Lionesses

Lionesses

Part 4

My wounds are healing now. I have not yet been allowed to see Spike and Dru, apart from the brief glimpse I had of them after tearing myself from that beam. His hands were dripping blood, where he had tried to pull them out of the manacles, and he was distraught. Typical Spike, he could never hide his feelings. Dru seemed content, though.

It has been seven days since then. Once I had pulled the nails from my wrists, the minions carried me off to a room where they cleaned me up, fed me, and bound up my wounds, no doubt so that Aurelius won’t get blood all over his linen. Before they washed me, though, I made sure that I kept safe that single golden hair. This I must understand, because there are no blonde vampires here. Well, other than Spike, and it certainly isn’t his.

I am still stiff and sore, but I aw ‘rw ‘requested’ to join the clan. I have seen none of them since that night, not even Aurelius. There is not much time before sunrise, so I don’t think I’m going to socialise.

The minions escort me out into the hall. Spike and Dru are there, this time chained where I was. I am taken to stand in front of Aurelius, who once more is holding formal court.

“Angelus.”

“Aurelius.”

I’m sure that he wants me to call him by some title other than his name – Master, perhaps, or Grandsire. He’ll wait a long time for that. If he thinks to humiliate me again, I just need to remember Acathla, in my own Hall, waiting for me to bend him to my purpose.

“You have survived the first part of my judgement.”

First part? FIRST part? What the hell now? I say nothing, though. What could I possibly say that will make a difference?

“The offences you have committed against the clan were offences against me, with the loss of Nest and Darla. These were carried out whilst you were not in control of yourself. This is accepted, and those offences have now been purged. The clan concurs with me on this. However, you still have no status within the clan, having allied yourself with the Slayer against us, and I presume that you wish to win that status back? You wish to be other than an outcast? To be confirmed in the territories that you claim?”

He pauses, and I can only nod. I have no idea what is coming, and that is worrying. There is something I must make a stand on, though. For the sake of my sanity.

“You know that I claim the Hellmouth, and the territory surrounding it as my own. As is custom, that includes everything and everybody within that territory. Even the Slayer. If I choose to make her my toy, my possession, to exact my vengeance in the manner of my choosing, no one here may gainsay it. That must be clearly understood.”

Aurelius gives a ghost of a smile, and Sekhmet yawns widely, much more widely than a modern lion can, displaying those long daggers that she calls teeth.

“Are you challenging me, Angelus? Setting up your will against mine?”

Careful, now. I can still be torn to pieces here. It galls me, but I duck my head in submission. Well, briefly, anyway.

“That is not my intent.”

Meaning, of course, that I will if I must. You always need to show strength when dealing with other vampires, take it from me.

“However, I must be clear about the terms of this arrangement.”

I’ll be damned if I’ll say ‘punishment’. But I cannot forget my hallucinations. If I go back to Sunnydale, and kill the Slayer, as I should, I may never get her out of my head, and that, above all, I need to do. There are things I must do first, before she dies. Things that will reassert my mastery over my own body and my own mind. Over her.

Angel.

I must be able to deal with her on my own terms, and without interference from elsewhere. And I don’t want to tell the clan about those dreams. They are private.

“The Slayer is in my territory. I may kill her, or I may make her my pet. Keep her alive so that I may drink her power whenever I wish. That is my affair. Is that agreed?”

If Aurelius thinks I’ve gone too far, he might make it his affair. The blood of a Slayer will make me stronger. The blood of a Slayer taken whenever I wish will make me very much stronger. Perhaps strong enough to challenge him. But it has been done before. Just occasionally, strong vampires have been involved with weak slayers, although that is very rare, and the names of the lucky bastards who did it are a mantra to vampire-kind. Never with a slayer like this, though. He cannot deny it, and I must have it publicly acknowledged now, rather than wait for him to send assassins creeping round my home. I think Aurelius has more honour than that, but I might be wrong. Never overestimate your opponent’s sense of honour. Angelus’ Third Law.

But he simply looks amused again.

“If you can tame what I understand is a very strong Slayer indeed, then you may do so with my goodwill. I may even come to visit this phenomenon myself.” I almost bare my teeth at that thought.

“For now, I have a task for you. In the last few months certain items belonging to me have been taken from their accustomed place. You will recover them for me.”

“What do you wish to recover?”

