First Thirst (Craving 1)

I couldna, wouldna give her an invitation that would allow her to come and go at MacLeod whenever the whim took her. Ye see ‘tis true, vampires need an invitation to enter yer home.

I asked her for time to adjust to m’condition. Oddly enough, she agreed.

Over the next weeks, as I learned to control the thirst and while I quenched it with animal blood, I also learned how to take only what I needed and not kill the poor creatures I had to use to survive.

Allora returned and repeated her demands. This time she didn’t mince words and advised me that she would kill everyone I had ever cared about if I dinnae submit to her demands to remain with her.

I loathed her, but I couldna allow her to hurt people who were dear to me. I had friends and tenant farmers, servants, and people I cared about. I couldna stand by and let her destroy the world I loved.

In the end, I did go to her, but with the mandate that we live abroad. I couldna have her near m’village…near the people who were dear to me.

Allora is temperamental and unpredictable. There was nae saying when she would strike out and hurt a human I cared about. Aye, they were human. I nae longer was.

However, the humanity in me still was strong. I dinnae think I even craved human blood after that first night Allora turned me.

At any rate, she accepted m’bargain because it suited her. Allora, I discovered, loved Europe far more than Scotland.

We traveled together and the longer I was with her, the moodier and more miserable I became. I hated her. She liked me that way, she said. Fucking her was just that—fucking. She tried to call it making love and that made me furious. I would throw her off me when she spoke of love.

She would go off on her own for days on end. I had nae idea where she went or with whom and I cared even less.

During that time, I studied ancient spells and dark magic. Bits of information about her and the Ancient Vampire Clan that ruled the dark side of Europe got through to me, and I stored that information to use against her one day.

Whenever she returned from one of her jaunts, she would ask me if I missed her and I told her the truth she didn’t want to accept. I told her I reveled in every minute I had without her in it.

It was the turn of the century, more than twenty-five years had gone by since she first turned me, and I had learned a great deal about what it meant to be a vampire. I was getting closer to the end of m’imprisonment. I would never again see the people I loved—nae while she was alive. But I had a plan.

I began to pick fights for nae a reason…out of nothing. I started to annoy her at every turn. I had a goal.

One day, she attempted to dispose of m’tin of pig’s blood.

That was a mistake. I may nae be an ancient, but I had been training m’self, enhancing m’skills, and this time, I went on the attack.

I go to a great deal of trouble every week to travel to nearby villages and stock up from different butchers so as nae to draw attention to m’self. It isn’t easy to keep the blood fresh, but I manage.

I wasna about to allow her to interfere with anything I did to retain what humanity I had left. As it turned out, m’speed and strength matched her own.

She hadna expected me to zero in on her with such force, but I did. I had her blonde hair in m’hands as I bent her back and threatened her with the leg of the chair I had just broken.

She looked momentarily taken aback.

I promised to kill her the next time she interfered with me.

So she, instead, took to taunting me about m’pig’s blood whenever she was around. She called me many ugly names. I dinnae listen or care. I was, in those days, biding m’time.

Even fucking her now was becoming difficult for me. I turned away from her demands more often than not. She threatened to return to MacLeod—the threat was always there, that purposeful threat. So I fucked her hard. I even tried to hurt her, but she liked it rough.

I was in hell. A man of m’stamp doesn’t take to being ordered about—used as she used me. So I continued to bide m’time and waited.

Years passed, och aye, twenty-five turned into fifty and then one hundred. That was what I had waited for. That was the time of m’independence, in that hundredth year.

We were in Paris at the moment of m’decision to leave.

I think she had grown weary of m’moods. She was away from our hotel room much more than she was there.

I dinnae think she would care when I left and at any rate, it dinnae matter. M’loved ones were gone. She could not threaten me any longer.

I had secretly been keeping MacLeod under m’management through an estate manager and that was where I headed in the year of 1975.