Chapter One

Chapter One

Marcel’s POV

“Open your eyes and watch, boy.” My father snarls through gritted teeth and spittle flies from his taught lips into my face. He roughly grabs the loosely tied pony tail at the back of my head and wrenches my head back, which forces me to look up and watch the carnage unfolding in front of my eyes.

My jaw tightens in frustration but I bite my tongue. I hate that he calls me ‘boy’. I haven’t been a boy for over a century, but he still looks down on me as if I am dirt beneath his boot and nothing more than a juvenile inconvenience.

“This... is what we are. This... is what they made us. You can not fight nature son.” He shakes my head, pulling my hair out at its roots, as he aggressively makes his point.

He is not wrong about not being able to fight nature, however, we are anything but natural. He continues his speech, the same one I have heard almost daily for decades.

“They call us demon, devil, night walker, shadow reaper, but we would not be, were it not for their meddling.” The venom dripping from his words is putrid. He stands tall and firm in his conviction beside me, and contentedly watches the new-borns tear the unsuspecting coven apart.

Women, cradling their children, run for their lives but are quickly caught and fed upon. This isn’t nature, it’s a massacre and I am one man, helpless to stop it.

The children watch, wide eyed and wailing in terror before being bundled into waiting cages. They will be brought back to the castle and put to work until they are old enough to turn or grown enough to satiate the hunger that burns inside my kind.

The infants are left to wither and succumb to the elements, mewling in their mother’s limp arms. They are too young to be of use and their blood barely worth the effort of a bite. Of all the cruel acts committed here this night, I believe that to be the worst.

This is my father’s vision for our future, and if I remain here much longer it will be a legacy tied to my name too. He is determined to find a way of turning a witch, but his efforts have been fruitless thus far. I want no part of it.

The newly turned recruits need to ‘cut their teeth’, is how he put it this afternoon. He believes these witches are descended from the ones who created, us and they are on the menu this evening.

My father acknowledges no difference between these innocent men, women and children and the creators of Vampyres, my race. To him, they are all fair game and just as culpable.

“They will pay with their blood and their family lines will end.” He sneers in my ear like a serpent.

“So they must pay for the actions of their ancestors? What price will my descendants pay for your misdeeds I wonder?” I don’t usually speak out against my father and I have no desire to create a lineage of my own, but that is beside the point.

He is deaf to any opposition and my efforts are always fruitless. Even as a child I knew I was different and I learned that to survive, I must at least appear to fit in in his dark world.

I have chosen to turn a blind eye as often as possible. I only feed when I must, and even then, only from willing humans who know exactly what I am. Such humans are not easy to find but fortunately for me, my position in the clan affords me certain freedoms and privileges.

The humans who seek us out and revere my father all wish to be turned, for reasons known only to them. I suspect many of them have fled impoverished living conditions or have maladies with no known or reliable cure.

Never one to miss an opportunity for exploitation, father keeps them as his pets. He tells them that if they are willing to serve us they will be rewarded for their loyalty. True to his word he has turned many, he has healed several others by feeding them his blood.

His actions are not philanthropic, rather they serve only to fuel the fire and keep the rumour mill grinding, Blackledge is the sanctuary of the damned. The Vampires he creates are lesser in strength and resilience and far more unpredictable and savage in nature.

I believe his appetite for the kill passes to his creations, but it is not a theory I have explored, nor do I intend to. No matter the reason for their inherent wildness, they are a liability and our future already teeters on a knife edge.

The humans who seek out immortality hear the stories of average men gaining the speed and strength of a god, they suffer no illness or frailties, heal from near death, and live a splendid life in the notorious Blackledge Castle. It’s a fairy-tale my father perpetuates to bring him more willing sacrificial lambs. “Like moths to the flame.” He chortles over his drink every time a new one arrives.

When he hears whispers of dissent and that faith in his promise is growing weak, he will turn an unlucky few and put them to work in his raiding parties. For him, there is no downside. Blood without the risk of the hunt, although he constantly complains about missing the thrill, and a seemingly unlimited supply of foot soldiers for his invasions and raids.

My father is the head of our clan, he calls himself ‘Lord of the Shadow Reapers’, feeding into the human hysteria and absolute fear of our kind. I have no doubt that the reputation he has built is the sole driving force of the hunting parties that seek to destroy every one of my kind.