“A book and some bones. Sekhmet will go with you, to ensure that you recover the right ones.”

What?

There are several cries of shock from the clan behind me, and then everyone starts talking at once.

************

You think that I am a monster? Well, and so I am. I am a vampire. What else is that, but a monster? Whether I am more monstrous than the average human, though, you shall judge. We have a little time in which to talk, whilst Angelus has gone to recover what is mine. The clan is shocked that I should entrust this to one whom they still fear is an apostate, and unreliable, but they are even more shocked at the fact of the loss. So am I. Someone has taken my most precious possession.

He has not gone alone. I have sent Sekhmet with him. He thinks, deep in his heart, that she will be the instrument of his execution if he tries to run from me, and that I have sent her for that reason. He is wrong. I know that he will not run. I know him better than he thinks.

Sekhmet may not help him – that was part of my judgement, although every fibre of me cried out to permit it, to send the whole gathering to help him, to go with him myself – but, other than me, she alone can assure him that the bones he recovers are the right ones. She alone will be with him. I will give Seth no reason to say that I have helped Angelus, and I have already done more than I should in giving him my blood again. He could never have freed himself otherwise, unable, as he was, to access the Slayer’s power because she’s taken some damned Watcher’s potion. I hadn’t expected that.

I have described what he must find, the bones and the book, but he does not know what they are, nor will I tell him, I think. I dare not tell him too much, for all our sakes.

