Let me tell you a story:
Once there was a child of an empire. That empire is now dust, echoed only in its architecture, and the bones of culture it left behind. The child grew into a woman, and ceased to grow from that point on, because a monster saw her from the shadows, and decided that such beauty should not suffer the indignity of age, and with soft whispers and blood exchanged, her form became like the marble statues that still stand long after her nation fractured and became history. Marble, flawless, a lifeless work of art.
Before the Monster came for her, she had tasted the copper flavor of blood, her lip bleeding from some barely remembered accident. After the fangs pierced her neck, blood was no longer just blood. Now it was like pouring molten light down your throat, like the sun igniting in your heart, like your mind awash with thunder and lightning. And as as the now empty husk of a person drops from her crimson stained ivory hands, she knows it is not light that fills her, but something primal and dark. The body belonged to her father, and the rest of her family follows soon after, as she is a feral, beautiful, hungry thing, and the Monster wishes it just so. When sense returns to her, and she knows she is kinslayer, blood drinker, that she has consumed in a wash of crimson all that she loves, the Monster is pleased, because he is all she has left now.
This is what it means to be a vampire. You are a wolf among sheep, a master unrivaled, and community means only the presence of other predators and objects in your ageless grasp, and it is better to be the one holding the chains and not ensnared by them.
Centuries later, long after the day she tore the Monster apart for what he made her do, and a thousand other indignities that made her marble skin scream with the echo of her mortal terror when she saw him come from dark, she see’s a woman in the evening, her skin darkened by a life under the kiss of the sun. And like the Monster before her, she cannot help but see a masterpiece, and imagines a bite that will render her eternal, a companion to contrast her marble form with ebony.
She only stops because when she see’s the fear in the woman’s eyes, does she remember, and then break in shame. Crimson tears paint the ground, and the woman, once afraid and now unsure, pauses before her would be attacker, and decides to stay.
They talk, and the girl who’d once been a child of a dead empire reveals all. They talk and talk, until the sun returns and she must return unto the dark, but with the promise that they will meet again. For a week this goes on, and predator and prey cease to exist, as they are now confidants, friends, perhaps the stirrings of something more.
It might have continued for years, but it lasts but a month before the vampire’s enemies witness and see nothing but a weakness to sink their teeth into. It is better to be the one holding the chains, know the blood drinkers, why they see their kind only as rivals in the night. And in that moment they strike, and take the person who helped the vampire remember love.
She does not have the power to free the one she loves. Oh, she could fight, rip and tear them apart, but by the time she arrives, they will kill her dearest heart, and for a moment she considers once more becoming an object, a piece of art owned by a Monster, if only that what she loves may live. She fears this, more than anything, but at least this time it will be her choice.
Still, she pauses, and prays. She asks the stars that are said to be distant suns, merciful or far away enough to safely walk beneath in the dark. She prays to the moon, the silver reflection of sunlight that does not burn her. And finally she prays to forgotten gods of her family, and to the Sun that would ignite her for guidance, and she promises that she would walk beneath them and into their temples for judgement to be rendered unto ash if she could find a way to save the one she loved.
She is answered, and the Light fills her. It is not like blood, not the euphoria that sent her hurdling thoughtlessly into dark, but an unrelenting pain that does not lie to her. She feels the lives consumed by her and claw and scream and the horrid truth of all she has done and been done to her crawl to the surface, and she cannot hide because it is terrible, but it is the truth. But at the end, she see’s the one among many that she spared, whose blood she will never taste, and in that moment, the light softens and fills her up.
Her once ivory skin is blackened and cracked, and their is a fire in her that seethes through her breath, like the bellows of a flame. The flame burns away all that she is not, and it is excruciating and everything she has ever wanted. It is love and truth, two lights that mar and heal in equal measure.
When she stands, blinking away tears that do not leave trails of blood on her face, a foreign sensation burns at her throat until she gasps and air fills her now working lungs. Humanity brings with it many discomforts, and it takes her a day in the sunlight to adjust and recall how be at peace with them.
The night comes, but the Sun stays with her when she goes to her enemy’s lair. They expected a submissive vampire, not a warrior with exact knowledge how to best them brimming with divine fire that purifies them one and all. She finds her Heart bleeding on the floor, and for a moment she is dead once more, the world cold and still, before her form stirs, and a pair of eyes take her in, scarred by flame, but more radiant than ever.
They leave that place with both their lives, and in time they both carry the divine fire, first with gratitude, then with faith, always burning brightest together. A love for one that opens a door to many. And for them, their lives finite but shared, that is more than enough.
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