PROGENY, PART FIVE

See Part Four here.

I sat in a garden of brambles and creepers, the sky above me a luminous void.  It was never really black any more.  To my new eyes, even the darkest, moonless night was a dim, steel blue, and the stars blazed so intensely I could now read comfortably by their light.  This was balanced, I suppose, by the day, when the sky overhead burned white hot from horizon to horizon, and direct sunlight felt like a million needles prickling my skin.  I didn't burst into flame, as my kind did in Hollywood movies, but it was uncomfortable and I couldn't function without sunglasses.

I had no idea where I was.  The garden was fenced in with stone and wrought iron, but everything inside its walls was decayed.  There were a few dead trees, a dried up fountain of cracked stone, a wooden gazebo half devoured by termites and rot.  It slowly came to me, as I rose to my feet, that it wasn't a garden at all.  Through the high, yellowed grass I could see shattered tombstones and a few crumbling vaults.  A lichen covered angel, her face eaten away by time, stared at me.  It was a cemetery, and one that had been ignored a century at least by the look of it.

There is such power in you now.

The voice was that of a man, deep and though speaking English, vaguely European in accent.  I turned slowly in a circle, looking for him.  Nothing escaped my sight; not the beetles scurrying in the dust nor the spiders in their webs, not the cracks in the stone walls nor the rust on the iron bars.  But the source of the voice was hidden to me.  He was near, but entirely invisible.

You have Athena to thank for that.  You have been Sired so close to the Source, far closer than I...

I narrowed my eyes.  "Harot?"

Ah... the voice purred.  You recognize my voice.

"How could I?"  I asked.  "I've never actually heard it."  I started walking slowly among the ruined graves, my gaze relentless, penetrating every nook and cranny.  He was right, of course.  My Sire was a First Generation and I a Second.  That placed me two steps away from the Patriarch of my Blood Line, and three from Lachiel himself.  As far as the Progeny went, the blood flowing in me was incredibly potent, ringing with the echoes of the magic which made my kind.  In the weeks I had spent with Athena and my Clan, I had been learning to harness this great Gift.  It seemed inconceivable that someone could be so close to me and yet still hide from my sharpened senses.

Have you not?  Have you not indeed?

An image burned in my brain so clearly, so intensely, and so suddenly I was certain it had just been placed there.  I saw a child in a crib.  I saw a tall, lanky shadow leaning over the infant.  I saw drops of blood fall on the baby's lips, the shadow encouraging it to suck...

"You?  You fed me your blood?  All those years ago?"  A spark of anger ignited in my belly and started shouldering there.  "Why?"

Why indeed.  There is only one way to know the answer, young Master Draegonne.  Come home to me.

My eyes snapped open, staring at the closed lid of the box I lay in.  There was not, for me, any line between waking and my 'slumber.'  Unlike my breathing days, there was no struggle to shake off sleep.  One moment I was, for all intents and purposes, a corpse.  The next I was fully alert.  And my repose was never troubled by dreams.  That made this vision, this telepathic conversation with Harot, all the more disturbing.  It had been happening with increasing strength and regularity the last week or so.  Harot was somehow reaching out to me, calling me to him.

I climbed from the box and went to the window, staring out at the sky.  The moon was nearly full, and even behind the thick clouds and pouring rain the night was luminous to me.  Each falling rain drop glittered like a diamond.  I drew in a breath; though I no longer needed to breathe, I could still do so for the purpose of scent.  Thousands of layered odors, from the rain and the earth and the garden below, mingled in my brain.

I knew I should go to Athena with this, or even Alexa or Decem.  I understood the bonds of blood that now held us, and I knew my Sire and clan would aid me.  I like to think that I would have confided in them, like a reasonable creature, if I hadn't first checked my phone.

Go ahead.  Check it.

Athena liked to pretend she didn't understand the modern world.  She had, on several occasions, made reference to the Internet as "that web thing."  As a being nine centuries old one might even be tempted to believe her.  But I was no fool.  Her ancient mind drank in information like blood, but she was wise enough to never show her full hand.  Besides, the clan's lair had full wi-fi, and excellent wi-fi at that.

I used it now, taking my smartphone from the drawer where I kept it.  My phone service had been terminated, but I could still use the wi-fi here and I still had my Google address.  I checked the mail now, rapidly, scanning until I saw something from attorneys I did not know.  I read the email a dozen times in the space of thirty seconds.  By the end of that minute, I had made up my mind.

I would leave tomorrow.

Tonight it was not possible.  Decem, by Brother in Blood, was transforming his own Get this evening.  The Tenebrati were gathering in the Chapel again to bear witness and welcome her, and this time I would be part of the ceremony rather than the recipient.  So I pushed Harot from my thoughts and dressed in a long black sherwani, the outfit that spoke the most to me from those in the wardrobe provided for me.  When the Familiar came to summon me, I was ready.  I noticed it was the boy I had attacked before.

He seemed fully recovered, but still I lowered my eyes in shame.  "I wanted to say...about the last time...I..."  I stammered like an idiot, trying to think of an apology sufficient for nearly killing him.  But the boy just looked at me, his eyes glinting in the candlelight.  Wordlessly, he started to unbutton his shirt.

"Wait!  What are you..." I was completely taken aback, as he let the shirt fall to the floor behind him, a smile on his lips.  He could not have been older than seventeen or eighteen, just wiry muscle and bone under smooth pale skin.  There was no hair on his chest, and only the barest wisps of it in a dark line below his navel.  He took a few steps towards me and turned his head, offering his throat.  He was breathing hard, but something told me it wasn't from fear.  Despite having nearly killed him, he was offering himself to me again, and I remembered his erection the last time I fed on him.  He gets off on this, I thought, feeling attracted and repulsed at the same moment.  He likes being used.