And now you wish to know some of those things I cannot tell Angelus, to hear stories that will while away the time until he returns? You had better hear about it from the beginning, I suppose.

~~~~~~

I do not come from Egypt, but from Europe. From the Alps. Of course, none of the places had the names then that they have now, and boundaries were very different where they existed at all. Nations and empires have come and gone since then, cities risen and fallen into dust. At the time of which I speak the natives of North America were still largely hunter-gatherers; the natives of Britain were just changing from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled tradition of farming. It was a little over 5,500 years ago. I don’t know exactly, although I could work it out if ever I wished to, but not only have nations and lifestyles come and gone, but so have calendar systems and methods of dating. And I have never been one for celebrating birthdays. Well, not after the first three thousand years, that is.

I came to Egypt with my father. I came for love, and because of love.

My father loved the wife of our tribal chief, and she loved him. For years, they tried to act with honour, but it was too much for them and one day, honour was cast to the winds. It was a little like your story of the triangle of Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot. It ended with the exile of my father. It should have ended with his death, but he was a smith, who knew the secrets of working metal. In those days, that was considered to be powerful magic, and my father no less than a magician – we were very ignorant and superstitious, you may think, but you are really no different now. Think about it. In any event, it was considered bad luck to kill him, so they killed her instead, and banished him. I loved my father, and so I went with him. I think that, were it not for me, he would have thrown his life away with hers. I was ten at the time.

We travelled for years, and he taught me the smith’s art. In those days, we could work copper and silver and gold, and we had just learned the art of working bronze. That was a very rare skill then, the secrets closely guarded. He was the best smith around, and we never lacked for anything except a permanent home. Many were offered, but none appealed enough to make us stay.

Then we arrived in Egypt. I was twenty-five, and I was as good at the smithy as my father. We liked the land and the people. They had no notion of how to work bronze and so we were valued for that, but we were also welcomed because of ourselves. We made friends. We decided to stay. I think my father also thought it was time I took a wife, and there were many desirable women here.

And that is how my story begins – with a woman. Zuleika. The fair one. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and I thought that I should die for love of her. I was old for an unmarried man, in those days, but our nomadic life had meant that I’d had no opportunity to truly fall in love before. She was my first. And I opened everything that I was to her. It’s an old and common tale, nothing unusual. We had high status in the village, but so did her other suitor. He was the headman’s son. She chose him because, she said, she had no wish to live with one who reeked of the forge.

I tried to change her mind, but I expect that I was too ardent, too passionate. She was haughty and disdainful, and her betrothed came to dissuade me from seeing her again. He came with a gang of his father’s men, and when they left, I lay badly beaten, and my father lay dead. An acct, It, I’m sure now, but nevertheless, he was dead. I had worshipped him, the kindest and gentlest of men. There was no one in those days to enforce the law against the headman’s son. The han wan was the law, and there was no more to be said.

Love for her turned to hatred and self-loathing, and I sought a means of vengeance. I knew of a shaman who said that he could call demons. I gave him a bronze axe and a bronze knife, with a carved ivory handle. They were beautiful pieces that I myself had made, and each was worth more than he would earn at his trade in a year. He accepted them with alacrity, and settled down to summon a demon. I wondered whether I would get a worthwhile trade for those items. Perhaps I have, perhaps I haven’t.

The knife still exists. I had carved the hilt on one side only, with a scene of men fighting, a pirate raid that I had seen when men from the land of Sumer came to loot and plunder along the banks of the Nile. The other side of the haft was bare, and he made me promise to carve it after I had seen the demon. I was always a man of my word, and I did. After drinking down his life and his small gift of magic, I carved an only slightly fanciful picture of what happened to me that night, my death and reh, ah, and later gave it to a Pharaoh, to remember me by. It is called the Gebel el-Arak knife, and it is in the Louvre. I don’t want it back, especially since the bronze blade was damaged at some time, and the haft reworked to fix it to a flint blade. The Egyptians could never work bronze.

But that is a story for another day. I will tell you of the demon. The shaman worked his charms and spells, although I saw nothing. He swore to me that a demon had spoken to him, was prepared to give me my vengeance, and told me to go that night up into the hills. He gave me a location, and I went there. I was young and foolish, hotheaded and passionate in those days. But not bad, not an evil man. How things change.

I was also very drunk. We had no spirits then, we we did have beer.

I went high into the hills and, at the place to which the shaman had directed me, I found a burning bush. I later discovered that the place was a very small Hellmouth, now closed up once and for all. Someone else found a similar burning bush, many centuries later, and he told his people about speaking to a god there. You know about that, even today. I, on the other hand, kept silent about my encounter.

The shaman had given me no instructions so I sat by the bush, which gave off a great deal of light and a little warmth in the chill night air.

“Do you think you will come to any good here?” said a voice behind me. When I looked, I saw a man, handsome and well dressed, but still a man. I was wrong.

“What I do here is my business, stranger.”

“Oh, I think it mine as well. After all, you summoned me here. What do you want from me?”

So, the shaman was more than an old trickster, after all.

I was still nursing my hatred and my burning need for vengeance. I told the demon that I wanted to have my revenge on the woman who had spurned me, and on her lover. And I wanted revenge on all those who had been involved in the murder of my father. It was a petty motive for summoning a demon, and it did not take me long to learn that, but at the time it was all I wanted in the world.

He asked me what he would get out of the bargain. I was lost for an answer – I had not thought beyond my griegrief – so I asked him what he wanted. He looked at me in a way I had never been looked at before. I believe he searched my soul. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him.

“I want a body for a demon.”

I was shocked and afraid.

“You want to kill me and take my body?”

“No. This is a female demon. She would be better in a woman’s body. And I want you to look after her until I can come for her myself.”

I was intrigued, then, and I knew that there was more to this request, so, in my drunken mood, I insisted that he tell me why he wanted this. I thought that he would not answer me, but eventually he did.

“There are many different types of demon. In some ways, the Underworld is not so very different to your world. Each demon has its own aspirations and desires, its own passions. The demon I need shelter for is the demon I love. She is young, newly emerged, and she has attracted many others. But she loves me, and we wish to be together.

“Another demon, much more powerful than I, has declared that she will be his. Not his wife or his lover, but his possession, his concubine and his slave, if that gives you a better understanding. I want to get her out of the Underworld, and away from Seth. Being young, she does not yet know how to take on flesh in this dimension, and he would find her in a heartbeat if she were simply a spirit. I need a body in which she can reside, to mask her, until he forgets about her. That may take a century or two, but he will. His obsessions come and go, and few have lasted more than a millennium.”

These were not timescales in which I was accustomed to think – to live to the age of fifty was an achievement in those days. But when you are drunk, everything becomes possible.

He looked around, taking in the velvet sky, thickly sprinkled with stars in a way that you never see in your modern world, at the stark beauty of the hills around us, the soft sheen of the Nile below.

“I love this dimension – I always have. Eventually, perhaps Sekhmet and I can live here, in peace. The demon dimensions are not somewhere you would want to spend much time, I can assure you.”

And so we agreed to a bargain. He would give me the means of delivering my vengeance, and we would find a body that his lover could inhabit. I would look after her for so long as necessary, so I too would need an extended lifespan.

He pondered how to do this for a while, and then he said a few words over the burning bush. The fire was instantly transformed into an egg shape of blue light. There was a crackle of power, and a body fell to the ground. It was a lion, but of a kind that I had never seen before. It had fangs that were about a span in length, for a start, and a short tail, just a little longer than that of a lynx. It was huge. It was also, fortunately, unconscious.

I walked over to the beast and examined it in wonder.

“I have never seen anything like this!”

“No. Most of them died out five or six thousand years ago. A very few survive but not, I think, for long. When everything else has been done, she will be the instrument of your vengeance. She will be possessed by a minor demon that will control her behaviour. It will be enslaved to you. She will do whatever you wish.”

He knelt down by the head of the cat and ran his finger down one long fang. He looked at me, and could see my interest in this strange and wondrous beast.

“They use these fangs to kill their prey. The animals they used to hunt were huge, much larger than any you have encountered, and lived in very cold conditions. Those beasts had thick skins and enormous layers of fat, and it was hard for a predator such as this to reach vital organs, to kill them. So they evolved these fangs. They are too brittle to use for killing prey in the normal way that such cats do – they would break on those large bones. They use them to bite into the neck and drink the blood, until the hunted becomes too weak to stand any longer. Then they can finish the animal off at their leisure. They will eat the meat, but the blood gives them everything they need. Those big animals are gone nowd thd these hunters cannot prosper without them. That is why there are fewer of them every year. There is no more than a handful now, and those will soon be gone. This female will not be missed.

“She will hunt humans in the same way, drinking their blood. She will do your bidding, kill whom you wish to kill. First, though, I will put my own Sekhmet into this body, for safekeeping until you find a suitable human female. Then you will call me and I will do the exchange. Sekhmet will be in the woman, and the demon in the lioness, and you may wipe out the whole of humanity, if you wish.”

That was a little beyond my ambitions, but I thought of those who had driven my father and I from our home, murdered the woman he came to love after my own mother had died, and I decided that perhaps we could deal with them too. I was very drunk, remember. And very young, full of find pnd passion.

“Now, slit the cat’s throat while she is still unconscious,” he instructed.

I didn’t understand, so he explained.

“We must take the cat to the point of death, so that the soul will flee the body. To have two spirits in one body is a recipe for disaster. It would drive both mad.”

I could see that, and he turned out to be right, of course, so I prepared to slit her throat, and spill her blood. As I did so, the demon called for his lover. All I ever saw of her was a shimmer in the air, like a heat haze, as we waited for the cat to fade from life.

It was then that absolute disaster struck. There was a rumble in the earth, and a smell of power in the air, not unlike the smell of the smithy. Seth had found us.
~~~~~~
************

