I've been busy working on my next book in the Sabrina Strong series, Vampire Interlude. It's currently being read by my beta reader, and when I worked on this one scene my reader said it was the most graphic piece I'd written to date.
This is how Vasyl became a vampire. Have a look. I hope to have this fourth book out at end of the year.
Somewhere in France 1000 A.D.
He was not dead. He was sure of it.
A heartbeat resounded. It came as a hard knock on Vasyl's chest wall. But there was only the one. That's strange.
While waiting to hear the next one, he lay in darkness, the scent of soil, loam and molding leaves sharp in his nose. Underground? He wiggled his fingers. Yes. He moved his feet. He existed. I am alive!
Another heartbeat came. One singular thu-thump in his chest. Then again, nothing.
He languished in the darkness thinking what a fool he was to have asked for this. As if it would be better than being killed by his arch enemies, the Nephilim, who wanted to take the Dagger of Delphi from him and destroy it. They did not want to be killed by it once the sibyl appeared again in the world.
Where was Camerlengo? He must come for him. He was somewhere in the woods. Possibly near the cemetery. Certainly he would come for him soon! He must!
Panic rushed through him like weighted doom. This only brought on an ache which throbbed in his head. Pain built and surged down through his body, and throughout his limbs. He groaned with these changes to his body. His insides churned, as though a beast were eating at him from the inside out. He thought it felt like the worst hunger pains he'd ever known. But even as a priest, he had readily been able to ask for food wherever he went, and appease this meager needs. This was beyond hunger. But what was it? Illness? A warmth filled him, becoming hot, then he became chilled once again. He gripped at his stomach, shuddered and moaned, trying to keep his sounds to a minimum.
No. This was not mere hunger in the sense that he was used to. It hurt. His head pounded, and a strange sensation tickled his groin. Arousal? He could not understand this. He was virginal, and had never had this overpowering need before.
The terrible gnawing in his stomach, pared with his pounding head, and his sexual desires coming full bore was more than he could handle. He wanted to stop it all, now! Make it stop! But how?
He shifted his shoulders, using his hands to roll over onto his side. His movement caused loud crackling all around him—as loud as cannon fire to his ears. Whatever it was covering him was not heavy, and not dirt. Right before the vampire, Camerlengo, had agreed to turn him Vasyl had made him promises to not bury or put him in a coffin. Oddly, he remembered nothing of the transition, or the moments after the initial bite at his wrist. All the rest of it was gone. No memory of what happened. His friend had said he would not die.
The vampire had not lied to him. But the pain was more than he could bare.
Deep woodsy earth scents of worms, centipedes, pill bugs and other small creatures which lived in the soil filled his nose.
Movements came slow, weakness in his limbs limited his ability to move quickly. The pounding in his head felt like someone taking a hammer and hitting him repeatedly. When finally he struggled to push the something that covered him away, it came away like a crash of cymbals, accompanied by the smell of decaying leaves.
Opening his eyes, he blinked at his surroundings. Everything looked oddly cold and alien. Objects, such as trees and bushes were in varying degrees of grays and deep blues, and black. Above him a network of bare oak tree limbs laced across his vision of the stars above him. The stars glowed strangely, too. Some were yellow, some red and others brilliant blue, and some with halos around them, and yet they looked different. He thought he could actually reach out and touch them, they seemed so close. For a moment he was mesmerized by everything he saw. Until the pounding resumed in his head, and he couldn't ignore it.
Working to push to his feet—despite the fact his legs felt like ropes, rather than flesh and bone—he stumbled once and then rose unsteadily. Wobbling, he gained his feet, ungainly, like a new born foal.
Shooting pain seared through his head. He cried out, seizing it with his hands. His voice reverberated and then was lost in the immense wood. The strange sensations traveled through his body once again and ended with an unbearable throbbing at his groin. His needs were confusing, but equal in intensity. If he did not satisfy both, he was certain to go mad, or perhaps die.
Harsh crackling and rushing filled his ears. The noise was too loud, and he had to cover his ears. Despite the all-consuming pain, he was hyper-aware of someone's approach, and growled a warning.
“Father Françios! It is I, Camerlengo.” The threat he had felt eased from him.
“Here, Camerlengo!” Wetness slid down his cheeks. He wiped the tears with the back of his hand.
“Father. Here I am, my friend!” A large man appeared through a gap in the trees, he could see him clearly as though it were mid-day.
“This pain! I hurt!” Françios said holding one hand to his stomach, another to his head. “What is this terrible pain I endure? Am I sick?”
“No. You have just ascended. The changes are taking place in your body. Everything changes; your needs change,” he explained, drawing up along side him in his tattered robes, his dark hair hanging in ringlets around his ears and over his brow.
He bent over, hands covering his ears. “I am going mad! Make it stop! Make it stop!” Françios cried. A new scent stopped him. Something wonderful. Something he must have. Where is it? Françios rose to look for the source of this scent.