The fact that he took my Grandfather’s title and land after prematurely ending his life, is a bone of contention between my parents, and many of the tenant farmers close to the borders do not recognise his authority. They do recognise my mother’s birth right and my father is well aware that she is the only reason there has not been an uprising. He would never admit it, but we need the harvest and meat from the farms just as much as the farmers need his protection. It has become a multi generational stale mate.

The witches terrified screams fill the cool night air and pull me away from my thoughts of what has led up to this moment. I don’t have to strain to hear them, and the sound of tearing flesh sets my teeth on edge. We need to feed, that is in our nature, but the barbaric practices of my father and his ‘cullings’ as he calls them, are an atrocity in my eyes.

As a being who has never lived, not in the conventional sense anyway, I find his blatant disregard for the sanctity of life abhorrent.

My father, Halen, was one of the first. He tells the clan the story of his creation at every opportunity, using it as propaganda, firing up the clan for another culling. His speeches rile up the troops, glasses are thrust in the air in appreciation and admiration of their Lord and leader. The paintings on the walls of the banqueting hall rattle with cheers, and cries for witch blood. I will say one thing for him, he knows how to get them in line and singing from his hymn sheet.

His creation is a story I could recount from my childhood word for word, but the truth has diminished and been replaced by ever more fanciful indulgences with each retelling. His curse is a punishment and his companions suffer with him.

The High Priestess took their lives with a single word, then pulled their twisted souls out of the darkness and returned them to their bodies. Their already deranged minds became more twisted, their souls would never know peace and they would merely exist in a world where they didn’t truly belong.

She made them reliant on the blood they so cruelly and unrelentingly spilled in their quest for notoriety and fortune. If they wanted to survive they had to feed on the blood of those who feared them. Halen embraced his curse, taking what was meant to be a disadvantage and using it to gain even more wealth and influence. I daresay that was not the Priestess’ intent when she worked her magic.

I have given it much thought and our abilities make no sense. We are strong, fast, able to enter the minds of lesser beings and bend them to our will, heal and kill with our blood and our bite. What the Priestess created was an apex predator. Nothing adds up.

Every time I think about it I get a bitter taste in my mouth, I have been fed a lie and I am determined to learn the truth of my existence.

Halen has always been a monster. The kind of creature parents would tell their children stories about to scare them into obedience and keep them from wandering.

He and the five men he travelled with from village to village were beasts of another kind. They pillaged, raped and reived their way across the land from coast to coast and back again. No village, farm, town or keep was spared... until they found Blackledge Creek, my home.

The way he tells it, the group had acquired a hoard too vast to keep moving and they decided to settle and build an empire over which to rule. My mother tells it differently. She says that when the two of them met and instantly fell in love, he could not bring himself to leave her, so he convinced the others to remain and build a life in Blackledge.

I find it hard to imagine my father being capable of loving anyone. There are times, when he believes no eyes are upon him, that he will let his mask slip and show my mother some semblance of the man he once was. Those instances are fewer and further between and my mother is more dismissive of his occasional affection than ever before.

At first Halen and his men were welcomed with open arms and given food and shelter at the castle. My mother’s father, the landowner and highly regarded Lord Blackledge, wrongly assumed that the wealthy men passing through his land would bring opportunities for trade to his peaceful, secluded corner of the world.

Lord Blackledge was delighted to observe the affections and attentions the leader of these men lavished on his only child, and he blindly welcomed the men into his home and at his table. That was the beginning of the end for my naive grandfather.

I couldn’t tell you if Halen was looking for a place to hide from the repercussions of a life time of destruction, but the tale of events which unfold soon after meeting my mother tell me that he and his companions had stumbled into a powerful coven during his travels. Their actions brought the full force of the High Priestess’ might down upon them and their associates.

My mother had long forgiven my father his past and the fact that their marriage meant she was cursed alongside him, but Halen continues to seek retribution for his perceived unjust punishment. He can’t see that his actions are doing more damage than the curse and my mother is at her wits end.

This little hamlet has been on Halen's hit list for some time. As I watch the simple stone buildings being set alight, the woven thatch of one roof catches and carries the fire quickly from one dwelling to the next.m I know I can’t be the man he expects me to be.

