Choosing Life: a William Morgan Story

By: Ben Bielert

“You’re hard to track down,” Angela said, surprising me as she emerged from the shadows.

I wasn’t easy to sneak up on either, so my surprise was intermingled with admiration.

“I don’t like to sit still,” I told her. “What are you doing here, Angie?”

“Not happy to see your offspring?” She asked, feigning a wounded tone.

We stood on top of one of the converted warehouse buildings in Victoria’s downtown core. Once a warehouse for grain, it was now hipster shops on the lower level and trendy apartments on the two upper floors. I had been visiting one of my blood pacts, a young woman in her early twenties named Kira.

“I’m happy to see you, but this isn’t the place. You know that I don’t like drawing attention to my wards if it can be helped,” I said.

Kira was sleeping in her apartment now, exhausted after my visit. She had let me satisfy all of my appetites and that left her completely drained in more ways than one. She would be fine in time but would be practically defenceless for the night, and you never knew who might be watching.

“I needed to get a hold of you, Will. We have a situation, and you’re never home,” Angela said.

A few blocks away, a siren went off. It sounded like it came from the intersection of Fort and Douglas. There was always a siren somewhere down here. Most likely one of the disenfranchised and forgotten had broken a shop window, or a fight had broken out between patrons of one of the many bars and clubs, or maybe some poor wayward soul was overdosing. The police and EMTs would deal with it. I didn’t concern myself much with what went on at that level of the city.

What did concern me was that Angela had dared to skulk around my haven, this must be something serious. My eyes narrowed.

“You went there? Scandalous. You know that a haven isn’t a home, but you’re right. I’m only in my haven during the day when I have to be. Of course, I sometimes sleep in different places,” I admitted with a devilish grin. “You could always call or text, though. What’s this ‘situation’ you’re worked up about?”

“I don’t like those stupid little trackers humans carry everywhere. And I didn’t go into your haven, I’m not an idiot. I’ve just been nearby around the last two sunrises, hoping to find you.”

“Well, if you’ve gone to this much effort it truly must be something crucial,” I said, trying to sound bored and not as interested as I was.

“It’s Norman,” she said, her chestnut brown hair gleaming in the moonlight and a look of worry playing across her striking features. “I haven’t seen him for a week.”

This wasn’t entirely unusual for Norman, so my initial reaction wasn’t one of worry, simply curiosity.

“We shouldn’t talk here, let’s reconvene on the roof of Vista 18,” I said. We had already spent too much time lurking on my ward’s rooftop and I wanted to get away as soon as possible.

She looked unimpressed and as though she wanted to disagree, but then she nodded.

I moved lithely and rapidly, bounding along rooftops, scaling walls, and leaping easily over gaps between buildings. I lightened myself when I needed to, regained complete corporeality when it suited me, and all the while I wondered at the fact that I was unable to outpace Angela.

She kept up with me, matching stride for stride. Not bad for a vampire in her 50s. I had changed her back in ’93 and she was 26 then; back then I had already seen more than 100 years in my life.

“You’ve gotten faster,” I beamed when we arrived. She looked tired, but I simply felt exhilarated.

The winds whipped at Angela and me, but we felt no cold. My skin would be warm to those who would feel it, and my cheeks had a degree of colour, unlike their usual pallor. Feeding always left our kind more closely resembling the living than what we were. Angela had fed recently too, I could tell from the vitality she exuded.

“I might have moved a little faster because I’m concerned for Norm,” she said.

We stood on the roof of Vista 18, a restaurant that sat on the top level of the Chateau Victoria. It was a tall building by this city’s standards, and I liked the view.

Victoria lay sprawled out before us. A city I had seen grow from a fort to a bonified and bustling frontier town during the Yukon gold rush. It was a city now, a little bit yuppie, with a dwindling population of hippies. I had seen so many iterations of this place. It was once the land of Lekwungen, only in recent years was that being acknowledged regularly. Progress.

I nodded. “Why though? Why are you so worried?”

“He’s been missing, isn’t that reason enough?” She asked.

I peered at the parliament buildings, where they broke ground in 1893. The great copper domes were already beginning to acquire their patina by 1897. It was one of Francis Rattenbury’s designs.

Like too many friends he was long in his grave now. So many of my friends from the earliest days of this city, and many from later days too were now gone. They had passed through here, added their notes to the symphony that was this city, and then they had consigned themselves to history. I still thought of it as our city, even if they weren’t here with me, and I liked to gaze upon it when I could.

I shook my head. “Norman goes out on adventures on his own all the time. He feeds off animals, we both know that. There comes a time when raccoons and deer become boring for him, and only the larger game he can find out toward Port Renfrew and beyond satisfy him.”

She was pacing, wringing her hands together. “He always tells me. He always lets me know when he’s going to be gone for longer than a night or two.”

I sat near the edge of the roof, legs dangling off into oblivion. The sky was dotted with clouds that caused the stars to blink in and out of view. “Maybe he was just held up for a day or two, or maybe he’s been resting. Have you gone to his haven? Been nearby when he was supposed to be coming or going?”

She shook her head. “We don’t normally go to one another’s havens. We meet at Craigdarroch, or we leave little messages for one another in the castle’s sun tower. He hasn’t been there at all this last week.”

Craigdarroch, one of two castles built by the Dunsmuir family. I could remember when Robert commissioned it in the late 1880s. It was designed by Smith and Williams, not Frank. The town was abuzz, what a display of wealth. What people now might call a flex. Nowadays the castle is a historic site and a tourist attraction.

“Do you meet every night?” I asked.

“No, often we miss each other–two ships in the night–but generally we try to connect at least once a week, share any news, and…”

“And make love?” I asked.

She grinned devilishly. “If that’s what you want to call it, I would use a much more colourful term,” she said.

