Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - In the Forests of the Night

"Why?" she responded. "Who you were no longer matters. You are Risika, of Silver's bloodline."

"And who is Risika?" I pressed, trying to ignore the painful shiver that wracked my body. "What is she?"

"She is— you are—a vampire," Ather told me. The information took a moment to reach my mind. I knew words like witch and Devil. This one was foreign. From somewhere, some memory I could not quite see, I heard someone say, "There are creatures out there that would damn you if they could, simply for spite."

Surely Ather was one of those creatures the speaker had been talking about. And Aubrey—I remembered him as well. Once again I saw him sheathing his knife, but still I could not remember why he had taken it out.

"You have made me into — "I broke off.

"Do you know I can read your mind like a book?" Ather said, laughing. "You are young now, still partially human. You will quickly learn to shield your thoughts, perhaps even from me. You are strong, even now. He warned me you would be. Was he afraid you would be too strong for me to control?"

I did not say anything, hardly understanding what Ather said. My head was spinning as if I had hit it on something, and I was having difficulty focusing on anything.

Ather paused, looking at me, and then smiled. When she did, I could see pale fangs, and I repressed another shiver. "Come, child," she told me. "You need to hunt before your body destroys itself."

Hunt. The word sent dread through me. It reminded me of wolves and cougars, animals who stalked their prey in the forest. Blood soaking into the ground. So much blood…

Now I wanted that blood. I could see the scarlet death in my mind. Surely the blood was warm and sweet and—

What was happening to me? These thoughts were not mine, were they?

"Come, Risika," Ather snapped. "The pain will worsen until you either feed or go mad from it."

"No." I said the word solidly, without reluctance, despite the way I felt. I was burning, and there was dust in my veins. I thought of blood and craved it the way I craved water on a long, hot day. I knew what Ather meant when she said hunt, but I would not kill to ease my own pain. I was not an animal. I was a human being…

At least, I hoped I was human. What had Ather done to me?

"Risika," she told me, "if you do not feed, the blood I have given you will kill you." She was not pleading with me; she was stating facts. " It will take days before you are truly dead, but by sunset tomorrow you will be too weak to hunt for yourself, and I refuse to spoon-feed you. Hunt or die, it is your choice."

I hesitated, trying to remember. There was a reason that I should not hunt. Someone I knew would have resisted, someone I loved but could not remember … I could not remember. The only reason I could remember now was the one I had been taught all my life by the preachers—because killing was a sin.

But dying by my own choice was a sin as well.

Perhaps I was already damned.

"Foolish child," Ather said. "Look at yourself in that mirror and tell me that your own church would not condemn you for what you are. Would you refuse the life I have given you to try to save the soul which your god has damned?"

"I will not sell my soul to save my life," I said, though in my mind I was not so sure. My church was cold and strict, but I feared the nothingness of a soulless death just as much as I feared the flames of the spoken Hell. And perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was already too late.

"No," I said again, trying to convince myself more than her. "I will not."

"Brave words," Ather told me. "What if I told you it did not matter?" She was whispering now, as if that would drive her words into my mind. It was working. "You signed the Devil's book as your blood fell onto my gift to you."

In my mind the scene played itself out again. A black rose, the thorns sharp like the fangs of a viper. A drop of blood falling on the black flower as those fanglike thorns cut the hand that held them. Black eyes, much like Ather's black eyes but somehow infinitely colder, watching like a snake as the blood fell. Watching like a viper, like the thorns of the rose, as if he had bitten me…

My mind was filled with dark images and darker thoughts of snakes and hunting beasts and red blood falling on black petals. My heart was filled with pain and anger and hatred and the black blood that had damned me.

I PULL MYSELF from my memories. I curse the fool I was to think I could save my damned soul with silly protests.

Aubrey's servant has run from my home, and I sense him leaving my town. He fears for his life, with good reason. Had he stayed I would have killed him. He knows I would, and he knows I can smell his fear.

I may have been changed against my will, but I do not fight what I am anymore. There is no greater freedom than feeling the night air against your face as you run through the forest, no greater joy than the hunt. The taste of your prey's fear, the sound of its heart beating strong and fast, the smells of the night.

I stand in this small town, so near to the dead and almost as near to the faithful in the church across the street, feeling the fear of the human running from my home. For that is what I am—a hunter. I learned long ago that I could not deny that fact.

Every instinct tells me to hunt this running, frightened creature. I am a vampire, after all. But I am not an animal, and I was once a human. That is what makes my kind dangerous: a hunter's instincts and a human's mind. Humanity's cruel way of toying with the world, laced with the savage, unthinking hunt of the wild animal.

But I do have control, and I will let this human live to tell his news to Aubrey, whom he fears even more than he fears me. He is the bearer of bad news, and Aubrey does not like bad news.

I refuse to allow Aubrey to rule me, but only because it is the way of my kind. I fear Aubrey as much as this human does, perhaps more, for I know exactly what Aubrey is and what he is capable of.

I am restless. Despite the rising sun, I am in the mood to do something.

After making a quick check to make sure there is no blood on me from the previous night's hunt, I leave my house. I walk, partly because I am not leaving Concord and thus not going far, but mostly because I have a craving to move.

Occasionally I visit cafes like Ambrosia, which cater to my kind. But more often I become a shadow of the human world. Human lives, which seem so complex to those who are living them, seem simple from the perspective of three hundred years.

The coffee shop has just opened when I slip through the door.

The girl who works there is human, of course. Her name is Alexis, and she has worked there for most of the summer.

"Morning, Elizabeth," she greets me, and I smile in return. I often visit this place in the morning. Of course, I did not give Alexis my real name. I do not allow myself to grow close to humans. They have a tendency to notice that I never age.

I buy coffee, not because I want the caffeine or even like the taste, but because people will stare at someone who is sitting in a coffee shop without anything to drink.

A few minutes later the prework traffic begins. For about half an hour the shop bustles, and I sit in the corner silently and watch people.

Though I have worked to distance myself from human society, I enjoy watching humans as they go about their business.

The principal of the nearby school hurries in, already late for work, dressed in a somber suit that makes her look even more tired than she is. A minute later a middle-aged man opens the door, stopping in during his morning jog. Two women, sipping their coffee at one of the small tables, get into a quiet argument over an article one read in the newspaper. A teenage girl meets her boyfriend and then is horrified as her father walks into the coffee shop.