Chapter 218 - FLASHBACK. A Turn To The Light

Like that, for three more years, I was Maria's fledgling. She diligently taught me everything a sire should teach their fledgling, while drilling her philosophy deeper into my mind. She showed me the pleasures one can seek as a vampire, ones that humans are too weak or too fragile to pursue, and if something I saw horrified me, she convinced me that creatures of night and darkness had nothing to fear—it's others who feared them.

It pains me to say that it took less than I'd like for me to truly start enjoying that life with her. If a part of my soul was still in pain, I had way too many ways to distract myself from it. My old life was lost by that point, and I knew that all too well, but a new one was open to me, and Maria convinced me I had a right to enjoy it and ignore everything and everyone else.

You wouldn't have liked me back then.

I was still Maria's fledgling when I had my first doubts about the way I lived. Many things prompted them, but a certain encounter stood out the most. It was a night like any other, except that I left Maria's manor and went to prowl city streets in search of fresh faces and necks to bite. Maria had plenty of servants to drink from, but all of them were men, and I always found myself preferring women. For a start, they usually had cleaner necks.

Few women strolled the streets after dark, though, or were seen in open late establishments. Still, sometimes, someone would appear—or I could just drink from a man.

It was then that I spotted a group of thugs trying to rob someone who looked like a young son of a noble or a rich merchant. The youth was half-drunk and scared to the bone, while the thugs—angry enough to kill him only for his birth that elevated him above their social class.

And I realised with a sudden clarity that it would be as easy as waving a hand to interfere and save the youth, whose worst fault was to be stupid enough to go through that neighbourhood in his nice clothes. There was nothing stopping me, and the only thing I will lose would be five minutes of my time. Yet, any other day, I would've ignored something like that and went my own way.

After all, they were just mortals, weren't they? This was what Maria taught me. They would wither and die eventually, so what did their fleeting lives mattered at all?

But they did, for them. And me, with all my new power—what was stopping me from using it to help, instead of harm, except for myself?

So I went in, hypnotised the thugs into forgetting all about robbing people—I was good with hypnosis even then—and helped the youth they attacked get to his friends, who were looking for him already.

It was gratifying. It opened my eyes. I, a monster, could still help people. Then, what if I close to help more people? Would I stop being monster then? Even if I still had to drink blood to survive…

I thought a lot about that for the next few weeks. It came to me that some humans often did terrible things, and sometimes for no good reason. Compared to them, vampires, by their base nature, weren't worse than any predator, like a wolf or a fox. Farmers would hate them for killing their cattle, but you couldn't really fault a fox for stealing chickens?

And unlike a fox, I didn't need to even kill said chickens.

It was more complicated than that, though. I was still something inhuman. Not dead, and not alive. A mockery of all that was holy, if you ask any priest, and I asked, trust me. But the only thing I came to think after their answers, is that no one knew for sure what exactly was God's truth, if there was any. Everyone had their own opinions.

With years, I came to believe that if there is a higher being watching over our world, then they have little care about it.

I didn't come to any grand conclusion then, but I realised I didn't want to stay with Maria anymore. I found, if not myself, then something like a purpose to cling to, and in the light of it, Maria's nature became almost as disgusting to me as in the first days after she kidnapped me.

I couldn't forget that part, too.

She didn't stop me from leaving. She was clear from the start that this day would come, when one of us will start feeling aggressive and territorial towards the other. I didn't feel it, but the time was right, and she didn't ask. Maria already had plenty of men to replace me, after all. She never got attached and passed this lesson to me.

It served me well in the future. A life of a vampire is either the one of loneliness, or one of loss. Even spirits grow old and die, even though very few of them measure time in the same way we do; and either way, most spirits hate vampires as much as… most anyone, I suppose.

While vampires with age only grow stronger.

Now, I was on my own again, free to go whenever I wanted. You'd think I tried to atone then—didn't I learn something just then? And I did, somewhat. I helped those I've met on my way when I could, but most of my focus was still on myself.

The ache in my soul didn't disappear, and I still had to silence it somehow, or it became insufferable. The pleasures I shared with Maria before were the only way I knew how.

In my heart, I couldn't stop believing that I was still a monster, and I hated it.. And those who hate themselves could have no genuine affection for the world and people in it.