I shrugged. “I get it, you don’t love one another.”

“I wouldn’t say that; we love each other in a way. It’s just not all rainbows and kittens when we get together.”

They were trying to fill a void, the overwhelming loneliness that life brought. Every now and then Angie and I got together as well, and when it wasn’t her, it was Samantha, sometimes Norman too, or one of my wards. Loneliness wasn’t something you could fully cure, and although good company could cause it to abate for a time, it was like an insidious cancer always ready to grow and multiply if left unchecked. No matter how many times I tried to fill that emptiness with connection, it somehow remained. Like a weed that’s roots dug too deep and just couldn’t be pulled up, there was no permanent cure for loneliness. Existence as a human is lonely and sometimes lacks purpose. It’s easy to become a nihilist even in a mortal shell, let alone in these unageing bodies where our only true drive seemed to be to consume, to procreate, and to fuck.

Don’t get me wrong though, life is preferable to the alternative. I was grateful for my eternal life even if there was no discernable meaning or purpose to it. Long ago I had decided that between nihilism and hedonism I would pick the latter, it was just so much more fun.

“So, he hasn’t shown up for his booty call in a couple of days, and now you’re worried about him,” I said, trying my best to pay attention, but being distracted by a mugging that I could hear occurring down in Beacon Hill Park. The sounds of struggle and violence always caught my attention, something about my predatory nature, I took a deep inhale of the air but couldn’t smell any fresh blood, yet.

“It’s unlike him,” she said with resolve, “and don’t say booty call, nobody but old people say that anymore.”

“I am old,” I said.

“Well, you don’t have to act like it,” she said.

She was pacing but I remained perched on the edge of the building. Ready to push off into the open air at any time. We can’t fly, that’s a myth, but we can slow our descent or withstand falls from great heights with no damage, and the idea of either was thrilling. I felt pent up, the blood coursing through me as it was.

“I’m not afraid of my years,” I said.

“Don’t you care about staying relevant?” she asked, peering at me.

The mugging in Beacon Hill had ended without blood being drawn, and now the thief was running toward Dallas Road while the victim was still in the park, likely stunned and in shock from the encounter. I shifted my focus back entirely to Angela.

“When you’re timeless, that’s not a concern,” I shot back with a grin. “Concerns about my lack of trendiness or relevance aside, I suppose we should investigate the situation with Norman further. He may hardly visit or call, but I still care deeply about my eldest offspring. So, for now, you have my assistance.”

“Great,” she said, “I knew I could count on you.”

“First things first, we should check his haven,” I said. This was normally something that would be forbidden or at the very least considered taboo. You didn’t often visit another Vampire’s haven, and never unbidden, but these were extenuating circumstances and I figured that it was justified.

Angela scowled. “What if he isn’t there?”

“Then we’ll investigate for clues,” I said.

“You mean, go into his haven without him there?” She balked.

I nodded.

“He’s not going to like that,”

I shrugged. “Then I guess he shouldn’t have gone missing.”

***

Every vampire keeps a haven, we must because we are incredibly vulnerable during the day. This isn’t a mystery; I’m not giving away some secret vampire information by telling you this. If you know anything about vampires, then you know that we become much weaker when the sun is up. The night is our domain, and we are practically gods during that time, but during the day we can be killed easily, and the sunlight can burn us to a crisp if we come in direct contact with it for too long. The older we get, the less effect this has. I, for instance, can survive for about five minutes in direct sun before it will kill me. All this means to my mind is that being stuck outside in broad daylight would be a prolonged and very unpleasant death. It also means that every vampire needs a place to hide when the sun comes up.

Norman’s haven wasn’t a mausoleum or a castle, it wasn’t something out of a gothic novel. He kept a trendy apartment in a nice part of town. Of course, for certain reasons, I can’t tell you exactly what part of town he lived in. Let it suffice to say that it was one of the ones with buildings older than me. His apartment was not so old as this, it was in a building that had been built in the 20^th century and had been updated since its construction. It was now occupied by people who had money, often young professionals with substantial incomes and no significant others or children. The rent alone here was several thousand dollars a month, but Norman could afford it.

The first thing we tried was buzzing up to his place. I found his name on the directory by the front door and tried to page him. No answer.

“Did you think it would be that easy?” Angela asked me, tilting her head.

I checked the position of the stars and the moon; it was just after 2 am.

“No,” I said, “but, it is always best to start with the simplest solutions and work your way out from there. No point in scaling the building and breaking into his apartment if he could just buzz us up.”

I peered up the outside of the building. This one wasn’t as tall as the Chateau Victoria, and I knew that Norman lived on the 11^th floor. I had been to this haven a total of three times, in just as many decades, but I could remember clearly which apartment was his. From here I could see that his lights, like most of the apartments, were off.

I tried buzzing up once more, but when no answer came, I swept around to the side of the building. Angela followed me, sticking as close as a shadow. In moments we were sweeping up the side of the building like two clouds moving rapidly across a plain after being blown by a heavy gale.

Once we were on his balcony, we tucked into the shadows easily and there was no chance that anyone could see us. It was dark here, not completely pitch black but far too dark for human eyes to see.

I moved to the sliding glass door and found that it was locked. This was unusual because for many of us the customary way to leave our haven would have been from the balcony, but then Norman always did like to do things a little differently than the rest.

He was a strange one, and it would be like him to use the front door like a human.

“Locked,” I told Angela.

She cursed softly. “We’ll have to break in.”

I shook my head. “Maybe not, this door is older, the weather stripping is likely worn and drafty.”

She smirked at me and swore again. “You’re going to go incorp?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t gone full incorporeal for a while, and it’ll be harder since I’m well-fed right now, but yeah, I think that’s our best bet to get this done without raising too much attention.”

She gestured towards the door. “Well then, please, by all means.”

