A Vial of Life(4)

All I could think about was the fact that Hans wasn’t dead. That he was standing right in front of me. I threw myself at him, reveling in his embrace as he showered my face with kisses. I’d seen those people snap his neck, even heard the crack of bone. Yet here he was. He pulled me down on his bed and, cradling me in his arms, began to reveal his full history to me for the first time. Everything he’d been holding back since the day we’d met. He told me first that, indeed, there were such things as vampires. He was one, and now I was one too.

He told me that he and his wife had been turned almost two hundred years before, along with his four siblings. They’d all been taken to the coven where we were now, deep in the Taihang Mountains. His wife had been murdered by another vampire over a dispute while living there, and after he’d lost her, Hans couldn’t bear to remain in the coven any longer. He and his siblings had tried to escape together, and while the latter had failed, Hans had managed to. He’d been in hiding ever since, in that old castle buried in the woods in the middle of nowhere, and he’d hoped that they would never find him.

He clutched my head in his hands, kissing me again and again even as he repeated how sorry he was, how he loved me and how dragging me into all of this was the last thing he’d wanted.

I told him that I didn’t care, that I was just grateful that he was alive and that we were together. I told him that, vampire or not, I would follow him anywhere. Because I was his. He held my heart and every part of me.

We spent the next four decades of our lives together in that Chinese coven. Or as together as we could be. Sometimes we were forced to split up and travel with different groups on nighttime excursions. But we were given a small apartment where we could live together and during the day, for the most part, we had each other. The vampires promised Hans that if he attempted to escape again, they would track us down and stake me through the heart in front of his eyes. Even though I suggested that we try it, it was for my sake that he refused. They’d already managed to track him down once, and he wouldn’t take the risk of that happening again.

Even in these circumstances, I couldn’t complain about my life. Hans was the only thing that I needed to be happy.

The nights became our days, and the days our nights. We fell into a mindless routine during the night hours that consisted primarily of procuring fresh human blood and bringing it back to the coven. And during the day, Hans and I could bask in the fire of our love, still burning as strong as the night we’d shared our first kiss.

Then one day our lives were uprooted yet again. The same woman who’d turned me into a vampire all those years ago knocked on our door again. She didn’t attack Hans this time as he opened the door, but the words she spoke caused Hans’ face to pale as I’d never seen before.

She told him that we’d both been selected to be transported to Cruor. She promised that we would both be performing important and valuable service to our masters, the Elders. Masters I’d only heard vague talk of around the coven.

Hans fought against the idea, but in the end, we had no choice in the matter. We were taken to a portal and brought to the desolate red-tinged landscape that was Cruor. The land of the Elders.

We were taken into the bowels of a mountain, where layer upon layer of shadowy chambers had been built. It was there that I discovered the truth about those known as the original vampires. Hans and I had been brought there to be used primarily as vessels, to do their bidding in whatever task they had. The Elders would inhabit us and we would descend into the deepest depths of the mountains, where giant halls filled with pools of shimmering blood were kept. We would be forced to drink liters of it at a time, thus sustaining and bringing pleasure to the Elder who’d inhabited us during the feeding.

Still, even through all of this, Hans and I were granted a room to ourselves, which became our refuge from the Elders’ ghastly abode. We lost track of time while living in that strange place. But I suspected that decades passed. Over time, our bodies became weaker. Although usually the Elders were careful to give us rest after being inhabited, sometimes they didn’t, which left us feeling drained and unwell.

Then, eighteen years ago, the climate between the Hawks and the Elders changed irrevocably. Due to a spiral of incidents that had happened in the human realm, the malice that had been brewing between the two species reached boiling point and our lives changed forever. The Hawks stormed Cruor, entering the Elders’ mountain chambers, murdering vessels, and soiling all the blood supplies that we had collected for decades.

During the first wave of the Hawks’ attack, Hans and I had been locked in our room. A Hawk broke down the door and barged into the room. With a combined effort, Hans and I managed to slit his throat before escaping through the door.