I put my hands on his bare shoulders, feeling the warmth in his skin.  At the same time I could feel his pulse, throbbing through his body.  My fangs unsheathed themselves, my grip on him tightening.  I tried to keep Athena's warning to me in the front of my mind, and lowered my lips to his exposed throat as gently as possible.  The skin was slightly fuzzy against my lips, and when the fangs broke it, it was like biting into a peach.

The boy moaned out loud and pressed himself against me.  His arms wrapped around my torso and clung to it.  I held him just as firmly, my lips closed in a tight seal over the wound I had made, my tongue flicking against it again and again to keep the blood flowing.  Just like before, the boy's thoughts opened to me.  He had volunteered for this duty...trading with the girl who had been assigned to me since I attacked him.  I like the handsome American, he had told her, it is my joy to serve him.  And though, since my Change, I had not myself felt any stirrings of sexual desire, I could feel his desire for me flowing in the blood.  I could feel him rocking his body gently against mine, grinding his pelvis against me hip as I sucked.  I could feel the heat building in him.  Suddenly, with a sharp cry, his fingers dug into my back and I felt the orgasm that rocked through him, felt it as if I myself had just come.  Releasing my grasp I pulled away, licking the wound again to close it.  The warmth and heat of the life I stole from him surged through me, I felt superhuman, like I could punch through concrete or leap skyscrapers.

The boy took my hand and pressed it against his own cheek, kissing the fingers before releasing it.  He hurried back into his shirt and composing himself, gestured towards the door.  In the close quarters of the room, and with my sharpened senses, I could smell the semen running down his leg, and saw the stain of it on his trousers.  Neither of us said anything.  I simply followed him out of the room.

I had been, by that time, to a handful of such gatherings.  Athena had brought me with her to one gala and introduced me to Lord Aurelius, the founder of the Raven's Claw.  At another she introduced me to her own Brother in Blood, where Aurelius was in attendance again.  On both occasions Athena's actions had raised questions in my mind.  Why had she accepted me?  Why had she taken it upon herself to Sire me?  She was a Clan Ruler, a First Generation, a creature nearly a millennium old.  What had caused her to transform a brash young American who had come begging to be saved from death?  The way in which she was so careful to present me to Aurelius, and her bloodkin, only deepened my suspicions.  Was she grooming me?  If so, for what?  I was bound to her now eternally by blood, my Mother in Darkness.  And yet, she was the Queen on a chessboard where I was just a meager pawn.  I had no idea what her endgame was.

No, not a pawn.  A voice in my head whispered.  I didn't know if it was Harot's or my own.  Chess ranks Pawns and Knights and Bishops as minor pieces.  It continued.  There are only two major pieces.  The Queen and the Rook.

And then, as if she heard what I was thinking, Athena looked up at me from clear across the room.

The Familiar led me into the Chapel, and for some reason I felt a stab of embarrassment.  I am sure everyone in the room could smell the fresh sex still wet on the boy.  So what?  You fed.  It is what you have been reborn to do.  Squaring my shoulders I glanced around and greeted the crowd.  Decem was there, and presented Isabel to me, the mortal he was about to change.  Summoning my Old World vampire charm, I took her hand and kissed it, much to Athena's amusement and the amusement of most the people in the room.  I recognized others as well.  Maximilian was there, as he had been at my turning.  There were some other familiar faces as well.

As the crowd continued to gather I wandered about, listening.  I was growing used to what I know considered "vampire speech," the eerie, ultra-frequency whispers the Progeny shared when they wished to be unheard.  As there had been at the last two gatherings, there were whispers all around of the Outcasts, and growing tensions with them.  The "white queen" I had met in the Progeny Castle, I now knew, was one of these clanless  Outcasts, and like the barbarians at the gates of Rome there were an steadily increasing threat.  Now, it seemed, I had missed an actual battle.  A skirmish had broken out between my Clan and the Outcasts the night before, and Athena herself had fought...much to the shock of many present.  I didn't fully understand vampire politics yet, but I knew chess.  You don't risk the Queen without good cause.

But she kept you out of this fight, the voice whispered again.  Is she protecting you?

There were other buzzings.  Some I had also heard.  There was gossip that Lachiel, the Fallen Angel who unleashed both the vampires and the shapeshifters on the world, was preparing to unleash Slayers...humans empowered to hunt and kill us.  No one seemed certain why, but Lachiel was inscrutable and capricious.  Perhaps he liked to sow conflict.  Perhaps he only wanted the strongest of his Progeny to survive.  None knew the answer, or if the rumor was even true...but many buzzed about it nevertheless.

We gathered finally around the altar, forming a circle.  The rest...I cannot speak of.  Isabel was changed as I had been, and to repay my debt to Decem I offered my own blood to assist the change.  It was important to me to repay that debt, because as the ceremony concluded I knew it was the last I would see of him for awhile.  America was calling me back, Harrow House was calling me.  I knew the pull would only grow stronger the more I tried to resist it.

The evening drew to a close and we welcomed Isabel to the fold, and as I said my goodbyes for the night I could feel Athena's eyes watching me.  If I had been wise, I would have confided in her.  Instead, I played right into Harot's trap.

