Chapter 3-Regrets

Demian stormed through the door of the sanctuary and sat, gloomy, in a chair. He propped one elbow on the arm of his seat and cradled the side of his head in his palm. The other arm of the chair became the resting place for one of his boots beneath a raised leg. The chair was in the style of the whole room, old. In the ultramodern world it was quite a change. All the furniture was made of polished mahogany and could have been made by human hands. Carpets made of wool, virtually vanished from the face of the world, covered the floors. They had high tech gadgets in the rest of the house, but this, the sanctuary, was designed to be almost meditative and Demian made it clear that energy beam chairs were not comfortable to him.

He sighed heavily and dwelled in his own thoughts. Karin had seemed, different. Perhaps she was, he would not give up so easily. Besides, there was something there that he hadn’t seen in any other human or vampyre. Not something in her, or him, but between them. He closed his eyes, picturing her. Those wild red-gold locks, deeply set blue eyes, and the pulsing of life within her. Not the pulsing of her heart but of her soul. It was something he had seen in Seraphine. They looked so alike. He could still feel her sometimes. The touch of her lips, the feel of her breath against his skin. But Seraphine was gone. Well, the Seraphine he knew was gone.

Amand, the name he hated so much, had taken her from him. He, Amand, and Seraphine had all known each other as mortals when they were all still innocent, as children. All three lived in the bustling 19th century streets of what was once known as New York City. Technically, he should think of it as "2 centuries BU" but that was newfangled human BS and he would always think in the terms he grew up with. No matter what calendar you use, it was the time of their innocence, his innocence. When they grew older, Demian and Seraphine fell in love. Amand also loved Seraphine, though Demian suspected that it was much out of Amand’s coveting what was Demian’s, and that was the end of their friendship with Amand but not his presence.

About a month before the incident that would change the two lovers forever, Amand disappeared. One night, Demian visited Seraphine’s house to find her parents slain.

"Seraphine!" he cried out in anguish. "Seraphine!" Demian heard a sudden crash above his head and a young woman’s scream that he knew to be his love’s. He tore up the stairs to see Seraphine in Amand’s arms. She was sucking on his arm fiercely and blood splattered her white nightgown. Amand’s face was full of triumph and he raised his cold, dead eyes to Demian. Blood ran from the side of his mouth and moonlight glinted from pearly white fangs in his mouth. "Amand!" Demian cried. "What has happened? What have you done?"

"I have made her mine," he cackled. "For eternity."

"Seraphine?" Demian asked breathlessly. She had dropped to the ground and now raised eyes as cruel as a rabid dog’s to him. The evil taint of Amand’s blood had spread through her, warping her heart. Demian stepped backwards and forgot about the stairs behind him. He felt himself crashing down them but he felt little as the pain of his broken heart already enveloped his entire being. While at the bottom he saw Amand grin viciously above him and then he felt his life drain as Amand bit into his neck. He was barely conscious but he vaguely remembered a struggle between Amand and another vampire, a woman who seemed much more powerful than he. Harsh words were exchanged then Amand fled, carrying Seraphine with him. The female vampire who had vanquished Amand lifted Demian’s battered body and carried him with her. Her name was Cecil and she became his sire. He had lived for years away from the world. He had no wish to see everything he knew die around him and his heart was so broken that his vampyric life was empty for him.

Cecil never gave up on him, she became like a mother, though in appearances she was not much older than he. Demian had been embraced when he was 19 and she was taken at 22. During the Wars, they hid high on a mountain in the Andes. Life was hard but they had survived, unlike many other vampyres. The humans hadn’t eliminated as many as they thought though. Their numbers had been reduced to the point that only a hundred or so vampyre were left. Demian never knew for sure, he hadn’t met all that survived. When Demian and Cecil snuck back to civilization, they found that all they had known was changed. They met back up with some of the few vampyres that had survived and they filled them in on all that had happened.

