Once Awakened: Prologue

I love the hunt; it’s a beautiful dance of death between the predator and my prey. It is a true test of a vampire, a true test of our skill, of our power, of our strength. I love the excitement of it all. I love stalking silently through the shadows, finding my prey as they walk the streets or even letting them find me. I see the fear in their eyes when they realize I bring death. I look into the eyes of every mortal I kill, I see the color of their eyes, the glisten of a tear, pleading, desperation, and when I have pierced them with my fangs, when I have drank them dry I see death. That is my life, the life of a Vampire, because that is what I am. Mortals must never find out we exist, but as for you, forget whatever you think you know about vampires. They exist.1

And I have been among the damned for more than a thousand years. I, the Vampire Sithandra Den Selray, was made in the distant land of Sorridin, a country so old that, to many, it has faded into the realms of myth and legend. But not to me, I alone still remember it and the beauty it possessed. 2

My sire, the Vampire Romulus Desivelo Enidicci, still lives there in his castle. I don’t know how many others he has made, if he has even made any others, but he did make me and he loved me for more than three hundred years, he still does. He raised me as a mortal, as his lover, and taught me everything. And now, more than a thousand years later I have decided to document it all. To record my life, and what a life it has been.3

I have wanted to tell my story for many reasons, some of them I cannot even put into words. I’ve heard that vampire stories sell quite well, but that’s not why I want to tell my story, it’s not for the money. I want to tell it simply to tell it. Simply to write it down and have it read. Have it known. After all, I have so much to tell. Has my life not been long enough to provide a story that could easily fill fifty books?4

When one has lived as long as I have the years fade into seconds and the nights seem non existent. Even for mortals the years can feel like this if they think about it. When someone tells them to wait one year they say it’s so long. But if they think about the years that have already passed it seems so much quicker. I don’t know which is the illusion to them, if it is the slowness of time or the swiftness of it. I can’t relate to it though, for vampires live outside of time, we can create our own illusions for it. 5

And because we have such a separation from time must draw a clear line between us and time. Though this line must be perfect, it must be blurred and clear at the same time because though we are separate from the time stream we live beside it and must appear to be in it. 6

We must draw the same line with mortals, though each vampire has a unique line when it comes to them. Some have such unbreakable lines that they never even see mortals except to kill them. Others prefer to live among them and even to love them with out ever saying what they are. They blur the line so much that at times it may become invisible.7

As for me, my line is both blurred and clear. I live near mortals but I also live silently in the eternal shadows of the lonely nighttime abyss. I feed upon those unfortunate mortals that cross my path, and nothing could change that. But even if anything did, disappearing would be nothing new to me. I have done it for more than two thousand years, have I not? Never living in one place long enough to raise suspicion before moving away. 8

To some mortals my life would seem like the deepest circle of hell. After all, I can never live among mortals without death, invariably their death. I can never love any but my own kind without murder, invariably their murder. But you forget, I was raised by a vampire. I was raised with solitude and secrecy beside me at all times. I never knew other mortals, I only ever saw them when Romulus would take me to see shows at night or when we walked through the city together. I have never missed the sunlight because I have never really seen it. I don’t know the ways of mortals because I was not raised with them. And in all honesty, I don’t regret the choice I made.9

I also know that many other mortals would gladly trade their mortality, their life, for what I have. They will send me letters, and they will ask me questions. Can I live for ever as well? (No, you cannot) Are you real? (Yes, I am as real as you are) Would you kill me if I met you? (You don’t want to meet me). Though I think when they ask and they hope for a certain answer they always know deep down what the actual answer will be.10

But they don’t know what they have. They all think the same thing, mortals, I’m going to die, I’m going to lose everything, my friends my family they will never see me again. You think being a vampire would change it? Never. You think we cannot kill each other? You think we don’t? I’ve seen it happen, my friend, I’ve seen vampires kill one another in such painful ways that you could never imagine that anyone could actually do such things to another. 11

But vampires? We’re not like everyone else, we don’t forget things, we don’t show mercy, not even to each other. The basic instinct to kill is embedded in to us at creation, and that instinct does not care if someone is a vampire or a mortal. Mortals shoot at each other with their guns or stab each other with their knives. As for vampires, we are not like that. 12