Read Part 6 Here

PROGENY, PART FOUR

See Part Three here.

Click to enlarge

“Father forgive me, for I have sinned.”

The confessional reeked of lemon wood polish, the smell so strong in the enclosed space it burned inside my nose. Under this, nearly undetectable, there was the undercurrent of something sickly and sweet, like roadkill on a hot August day.  I wanted to gag, but couldn’t even breathe.  The walls seemed to close in around me.

“Father?”

There was still no reply.  I tried to shift around, to peer through the screen to see if I could make out the silhouette of the priest beside me.  But my limbs wouldn’t move. My entire body felt numb and cold, deadweight encasing my brain.  Panic started to grip me.

“Father, please…are you there?”

I tried to force myself to think.  Why had I come to confession?  I hadn’t been since the Church and I parted ways back in high school.  My memory refused to answer, my head filled with a wet, cloying fog.  There was a prickling at the back of my scalp, the dizzying uncertainty of waking in a strange place after a night of being spectacularly drunk.  But I could never remember feeling this disoriented before.  Jesus Christ, I thought.  What was I drinking last night?  Paint thinner?

Then, through the wood of the confessional, muffled voices reached my ears.  I heard movement, one said.  He is awake.  Fetch the Mistress.

Suddenly, through the thick sludge in my brain, I became aware of a presence there with me, mere inches away it seemed.  It had to be the priest.  I could feel him there, watching me, though he didn’t speak.  I wondered what was wrong, why he wouldn’t answer me.

“Father?” 

I waited, but still my companion remained silent.  I had the sudden image of a black tunnel, of rats scurrying through the filth and rot littering an earthen floor.  I felt drawn towards an open sarcophagus, the ancient corpse lying within it calling out to me.  

Come home young Master Draegonne.  I am waiting for you.

My eyes snapped open.

Not a confessional.  I was in a box.  Terror gripped me, and my hands flew to the wooden lid near my face, shoving with all my might.  There was the sound of screaming wood and snapping metal, and the lid shattered in two.  Holding back a scream in my throat, I sat upright in the coffin, my eyes darting wildly around the room.  Where?  Am I dead?

The boy stared at me in shock.  I had seen him somewhere before.  He stood across the darkened room, holding his hands up as if in surrender.  One moment I was there, looking at him from several yards away, and the blink of an eye later I had him by the throat, pressed against the wall.  With a single hand I lifted him off his feet, baring my teeth.

“Damien.  Put him down.”

He was whimpering, shivering in terror.  I could smell the acidic tang of urine as it ran down his leg.

“Damien.”

She did not raise her voice.  She did not need to.  I obeyed instinctively.  

Setting the boy on his feet again, I backed away from him slowly, shaking my head to clear it.  “I don’t remember where I am.”  I told her.  My voice sounded frightened in my own ears.  Then I clutched my throat.  It felt so dry.  There was a writhing hunger in my gut, twisting like a live animal.  I almost doubled over.  “What is wrong with me?”

Athena moved towards me, calmly.  Her presence seemed to fill the room.  “You have been dead for three days, Damien, while the Change came over you.  What you are feeling now is the Hunger.”

“I don’t understand.”

She didn’t reply, gesturing towards the boy instead.  Swallowing, he came across the room towards us, standing just inches away from me.  I could feel his body heat like I was standing near a furnace.  I wanted to tear him open like and orange and feast on his insides.

“Drink, but be gentle.  There is less waste the more gentle you are.”

The boy closed his eyes, offering his throat to me.  His eyelids fluttered, like a virgin waiting with expectation and terror for that first joining of flesh.  With a sound like a moan, or a hiss, my head shot forward, striking like a snake.  I was guided by some newfound instinct, blind and unthinking.  My fangs broke his skin and he exploded into my mouth.

And then I was in him, and he was bleeding into me.  Thousands of his own memories flashed through my own brain, as if in that one second I was leading both my life and his.  I saw his drunken whore of a mother, a different man in her bed night after night.  I saw him run away, living on the streets.  I felt his raw terror the first time he sold himself to a man for sex, on his knees in an alleyway sucking the cock of a fat father of four.  I felt the high, the escape, as he buried the needle into his flesh.  I shared in the agony of addictive need as he burned for another score.  I saw Athena through his eyes, the first time he was brought to her.  I felt his absolute love and devotion as she broke him of his addiction and offered him a new life serving as a Familiar to the Clan.  And I felt, through him, the rock hard erection in his pants in response to my fangs in his throat.  This was his new drug.

“Damien, stop.”

And all these images were carried to me on a red tide, a flow of hot fire that sang to me as it poured down my throat.  It didn’t just fill my belly, it rushed through all my veins, lighting up my entire body.  This was unlike anything I had ever experienced, anything I had ever dreamed.  I was flying, I was soaring, my spirit shooting like a comet through infinity.  I’d give anything for this, anything.  Nothing I had ever felt came close to it.

“Damien, enough.”

…but the boy was falling.  I could feel that now.  He had been up there, flying with me, but now his hard cock was going limp and his brilliant, flashing thoughts were going dark.  He seemed to be melting, all the life and light in him fading, turning to ash.  No!  NO!  He had to come back.  I wanted more.  I needed…

“ENOUGH.”

She did not touch me.  She didn’t need to.  Instead she reached right into my head and jerked me back, gasping, blood oozing down my chin.  The other Familiars rushed forward to grab the boy, and Athena nodded to them.  “He will need a transfusion.  See to it.”  Then she turned her attention back to me.