I began to focus on the shift.

Turning into my vaporous form didn’t mean that I would truly become incorporeal, I wasn’t transforming into an ethereal form or some nonsense like that. It was more of a phase shift, turning from a solid to a gas or more accurately to a sort of aerosol by spreading my atoms out from one another. The best way I can think to describe it to someone who hasn’t experienced it is that it is like if you were to stand up as straight as you possibly could and extend your legs and arms out from your body as far as possible. Imagine you reached your fingers out too and just pushed yourself to take up every little bit of room you possibly could. Then, you push further, in all directions. It doesn’t hurt unless something happens to your atoms when they are scattered like this. For instance, if the sun were to shine on me in this form, I would burn to nothing almost instantly. But, barring that or an explosion or the like it does not harm me to change to this form and then back. I can move gradually by force of will while in the form. There is a sort of magnetic attraction between the atoms still, and if I decide to go in one direction, then everything moves in that direction. I cannot hear when I am incorporeal, but I can see. My sight is limited, immediate, and it lacks colour, but I can see from all parts of me. With all this said, it is unsettling to do and so normally I do not do it fully. I will use it partially often, as a way to lighten myself, or more accurately to make myself more buoyant on air currents and move more easily.

It took me several minutes to phase completely and soon after I was poking around, exploring the door as the great cloud of mist that I had become. I quickly discovered that I was correct and that the weather stripping was old and worn, and there were several points where I could squeeze through.

In another two minutes, I was on the other side. In another few minutes I was solid once more. I was standing stark naked in Norman’s home, but I was in. I unlocked the door and Angela handed me my clothes and stepped inside.

“Thanks,” I said.

She looked me over quickly and gave me a wink and said, “No problem.”

That was the other thing about going completely incorporeal. When you do, you can’t take your stuff, whatever you’re carrying or wearing, with you. It falls off you and remains in a heap wherever you pass out of it. Going partially, you can maintain enough solid surfaces to keep clothes around your being, but when you phase out completely, well, you just pass right through them. Would be nice if the stuff phased with you, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work like that.

“Look for anything that seems out of place,” I said to Angela as I got dressed.

“Is that what we’re supposed to be doing here?” She asked me. “I thought we were just going to watch his TV and snoop in his underwear drawer.”

“Har dee har har,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

We began to poke around. At first, it seemed like everything was in place.

Norman’s haven was spacious and well-decorated. I knew that he liked to maintain friendships with several humans, but not for the same reason I did. His humans weren’t wards that he had enticed with the possibility of eternal life in exchange for their blood. They weren’t blood contracts and potential offspring. Norman had human friends that were simply that, a source of companionship.

In my mind, it was these humans that explained why Norman kept his haven decorated like a very nice home. Clearly, we have no need for a well-appointed kitchen, but the kitchen in Norman’s haven looked like it belonged on the pages of a magazine. He had a modern gas range from Thermador with a stainless-steel hood vent, quartz countertops, a sleek Miele dishwasher, tile flooring, and a large Liebherr refrigerator of burnished steel with double doors. I ran my finger along his countertop and found it to be spotless. When I looked in the fridge, it was stocked with all sorts of human food that were entirely useless to us.

We could eat, but human food would do nothing to sustain us. It would be like a child eating an imaginary meal.

The dining area was equally unnecessarily impressive, with an iron chandelier suspended over a solid oak table that could seat eight, and the seats themselves were carved wooden chairs, each with an intricate design carved into the back, and with leather upholstered seats.

I had just gotten to Norman’s living room and was drooling over his book collection when Angela called to me from his bedroom.

“So, you did decide to investigate his underwear drawer,” I said with a smirk as I entered the room.

His bedroom was decorated in a minimalist style, with a king-sized bed on a sled frame, an iron and cherry wood nightstand, an oak dresser, and blackout curtains that were thrown open giving a sweeping view of the night sky and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Angela didn’t laugh at my joke, she didn’t even smile.

“What is it?” I asked.

She was standing next to the bed on the side with the nightstand and holding a piece of paper.

“It’s a letter,” she said, “from a human named Riley. It was in a hidden compartment of his nightstand, amongst others.”

“What does it say?” I asked. She thrust the letter toward me, and I read it carefully.

This is what it said:

“Dear Norman,

Ever since you came into my life, things have changed. For the better! I was doing all the “right” things, but things just didn’t feel right.

As soon as I met you, I knew there was something special about you, and now I know for sure that there is. Thank you for sharing your secret with me. I now know that extraordinary things exist in this world. I had lost faith in that for a long time, and it feels like parts of me are coming back to life that I had thought were gone for good.

I don’t want to lose this feeling. I don’t want to stop walking in your world. I know what you have told me about your rules, and I don’t want to force you to do anything that would get you into any trouble, but I am hoping you might consider me worthy of being one of the wards that you told me about.

I will wait for you tonight and every night. I hope that you come to me, I am yours.

Love, Riley”

When I had finished reading, Angela made a sound of disgust.

I peered up at her, arching an eyebrow.

“Such an overeager little human,” she sneered.

“I seem to recall similar pleas from another young woman,” I said.

“It must have been Samantha or one of your other blood pacts because I was certainly never that desperate.”

I smiled placidly.

When I had met Angela, she had fully been in a 90s grunge/goth phase. She was so awed to meet a real vampire that she had almost instantly pledged her undying and unwavering loyalty to me. Nowadays she was a little more reserved in her expression of emotion, but this life changed your perspective and although being a vampire isn’t the torturous hardship some of the lore would suggest, it isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be either. She had been a vampire now longer than she had been a human, and certainly far longer than she had been an adult human with a fully working mind. It was so easy to forget our human infancy.

“Desperate or not, it seems like Norman might at the very least be with this young Riley,” I said.