I have been researching in Giles’ books. I had to steal the one I wanted to read – I don’t want to ask him this question. I don’t want him to know that it even is a question. Even more confusing, I don’t know why I need to know, except that it is something to do with the dreams I have had of Angel. Those dreams are gone now, although a shadow of them seems to remain. It’s a dark shadow, and I am afraid of it.

I want to know about mates. And now I do.

A vampire usually only has one mate at a time – any more is considered ‘bad form’. That sounds like an English phrase, but I guess I know what it means. The mate is usually of the opposite sex, and seems to be much the same as a long-term lover or partner in marriage. And sometimes, that partner can be a human. Some vampires seem to be able to fall in love with humans. There is no ceremony, no ritual for this mating – the parties just think of themselves as mates, as lovers, and the relationship usually ends when one tires of it and sends the other packing. Not so different to us, then.

But there is a different type of mate. An eternal mate. A relationship that is expected to live on beyond death – beyond a vampire’s final death, that is. When they are dust, they believe that their spirits will stay together. Soul mates, if ever vampires had souls. This is a bonding that is recognised by ritual and ceremony, a higher form of marriage, if you like, and is rare indeed. It is severed only by death, and then only until the death of the survivor. There is no record of this ever being offered to a human.

Would Angel have ever offered this to me? Does he think of me this way? Is that why I was called to him? Is he dead? Is he still among the living? What am I to do?

Will I dream of him tonight? I want to, but I’m afraid of what the dream might mean.

***********
I sit in the shadows, watching. I am watching Angelus, as he carries out the task Aurelius has given him. We have been to Jerusalem, where those things we seek were first taken. But being Egyptian in character, in a gesture of goodwill, they have been loaned to Egypt for further research. So we are in the Cairo Museum.