“This is your first Feeding, Damien, so this time I will be lenient.  But you must remember never to drink that deeply again.  Especially not of a Familiar.  It is a waste to kill.  Take enough to live and leave them to restore themselves.  This keeps the blood supply flowing and the Hunters away from the door.”

I stared at her, echoes of the boy ringing in my body.  “Is it always like that?”

Athena smiled faintly, and nodded.  “Come.  There are many things I have to tell you.”

We withdrew to a study, and she gestured for me to sit by the fire.  Again, I had the image of her as a lioness as she settled into her chair.  She watched me for a long while, without speaking, but I found I could not return her stare.  I lowered my eyes and let my gaze trace the patterns in the oriental carpet instead.

“It will take awhile for you to adjust, Damien.  The transition is not an easy one.  You need to take my instructions to heart.  They are the key to your continued survival.”

I nodded, feeling a sense of shame for drinking so deeply of the boy.

“It may be more difficult for you than some,” she continued.  “I am of the First Generation.  That means the one who made me was a Patriarch, the founder of our Blood Line.  As such, the blood in my veins is extremely powerful.  You, my Get, are therefore Second Generation, and if and when you ever make Get they will be Third Generation.  The blood looses some potency each step away from the Founder, though age and other factors play a role as well.  Regardless, the blood I have given you is ancient and potent.  You need to control it, or it will control you.”

I wanted to ask her why, why she had agreed to Sire me.  Instead, I simply nodded that I understood.  

“You are far stronger than you were before, and you must be careful of that.  You can move with great speed and tear people apart with your bare hands.  But you must Feed.  You will not need to feed every day, but it is wise to drink a little on a daily basis, to control the Hunger.”

“How?”

Athena smiled faintly, staring into the flames.  “All of us, the Progeny of Lachiel, have the gift to cloud the minds of the Quick.  All you need do is seduce a mortal, and lead them away to a place where you may feed in private.  You will be able to wipe their minds of the event.  If you do not take too much, all they will have is some fatigue.”

I nodded again.  “Are there…other powers?”

She looked at me.  “Very likely.  Especially with my blood flowing through your veins.  As I have said, it is very close to the Source.  But you must understand, Lachiel’s Gift is different for us all.  Some traits and powers run in Blood Lines, but we all manifest certain abilities of our own.  You might be able to shape shift, or fly, or pass through walls.  You might be able to control the elements.  Likewise, you might have a weakness for silver, or garlic, or running water.  The sun might burn your flesh or simply fatigue you.  Only experience can teach you.  In many ways we are all unique.”

I thought, suddenly, of Harot, and of the voice I heard with me in the casket.  “Is telepathy a common power?”

She stared at me, and if she knew what was in my thoughts, she had an excellent poker face.  “It is known to occur.”

I nodded.  Even as we sat there, in the back of my head I thought I could feel him calling out to me from a distance.  But why?

“Something is troubling you.”

“No.  Not exactly.  But I feel like I must return home soon.  To my birthplace, I mean.”

Athena narrowed her eyes.  “It is important for you to learn first, and to meet more of your family.  I would also like to present you to the Patriarch.”

I nodded to this, trying to close the door against Harot’s call in my head.  Athena was right…it would be foolish for me to rush off now, especially towards an Outcast.  All the same the pull was strong.  It took an act of will to resist.

“We can talk again later,” she told me, rising to her feet.  “Feel free to explore the Hall, and take measure of your new existence.”

I thanked her again, and stood.  The image of a stone sarcophagus, of blood spattered cages and candles, flashed across my mind.  Focusing, I squeezed it out and went to seek my new Clan mates.

See Part Five here. 

PROGENY, PART THREE

See Part Two here.

Click to enlarge

In the ninth grade, I beat the undefeated Chess Club president by sacrificing my queen and checkmating him with my rooks.  I will never forget the look on his face.  Tall and reedy, Don was one of those nerdy boys who disguised their fear and alienation under a liberal layer of arrogance and superiority.  Chess was his wheelhouse.  Now it looked like he was going to cry.  "I never saw you coming," he said, lowering his eyes.

After that, the name stuck.  By the end of the year everyone was calling me it, even kids outside the club who had no idea what it meant or why they were calling me it.  I wasn't Damien Draegonne any more.  I was simply 'Rook.'

I was vaguely aware a 'rook' was also some kind of bird, but this was in the days before Google when if you wanted to know something you actually had to put some effort into it.  It never seemed that important.  But I got the answer a few years later, anyway.  My girlfriend was doing some fieldwork on the Akwesasne reservation in upstate New York one summer, and I drove up to visit her.  She introduced me to and old man she described as a 'shaman,' and sharing a meal one night we got to talking about totem animals.  "You are watched by Rabbit," he told her, before stopping and looking very hard at me.  "And you...you will be a Crow."

"Will be?"

The old man stared again, with the kind of look you saw in the eyes of the deeply stoned or people looking right through you.  "Will be.  They haven't come for you yet."

I remember deciding the old man probably was stoned and went on with the meal.  That evening though, my girlfriend brought it up again.  "That was weird, right?  The Crow thing?"

"Spirit guides in general seem pretty weird to me."  I said, brushing the conversation aside and attempting to nuzzle her neck.  I didn't want to discuss Iroquois spirituality.  I'd made the six hour drive for sex.

"I mean, because I introduced you as 'Damien.'"

"Mmmm," I murmured, trying to unbutton her blouse.  "Well that is my name."

"But everybody calls you Rook, and he didn't know that."