To a vampire killing is not as simple as picking up a gun and pulling a trigger, or randomly stabbing another. And though most of us do carry weapons, we don’t require them. We are designed for the thing we do. We are designed to kill. To a vampire killing is a delicate art. It is something that must be done carefully and even beautifully. It is an art that must be taught, must be practiced, and then must be perfected. No vampire just grabs a mortal and kills them without thought. 13

Yes, killing mortals, that is an art in itself. So many different things are involved in it, where to bite, how much pain to cause them. The most experienced of us could drain a mortal to the point of death without even making their presence known. Or, simply their touch can feel like the hottest flames of Hell. You must be very gentle with mortals as their bodies are so frail compared to ours. It’s so easy to accidentally kill a mortal, and they are so very mortal. They hurt so much more easily then us, and they break so easily as well. If we aren’t careful even the slightest thing could prove fatal. A slight caress of the cheek, for example, could easily crack the skull of a mortal if we used even the slightest amount of strength. And if we hurt them then they are no longer beautiful to us. But, after a time, it becomes second nature to be gentle with them.14

However, no matter what we do, no matter how we do it, there is one true thing. We are all evil. From the moment the blood from the vein’s of our sire touches our lips we are evil, nothing can change it. We are evil in its purest and most complete form, the object of nightmares, the children of the shadows. 15

There are many of us who want to be evil, and they want to take life, and not just for the blood. They want to take life simply to take life, simply to see the fear and the pain in the eyes of a mortal in the last minute of their life, when they have no hope, when they have nothing to hold onto anymore and the tears fall from their wide eyes like rain in a storm. And the last sound their victim would hear is the sound of their sadistic killer’s laughter. There are vampires who embrace those moments and kill mercilessly just to taste them. They cannot control themselves and their greed ultimately becomes their downfall. But I am not among them16

To so many I would be a hero, the immortal vampire always there to save the night. I can see it now, running down the streets, my black cloak swirling around me, rushing to the aid of some unfortunate mortal. The idea is laughable. Sure, I would not mind being the hero once or twice instead of turning away for fear of showing my true nature to the world. But, unfortunately that is impossible. And I hate it. After all, eternity is a long time for me to be the evil one. And truly, I’m not evil.17

But too just as many I would be the villain. I am the killer waiting in the shadows. I am the one you would never want to meet alone in the dark. I am the one who defines evil. Waiting just around the corner to snatch you up and say good bye. To sink my fangs into your flesh and drink away all that you were. God, I’ve killed so many in my lifetime, more then I can count. More then I would want to count.18

I am known only by the shadows, they keep their silence. We live alone. That’s what a vampire’s life is, loneliness, always the same, through every night, every year, every century. Only the strongest can handle it. Many vampires do not even live a single century before they give it all up. The solitude becomes unbearable, the thirst becomes unquenchable, the pain becomes unstoppable, and their life becomes unlivable. The world passes into its new ages and we stay in ours, never changing and never going on. They hold onto their sadness and their loneliness because they are all they really have. And after a lifetime of molding death into a work of art they make their own death just as beautiful and just as unforgettable. 19

And what of those of us who have managed to live through the millenniums? What of us? The stronger ones, sometimes I wonder if we are really the weaker ones. We call our eldest our strongest because they have managed to live through almost anything, but in a way I think they are the weakest. They are the ones who have lived outside of time for so long that they cannot comprehend it any longer. They are the ones who have forgotten what mortality is like while the younger ones can still remember it. And thought their memories may cloud their judgment it helps us in far more ways.20

But you want to hear my story don’t you? You want to hear every detail of my life from the moment Romulus took me away from death, to the moment he killed me himself, to this very moment, right now. You do not want to hear the mindless prattle of a vampire more than thousand years old. You want to hear the real story, the real story of what actually happened in that millennium. You don’t want to hear me make excuses for the way we are or try to convince you that we this or that. You probably have your own idea about what you think we are anyway and no amount of truth can change that. Letting your imagination fill in the blanks is probably better anyway. You want to know what I’ve seen, what I’ve done. How did I manage to watch the years fly by? How did I manage to watch each age curl up and then fade away into darkness without doing the very same thing myself? 21

Well you have no need to worry about that, my friend. I am going tell you. How could I not? Those one thousand years have given to me a story that simply longs to be told, that simply needs to be told. And I know just how to fill these pages with a story that you could never put down even if you wanted to. And you know? I think I will.22