Chapter 1b: A change for the better

When I finally came to, I found myself lying on the ground in a bed of leaves surrounded by frescoed walls. The roof was a marble dome. I didn't know how I got there. It had to be Odali who had left me there. Where could she be, I wondered.

It was almost pitch dark in that small marble pavilion but I could see clearly. I saw more clearly than if it were a bright moonlit night. Even the shadows hid nothing from my sight. I shouldn't be able to see so well in the dark, I told myself. I looked round and discovered I was walled in. Was I buried alive, doomed to starve to death? In a blind panic I smashed my way out of that marble enclosure. I didn't even stop to think that was impossible. The walls crumbled before my onslaught.

It was just as dark outside. I could hear the night noises of the jungle with excruciating clarity. Startled I stood absolutely still. I could smell the jungle: the damp smell of rotting leaves, the delicate perfume of a distant orchid, the musk of a civet cat in a tree a hundred feet away, and I heard her silent footsteps as Odali glided to me over the detritus of the jungle floor.

"My goodness, you did not use the door," she scolded. "Never mind, you have awakened." So there was a door that I must have missed in my terror.

"What are you and why have you done this to me?" I asked in a hoarse whisper realising that I had gone through some tremendous physical change. I had some recollection of what had happened but I was reluctant to admit that I had been bitten by a vampire and had become a vampire, a creature of horror and the night, doomed to flit from throat to throat. I almost whimpered in self-pity. How could there be such things as vampires in this age of computers and space flight, I moaned silently. Vampires went with horror stories that grannies, reeking of wintergreen and lavender, told to children burrowing into their blankets while they shuddered in delicious terror.

"Ah well, out is out. What do I call you? Adam Kaid? Good, I shall call you Kaid. Be calm. I shall tell you everything. You have been here for nearly five days and I have fed on you to the brink of death. Then I gave you my blood to bring you back to life. Now you are as one with me, a blood drinker."

"Blood drinker? You mean a vampire?" I glared at her. All my readings of vampire lore came flooding into my mind. I had become a veritable Dracula, one of the Undead. I was an avid reader of occult horror and I enjoyed them but for these stories to come to life was another thing entirely. I registered my protest vehemently.

"You made me into an abomination? A lifeless thing without a soul? A cursed ghoul?"

"No, no," she protested, "not a ghoul. Never. Those foul things live in graves and eat putrefied flesh. And certainly not an abomination. Attend me carefully. We are all creatures of the One, of God, Humans and Us." I could hear the capital letters quite distinctly. "We all have our places in the sun. Well, not all of us, to be exact."

In time I would understand her closing statement better. She explained carefully what she had done to me and why.

"It's lonely here all by myself and you attracted me," she said. "So I changed you instead of letting you die. There is something about you." She cocked her head and looked at me gravely for a moment before continuing. "Anyway, think. There are many advantages to being what you are now: an unimaginably long life, incredible strength — and you grow stronger as you age — the ability to command and control creatures from another dimension, more besides. The upside really outweighs the downside."

I wondered how she kept pace with modern idiom living as she did alone in the jungle. Also that bit about creatures from another dimension did not slide past me.

It didn't take me too long to accept what she said. I was shocked. But I wasn't angry nor did I rail at her for what she had done. As the lady said, she could have gone all the way and left me dead. Furthermore I liked what I did to the marble pavilion. And when I gave the matter a little more thought I realised that I did not need to work for a living at all. Or so I thought.

"You needn't have destroyed the pavilion as it was a nice one. It was built around the time of Akhbar the Great. Now there was a king."

Her eyes dimmed in reminiscence and I wondered how old she was.

"Almost two thousand years, my Kaid," she said, smiling at me. I was stunned. I tried to imagine living for two millennia and I gave up after the first few hundred years.

"You can read minds, too?" I stammered.

"No. And who would want to wallow in the thoughts of another person? It would be like wading in a cesspool. You could go mad if you connected with an insane mind. Actually it is, er... there is a word you people use."

"Body language?" I made a wild guess.

"Yes, something similar to that." She was quite pleased and continued. "You will have to learn to control your strength, among other things."

I liked the idea of enormous physical abilities because all my life I had been a nerd and a wimp and always at the wrong end of someone's knuckles. Having the strength of a King Kong was definitely a change for the better. She smiled at that. My body language was quite explicit.

"I wasn't mistaken when I altered you, Kaid. You have the soul of a berserker and the mindset of a vampire. Something the matter?"

"I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I do feel somewhat peckish," I complained.

"Well then, it's a good thing I saved something for you."

She went back the way she came and returned with a fawn cradled in her arms, a tender morsel. She held it to me.

"Food. Take and drink." She grinned, her fangs now evident. I felt my stomach growl and I began to tremble with a thirst for its life blood. I started to balk at the idea of drinking from the animal's veins but the blood call was too strong to resist. I took it from her and I felt my canines grow. They ached with my hunger and I found a pulsing artery unerringly. I drank the warm, life-infused blood and left only a husk. I threw away the carcass and I felt strengthened but there was something missing. Odali gave me a knowing look.

"It is food but it is not the Blood. It is the blood of an animal not a human being. There is a difference. Animal blood sustains you. Human blood revitalises and sustains you. Now I will show you how to hunt."

When she differentiated between animal and human blood I did not feel any emotion. It was as if I had fully accepted my new status — that I was no longer human except in my image. When I used the surface of a pond for a mirror I saw no horns, hairy pointed ears, or fangs protruding from under my upper lip. I looked as ordinary as ever. Appearances do deceive as I would discover later on.

Swiftly we ran, our bare feet hardly touching the ground. The sensation was astounding. I could feel the texture of the earth upon which we ran, the leaves underfoot, the squish of some creature when I stepped on it. Thorns did not penetrate the soles of my feet nor did flinty stones hurt me. We came to a village. We watched and waited and soon the fires were banked and the oil lamps faded to mere flickers. We moved into the village. The dogs sensed us but at a command from Odali they bellied to the ground with their tails between their legs. We searched the huts and we supped — Odali from a youth and I from a maid. When we had taken what we needed — a pint each was sufficient — we left.

"You did well. You learn quickly."

Her voice was a husky thing that raised feelings of lust in me and I grew hard. She approached me with a smile. Everything was so clear to me even at the opening stages of my unlife. I felt no regret that she had changed me so. I felt invincible and untameable. It was a great feeling. We sank to the floor of the jungle and made love. Ordinary people do not know what vampire love can be like — volcanic, earth shaking, hellish! I don't know if heavenly would be a better word to describe the ecstatic feeling I experienced, but then again paradise is relative.

My education began that night and Odali taught me with loving patience. It took several years. There was the matter of learning First Speak, a language spoken by the First Men and now lost to modern man. Good thing, too. First Speak is the key to magic and with such knowledge, the havoc modern man and his penchant for mass destruction could have caused would have been incalculable.

She taught me the Do's and Don'ts of being a successful vampire. There were lessons on how to summon and control elementals, which was a scary business and fraught with terrible danger. Animals too came under our control, especially dogs. Their wild cousins, the wolves, were our playmates. I became more and more attentive as my understanding grew. Her knowledge of things was prodigious. I suppose you can't help learning a lot about everything if you had the time and the will to apply yourself. And she went back a long way. And vampires are obsessively curious. Someone once said that almost any one could be a professor emeritus if given unlimited time.