I realized, as thousands of generations of men before me had, that I wasn't going to get what I wanted until I let her say what was on her mind.  So I stopped pawing at her and sat up straight with my best "I am here to listen to you" face.  "And?"

"Well a rook is a kind of crow," she said, looking at me like it should have been obvious.  "Or a raven."

"Huh," I said, still thinking about undressing her.  "That's interesting."

They haven't come for you yet.

To this day I cannot tell you how we travelled from the Progeny's castle to the Tenebrati lair.  From my point of view, we just suddenly were "there."  I have no memory of the journey, and at the time had no idea if I was even in the same nation or hemisphere.  I have since learned the effect the Progeny can have on the minds of the Quick; We can lure one of you away from the herd and feed, returning you with no memory of the event.  It's not hypnosis so much as pushing you down gently into a dream state, just as easily as shoving the head of a child below the water line of a bath.  Individual Progeny develop individual powers, but this forced dreaming seems universal.

Perhaps the same applied there.  Maybe I made the entire journey in that thick mental haze, or maybe Athena actually possessed to power of teleportation from one place to the next.  All I knew then was that one moment I had been standing with her in the library at the Progeny castle, and the next I was blinking and dizzy, the world coming into focus around me, somewhere else.

And as my head cleared, I became aware of a semi-circle of figures gathered in front of me.

"Everyone," Athena announced to the room.  She had not raised her voice but a stillness fell over them all nonetheless.  "This is Damien. He is seeking to join us."

She began a round of introductions.  Again, there is a surreal haze over my memory--perhaps the Progeny affect on the Quick--and my impressions of the evening are blurry at best.  I remember the amber firelight flickering over the ancient stone walls, the intricate pattern of the carpet on the floor.  I remember the whisper of fabric as the Progeny moved through the room.  But their faces, and any details about them, are veiled.

I remember Alexa was there, with her young Get.  I remember Marcus, immaculately dressed in a tailored suit.  Others came and went it seemed, appearing and disappearing in the fog around my perception like ghosts.  They moved around me, pale shadows with glittering eyes and soothing voices, and in my memories they chatted with me amiably, as if I were an equal.

Though they questioned me extensively, I was also able to learn something of them.  Some of it I knew already from Harot.  I knew that the Progeny were bound by an elaborate web of traditions and customs, stretching back through time.  I knew they divided themselves first into Bloodlines, which might be compared to "nationality" or "ethnicity" among the Quick.  Within  these Bloodlines ran smaller sub-divisions, known as Clans, just as human nations have local regions.  If a Bloodline were, say, the United States, a Clan might be New England, the Pacific Northwest, or the Deep South.  The difference of course is that Bloodlines and Clans were not bound by geography.

"We are the Raven's Claw," Athena told me, a note of pride in her strong voice.  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, the shaman's words echoed in the back of my brain.  You will be a crow.  They haven't come for you yet.  I was to be a Crow.  The Rook.  A Raven.  I had never believed in destiny before, but my path seemed to have led inevitably to these beings.  "Our Bloodline spans many Clans, and even includes some among the Quick and the Others."  The Others, I would come to learn, referred to supernatural beings other than the Progeny.

"We tend to be less autocratic than many Bloodlines," Marcus smiled from across the room.  His words buzzed like Novocain in my head.

"In some the Get are bound tightly to their Sires, in a strict chain of command." Athena agreed.  "We value independence here...which gives us a reputation of being intensely political.  For we do not always agree, and can be passionate in our disagreements."  The others in the room nodded at this as if thinking upon some incident I wasn't privy to.

"You are fortunate you happened upon Athena," Marcus added.  "Our Bloodline is not as contemptuous of the Quick as some may be."

I realized even as they spoke to me they were discussing business among themselves in those eerie, inaudible voices.  The air hummed with it around me, even if I couldn't make out the words.  Now and again they glanced my way, and I felt certain they were sizing me up, examining me in ways I couldn't comprehend.

"Rook is a scholar," Athena informed them.  "A writer.  I think perhaps he might like to help me with the archives."

I found myself agreeing, partly because I had come this far and was desperate for acceptance, and partly because the dizzy, narcotic influence they had on me made me want to say "yes" to everything they said.  If Athena had told me it was a good idea to take a steak knife and carve off my face, under their influence, I would have to struggle not to refuse.

"I think I will keep him," she told the others, and there were murmurs of agreement.

I was given quarters in which to stay, as the Clan made plans for my Embrace.  I cannot tell you how many days or weeks I was there.  At night, the dreaming effect of the Progeny was strong, making my thoughts slow and thick.  During the day, my head cleared, but I felt strangely lethargic.  I spent most of my time pouring over books that Alexa had given me, the laws and customs of the Raven's Claw, the those that bound the Progeny entire.  Food was brought to me at regular intervals, but I had less and less appetite as the days passed.  I was losing weight.  My skin had turned pale and them clammy.  Dark circles appeared under my eyes.

Are they feeding on me?  I felt a thrill of horror.  If they were, I had no memory of it.  Still, I was showing all the signs of increased blood loss, even if I could find no tell-tale bite marks on my skin.

When Athena returned to visit me, I was very weak.  My supper sat uneaten on a try beside the bed.  "Are you ready to join us, Damien?"

I nodded, and told her yes.

"You understand what this means, I hope?  There will be no turning back."