Angela nodded; her hands were clenched into fists. “We need to find them.”

“I agree,” I said, “but how are we going to track her down? I don’t suppose you found an address book in that nightstand?”

“No address book, but there were envelopes for the letters,” she said, providing one. “The return address is in the upper right corner.”

She lived out in Colwood, which was a little way to go but not that long. We could run up the Galloping Goose and be there in less than an hour. I checked the time quickly on the small clock that sat on Norman’s bedside table, it was nearing 3 am now.

“Do we go out to pay them a visit?” I asked. “It seems to me he could just have gotten caught up with his new… friend.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think this is just him getting caught up. Norman wouldn’t just ditch for days with no word. Something must be wrong here.”

I thought she might say that. The thought that Norman had simply blown her off for a human was bound to sting. “Alright then, it’s settled. We’ll pay Norman a little visit. We have four more hours of night, so that should be plenty to figure this out and get back to our havens.”

We stopped to write Norman a note, leaving it on his dining room table and letting him know we had been by and that if he returned, he was to seek us out or send word that he was okay. I briefly outlined our worry, complete with a small admonishment for pulling me away from my usual routine.

“Alright, let’s go,” Angela said when I was done, eager to be away.

“Just a second,” I said, pulling out my phone and sending a text. It wasn’t to Norman, he didn’t like cell phones and had never owned one, but I had already decided that if we were going to dig deeper we might need a little more help. By the time the night was over, I was glad I’d sent that text.

***

“Where are we going?” Samantha asked.

She was struggling to maintain the pace that Angela and I were setting, but she was still young.  She had only been brought to this life a decade earlier.

“Out to Colwood,” Angela said.

We raced along the Galloping Goose Trail, a stretch of path that went all the way downtown near the Johnson Street bridge in Esquimalt at one end and out past Sooke at the other. It had once been a rail line in the 1920s and early 1930s. I liked it better this way. This time of night it was practically deserted, and anyone who was along it had no time to even register we were there before we were long gone. There were a few of the city’s urban nomads about, and a group of young people that were intoxicated, but we weaved around them easily. The trail is great for getting from one side of town to the other at rapid speeds and not drawing too much attention. Anyone who might know or suspect what had just passed them could be easily discounted and often were.

“Why Colwood?” Samantha asked.

I explained to her calmly what the situation was, how Norman had been missing, our investigation of his haven, and the discovery of his relationship with Riley.

“And you think he’s there?” Samantha asked, her words slightly accented.

Samantha was actually named Samanta, and she originally came from Colombia. Her hair was black as night, her skin even in this life was a beautiful light brown like sandalwood, and her face looked more like an angel’s than a demon’s. Full lips, a gentle but defined jawline, large brown eyes, and a nose that was ever so slightly flat but suited her face. I rarely picked wards that were unattractive, but Samanta was exceedingly beautiful even by my standards.

“There is a good chance that he’s there,” I said, “but this is our best guess.”

“He’s there, with his little pet,” Angela said, sounding altogether too bitter.

“I thought you said something didn’t seem right?” I ask, an eyebrow arched.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Angela said, we moved as seamlessly and rapidly as a shadow cast by the headlights of a passing car.

I grinned but didn’t let Angela see my expression. I knew that her true fear was that Norman had replaced her, found someone better to wile away eternity with. It was a risk we all ran. “She’s a new friend, Angela. Perhaps a new ward, you and I keep wards. Why should it be any different for Norman?”

“It’s not the same, he has grown overly attached to this one,” she said, jealousy creeping into every word.

At the cost of ignoring you, I thought, but again I kept this to myself.

Angela tried to cover, saying, “I’m just worried this might draw too much attention, what if this girl lets it slip to someone that she knows a vampire? Some vampire hunter wannabe will be showing up the next week.”

I had been operating in this city for decades, and yet I had only encountered would-be vampire hunters on a handful of occasions. Vampire hunters, as a general rule, are not reasonable people, but I had managed to reason with a few, and the rest I had needed to deal with as the need arose. I didn’t like having to handle them in either capacity. It was always my general practice to operate in the shadows, to maintain certain anonymity and not flaunt my existence or my gifts. I encouraged my offspring to do the same, and we bound any wards that we fed from to complete secrecy.

“So,” Samantha said, “there is a chance that he isn’t here at all.”

“It’s a hunch and a good one,” I said, “but yeah.”

“What will we do if we don’t find him tonight?” Samantha asked.

I pondered this for a moment before answering. “We’ll talk to Riley, see what she knows, and look for as long as we can until we find him, or the sun rises. Tomorrow, we’ll look again. We’ll go back to his haven; we’ll keep looking until we find him.”

Life was simpler before I made my offspring, but it was also lonelier. They were friends, companions, the closest things to equals I had in my life, and family but in the way that your spouse becomes your family when you marry. The bond we shared is hard to explain to humans because humans have nothing on the level that a vampire feels about the other members of his coven. I loved very little in this world more than myself, but my offspring were an exception to that rule.

“Let’s hope we find him tonight then,” Samantha said with a slight grin, “I have plans tomorrow night.”

When we arrived at Riley’s address, all was quiet. We padded up to the house silently, the only sign of our presence was the dark spots where our feet shook the shimmering dew off of the blades of grass on the lawn. I signalled to Samantha and Angela, and we split up and looked about the house, peering in windows and listening intently.

The house was silent, save a man snoring in one of the bedrooms and a woman breathing rhythmically beside him. Judging from the sound of their breathing and the beating of their hearts, I knew that they were older, perhaps in their late 50s or so. The house was a reasonably nice place in Colwood near the Esquimalt lagoon, so it seemed Riley was the owner or the only tenant. The older humans may have been her parents, or maybe a landlord and landlady. Searching more I discovered there was a suite in the basement.

