Chapter 4

Rowan slouched against the back of his chair and stretched his long, lean legs to full length in front of him.  Rubbing his tired eyes with his left hand, his right hand gripped the papers that he’d managed to acquire.  They belonged to a physician turned scientist who lived a few centuries earlier.  The man had been successful in putting life back into a human corpse.  True, the revived corpse possessed a monster-like appearance, and the experiments went no further, but the concept was still a valid one. It was Rowan’s thought that, since the physician had been able to bring a deceased human back to life, surely there was a method for elongating the life of one still living– possibly to the point of immortality- without the need of polluting it with his vampire blood.

With frustration and disgust, he tossed the soiled and dog-eared papers onto the table next to his chair. He’d combed over them at least a dozen times, but still came up empty for clues as to how to successfully perform the task.

It would be dawn soon.  He lived in the mountains surrounded by forest for a reason.  The sun was less potent which allowed him to venture out of doors during most daylight hours.  His only caution was when it was at its peak.  Even so, he maintained a home that was able to barricade against the sun’s rays if desired.  Because of the schedule that he’d been keeping, he’d opted to avoid the rays to help maintain optimum health. As long as he kept his body properly nourished with fresh human blood and refrained from exposing himself to the intense sunlight, he’d been able to get by on only a handful of hours of reprieve since he began his project half a century ago.

To his disappointment, of late, he was finding it more and more difficult to remain animated around the clock.  The demands that he’d placed on his body were taking their toll and it craved the respite that the average vampire favored from sunup to sundown each day.  With no vampire physician available for him to consult with, he interpreted this repercussion of the treatment he'd given his body as a sign that his time was running short.  This made him all the more determined to complete his mission before it was too late.

The threat of his vampire family’s extinction was too great to ignore or take lightly.  Ever since the werewolves arrived a few centuries ago, they’d been picking off his people; little by little.

Originally, he had to admit that he was just as against vampirism as were the s.  More than once he’d lamented his fate after having the misfortune of encountering a villainous vampire in the middle of the night while traveling home from an evening of debauchery that he should have known better than to partake in.  He considered it his punishment that the vampire took great delight in draining him of what he thought was every drop of blood.  Although his body looked dead and bloodless, there was just enough blood spared to mix with the vampire venom that the evil vampire maliciously deposited into his system to cause Rowan to resurrect days after being buried in the cold, lonely soil amongst a sea of rotting corpses.  It left him with no option than to flee Europe and seek refuge in the less populated new world.

For several decades, Rowan bitterly tried to end his existence by starving himself of life-giving blood, but the inherent vampire demand for survival was too powerful.  He eventually gave in and ingested the blood of whatever living creature that had the misfortune of coming too near.  Sometimes it was a deer, sometimes something larger like a bear, and sometimes a small rabbit or two. He drank, but he never killed.

He’d vowed to abstain from consuming the blood of humans for fear of creating more like himself.  It wasn’t until he stumbled onto the mangled, half-dead body of a man who’d had the misfortune of losing the battle with a bear that he’d been tracking that he finally sampled the blood of a human.  Seeing that the man was on death’s door and hearing his pleas for help, he made the snap decision to do the only thing that he could do. 

Having been created and left without the guidance of his maker, Rowan was forced to stumble about and learn through trial and error from events as they happened.  His experience drinking from the animals showed him that he needed to mix a bit of his venomous vampire saliva into the blood of his victim in order for the victim to be infected and turn.  His surprise when this first occurred with a rabbit and then a deer was so acute that he quickly trained himself to stifle his venom’s flow while feeding, something many vampires simply couldn’t master.

On this particular occasion, he deliberately introduced a heavy dose of his venomous saliva into the man’s blood supply after sinking his impalers deep into one of the angry looking wounds. He drank what blood was left of the mutilated body until there was just a drop or two of the tainted fluid left.  Then, he sat back and waited for the first member of his future family to join him. 

Watching the man’s wounds heal as he transformed from human to vampire proved mesmerizing for Rowan.  Even centuries later, he still found it a beautiful and satisfying sight to behold.

Samuel Belvidere took to vampirism far more easily than did his maker, Rowan Jules.  Perhaps it was because he had the advantage of Rowan’s guidance and tutorage, while Rowan was left to his own devices and forced to learn and acclimate through trial and error.  Whatever the reason, Rowan was encouraged to make others to join their little family.  By the time the werewolves appeared on the scene, his family was hundreds in number. 

Also called lycan, but preferring the name werewolf, they proved to be a fierce and vindictive lot.  Having been chased out of Eastern Europe by a band of evil vampires that made the werewolves seem gentle, they took vengeance on Rowan and his unsuspecting people.  With devious malice, they made sure to travel in small groups of at least three; keeping their identity and motive hidden until the opportunity to take out a lone and unsuspecting vampire arose.

It was far easier to recognize that you were in the company of a vampire than a werewolf.  Besides the fact that they were more comfortable walking in the light of day no matter the intensity of the sun, werewolves were very human with their looks and energy.  Their human form gave off a slightly greater amount of body heat, but their hearts beat, and blood flowed just like that of a human.  This was not the case with the vampire.  His heart would beat four times slower than that of a human’s, as did his blood flow at an equally slow rate.  Because of this, the vampire’s body temperature was cool.  So cool, in fact, that it was a mere few degrees warmer than that of a cadaver.  The facts that the vampire’s complexion was naturally pale while a werewolf’s was ruddy and that the vampire required blood to maintain a healthy countenance, caused humans to look upon them as dangerous animated dead creatures. 

The werewolf also had the advantage of being able to dine on the same food as humans. Although, even though they disliked the taste and texture of vegetables, vampires could manage to digest most of them, but they’d become deathly ill if meat was ingested.