"I understand.  And I am ready."  I was ready, I felt it in my bones...but if I wasn't?  I wondered what then.  I was in their lair, and it was clear they had been draining me.  They had opened up their secrets to me.  Yes, I had come if my own free will, but I felt certain if I had a last minute change of heart I would simply disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

"Dress is formal," she replied with a nod.  "I will send for you."

It was a struggle to dress.  Standing, I felt dizzy and weak, and my heart pounded irregularly in my chest.  I put on a suit left for me and knotted the tie, realizing with a curiously detached feeling that my life was about to come to an end.  Not the end the doctors had condemned me to; but something altogether more alien.  My breath would stop.  My heart would cease to beat.  But I would live, after a fashion.  I would be some entirely different order of being.

And I would feed on blood.

The horror came to me then, the same limb-seizing terror that gripped me on my way to First Communion.  I am the resurrection and the life.  He that believeth in me, though he were dead, shall live.

A raven landed on the windowsill and cocked its head at me.  And I knew with perfectly clarity my entire existence had led to this.

O death where is thy sting?  O grave where is thy victory?

The ones who came for me, I felt certain, were human.  What had the books called them?  Familiars.  That was it.  It was a pair of them, a young man and woman, both pale and dressed in black.  I had read that the Progeny often kept human servants, or Familiars, around for protection and for food.  Some did it hoping they too could someday be elevated into the Progeny's ranks, others found a sort of submissive sexual thrill in being vampirized.  These two, brother and sister by the look of them, took me gently by the arms and escorted me, slowly, into the hall and down the grand stairs.  I was glad to have them.  My knees were weak from blood loss and my head was swimming.

The room they led me to was some sort of chapel.  The girl swung open the heavy wooden doors while the boy helped me keep standing.  Lit by flickering candlelight, the smell of incense heavy in the air, a low chant poured out of the room.  As the boy escorted me in, a saw a dozen or more shadows around me, turning their glittering eyes towards me in unison.  Male and female, of all nationalities and ethnicities, they had the same air of hunger about them.  They moved aside, silently, as the pair led me towards a black altar on the far side of the chamber.

Athena was there, in a black evening gown.  She stood directly before the altar, Alexa not far away.  The pair of Familiars left me standing in front of her, my back to the assembly.  It took all my strength to remain on my feet.

"You understand what must be done here," she said.  It was not a question.  I nodded both to demonstrate I understood, and that I was giving my consent.  "You must be drained of blood to the point of death," she continued, nodding at Alexa.  "I have asked Alexa to prepare you in this regard, and she had been draining you over the last few nights.  She must now finish the task."

This is my blood that establishes the covenant...

For the first time my nerve faltered, and I stumbled back towards the altar.  Alexa seized me by the wrist.  Athena stared at me hard, and summoning what remained of my courage, I nodded.  Immediately Alexa rolled up my sleeve, exposing the wrist.  With a soft, wet, popping sound her canines unsheathed, dagger-like fangs elongating.  With the speed and natural instinct if a cobra she struck, a flash of pain surging up my arm as the bite landed.  This was followed by the strangely sensuous thrill of her lips and tongue working against the wound, sucking sounds filling the air.

Athena has assumed the position of a high priestess at the altar, reciting a litany.  To be honest, I cannot clearly recall to this day what was said.  I was at that moment literally dying; the words she spoke and the chant repeated by the assembled Progeny was drown out in the roar that filled my ears, and the writhing blackness filling my head.

I think I fell.  There was a sensation of falling, of my body becoming weightless.  In the distance a drum was beating, but the rhythm was irregular and slow.  I became aware of strong arms snatching me, arms as hard and cold as marble.  They were the only things keeping me from falling any further, a plunge I knew then led downwards into Death.

Drink of me.  Drink of me and live forever.

(I am not worthy...but only say the word and my soul shall be healed)

I became aware then of sucking at something, something black and cold...or so it seemed to me at the time.  I realized with a start it was Athena.  She was giving some of her blood to me.  "Decem," I heard her say somewhere above me, "he needs more.  Let him drink of you."

A male stepped forward, and opened his own wrist for me.  After swallowing the blood of my Sire, I fastened hungrily onto him.

The hunger of a newborn, someone said, and the rest of the room was laughing.

I could compare it to many things, but none would be accurate.  I could tell you it felt like sex after a long dry spell.  I could tell you it felt like gulping down water on a hot summer day.  I could tell you it was like feasting after days without food.  Perhaps the closest analogy was scoring a fix after trying to go cold turkey.  All I can say is that I have never needed anything as badly as I needed the blood oozing from his wrist, and never been as hungry for anything.  I was lost in the need.

But they pulled me away and I began to feel the poison working inside me. I fell to my knees and then face-down on the floor.  Numbing cold was spreading through my body, and my senses were dimmed by it.  My pulse became erratic and sputtered to a halt.  My lungs couldn't get any air.  Ice cold and paralyzed, the blood of the Progeny ran through me, changing ever cell.  The darkness took me, a dreamless sleep as near death as anything I have ever known.

See Part Four here.

PROGENY, Part 2

The is Part Two of my serialisation of an online role-playing game.  Take a look at Part One if you haven't already.  Second Life users who wish to view this location, go here.  Everyone else, just read on and enjoy.

The Progeny Castle (click to enlarge)

My clearest memory of First Communion was fear. There are other memories, but they are dusty and muted, like photographs you find years after the fact under the sofa or lost in the bottoms of drawers.  I remember, for example, wearing one of my cousin Mikey's hand-me-down suits, and my mother fussing over what seemed like forever over my hair.  I remember my grandmother crying without having any clear idea why she was doing it.   There are other memories too, my family and all their friends gathered around watching me, the vague sense that in some fundamental way I was about to change, but the fear--the knot tightening my guts with each step closer to the communion rail--is the unforgettable part.  It colors my entire perception of the event.

