Moonwolf’s Graphics Lair

Another of the vampire Promise series renders to go alongside the novels.  Again, the text was created for the image itself.  Image and story after the fold, this time from our plucky protagonist’s perspective.

Warning: Image Of Nekkid Vampire Not Safe For Work!!

Awakening To Eternity

It’s actually a myth that the Inuit have so many words for snow.  I’m much more interested in how many they have for cold, right now.

I mean, there are different degrees of cold – there’s chilly, there’s a cold wind, there’s refrigerator cold.  There’s that cold that freezes you down to the very marrow of your bones.

This is colder.  I’m struggling trying to will my arms, my legs, my head – even my eyelids to move, but this damned oppressive cold is holding me down, immobile, frozen.

I start to panic.  Where am I?  What the hell is going on?  Why can’t I damned move?

I realize something is wrong.  I know I’m panicking, know I’m getting more and more scared by the moment – but something is missing.

Then it hits me like a ton of bricks – my heart should be racing, I should be hyperventilating, feeling the thump as one tried to leap up through my throat and hearing the sound of the other through the rushing of blood in my ears …

Oh.

I remember.

I’m dead.

That explains it.

Bits and pieces of a distant recollection of an image of a memory start to float into my consciousness.  A flash of pain, feeling my life ebb away on the tide of my blood as it’s sucked from my artery.

As she killed me.

Her.

Wait a minute!  If it worked, why can’t I move?  Why do I feel so cold?  Where is she?

As if in answer to that last unspoken question screamed silently in my mind, I can sense a glow of light through my closed eyelids, can feel a presence above me.  I would shriek in fright as I feel the sudden stroke of something across my cheek, if I weren’t paralyzed with the cold.

“Don’t struggle, my love.  Just listen for a moment and all will become clear.”

Her voice.

“Your body isn’t going to want to do anything, as far as it’s concerned you’ve been dead for the past three days – which, I suppose you could say is true.  It will take a little while for it to warm up” – I could hear the amusement in her voice, stressing those last words – “as it were”.

“The sun set an hour ago, the last traces of its light have dissipated,” she went on, “you should start loosening up in a minute or so.  You’ll wake like this for many nights yet, so get used to it and relax.”

Many nights?  I don’t understand.

“When you get older, when you’re more in tune with the darkness of night and the power it brings to breathe life into us, you’ll wake easier, faster, sooner.”

That didn’t help, I still don’t understand.  But … was that a twitch of my hand?  I concentrate like I’ve never concentrated before, demanding it respond to my commands, that it move, that it prove to me I’m not doomed to be entombed within my own cold dead body here – where-ever here is!

Yes!  Success!  I’d breathe a sign of relief – if I was still breathing.  She must have noticed it, I can hear the pride tinge her voice.

“See if you can open your eyes?  Take it slow, don’t open them too fast, the light might hurt a little.”  I try to put as much effort into the process as brought my hand to life, and am rewarded with a bright flash and a piercing stab of pain in my eyes as they open.  A shadow falls across my sight, and I can see she’s put her hand over my face, shielding my eyes from the blinding light.

She starts turning the lights down … No, hang on, that’s not it – no, my eyes are adjusting.  I blink a few times to clear my eyes, they feel gritty, and she notices, pulling her hand away slowly.

It only takes me a moment to see her above me, though it’s still kind of blurry.  I reach up to rub my eyes, and realize my arm moved without too much effort.  She catches my wrist before I can get to my eyes and I hold for a moment.

“Don’t be too hard, your eyes dried out while you were dead.  Rub too much and it’ll hurt.”  She releases my wrist and I do as she advised, and then I can see again, see her again.

God, she’s beautiful.

I try to speak, but nothing comes out.  Oh hell, I’m dead, so I’m not breathing, so there’s no air to pass over my vocal cords – I’m mute!  Wait a minute, she’s dead too, she can talk – how?  She sees my jaw working as I try to speak, and smiles.

“This one you have to work on, but it’ll become natural for you.  You have to deliberately breathe in, then out as you speak.”  I watch her as she says this, and can see what she means, how her chest rises and falls, and something from the past make sense at least – she always tended to speak fast, or to pause in sentences.  Needing to take a breath, I guess.

I give it a try, but all I can manage is a croaking whistle.  She reaches down and caresses my cheek with the back of her hand, and as I look up into her eyes I can see concern, and love, and strength and … a touch of sadness?

Unbidden by conscious thought, I raise my hand to hers and touch the back of it lightly, and try to smile encouragingly at her, but a strange sensation in my mouth brings everything to crystal clear clarity.  I can feel them – elongated teeth, the incisors and the ones next to them.

Fangs.

My fangs.

Well, what did I expect?  I’ve seen hers in action a couple of times before, been on the receiving end of them, and the whole idea was I’d end like her afterwards.

I’m a vampire.

The warring emotions at this self-realization must have played out their battle on my expression, because hers becomes more definitely sad.  I look at her and try to speak again, croaking out “What’s wrong?”.

She lowers her eyes “You have what you wanted now, I’m just wondering if it’s what you expected.”

I think for a moment.  Did I really want this?

Yes.

One way or another, I was destined to die before my time, if it hadn’t been this way it would have soon been at my own hand – There’s only so much pain the human body can endure.

She knew that, she’d asked me so many times before that night if it was what I really wanted, why I wanted it.

Yes, this whole waking from the dead (literally) thing scared me the first time, but I had no idea what was going on.  And it’s kind of a shock to have what you are now so vividly demonstrated to you by discovering the changes made to your own body.  Of course I’d have a strange look on my face as I learned these new things about me!

I smile up at her and nod my head as best I can from my prone position beneath her.  “You took my life, and saved it in the process.  If it wasn’t for you, I’d be just dead.”  She smiles back at me and I take the opportunity of my head being able to move to look at my surroundings.

Bare planed wooden sides surrounding me,  box of some …

Coffin.  Mine.  A momentary burst of insanity comes on me as I wonder if it’s the one I was actually buried in, before I remember there wasn’t any burial.  Embalming would have made a right mess of things, it seemed.

I look down and to the side, and sure enough, there’s the dirt lining the bottom of it.  I struggle to sit up, to get out of the dirt, but my body’s still thawing, or whatever it’s supposed to do, and all I can do is roll over onto my belly.  Great.  Now I get a face full of dirt too.

I reach up and lever against the side of the coffin, trying to draw my legs under me, but they’re still asleep.  In the end, I give up, and lever myself up as if I’m doing push-ups to see over the edge of my … bed.

We’re in some sort of basement, a boiler room maybe, which isn’t really a surprise.  I know how bad sunlight would be if I caught it – we’re not talking a tan or sunburn here.  That, as she explained it, was the reason why coffins were traditionally used to sleep in, they’re one of the few guaranteed light-tight spaces, if made properly.

And beside mine, I can see one that’s been made properly.  Dark black wood, ornate handles, and … she gets velvet lining?

She’s moving towards her coffin, and sits down on the lid, staring quietly at me as I examine the room, and the living arrangements.  I raise an eyebrow in silent question, motioning my head towards her coffin, and she cracks a grin.

“I wasn’t exactly expecting to have someone along with me, I had to get that for you in a hurry.  You can sort out one more … comfortable … for you soon enough, my love”.

I laugh, and am amazed it actually came out almost sounding like one.  Need to work more on that diaphragm stuff.

“So what now?” I ask her, and she straightens up on her coffin lid.  I can see her green eyes almost glow, set against her pale skin – mine’s paler now, but in a way it is soothing to look at, almost porcelain pale.

“Now we wake you up properly and go get breakfast.”

Breakfa …

Oh.

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