“You must take sustenance,” Camerlengo said. “I have brought you something that will help your change along.” With that, he drew up a small woman from behind him. Because Camerlengo was a large man he hadn't seen her. Blonde, and young, wearing a blue dress, or was it a night rail? He must have been pulling her along. He pushed the woman forward. She stood between the two of them. A look of confusion wrinkled her forehead when she looked from Camerlengo and himself. Odd little noises leaked from her lips. He noticed she shivered and the starlight cast fascinating shadows over her fair features. Fear. He could practically taste it on the air. It had a sweet, coppery essence that seemed to magnify his needs all the more. His finger tips itched, his mouth burned in torment until he opened his mouth to allow the prickle of agony at his gum-line to ease the ache there. He let out an in-human sound, like a beast, aware of the fangs that had drawn down out of his upper mouth. Thus equipped instinctively he moved forward, toward the small woman. Barely a woman, she must have been fifteen or sixteen.
“I will keep her thralled for you. Take what you need of her,” Camerlengo encouraged.
A deep anticipation came over Françios. With a growl, he fell upon the small, young woman. Fingers grasping her by the shoulders, he made a quick movement to twirl her around. Her blonde hair fell away from one side of her neck and he plunged his fangs into her flesh. Her coppery-sweet essence slid into his mouth and he drew on the wound he'd made to drink more deeply. But it did not come fast enough. Not fast enough to ease the torment inside him.
“Ease up, Françios,” Camerlengo said. But his words had no effect on him.
Françios held the girl tightly to himself, finding the small mounds of her breasts pleasant to hold. They fit into his palms perfectly.
That's when the fire in him slammed his insides, and he could no longer stand it. He pressed the girl down to the ground, threw up her skirts, and with much fumbling entered her roughly.
She screamed at first, but was so weakened by the loss of blood, she could do nothing to thwart his fiendish and cruel enjoyment of her. When he was done, he covered her throat with his mouth, bit hard, and tugged. A gush of crimson flowed and he buried his face into the gore.
Satiated, he drew back and looked at the blood soaked dress, her legs spread from his taking her. His horrific attack on her pricked whatever humanity he had left.
“Mon Deu! What have I done?” he cried out and jumped to his feet. “I can't stand this abomination! This-this evil thing I've become!” He crumpled, buried his face into his hands and wept. After a moment, his sire touched him on the shoulder.
“Enough, Françios. We must bury her. Hide our evidence.”
“I cannot. No! I must take her to her parents and admit my sins. I deserve punishment of the harshest degree for what I have done!”
“No. Come away. Understand me, my friend. You are not human. Nothing they can do to you short of burning or decapitation will kill you, and nothing they do will harm you. You are basically indestructible.” He paused a moment. “This was your first night. Your first feeding. It always goes badly for the soul we take. Almost always someone is killed by our feeding lust.”
“No! I cannot do this! I must destroy myself somehow!”
“You cannot. A vampire has too strong a will to exist.”
Françios shot to his feet again. “I am an abomination! I killed! How can I live with that on my conscious?”
Camerlengo grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard and said, “You came to me, telling me why you needed to complete your mission to keep the dagger safe and find the sibyl, because if you did not the Nephilim would take over the world. You said you would risk everything—everything—for her. Everything, including your own soul! This is what you said to me!” They stared at one another for long moments.
Finally Françios relented. His muscles relaxed. “Of course, my friend. You are right.” He drew his hand to his forehead. “I'd forgotten my mission. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Tomorrow it will go better. I will show you.” He grasped him by the arm and drew him along the forest of oaks. “You must now choose a name.”
“But I have a name.”
“No. That was your human name. You will no longer go by that.” He drew him along. “Come, into the cemetery. You can choose a name from a marker, if you wish.”
They stepped out of the woods into a partial clearing where grave markers lined the field. They walked quietly through the cemetery.
“Here is one,” Camerlengo said, pointing to a fine marble one chiseled recently.
But Françios looked to another. “This is a fine name.” he moved before a marker and Camerlengo joined him.
“Vasyl Datsyuk?”
“No. Just Vasyl. It's perfect.”
“It is Ukranian, I think,” he said. “Ancient Greek it would be pronounced Basileios.”
“Just Vasyl.”
“Basil is another form of this name,” Camerlengo said. “Would you not like that, instead?”
“No. I like this one. No one would know who Vasyl is, if they heard it. I will be able to stay hidden from those devils for years to come.” He drew up looking into the heavens. “Yes. From now on, my name will be known as Vasyl!”
©Lorelei Bell 2013
Certainly not! There are 8 planned, and since we've only gotten 4 up and going, you should be looking forward to #5 some time this year. I have no time-line on it, as yet. I have delivered it to my tireless publisher, and so, when they have gone through it for edits, and I look through it one more time, and we have a cover, that book will be out for all of you to enjoy!
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