Chapter 2a: A predator unleashed

Five years went by before I began to feel the need to move on. Because of our extreme longevity, vampires don't share the same regard for time as ordinary people do. I thought of collecting my parchment but that was out. The university faculty would have collapsed with collective cardiac arrest if I turned up at the registrar's office after disappearing for so long. Worse yet, surfacing after an absence of five years would trigger an investigation into the circumstances of my disappearance and my sudden reappearance. At any rate the university would have forwarded my passport to the embassy where, doubtless, it would have had its validity cancelled. I worried about my lost passport and fretted about how I could return to my own land.

"You're forgetting what you are, Kaid. Use your powers," Odali said. "People will believe anything you want them to. You only have to put your mind to it."

"Like telling them this leaf I'm holding is my passport?" I retorted sarcastically.

"Yes," she snapped in exasperation. "Haven't you remembered anything I taught you? You can tell a woman to forget that you were inside her and that you had drawn a pint of her blood and you cannot tell a foolish clerk that that leaf is your passport, whatever that is."

"I forgot," I grinned sheepishly. "I suppose it's the realisation I'm going to miss you that makes me like this."

"O foolish man. I made you so why can you not make one for yourself. You will be thinking of me as your mother next." Her smile was sly and provocative.

"Well, aren't you? And how many men have made love to a mother as beautiful as you, my beloved." I gathered her into my arms and she responded fiercely. We coupled with a fierce passion. When we were sated we lay side by side. She turned to me.

"It is good that you leave. This jungle is becoming too small for the two of us and I think it is time I moved elsewhere. The world is a big place and there is still much to see." I marvelled she could say that after two thousand years.

"Remember to be careful whom you choose for a companion. Forever is a long time," she added.

First I had to find the means of purchasing an airplane ticket and that was the easy bit. With Odali to guide me I 'raided' several temple ruins in that jungle. It was shocking. Kings' ransoms lay carelessly strewn under leaf mould and in the rubble of fallen ruins. I picked the choicest diamonds, flawless rubies and even emeralds, from the pits where Odali told me to dig and wrapped them in a soft leather pouch I had stolen from a village a few days before. The precious stones were worth a king's ransom — close to a million Brit pounds, I would discover. Before I bade Odali goodbye we made love one last time after sharing the blood of a maid whom we lured away from the herd of goats she was tending. We left her in a stupor but alive, with no memory of what had happened.

We parted at the road some twenty miles from where the rest house was. There were no tears or promises to return from either of us. We exchanged smiles and she said, "Be well, my love." She turned and disappeared into the jungle. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

I bundled my old clothes in a sheet of cloth and slung it over my shoulders. The dhoti and dingy turban I wore had been liberated from several clotheslines. I walked until I reached the trunk road that led to Madras; Chennai as it is now known. There were travellers on the road with me. We exchanged greetings and talked as we travelled. No one suspected that I was anything but human. I had a moment of unease when a Sadhu, a holy ascetic, gave me several long searching looks. That night I slipped away and joined another group of travellers, some five miles ahead.

Some left the road as they reached their destinations while others continued further. New travellers joined the stream of buses, trucks, cars, bullock carts and people on foot like me. I could have gone faster if I chose to hitch a ride but the slow, leisurely pace of my passage on foot was both soothing and exciting. It also helped me to adjust to living in the real world. I fed secretly at night when my fellow travellers went to sleep in the dust of the roadside or on the cement platform that surrounded the peepul tree in a village square. Usually, when the weather was good, we wrapped ourselves in our thin blankets and slept on the hard ground. I did not feed on my travelling companions as that would have been foolish.

I would watch a village for women who ventured to the well at night. I would then lure them away and bite them, taking only enough to satisfy my hunger. Then I would fuck them to their great delight. I don't want to sound immodest but I have always been endowed with good equipment and the change had made me quite superior in that department. Couple size with vampire vigour and you have the makings for a great party piece. I kept away from maidens because I knew what hell they had to go through if they lost their virtue. Indian culture and customs prized virgins for marriage. Even during the early part of my new life, or Un-life if you prefer, I had qualms about causing unnecessary distress to people.

After about two weeks on the road I met Indra. I caught her washing at the well behind her house. It was late, about ten, and unusual that a woman would be out in the dark. She didn't even have a lamp to light her way. She gasped when I grasped her and sank my teeth into her neck, puncturing her artery. I drank slowly. She sobbed when my canines stabbed through her flesh and then she sighed with pleasure while I drank, my hands fondling her soft round melons. She leaned into me and pressed her rear against my crotch and raised my mast.

"O Kali piara, beloved of Kali, if you are a demon spare me from death. Grant me a moment's pleasure instead," she murmured her teeth chattering. She was a widow who escaped the suttee, or ritual cremation of the surviving widow along with her deceased husband, because there was now a law against such things. When I had drunk enough I loosened my dhoti which fluttered to the ground and turned her round. She looked into my scarlet flecked eyes and my fanged mouth stained with her blood. Her eyes opened wide.

"Ach! Demon. You are indeed sent by Kali," she whispered, her face animated with a lively interest. I was surprised by her reaction. I had yet to tell her to forget and instead of being repelled by me she was attracted instead. I took her by the waist and lifted her off her feet and positioned her on the tip of my erection. Immediately her arms went round my neck and she lifted her legs and snaked them round my waist. I lowered her slowly. She moaned softly as she engulfed my rigid piece until it could go no further. Holding her in that position I walked away from the well and sank onto the grass still connected to her. I fucked her as hard as I could and she reciprocated with everything she knew. We discharged violently, grinding our lips together to muffle the cries of ecstasy that gurgled in our throats. I flooded her with my thick seedless semen. She begged for more. We fucked again and then again and finally I drank her blood once more while we were in the throes of our orgasm. She collapsed exhausted.

I rose from her body, cock throbbing still, and made to go away.