“She lives down there,” I said in a whisper hardly louder than a breath.

Angela and Samantha nodded.

“Nobody’s inside the suite,” Angela said.

“I’m going in,” I replied, “keep a watch.”

They nodded and I began to become incorporeal and slip through the crack of the door.

The first thing I noticed was that it was far humbler than Norman’s haven. A basement suite, so the ceilings were only a couple of feet over my head. The furniture was a mishmash of things, with absolutely no thought given to a cohesive theme. The range was an old electric Maytag, the couch looked like it was found in the back of a Salvation Army or possibly on the side of the road.

I looked in her bedroom and find a dresser with a broken mirror, torn bedsheets, and a blanket tucked on the curtain rod and blocking the window completely. On top of these lovely details, the entire place was a mess. But worst of all there was a stench of death hanging in the air.

This may surprise you, but death is not an odour I encounter all too often and I find it very offensive. Vampires smell like very little. Our bodies do not decompose, and we neither sweat, nor produce waste like humans. So, we often smell neutral or with the slightest smell of lilies. Many apply or wear a cologne or perfume and it is that scent that they smell like, having no competing body odour. In short, we do not smell like death and decay. As you know, I try to leave those I feed on alive, and I certainly wouldn’t keep their corpses around if they died.  

It didn’t take me long to find the source of the stench. There were two rabbits and a fawn in a garbage bag that was near the garbage. I pulled one of the rabbits out and examined it closely. Its body was shrivelled like a raisin, and there were two puncture marks on its throat. I tsked and tossed it back into the bag.

We had no time to wait for me to go incorporeal and corporeal again, so I simply unlocked the door, snagged my clothes, re-dressed, and walked outside. I locked the handle behind me so that it wasn’t left wide open.

“What did you find?” Samantha asked me, she was crouching in shadow and would be invisible to humans.

I signalled to them to join me, and we moved out to the road where we began to walk toward Royal Roads and Hatley Park. Judging from the position of the moon and the stars I knew that it was after 4 am now.

“Well, you don’t have to be nervous about Norman choosing to spend so much time with a human,” I said to Angela.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so aggravating. Even still, I can’t help but smirk a little.

“What do you mean?” She asked me.

“I mean that he has a good reason to be so distracted.”

“Let’s not play guessing games,” Samantha said, giving me a playful shove. “What are you saying?”

I sighed and looked up at the stars.

“I’m saying that Riley isn’t human anymore, Norman turned her, she’s a fledgling vampire now.”

***

“That rat bastard,” Angela fumed.

We ran through the woods in Royal Roads, covering as much territory as possible but staying together. Royal Roads was the site of the second castle built by the Dunsmuirs, this one built by Robert’s son James, and attached to a large estate. Over a century later the castle, many of the buildings, and those grounds remained but now they were a university and large forested park. We still had a few hours left until dawn, and we knew we could cover the entire forest in that time, but if they eluded us, or even took an alternate route we may miss each other.

“Now, now, Angela. There’s no need for name-calling,” I said.

“But it’s true, did he have your permission to do this?” She asked.

We had entered from the entrance near the corner of Heatherbell and Lagoon Road and then gone up along Cottonwood Lane and to the large field of Scottish broom and blackberries. I had hoped that they might be in that field hunting. Judging from the animal carcasses in Riley’s suite, Norman was trying to teach her to feed like he did.

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t give him permission to do this.”

“Then he’s a rat bastard. We can’t just create vampires when we want to,” Angela said, and she punched a poor tree that had nothing to do with the situation whatsoever. Splinters and wood went flying, leaving a large void on one side of the trunk.

I focused keenly on the terrain around us. We startled a deer which went bounding off into the woods, occasionally we flushed out a rabbit, and we had seen a barred owl perched in a tree when we had first come into the woods. There was movement and life here, but no sign of Norman and Riley yet.

“I remember the three of you voting when I was turned,” Samantha offered. “You voted no, Angela.” She laughed.

“At the time, I didn’t think we needed a new member to our coven,” Angela said.

“You were wrong about that one,” I said.

They weren’t in the lower field, so we went from there back and through the woods leading up to the gravel pit. They weren’t there either. We combed the surrounding woods and found nothing The odd animal was flushed out of hiding, but this wasn’t the quarry we sought. We came to the gate near Langholme Drive and followed the dirt road downhill, listening intently for any sign of them in the woods. When we reached the end of this road, I thought I heard something.

We stopped and listened intently to the silence of the night, sniffing the air. Animals moved in the darkness, but there was something else, something not human nor animal. Different animals move differently, predator, prey, and those who fall in between. We could hear the movements of a predator, and this was no cougar or bear.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

Angela and Samantha nodded.

We followed the path up towards College Drive and turned back into the woods and towards the upper meadow, now dominated by Scottish broom just like the lower.  

We moved as silently as we could, hoping that we might approach them undetected.

Truth be told, I wasn’t certain what I was going to do when we caught up to them. Creating new vampires was complicated, to say the least. Even I wasn’t allowed to just make a vampire whenever I felt like it. There would be consequences for what Norman had done.

Then we were there. We had approached the field from a side path and the eastern side of the field where the row of hillocks separates the field from the woods. We peered over the hillocks, and there they were.

Norman and Riley were standing in the field, and Riley was holding a doe by the neck. The doe was kicking and struggling, obviously freshly caught.

“Put it out of its misery,” Norman said.

She reached over and snapped its neck with a quick and easy movement that had already seemingly been practiced a few times. Her fangs glistened in the moonlight as she tucked into her meal, she drank from her kill for a few minutes while we watched, and when she pulled away there was blood on her face and steam arose from the bite on the deer’s neck.

“What the hell is this?!” Angela screeched.