Before the Wars, the vampyre played at lives like normal people except that they were restricted to the evening and night hours. That was one reason they had stayed hidden for so long. There was no one to suspect. They also had a multi-leveled society with their own rules, leaders, intrigues, and everything else one would expect. This had been destroyed after the deaths of so many but gradually, those who survived the Wars created their own. Cecil had experienced troubles with the former society of vampyre, she had even been an outcast for about 250 years, and had refused any part in the new to begin with. She was one of the oldest vampyres left, though, and they had virtually begged her to take a position of authority. Reluctantly, she agreed, and became one of ten on the Council of the Vampyre, the highest ranked vampyres in the whole of their society.

Over the years since the war, the numbers of the vampyre had grown. Among all of them, Demian had never seen Amand or Seraphine. He could still remember her perfectly though. He pictured her smiling face but suddenly it changed to that of the beasts he had seen on their last meeting. He quickly shoved the image from his mind. A new image appeared, Karin. He found himself surprisingly content with that image but his reverie was broken when Cecil broke through the large, polished doors.

"Hellllloooooo," she sang and then spun over to muss with Demian’s hair.

"Why are you so happy?" he asked her gloomily.

"Why are you so sour?" she asked him with her dark green eyes studying him. Her soft brown hair was pulled back from her face in twist that was the latest style. Cecil could never forget her love of the human world, even after they hunted them, and she constantly kept herself studying it. It was her love of humans that got her in trouble.

"Cecil?" he asked.

"Yup?" she replied. She had sat down on a desk and was writing away at a column for the newspaper she worked at, her current human job.

"Do you ever regret…" he began. "John?" John had been her mortal lover in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s. Loving him had made her an outcast. One of the rules that the old society, and the new, had was that vampyres could not have a relationship with a mortal. They either had to embrace them or leave them. Cecil wouldn’t do that to the man she loved and had become an outcast because of it.

Demian watched her back stiffen as he asked the question. Without turning to him she replied, "For a mere 40 years with him, I had to spend over two centuries as an outcast. I was cut off from seeing any other vampyre, except you toward the end, but you don’t count. The loneliness drove me to put my pride aside and beg, in front of all the Elders and every other vampyre who I had respected, to be let back into the society. In order for me to be accepted, I had to drag myself, on my belly, over Mt. Fugi during the time when it was covered with the most, biting snow. In order to survive I had to feed on the blood of rodents that scampered to close, and you wonder if I regretted it?" She turned to Demian.

"Did you?" he asked, his expression unchanged.

"Not for the briefest fraction of the tiniest measure of time you can think of," she said plainly, then turned back to her column. She seemed to be waiting for Demian to say something and was frustrated at his lack of comment. She whirled around and marched over to him. "Well?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips. "Don’t you want to know why. Demian shrugged, infuriating her more. "I’ll tell you why!" she shouted. "Every single moment with him was utter bliss, utter bliss boy!"

"Obviously you didn’t regret his company," said Demian. "But what about embracing him? Why didn’t you?" That earned him a hard slap that even his acute perceptions didn’t see coming.

"I loved him beyond words," she said, the anger melting away from her snow from a proud mountain. "And I could have never done to him what was done to me." She stared

"Why did you embrace me then?" asked Demian.

She glanced at him with a regretful expression. "You were dying, I was lonely," she said with a sigh. "I regret every day what I did to you but it was necessary. Amand had already drained you and a drop of his blood landed in your mouth. That tiny bit would have caused you to become vampyre and you would have also had the evil taint of him. I let you drink much blood from me, before you ingested Amand’s blood, in the hopes that it would wash away the taint. I think it has. Either that or you were strong enough to overcome it." Demian nodded in silence. There was a bit of Amand inside him, the thought made him sick. "Are you okay Demian?" she asked. "Why did you bring all this up?

"I guess I have a right to know why one would do this to me," he said.

"I didn’t mean that part," she said, punching him lightly. "I meant whether I regretted."

Demian looked away from her and quickly said, "No reason." Cecil’s look said she didn’t believe him but she merely shrugged and went back to her column. He heard Cecil’s voice repeated, "utter bliss," over and over before he drifted away into a fitful sleep.