Sir…” Manfred trailed off, looking a bit out of sorts. It was unusual for him.

I gave him a questioning look, but he shrugged his shoulders then disappeared. Less than a minute later, Davis walked into the library.

“Davis,” I said warmly. I stood up and took a step toward my old friend.

“Stay back, Elian,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket.

I paused, not understanding his brusque warning. I studied his face, one that was intimately familiar to me for more than two hundred years. Then the scent hit me, almost driving me into a frenzy. I stepped backward until my calves met the leather recliner I’d been reading in. I sat down hard, suddenly afraid. I hadn’t felt fear for at least three centuries.

“You can smell it, can’t you?” he asked, slowly making his way to a chair a few feet from mine.

“Davis,” I breathed, trying to get my hunger under control, “what… you’re alive again.”

“Not one hundred percent,” he replied. The glow of his skin, the pulse in his neck pushing my hunger to new heights, frightening depths. “But enough to walk in the sunlight again. Enough to eat and drink real food and actually enjoy it as I once did. Enough to know you are fighting your desire to infect me all over again.”

He knew me as well as he knew himself. As a creature of the dark, it would be impossible to not know how hard it was for me to not fly out of my chair and lunch for his throat. He watched me struggle for a few seconds, which only drove my need into panicked desperation. I couldn’t fight it anymore. I launched myself out of the chair too fast for any mortal eye to follow.

Davis still had enough of his vampire side left to react before I reached him. He pulled his hand from his coat pocket and held it out toward me. I was moving too fast to stop in time. The crucifix touched my bare forearm for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to instantly sear my flesh. Pain unlike anything I had ever felt shocked me into paralysis. The burning, agonizing sensation made me shriek, which broke my paralysis. I stumbled backward, hands up to guard against the cross, the fear of it touching me again overpowering the constant hunger that burned within me at Davis’ living blood. He ran forward, the crucifix extended in his right hand, a glass vial of clear liquid in his left.

“Please, Elian,” Davis begged. “Don’t make me hurt you anymore.”

Neither of us could mistake the stench of scorched, rotting flesh.

“How dare you bring such things into my home!” I screamed while cowering on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Elian,” he said, shaking his head. He looked completely distraught, truly sorry for what he had done to me. “I came to tell you before you stumbled across it yourself.”

“What?” I asked. “What the hell has happened to you?”

I felt like crying, another emotion I hadn’t succumbed to for one hundred and twenty-one years, since my beloved Niklas and Sondra had been destroyed by an excavation crew exposing their lair to the sun.

“Elian,” Davis said softly, back up until he found the chair behind him. He sat down, never taking his eyes off me. “I need you to listen carefully to me. Something has happened, and not just to me. Depending on your view of it, it’s either a miracle, or the apocalypse.”

I pulled myself up into my chair. Manfred appeared, hand in his housecoat pocket, where I knew he carried a pistol. As my faithful manservant for almost half a millennium, he was my protector against threats during the daylight hours.

“Are you in need of assistance, sir?” he asked, glaring at Davis while somehow looking worriedly at me.

Manfred got a good look at my arm, gasped, and pulled the gun from his pocket. He pointed it at Davis while taking a few steps toward the visitor, until the barrel of the weapon rested against my friend’s temple.

“Put the gun away, Manfred,” I said, waving my hand toward him.

When he gave me a questioning look, I nodded to assure him the gun wouldn’t be necessary. Manfred returned the gun to his housecoat pocket, then came to my side. He clucked and tsk’ed as he examined my wound, a festering, blackened blister on my right forearm. The pain was intense, but I could at least feel my fingers again.

“It’s good for both of you to hear,” Davis said, leaning back in his chair. He put the crucifix in his lap and the glass vial into a coat pocket. “I apologize, Manfred. I truly do, but this concerns you as well.”

Manfred simply nodded, knowing Davis would never harm either of us unless something far out of the ordinary was happening. My manservant stood and left the library without a word. Davis and I were silent for two minutes until Manfred returned with a jar of salve and cold blood bag. He punctured the small bag, dripping a small amount directly on the putrefying wound before handing it to me. My fangs easily punched through the bag material, and I began to feed while Manfred applied salve to my arm. When he was done, I gestured for him to pull up a chair and sit with us.

“Go on,” I said to Davis, letting him know it was time to bring us up to speed.