An employee who was working late in one of the back rooms is wishing that he had gone home on time, but it’s too late now. Angelus has the man tied to a chair, and has assembled a small tray of implements, which he is showing to his terrified victim. There are not many implements, but there are enough. I know what he can do with them. I’ve been inside his head. I didn’t need to go very deeply for what I had to do, but the things I saw, even so… You *really* don’t want to know. Not some of them, any way.

I’ve been inside *her* head, too. That was very interesting. Bringing them together? That was easy, like two halves of a magnet. One thing I telltell you – keeping them apart, that will be the trick. I pity whoever tries. With the two of them together, the future will be very interesting indeed, as Aurelius well knows.

What? Because I’m a cat, you think I’m nothing else? Think again, youngster.

He’s picked up a sliver of flint – it looks like a piece of old arrowhead. I remember those. They hurt. It’s very sharp, sharper than any steel edge, and the man is naked. The flint can do a lot of damage. Angelus seems to deliberate, just trying the edge of the flint against certain parts of the anatomy, leaving a barely visible red line at each place, stinging no more than a paper cut would, just a harbinger of things to come. The man has gone very pale indeed. I think he might cry.

Angelus doesn’t really want to have to cut. Oh, he will, if he has to, and in other circumstances would have a fine night’s entertainment from it. But he’s in a hurry to find what he’s been sent for, and he knows that his best weapon for getting speedy information is fear - the fear of what *might* happen, of how the pain *might* feel. If this man is brave enough to allow Angelus to start cutting, he might hold out for some time. We don’t want that.

So, he allows the man to imagine. He helps that along by just touching the flint to the most sensitive parts. He has a rag in the other hand, in case the man starts screaming. The man stinks of fear, but what is he most afraid of – Angelus, or the consequences of giving up the information? I know which one he *should* be, but he doesn’t know who he is dealing with.

Angelus seems to come to the same conclusion. Quick as thought, and without the least warning, he slashes the little blade across the man’s eyeball, and then muffles the inevitable scream with the rag in his fist.

Now he’s promising that the man will keep his other eye if he tells what he knows. I think he’s made his point.

The book and the bones were here, as we were told in Jerusalem. But at the moment they are gone. One of the senior officials has them at his house. He often takes antiquities home for a while. Does he now? The man gives us the address and tells us about his boss’s habits.

When Angelus has everything he needs, he buries his fangs in the man’s throat. Surprisingly, he shares his kill with me. His promise to the man? Well, he only promised that he would keep the other eye. He has. He was never going to come out of this with his life.

My companion tidies up perfunctorily, and then shoulders the corpse. We head off, first for a dumping ground, and then to this new address.