Mikey was to blame.  We weren't allowed to watch horror movies, both our mothers forbade it, but Mikey got a steady supply of VHS tapes from a friend at school.  We had been watching Night of the Living Dead a few weeks before, and the first time one of the zombies sank his teeth into one of the living, Mikey turned an gave me a serious stare.  "That's what it's like, you know.  When you take Communion.  It's flesh and blood in your mouth and you gotta swallow it all without gagging."

"Nah-ah," I protested.  "It's just some stupid cracker and some wine."

Mikey pretended to be shocked.  "You better not let Father Frank hear you say that, or you're going straight to Hell."

I tried for weeks to put it out of my head, pretty sure Mikey was just trying to freak me out...but it was too late.  The seed was planted.  What was I going to be eating that day?  They kept telling me in Catechism class it really was going to be flesh and blood...but was it?  Really?  Or was this like Santa Claus, a lie parents felt the need to tell.  Trying to get used to the idea, I put a raw piece of steak in my mouth when my mother wasn't looking and almost threw up.  I couldn't imagine being forced to do this every Sunday for the rest of my life. Was this the price for salvation?  For being an adult?  When the day finally came, and it was time to kneel at the rail, I was so weirded out I was trembling in horror.

But...it was just wine and a cracker after all.

I shared this once with my girlfriend in grad school, an anthropology major with a sharp wit and a dusting of freckles across her nose.  We were in bed and she was critiquing Catholicism again--she was an atheist, and my that stage in my life I pretty much was as well--going on about the inherent misogyny of the Church.  For some reason that Communion memory came to mind and I shared it with her.

"Well, you know where it really comes from," she said in a matter-of-fact tone that didn't sound like a question at all.  "It goes right back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors when food was scarce.  Whatever fed you was your God...it gave life to the tribe.  People prayed to the animals they killed and ate, thanking them for their sacrifice, for the gift of life.  They cooked and ate the flesh together, one tribe joined by sharing the animal's body and blood.  Thousands of years later, right through a staring of dead and resurrecting agriculture gods like Osiris and Dionysus, you arrive at Jesus...people eating their God together and forming a community from the act.  There's no great mystery to it at all.  It's an old story."

No great mystery at all.

Standing there in that darkened chapel, the terror of First Communion gripped me again...far worse than before.  This time there was no question of what was being consumed, no chance it was simply bread and wine.  Heart pounding, I fought the urge to run, adrenaline singing in my veins.  All around me, emerging from the shadows, the assembly stood pale-skinned and dressed to the nines, watching me with hungry and feverish eyes.  I took a few steps backwards, towards the black altar, but the dark-haired one called Alexa seized my by the wrist and held me in place.  Her fingers might have been made of steel.  I wasn't going anywhere.

Like that day in Church twenty-five years before, the congregation was gathered there to welcome me to the community, the Church I was to join through shared flesh and blood.

I am getting ahead of myself, however.

Harot's information had led me across the Atlantic, you see, a journey I ended up taking by ship.  I had little money left, and certainly not enough for airfare.  My credit cards were all maxed out and my bank account completely depleted; I was fleeing the country with an army of bills behind me.  See, I chasing death.  Like Ethan Hawke at the end of Gattaca I wasn't saving anything for the swim back.  So I found passage on a ship scrubbing toilets.  Shortly after that I did manual labor in a fishing village on the coast of...

No.  Wait.  I can't say that.  There are oaths that bind me now.  I cannot reveal to you the location of the castle, the name of the desolate village beneath it, the country that it lay in.  The Progeny flourish only in their secrecy, in the fact that the Quick neither know nor would believe they exist.  The tiger has his stripes.  The lion has the tawny color of the savannah.  It is the nature of the predator to conceal himself from his prey.  For this reason, you, gentle reader, will have to forgive my sins of omission.  I will not be telling you any of the names of those I meet in my travels, and none of the locations.  I will share with you all that I have seen and experienced but it must by necessity be censored.  It wouldn't do at all to completely draw back the veil of night.

All you need know at this stage of my narrative is that it took many months to reach my destination, and the last stretch of the journey was the most difficult of all.  Where the castle lay there were no real roads to speak of, and nothing for many kilometers around.  None of the locals dared go near the place, and was ringed by long abandoned villages.  Unlike Jonathan Harker, I couldn't depend on anyone sending a carriage to collect me.  I was no invited guest, but an intruder.  So I spent the very last of what I had on a motorbike that had seen its best days back during the Second World War, and what I hoped would be enough petrol to get me where I was going.  I had no food left, no money, and no signal for my phone.  All I had was some water and a hand drawn map several centuries out of date.  For all I knew the castle wasn't even there any longer.

But what choice did I have?

I set out in early morning, the bike jerking and rattling over muddy trails through tangled woods, and stony paths through twisting mountain valleys.  I followed for a good length of time what I believed to be the remains of an ancient Roman road.  By noon I feared I was hopelessly lost, and a new terror began to grow inside of me.  Harot had assured me that within the castle itself I could find a sort of "sanctuary."  Centuries of agreement between rival clans (we will get to that presently) ensured a sort of demilitarized zone there...a place of safety even for the Quick.  Outside the castle, however, I was fair game.  If I did not make it by nightfall, I might end up prey dumped at the side of the road.