Rowan’s human life was one of advantages.  Highly educated, he did not buy into the folklore that tended to frighten the tenant farmers that surrounded his estate.  It was because of this that he had no idea of the validity to the claim of vampires being about and was equally ignorant about the existence of werewolves.  Had he taken the tales more seriously, he might have avoided the fateful encounter that altered his future forever.

For the better part of the last two centuries, his vampire family warred with the werewolves.  Sometimes his people were the victor of a bloody skirmish and other times the werewolves prevailed.  Of late, a new leader, Marcus, had appeared within the ranks of his enemy.  Since the life of a werewolves did not match the near immortal longevity of a vampire, he’d seen several come and go over the years, but he’d never experienced a werewolf quite like Marcus.

This particular leader worried Rowan.  He was cunning, brave, and vicious.  He’d managed to entrap the vampires in battle to the extent that they were down to mere dozens in number.  Because of this, Rowan was forced to resort to steadily creating an army of vampires to fight back.  Since sickness and death were a natural experience for humans, finding candidates was not difficult.

Although it was his rule that he and he alone turned the humans, he eventually conceded to allow Samuel and the second vampire he’d turned, Oscar, to aid him in bringing the numbers of their army up to snuff.

Because of his respect and value for human life, he’d ordered that they turn people who, like Samuel, were on death’s door, but he suspected that some of the new vampires that were created by his underlings came from alternate situations. He also suspected that it was Oscar and not Samuel who occasionally ignored his orders.  A strong believer in picking his battles to make certain they were a worthwhile use of his energies, he decided to ignore his suspicions as the occasions where he guessed the conditions of a vampire being made under the wrong circumstances were few.  Should that change, then, he would rethink how to handle the situation.

He did his best to educate and prepare his soldiers against the deviousness of the enemy, but Marcus still managed to keep one step ahead of him.  The frustrating fact was that it seemed that as fast as a vampire was created, one was destroyed.

Rowan had suspected that his lack of sufficient rest would eventually take its toll on his body, but the urgency that he felt in trying to find the means to save his family from extinction overshadowed all concern or reason. When he finally determined that the inevitable was approaching - that his body was preparing to give in to the permanency of death- he knew that he needed to try something different.  Thus, he pulled out the papers from the scientist of old and began to work on elongating the life of a human instead of turning him vampire. Of course, if someone was adamant about becoming a true vampire, he or she would have that option by way of Samuel or one of the others, but, if he could master this feat, then those who coveted the excessively long and happy life of a human or wished to be able to comfortably intermingle with humans would be able to have it as well.  What a concept!

He pulled on what remained of his vague human memories; living, eating, sleeping, and feeling the intense heat of the sun on his cheeks as he walked in the most brilliant part of the day.  How wondrous it would be to enjoy such things for all of eternity. He’d managed to extend the life of his staff and his ward, Cora, by giving tiny amounts of his blood to them at regular intervals.  But he knew that when he eventually expired, they would no longer have his blood and their bodies would rapidly degenerate.

He would have passed the responsibility on to one of his senior vampires, but he’d had both Samuel and Oscar give their blood to humans, only to discover through tragedy that vampire blood could not be mingled in such a way.  The human would turn vampire every time.

At first, Rowan suspected that his underlings were leaking their venom into the blood of the human, but that was not the case.  It seemed that even though the vampires were created by Rowan, there was still a variance due to the human DNA of each individual body turned vampire. There was something special about Julian’s blood that did not get passed on to his offspring.   The sad fact was that, once he expired, Cora and those in his staff who he’d been keeping alive would not be able to receive treatment from Samuel or Oscar. They would be forced into the decision of whether to turn vampire or die a human death.

He did not want them to lose their life.  Nor did he relish the idea of them becoming vampires and forfeiting the advantages of living in the light of day and have the wonders of the sun upon their face or the deliciousness of fine foods become a distant memory.  He was determined to learn how to make their lives go on long after he was gone.

He also desired to give his vampire family enough human genetics as to raise the body temperature to allow him or her to comingle with humans.  Thus, making them more difficult to spot. Either would be a worthwhile cause, but, so far, he’d had no success.

It was his earnest desire to leave those who he loved with this gift before he expired and was no more.

A sadness swept through him.  If only he could master his task before his own life expired.  What a joy it would be to be able to have some semblance of humanity again.  Of course, that was too much to ask for.  Measuring the way his body felt of late, he’d be lucky if he lasted long enough for it to become a possibility for his family, let alone himself.

Cora was not aware of the fact that he was slowly expiring and the consequences for her thereof and he had no intention of telling her.  She’d made it clear that she coveted vampirism because of the longevity of life that bordered on immortality that accompanied it. If he was unable to find another way and that was the only possibility for her to continue on, then he would grant her wish. It was his earnest desire to gift her with that same longevity without the curse of vampirism. At least for the time being, she was able to enjoy both.  Hopefully, he would find a way to keep it like that.

The man he’d discovered in the alley gave him hope.  He’d been bitten by the zombie that was beheaded. He should have died from that bite and become a zombie, yet he had not. There were also signs of werewolf bites and slashes on his flesh.  They alone should have either killed him or turned him, depending upon whether or not he was born with werewolf compatible genetics.  Yet, he was found as a human who lay at death’s doorstep.

Rowan wasn’t sure if it was because he’d been rescued by him and immediately given a small dose of vampire blood or if the man was simply immune to the supernatural. Could that be?  Could a human be immune to the curses of vampirism, werewolfism, or zombiesm? If so, what was the trait that gave him that immunity? He needed to find out.

With a long, cat-like stretch, he got out of the chair and made his way to his room.  If he was going to complete his mission, he’d have to start treating his body with a bit more care.