*************
~~~~~~

Seth was not pleased. He was powerful, even then. He has learned more since. So have I, but not enough to go up against him. On this night, he was a tall, dark, indistinct figure, cloaked in black. He muttered a few words, spinning some spell that prevented any of us from moving, even the two demons. He moved to stand in front of the corporeal demon.

“You think to steal my toy away from me?” he raged. “You think that I would allow that to pass, that I would not hunt you down and punish you?”

My demon companion was struggling to move, and struggling to speak, but we were like flies in amber. It was impossible. Seth was silent for a moment or two, but when he spoke again, he seemed to have composed himself a little.

“Well, what shall I do with you all?” he mused, his voice cold and sharp.

“Acathla.”

He addressed my companion, whose name I had not known until now.

“You’ve got big ambitions, if you think you can set your will against mine. Let’s give you an appetite to match those ambitions. I am well aware that you love this dimension, that it attracts you as ours do not. That will be your punishment. You will have one function in life, and one function only. You already have the power to transport things,” and he looked meaningfully at the cat. “You will become a gateway to Hell. This human’s bloodline will be the trigger that opens you, and believe me, I shall make sure that his bloodline carries on down the ages, for as long as it suits me. Everything that passes through you will find an eternity of pain. Allow me to demonstrate.”

He did so. Behind the barrier of whatever spell he had cast, I saw my companion change shape to become some grey-skinned ugly demon. Seth muttered a few words and Acathla’s mouth opened, growing bigger and bigger. Within that mouth was a vortex that I later found out to be a portal. Acathla’s expression was one of stark horror. Seth waved a hand negligently and a small antelope was dragged from its nearby hiding place to stand shivering in front of that swirl of energy. Another gesture and the poor beast disappeared into the vortex. It disappeared from sight, but not from earshot. I can hear its screams even now. More words from Seth and Acathla’s mouth closed.

“You can see where the creature is now, can’t you?”

Acathla was permitted to nod in silent misery.

“Nice place. You’ll be capable of sucking everything on this planet down there, including the planet itself. Once started, you won’t be able to stop. When I’m done here, I’m going to finish you off, turn you to an eternal stone statue. You will remain sentient, of course – it would be no punishment, otherwise. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you? And your human here won’t be able to do a thing about it. If he comes after you, a little graze, a tiny cut – which I will make sure he gets from you – just one drop of blood, and you’ll be off sucking everything to Hell. Including your precious Sekhmet.”

He paused, as if listening to something.

“Oh, very well – his bloodline will be the key to closing you, too – I suppose that keys must work both ways.

“That’s one down.”

I could see tears running down Acathla’s face. I wondered if he could see those running dminemine.

Seth stopped to think for a moment again, then walked over to the recumbent lioness, still unconscious, her lifeblood now seeping into the sand. He knelt and waited. I saw the lioness’ mouth gape, reaching for breath, then she shuddered in the throes of death. Seth slashed his wrist open on one of her fangs and allowed a little blood to drip onto her tongue. The slash across her throat healed over, in the blink of an eye. He said a few words, and the airy shimmer that was Sekhmet disappeared.

“That’s two down. I don’t want her anymore if she’s so much trouble.”

Like a little boy throwing his teddy out of the cot.

“A human. Hmmm. What to do? We have a gateway to Hell, and we have a demon cat. Why not a demon human, as well? A toy for me to play with, to replace the one I’ve just given up?”

I was trembling in every part of my body, and I tried to beg for my life. He knew it, even though I could not speak.

“Don’t want to go bravely to your fate? Well, I can be merciful. You were a small part of this conspiracy, after all. I will allow you to share your fate – well, you’ll be able to do that anyway. You’ll know how – it will be in your blood. But I’ve got a lot of things coming up, and I don’t need another toy just now. So, someone else can be my plaything instead of you, someone that I can save for the future. Your child, your grandchild, I don’t mind. You just give me a number, and I shall choose someone from that generation. Anything up to, oh, let’s say four.

“CHOOSE, or I shall choose for you, and keep you as well.”

I chose.

A saying has come down to you from that choice. More than a saying, a part of your Decalogue, the Ten Commandments:

‘…for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’

It isn’t entirely accurately worded, you don’t understand it, and I really don’t know how it found its way into that particular list of do’s and don’ts, but do you truly think that a merciful god would visit such a thing on innocent children? Of course not. Only a demon such as Seth.

I chose someone from the fourth generation, as far away in time as Seth would permit. When I first saw Angelus, I heard Seth whisper in my head.

“That one is my chosen one.”

On that day, which still lay far in my future, I could have wept from shame and guilt at the cowardice that had allowed such a choice to happen, but it was all much too late by then. My sins lay on Angelus’ head. I had sold him into slavery as the plaything of a wicked, powerful, vengeful fiend. A toy, to be tormented; an unwitting chess piece in the games that the gods seem to play with us. We all take part in the game, but he was destined for a leading role. Destined for Seth’s special attentions. The weight of a godling’s attention is a terrible thing. Mea culpa.

But back on that first day, Seth said a few more words, and the cat rose to her feet, unsteady, disoriented. She padded over to me and looked uncertain. Then her demeanour changed. Snarling, she raised herself onto her hind legs, her front paws on my shoulder, and sank her fangs into my neck. She drank me down until I could not stand of my own volition. All that kept me upright was the stay spell. As my heart slowed, unable to sustain itself, and my vision grew cloudy, Seth stalked over, and slashed the cat’s chest with his claw. He pulled her head off my neck, and then pressed my lips to her wound. The blood welled up, choking me as it slid down my throat, hot and sweet, with a tang of black bitterness threaded through it, a coiling venom in my belly.

I remembered no more until I woke next day. The cat and I were in a cave. She was curled by my side. I was changed. I was a vampire, the first of my line. Oh, I’m not the first vampire to be made from scratch, so to speak, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Each different line, each clan, has its own genesis. This just happened to be mine. Now you know why we share a lot with cats.

~~~~~~
*************