It surprised me a little because I had thought we would move together, but she was already racing toward them. I followed as quickly as I could. If I was surprised, that was to say nothing of Norman and Riley. They both jumped and looked toward Angela, Norman stepping in front of his progeny just before Angela reached them.

He held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Now Angela, just hear me out.”

She struck him, hard. He made no move to try to block it.

“How could you?” she demanded. “How could you create her without talking to any of us?”

I grabbed her and pulled her away from them. “Angela, I cannot allow you to hit one of my offspring.”

“I’m your offspring too, aren’t you angry about this?”

I sighed, Samantha had caught up to us too now and was standing just slightly back. Riley’s eyes were shifting between all of us.

“William,” Norman said, “I’m sorry for not talking to you first, but something happened, and I couldn’t wait to turn her. I promise you I wouldn’t have done it without your permission, but she would have died, Will.”

“Bullshit!” Angela screamed, tears of blood streaming down her face, she fought against me and almost broke free, but I held her fast.

I whispered in her ear, “Let’s hear him out. It’s Norman, he’s never lied to us before. Let’s hear him out.”

She slumped in my arms. “You can be punished for this, Will.”

I kissed the side of her face gently. “Then it is my outrage to have and not yours. But that outrage will be little compared to the outrage I would feel if any of my coven is hurt here tonight.”

She calmed in my arms, and I let her go.

“Just a little dramatic, no?” Samantha chided.

Angela bared her fangs at her.

“Norman, explain now,” I said.

He looked at his offspring, and she looked positively terrified. It occurred to me that Norman had explained the law on making new offspring to her and she sensed their precarious position.

“Riley and I have been friends for a few years now. You know that I have many human friends, Will.”

I nodded.

“When we first met, she was near the age I was when turned, a year or two younger. At first, I just saw her as a friend. I wasn’t looking for anything else.”

“And now?” Angela asked with a wavering voice.

Norman looked pained. “We are more than friends.”

“What does that make us?” Angela asked.

“We can be whatever you want us to remain,” Norman said.

“I don’t mean to seem insensitive to your lover’s quarrel, but it truly isn’t the most important part of this,” I said.

Samantha grinned and winked at me.

“Right, sorry Will. So, as our relationship developed, and over the last six months, I began to see Riley differently. She had been a good friend, but she was also a very interesting person. We could talk on many subjects for hours on end. I enjoyed her company, more than my other human friends by far. We became lovers a few months ago, and shortly after I told her my secret.”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Why what?”

“Why did you tell her your secret?”

He seemed at a loss for words for a moment but then he spoke. “I guess it was because I wanted whatever we had to be real. I didn’t want to lie to her, I didn’t want to have to hide from her, or hide parts of myself from her. I knew it might mean losing her. I knew it might mean that I was at risk, but it was worth those risks so that what we would have would be something real. Do you understand?”

I did understand. I understood as completely as any of our coven would. It was the same reason I had made all of them. I had gotten sick of the loneliness, of the superficial relationships I had. They had all been ushered into this life because I wanted to truly be able to share my unending life with others.

I nodded. “The desire for real connection is one we all feel, but it doesn’t justify you breaking the rules or putting us all at risk. What happens when the New York council finds out? Have you thought of that?”

“I will take full responsibility. I created her and as such…”

“No,” I interrupted him, “I will be taking full responsibility. You are my offspring, and she is yours, therefore I am responsible for everything that has happened.

“There is a solution here,” Angela piped up, “if we kill her then the problem is resolved.”

A silence fell, she was right. If we were to end the fledgling now, then that would be the end of any difficulties. We would have to do some cover-up, perhaps Norman would have to disappear for a while. He would go out to Port Renfrew and the surrounding wilderness until things cooled down, and we might have to kill some key witnesses, but when the vampire council came knocking we would all be safe.

If there would be no unauthorized fledgling in our midst, there was nothing to punish.

“I don’t like that option,” I said.

Norman and Riley seemed to relax a little. Angela fumed. Samantha watched us all warily, taking furtive glances at the sky. It was dark yet, but nearing 5 a.m.

I spoke quietly, but in the silence of the night, every word hung clearly in the air. “Tell me the rest of how she came to be as she is, Norman.”

He went on, “Once she knew my secret, once I had shared that with her, I wanted to share more, and to show her more. So, I came to her most nights. I would take her away, carrying her while I ran through the woods, or along the beaches, I climbed great towering firs, and we saw the city and the sea from vantages people would never know. I wanted to show her what was wondrous about this life. Already I was hoping to turn her someday, but I was going to ask you and enter a blood pact with her. I was hoping that since I had never fed on humans, and since my presence was perhaps the most subtle of our coven, you might permit me to turn her in five years, were the council to agree. I would teach her to feed on animals as I have, to leave little to no footprint. Her and I would blend with human society and bring no risk to our coven.”

“But you didn’t wait five years,” Angela spat. “You decided it was easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and looking down. A single teardrop of blood traced its way down his cheek as he looked up at me. His eyes were locked on mine. “I swear to you, I had every intention of following the rules.”

“What happened, Norman?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

“One night, two nights ago now, we were at the top of the tallest tree on the highest elevation of the Roads. We were looking out to the sea, and it was a slightly stormy night. The whitecaps looked like a flock of sheep, running and rolling in the ocean. We laughed, as the tree swayed. I was an idiot; she should have never been up there.”

“You dropped her?” I asked.

“The tree top broke off,” he said. “There was a loud crack that I thought was thunder at first. It began to fall and us along with it. We lurched, and before I knew it, she was out of my grip. I frantically tried to grab her before we reached the ground, but when she landed, I knew. She was terribly injured.”

