“I’ll send someone for you,” I told the man while I covered him with branches to shade him from the sun. Then, I left, tasting freedom for the first time in years.
I stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing up at the rapidly darkening sky, and watched as the first stars twinkled into view.
There would be time to enact my plan for revenge. First, I had to fin
d another blood meal and soon, or I'd never be able to find a new place to stay so I could escape the coming daylight.
I could have killed wildlife, but I didn’t want animal blood – I wanted – I needed human blood.
I walked down a road to a cabin in the woods and watched the inhabitants. Several young men in their twenties sat around a campfire and drank alcohol. They were loud, laughing and joking, taking about a ball game and various women they had been with.
I waited in the shadows until they went inside and were getting ready to sleep. When one came outside to use the outhouse, I grabbed him and fed on his forearm, calming him first so he didn’t fight me. That first mouthful of blood was refreshing for the blood of the young was much more potent than that of the elderly. It never failed to arouse a predator like me, and I drank the just enough to give me strength to last the night. When I had finished, I compelled him to return to the cabin and say nothing of what happened. He dutifully used the outhouse and then went back to the cabin, without even looking back at me.
I left, quickly moving away from the cabin in case anyone became alarmed about the wound on his arm.
Still, I needed more.
Even with that amount of blood from two victims, I grew strong enough to dematerialize and fly up the coast in search of a place to stay for the next day. I found my way out of the cliff-top forest to a small settlement a few miles away. The sign outside of town read Shelter Cove, California. It was more than one hundred miles from San Francisco. The homes were of a strange design, the streets lit up with electricity, and I knew when I stood at an intersection with flashing red yellow and green lights that I was in a different world.
Down a back alley in the center of the town, I found a vagrant passed out behind a large garbage bin. He smelled of beer and stale sweat, but was fat and otherwise healthy. I drank from him, stopping only when I could tell he'd die if I took another mouthful. I left him still alive, shocked at my own self-control given my years of deprivation. The last thing I needed was another charge of causing the unlawful death of a human. Like the other two mortals I had fed off, he’d wake up the next morning, with a headache, weak and in need of sustenance, but he'd live.
I found yet another vagrant underneath a bridge near a highway and another along passed out beside the railway tracks. Soon, I was almost back to my natural state of vigor. Although I wasn't as strong as I had been before my imprisonment, I was able to escape detection using my stealth and speed. In the town, strange motorized vehicles sped down the streets, the look and speed of which were beyond the technology I was familiar with before I was made a captive. The few mortals who passed me by in these motorized vehicles saw nothing more than shadows on shadows.
I stopped beside a warehouse and waited, watching in the darkness until the streets became quiet. I took pains to remain hidden from view by staying in the shadows, taking the back alleys until I found my way back to the cliffs along the coast. Beneath me, at the base of the cliff, waves crashed against the rocky shore, the white foam of the surf glowing in the moonlight.
Standing on the edge of the cliff, I breathed in the fresh salt air, filled with new life and new hope. I had never given up– not even in the darkest moments of captivity when I feared I’d never see my kin again. I was the eldest son of a prince of my kind, the heir to an ancient principality, and I was determined to return to the world I once commanded. Once I did, I would hunt down those who betrayed me and put them all into their own prisons.
I knew what I must do.
I must find a refuge until I could understand the current world. Once I found shelter, I would contact my family. When I did, they would send guards to retrieve me, and bring me back to The City, where my family ruled over more than a dozen covens who made Montreal their home.
I needed an ally – someone who understood the current world and could help me traverse it. I was strong enough by midnight that I could dematerialize, flying along the coast in the moonlight in search of a suitable home in which to stay, and a vulnerable mortal I could control and use to reconnect with my family.
I relished the freedom, pleased to return to my vampire nature after being practically immobile for so long. Emboldened by my escape, I allowed myself to feel real hope
As I flew, I scanned the coastline, looking for a suitable refuge far enough away from civilization that I would be undetected. I flew as far as my strength would take me, as far away as I could get from San Francisco and the enemies who would no doubt be looking for me once they realized that my prison had been destroyed and I had escaped.
I found such a place after several hours, nestled in a copse of redwoods at the edge of an old forest. An abandoned shack, the roof still intact and offering enough shelter that I could stay during the day, protected from the sun's killing rays. I broke open the floorboards and crept under the timbers, wanting to ensure I would be safe while I slept and recovered my strength.
The next day I would find a place for a longer stay.
With another day behind me, and hundreds of miles from San Francisco, I set off to search the coast for a suitable place to stay until I could contact my family. I was heading towards Portland – I knew that from having studied maps of the Western Coast of America before my trip. I should arrive soon, if my strength held out.
Finally, about an hour after sunset, I found it.
A house on a cliff at the edge of a small redwood forest, the windows overlooking the ocean. In addition to the main house, there was a small cottage and a private road that led away from the coast to the main highway. The home was secluded and perfect for my needs, so I stopped at a nearby cliff and watched for an hour, counting three people in the house – a man and what I assumed was his wife and their daughter. While I watched, the parents loaded the motorized vehicle with suitcases while the girl assisted. She looked to be nearing adulthood and I guessed that she was at most seventeen or eighteen by her height and level of development.
As I flew around, planning my approach, I watched her leave her home and walk along the lonely coastline, her long dark hair blowing in the brisk wind that blew off the ocean.
She was vulnerable.
Now was my chance.
I truly didn’t want to involve her in my drama. She was an innocent, unaware of the darkness surrounding her, but I had no other choice. Not only did I need blood, I needed someone who knew how to maneuver this new world into which I had been suddenly thrust. I needed someone who knew how to help me, to rescue me from the oblivion in which I had been trapped for all those years. I craved contact with others, even if they were mortals, for I knew that they – that she – would be the only way I could find my own kind.
As I watched her walk along the pathway leading between the dunes, I felt such sympathy for her. She was young and unaware of the predator watching her, coveting her blood, planning to use her for my own ends. Becoming a vampire’s next meal was probably the worst fate she could imagine. I would be kind. I would take away her fear so her time with me wouldn’t be so terrifying.
Most of all, I would not harm her more than was necessary. That, I promised myself. I would not start my new life a murderer. That accusation — a false accusation — cost me over a century in near-stasis in the cliff-top prison.