“I can see your disgust Marcel. You fool nobody by hiding in your chamber and deluding yourself. You won’t be able to outrun your hunger forever, feeding only from a handful of servants, it is your curse too. The sooner you accept it for what it is, the sooner you will know the inner peace you seek from your books and endless, pointless enquiries.” Halen snorts derisively and releases his grip on me when the last anguished cries fade.

It is no secret that I escape reality by submerging myself in literature, but the regular visits of soothsayers, augurs, clergymen and oracles, I had believed to be undiscovered until now. My quest for the truth has hit a stone wall and I am directionless.

If he had known I was exploring my options and looking for a way to rid myself of this god forsaken place, surely my guests would not have been allowed to leave the castle grounds alive. My father may have a low opinion of me but he never displays his contempt in public. His chastisement is delivered behind closed doors as to keep up the pretence of solidarity amongst the Vampyres. If he knew, I would have been punished, wouldn’t I?

Even in our clan the class distinction is as apparent as it is amongst the humans. Halen, my mother Constance, Thebus, Damon, Alderon, Quintus, his wife Lydia, and Conon and his wife Glynnis, were all turned by the High Priestess.

My grandfather and uncles were turned also, but my father put them out of their misery long before they became an obstacle to his desires. Many, many years later, decades in fact, I was born. My birth was followed by children of both Quintus and Lydia and Conon and Glynnis.

My father proclaimed that all those born of pure blood would be called Vampyres, those created from humans would be known as Vampires. Though the two words sound the same when spoken, our written records would clearly distinguish between the pure of blood and the lesser of the species.

Our entire history, weaknesses, strengths and deeds are painstakingly recorded in great detail in a specially commissioned, leather bound ledger that he has come to call ‘The Vampyre Chronicles.’ The Vampyre being referred to is himself, not the race as a whole. He is beginning to believe in his own legend and that is not good for anyone, myself included.

By the time I reached the tender age of nine years old, the other pure blooded Vampyres had left Blackledge with the believed intention of expanding our empire and growing our numbers. Halen could not see that he was losing his grip on his empire.

His comrades had no intention of living under his rule and formed clans to rival our own.

The children like me, the ones I had grown up with, are now my enemies. Our clans are at war for land, battling for the richest and most densely populated villages and towns. To them they are nothing more than cattle, a herd to be left to multiply then culled when the need arises. The memories of seeing a culling for the first time nauseates me even now.

The stench of blood makes my skin itch and my mouth water. The herbs and tonics I acquired from the medicine woman ran out days ago and my lust for blood grows stronger with each passing second.

That is why Halen brought me here, to tempt me to feed. He often says that nothing happens in his castle that he is not aware of, I’m beginning to think it was more of a warning than the thinly veiled threat I always believed it to be.

I have spent night after night wondering why Halen is so angry about our curse. He relishes in all of this, even before the curse he was a monster. It doesn’t make any sense to me. He is his own worst enemy. If he hadn’t gone on killing spree after killing spree, the humans and witches would not be as aware of us as they are.

My father’s legend strikes fear in their hearts, and that fear has led to a desperate need for survival. They have found the Vampires’ weaknesses and more often than not they fight back. There have been many instances where Halen has lost the majority of his men, which only fuels his anger and breeds more rage inside him.

I think that is what angers him more than anything. His own actions have backed him into a corner and he is fighting a losing battle. Unable to see his own faults he blames the witches, they caused his creations to be weak, they feed the fear amongst the humans, they teach them how to fight back, it’s all them, and he will not hear anything else.

The ground is soaked with blood and I have to tread carefully around discarded bodies or else lose my footing. I know not where I am going, but I cannot stand and watch as the children who tried to run for their lives are rounded up and caged with the rest.

I stop walking when I reach a building which is set back from the others. The large spruce planks of the doors are held together with thick wrought-iron straps and crudely forged nails. They are not like anything I have ever seen in such a small settlement.

My fingers mindlessly trace the rough lines of the runes which have been carefully carved into each stone block that forms the doorway. A rush of understanding and cautious excitement comes over me. This is their sacred place, a church of sorts.

It is not just any church. I recognise the sigil carved into the top most stone. I have seen this marking before in the chronicles. It is the mark of the High Priestess Hikura, the one responsible for my father’s curse and my current plight.

I was forced to come here tonight, and now I wonder if fate had a hand in bringing me to this place. Are the answers here? Slaughtering Hikura’s people is not likely to win any favours from the Priestess, I need to break away from my clan or I will be pulled down with them.