“So, she begged you to turn her, and you listened,” I said.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “she told me not to. I had told her how our laws worked by then, and she knew that it would be bad for me and my coven if I did. Her heartbeat growing weaker, the light fading from her eyes she told me, ‘Let me die, Norman. These last days have been the best of my life, and better than many get in a lifetime, it’s okay.’ I told her I loved her; she told me she loved me too. I couldn’t let her die, Will. I just couldn’t.”

I took a deep breath. There was only one fair way to do this.

“We have to take a vote on what to do,” I said.  

***

“Well, you know how I’ll vote,” Norman said.

“You don’t get a vote,” I replied.

I turned to Angela and Samantha. “Do we kill her, or do we risk letting her live?”

Angela looked insulted I would even ask, but I had to know how she would vote now that she knew all.

Angela spat her words like venom, “I vote we kill the little slut, of course.”

She had always been emotional. This was not a decision made based on justice but on her own petty jealousies. Even still, I had said she could vote, and I could not rescind that right now.

I turned to Samantha. “And you, what say you, my young one?”

Samantha shook her head. “It is tragic, their story. She loves him and he loves her, and that moves me. I cannot blame Norman for what he chose. If you were to be in such danger, William, I would risk anything to save you.”

“You vote that we show mercy?” I asked.

She nodded. “We are vampires, mi amor, that doesn’t mean we have to be monsters.”

I smiled and reached out to stroke her arm. “You’ve put me in a really difficult position with your bleeding heart.”

She shrugged. “Now it comes to you, what is your vote?”

“I don’t like it, but you’ve left us with little choice, Norman. You know as well as I do that the elders of New York have strict rules about creating progeny. They might kill all of us just to teach us a lesson, they will certainly kill her and me. I have to pick the option that saves the most suffering.”

Angela and I moved to attack, she was eager and I willing, but then Samantha stepped across to face us.

Three against two. Two young vampires and a mature vampire against a young elder and a mature. I smirked.

“What are you doing Samantha?”

“This isn’t right, William, and you know it,” she said.

She had been willful even before I turned her. Perhaps I was too kind with my progeny. I could have bent them to my will, sires had that ability. Some revelled in that power, but I used it sparingly. It had always seemed to me that I wanted companions and not servants, and that to abuse and overuse this ability would leave me lonelier than if I had been alone.

“What is right in this situation? The council shows up and she’s here, they may kill all of us just to set an example to other covens. You can’t keep up with me, Samantha, and I am not yet two-hundred years old. There is no one on the council in New York younger than four centuries, they would go through us as quickly and easily as a serrated blade through a rare steak. I am choosing the lesser of two evils.”

“Please Will, she would have died if I didn’t turn her,” he pleaded.

“All you have done is bought yourselves a little more time, but unfortunately, the clock runs down now. I have obligations to more than just you, Norman. This is about more than Riley’s life now. I am sorry fledgling,” I said, addressing her directly, “but you must die for the good of this coven.”

Angela was bristling beside me, and I knew that at any moment she would attack, no longer able to hold herself back. The night was calm and still, like the silence that settles across the ocean before a storm. Samantha shook her head but readied herself to fight, Norman and his neonate both readied themselves. All the while, I couldn’t help but think how much I hated killing, how I had avoided it all these years as much as possible. I had struck deals, I had used the human obsession with vampires to find those to feed from, but I had left them alive. I had extended the lives of my very favourite blood pacts, and now I would be responsible for ending the lives of two and another. Another that if it weren’t for laws set by those who knew little of us and cared even less, I would have gotten to know and loved just as family as well. I readied myself, consigning myself to the unpleasant job that had to be done.

“Wait!” Norman shouted, just before we were about to attack. Every tense muscle in my body was for a moment activated and slackened, like the wrong chord being struck on a mandolin and then silenced.

“What?” Angela demanded. There was murder in her eyes.

“The council limits the number of vampires created, so that our numbers don’t get out of hand causing the humans to rise up against us, right?”

I nodded. “That is the reason for their laws and regulating the number of offspring.”

“Our coven has 4 members,” he said.

I nodded. “Where are you going with this, Norman?”

“Kill me,” he said.

I balked. “What?”

“Are you insane?” Angela asked.

He shook his head. “It’s not her fault. It was my fault she was in that tree; it was my fault she was turned; all of this is my fault. Rather than see our coven tear itself apart, rather than see Riley destroyed, I would rather die.”

“You can’t do that!” Angela shouted. “What is wrong with you? You’ve known her for a few years and you’re willing to die?”

He nodded. “I would have done the same for you.”

“I don’t want you to die, you asshole,” Angela seethed. “I want you to live.”

“We can’t kill Norman,” Samantha said to me.

Norman, my first offspring, my earliest true friend. The nights we had spent together, the way he chased away my loneliness. How empty would so much feel without him?

“It’s his choice,” I said, blinking away the tears that built behind my eyes.

I went and broke off a branch from a nearby holly tree, making sure to break it so it was sharp and pointed at one end. I walked back to him, like I was walking to my own execution, and in a way I was. A part of me would surely die in doing this.

He kneeled to the ground and pulled his shirt off, exposing his lean frame. His chest bared for me. He looked up with sorrow and understanding in his eyes.

 He mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” I said, and I lifted the makeshift stake high into the air.

“Don’t do it,” Riley sobbed.

I stopped, looking at her.

“Kill me, just kill me,” she begged. “I can’t be the reason this happens; I don’t want this life if it starts like this. Kill me.”

Angela snatched the stake from me and strode in her direction. I was in the way in the blink of an eye.

“Stop,” I commanded.

“She wants to die,” Angela said, “allow me to oblige her.”

“No, let me die in her stead,” Norman begged.

“This is like some sort of vampire Romeo and Juliet,” Samantha said with a grin.

I snatched the stake from Angela. “You do not get to do this, no matter what. You hate this girl for jealousy and little else. I expected better from you, now stand down.”

Angela looked a mixture of angry and embarrassed and stepped away.