Time was of the essence.

Racing the sun, I found signs that I was on the right trail...a curiously shaped outcropping of rock, a pair of twin hills, a line of brooding cliffs.  As the sun arched his way towards the horizon, and the mountains turned bruised purple, I felt a shock of relief at glimpsing the spires and battlements of the fortress rising above the trees.  With a mixture of longing and dread I drove the bike forward, right through the open front gate and across the courtyard.  The silence, when I killed the engine, was deafening.  My eyes ran over the darkening walls, the black and lifeless windows, and I left the motorcycle behind, climbing the wide sweep of crumbling stairs for the door.

The wide entrance hall had the air of a marketplace, with vendor's stalls tucked away in the shadowy corners.  As I crossed the stone floor, each step echoing in the vaulted chamber, I wondered what sort of commerce the Un-dead engaged in.  Shadowy doorways led away from this great main room, but there was one from which a flickering candlelight spilled.  Summoning all of my courage, I forced myself forward, towards it.  Like the moth to the flame, I felt I might be flitting towards my own destruction.

It was a library, and an immense one at that.  For a bookworm like me it was fairly close to my vision of Paradise.  But I couldn't even look at the books...I barely noticed they were there.  Instead my attention was fixed on the two figures standing in the room.

She might have been carved from ivory.  Wearing the most outlandish costume I had ever seen--a massive white Victorian nightmare of silk and lace that could equally have been a bridal or burial gown--she seemed oblivious to my existence.  Though physically larger than she, the man she was with seemed somehow smaller, despite all the sinister black leather he wore.  Neither of them acknowledged me, speaking to each other it seemed in humming, buzzing voices.  I had the impression they were speaking so quickly I couldn't decipher the words.

I watched them awhile, until I was absolutely certain.  The way they moved, the glitter in their eyes, the flat, dead expressions...  These were not human beings.  They were like marble animated with a bit of life, Pygmalion half-finished with his work.  They were human shaped...but there was nothing human about them at all.  I was in a tank now with a pair of sharks.

Swallowing, I drew closer, clearing my throat.  "Forgive me.  I don't mean to intrude."

There was nothing to show they had even heard me, and they continued  their conversation in the eerie, whispering voices that seemed to pass over the range of my hearing.  I wondered if this "speech" of theirs was like the sonar of bats.  I took a few steps closer and tried again.

The buzzing stopped, and my heart seemed to as well.  The woman turned her bone white face towards mine, and I immediately felt dizzy looking into her black eyes.  Looking into them was like breathing anaesthesia.  "What have we here?"

"A...pilgrim, my Lady," I replied carefully.  I have come a very long way to find you."

There was no trace of emotion, or comprehension, on that porcelain face.  Perhaps the creature wearing it was so old she had forgotten how to move her facial muscles.  "Oh?  And why is that?"

"I have come..." my throat dried here and I had to clear it "...looking for what you already possess."

"Oh I see," she breathed, and there was a tinkling sound very nearly like laughter.  "Another seeker.  Well.  This is not the way it works.  One of us comes seeking you, and if we like what we see, you might be elevated.  Never the other way around, I am afraid."

Without a further word she went back to her buzzing conversation, and I stood there on the carpet for long moments wondering what to do next.  It was clear I had been dismissed...but there was no going back.  It would be better to die there than try to return home empty-handed.  Besides, all my bridges had been burned.

I cannot tell you when, or how, the third figure entered the room.  She was, it seems, 'just there.'  From the way she looked at me, that quizzical, studying expression, it was clear she had heard my request.  I wondered if she had been there all along and by some strange power I had been unable to see her.

She was not the kind of woman you would miss walking into a room though.  Compared to the other two--who seemed dressed specifically for a Goth convention or Halloween ball--this woman was dressed simply, casually.  She could easily have passed by you on the fashion high street of a busy town without a stare.  All the same she was striking, with high cheekbones and luxurious blonde hair.  There was something fierce, like a lioness, in her face, but without the inhuman coldness I found in the other woman's.  As they continued their buzzing inhuman speech, she looked straight at me and spoke, but I wondered if anyone other than I could hear it.

"Tell me why you wish to join us."

I began to speak, fumbling for an answer that didn't include Harot.  I told her I had spent my life studying her kind--not entirely a lie--and that I had discovered writings of this place (also technically true).  I told her I felt I had accomplished all I could as a mortal, and felt this was the only way for me to go forward.  I rambled on about all sorts of things, trying to convince her without giving anything away.  And all the while she watched and listened, and I had the distinct feeling the words she heard were not the weak excuses tumbling from my lips but the genuine ones inside my head.  She was reading me like a book.  I never mentioned my death sentence, the ticking time bomb in my head, and she didn't mention it either. But somehow I sensed she knew.

As I spoke, and she sifted through the contents of my head, the black clad male vanished, leaving the white queen listening to us.  After a few moments she said something to the blonde woman in that high, humming voice, and the blonde woman shook her head.  "I will place this one under my protection," she told the white queen.  "He can come with me back to the hall of my Clan."

The white queen nodded, perhaps a flicker of amusement on her pale features.  Then she faded like a ghost.

"I am Athena," the blonde woman told me.  "I am the leader of the Clan Tenebrati. If you value your life in this place, stick close."  Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.  "Not all the Progeny are the same, Damien.  Some bloodlines run les human than others.  Come.  Let me introduce you to some of the Clan."

I nodded, and leaving my old life behind followed.

See Part Three here.