“You want to die?” I asked.

“I would rather die than live without him,” she said.

“It seems he feels the same way,” I said.

“I do,” Norman interjected, “if you kill her, then I will wait for the dawn.”

“If you kill him, then I will wait for the dawn,” she said.

I sighed and turned to Samantha. “You aren’t the only one who has put me in a precarious situation today.”

She grinned at me and shrugged.

I turned back to the two little martyrs. “What am I supposed to do with this situation? Any other coven master would just kill you both and be done with it, you know that?”

Norman nodded. “I’m sorry, Will. I just can’t let her die without doing everything in my power.”

“Even if what is in your power is to die?”

“Even then,” he said.

“And you, fledgling, you love him that much? More than you love yourself?’

“More than I love anything,” she said.

I pinched my nose and rubbed my eyes. “You leave me no choice,” I said, raising the stake above my head, “I didn’t want to do this.”

I broke the stake in half and tossed it into the woods.

“I’m changing my vote. Neither of you must die, we’ll contact the council, and we’ll face whatever comes as a coven… as a family.”

Angela shrieked. “You can’t do that!”

“I can, and I have,” I replied. “I cannot in good conscience kill either of these two, and although this decision affects more than them and myself, the majority of the coven has spoken loud and clear. I’m sorry, Angela, but tonight we will choose life over death.”

“A fine choice of words for a decision that may result in all of us dying,” she said.

“We will face what comes,” I said.

Norman got to his feet and put his shirt back on. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure, Norm. I didn’t exactly come to this decision easily, you know.”

“Thank you,” Riley said, draping me in a hug. “I’m sorry it had to start like this.”

I hugged her back. “I’m sorry too, your coven should make you feel safe. Maybe tomorrow night we can start fresh.”

She smiled at me, “I’d like that.”

“I knew you’d do the right thing,” Samanatha said, giving me a punch in the shoulder.

“I’m glad one of us did,” I said. “Angela, I’m sorry this didn’t end how you wanted, but will you respect this decision?”

She nodded slowly. “What choice do I have?”

“We still all love you, and I understand how you feel. But don’t look at this as losing Norman, look at it as gaining a coven member.”

“You’re just happy because I’ll be visiting you more often,” she said.

“Well, I have missed you, if that’s a benefit of this then I’ll take it,” I said.

“I don’t mean to break up this love-in,” Samantha said, “but the sun will be up soon, we should get to our respective havens.”

I looked to the sky, and although it was still dark, I could tell that we were nearing the crucial hour to make our way home.

“I expect you both back in town tomorrow, we have much to discuss,” I said to Riley and Norman.

They both nodded.

“Okay then,” I said to Samantha and Angela, “let’s be off.”

***

We left them in Colwood to rest in Riley’s apartment. They promised to meet the next night. Samantha, Angela, and I raced down the Goose and made it to town around half past six.

We parted ways, the sun was coming, and we all had to get somewhere safe.

As the sky grew lighter, I climbed the roof of Vista 18 again. I played Live Forever by Oasis softly on my phone as I overlooked the city. It was especially beautiful now that it was growing lighter. I could see everything, every person, every animal, every bit of life crammed into Victoria’s downtown core was mine to behold. So many lives just moving about.

The sun was creeping up, and soon I would have to go. No, this wasn’t what you might think, I wasn’t sacrificing myself, as noble as that might have been.

I had no intention of dying, and I had no intention of letting any of my offspring or my offspring’s progeny die. By allowing both Riley and Norman to live, I knew the council would be coming. It may be weeks, maybe months, or even years, but sooner or later they were coming.

When I was turned, so long ago now, I was happy with my sire for a time. She was beautiful and kind to me, but firm when she needed to be. For a few decades I had that first small family, but then… I could still hear the screaming. She had taken so long to burn.

I never did relish killing, but I did delight in the vengeance I exacted for what was done to her. I shook my head; I shouldn’t think of these things.

I knew that I would do it again if anyone tried to take what I had built.

There was birdsong in the air. Great bands of pink and gold worked their way along the horizon. I needed to go.  As Norman’s sire, I’ll be ultimately responsible. Maybe they’ll make me face the dawn, maybe it will be my screaming that my progeny has to hear.  

I took an oath when I created them.

I told them that I would protect them, and I swore to myself that I would love them. I did this so that I wouldn’t be alone. Some things are worse than death. A life without connection is worse than death and makes one crave it.

I leapt down from the rooftop, landing softly and scuttling into an alley. The sun had begun to peek above the horizon, but I could stay in the shadows and get to my nearest resting place. I had a blood pact near here who would let me sleep. Someone I cared about and who cared about me.

I’ll take it. I’ll take the risk that is coming because a long time ago I chose life, even if it is imperfect. There’s always another way to look at things, to do things. As long as you’re alive you can find another path. Being a vampire normally means death, doesn’t it? And didn’t I find a way around that?

We feed without killing, Norman feeds from animals. As I knocked on the window of my ward’s window and the shadows shrank with the rising sun, I knew that I could find a way around this. I would keep finding ways around the obstacles that came because I choose life with all its challenges and beautiful complexity.

My ward, a young man named Emilio whom I had entered a blood pact with some years ago came to the window just in time. The sun was starting to burn my skin.

“William? What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I need a place to sleep today, Emilio,” I said.

He must have seen the steam rising off me, and I must have looked pained because he invited me in quickly.

“What were you doing out there so close to sunrise?”

I smile. “I just wanted to see the city in all its glory.”

“Seems a little crazy to take that risk,” he said.

I nod, climbing into his bed and wrapping my arms around him. He offers his neck and I take a little bite, taking a small drink before speaking. “Sometimes we have to take a risk, otherwise life stops being worth living.”

© Benjamin Bielert, all rights reserved