Chapter 3. Deception

ALICIA CHAY

He could come out at will. There were hundreds of women before me and hundreds of men. He clothed every one of them with fresh linen, but I remained naked.

And that was the deception. Why did he keep me in a naked state but put linen and clothing on everyone else that he’s helped. Bigger red flag was why he lied to me altogether.

I saw his family. He had a son that was born a few years before this moment. After his son’s birth he was attacked by a sea of vultures that was drawn to the dying baby. That was how he found out his son was dying.

When the buzzards started circling above, his son was alive.

I continued to drink. I didn’t realize that all the gators and snakes rushed into his body at once and turned him into something that threw me forty feet back.

He ran at me with the speed of light and chopped my hair off with one swoop, missing my scalp and the middle section of my brain by a few inches.

I was prepared to fight….

In an instant my nappy hair grew back down past my buttocks. We went through a series of punches, but neither one connected between the two of us because we were both skilled fighters. I didn’t know what his style was or who trained him, but he was extremely powerful.

He threw a bunch of jabs and uppercuts, but I deflected each one. He vanished and appeared above me, trying to drop down on top of my head, but missed. His feet crashed into the ground. I was relieved that it wasn’t my skull.

A bit famished, I matched his skill. Just because I was a woman didn’t mean that I would not fight someone who was masculine. I was just as skilled as he was. It took him by surprise that I was strong.

The narcissist really thought it was going to be that easy to take advantage of me. Yes, I was foolish for thinking he had my best interest at heart. I knew not to be that ignorant and naïve moving forward.

Another thing occurred to me. There was glass everywhere. Different class types. As if he was a maker of glass. I didn’t think anything of it at first because I was a guest, but the more I thought about it the more I’d come to realize that he wasn’t nursing me back to health.

He wasn’t making sure that I was okay. He wasn’t making sure I was safe and secure. I was on a bed of roses as an experiment. He was going to deflower me on top of roses as if I was an exhibition.

He wanted to have me as a keepsake. Was he going to knock me unconscious and hang me on the walls of the cave? Was he trying to contain my beauty for the rest of my life, giving him something to look at for the rest of his?

I wasn’t going to stay long enough to find out. Once I started drinking his blood, I saw him groping me and violating me in his own little subtle sweet way. I had to get out of there and get out of there fast.

He slammed me on the ground, splitting the ground open in seventy different directions.

I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t know what he was or who he was or why he brought me here. I flew away so fast when I finally did look back my eyes were no longer black. I landed in Africa and forgot about the ordeal altogether.

My heart began to beat backward, sending my blood flow counterclockwise. Still, a path of destruction I refused to look at ever again beckoned me to look back.

To look back would mean I had to remember that an hour before I landed in Asia, I was human; a young dark-skinned girl that had just turned eighteen.

I had a happy life, yet watching two of my loved ones betraying me with passion and conviction made my sudden transition easier for me to embrace when a vampiric presence attacked me while they made love under the moonlight.

Then I regretted that easier transition and wanted my life back, especially after encountering that faceless ghoul.

I went on a killing spree, led by emotion, crushed by the lack of loyalty from those I loved the most in the world.

I drained humans and fled. I jumped in the air, bloody and naked, flying through a sea of thick branches that parted for my exit.

I roared like a savage beast set free after a century of restraint. The force of my voice caused every leaf to fall from a hundred thousand trees in an instant.

I still didn’t look back.

The first two hundred years of my life as a vampire were filled with deceit, chaos, and control.

As I tried to find my place in a mysterious world, I was a homeless murderer. Always on the hunt for blood without a coach or a teacher. There was no trainer for situations like mine. You were just put into it and expected to swim out of thirty feet deep water in absolute darkness, when you couldn’t float or swim.

I needed a home. I was well traveled and saw a lot of edifices that captivated me. So, I built and ran an entity called THÈ HÔU₷E ÖF THÈ HÔUND₷, located in Africa. It took thirty thousand slaves to construct the massive edifice to my standards. I simply hypnotized them and gave grave instructions. Within a few years, my palace was built beyond my wildest dreams.

It became a gritty place full of murder, games, and blood. I was in control, a small-time Queen in search of herself…

My consciousness was a series of blanks, and I was filled with anger. Angry for what I was, with memories of my human life hidden in subliminal codes.

I was thrust into dread and misery, forced to survive in the monstrous jungle of the unknown, the life of the condemned and the damned. Like my conception and my birth, I had no say in the matter. Even though it was my life, my death didn’t make a difference.

Being alone was good for the soul, but what good was a soul when you were dead. Being alone and lonely for the first century of my supernatural life was dread and misery. It drove me to the brink of insanity.

I was a lone traveler that nearly lost her mind, with no one to confide in or talk to. As a result of seeking companionship, I raided a family of brothers with skin as dark as the midnight sky while they slept nakedly in an open field surrounded by trees and brush. I turned them into my fledgling against their will with the same vigor I was turned many moons ago.

Ki’Wah, Tresyon, Qu’stah, Zyath, Crusha and Dominyshus were their names.

Over a fleeting period of time, we became a small family of savage-ridden vampires that terrorized civilians around the globe, on top of the fighting between the men for my devotion and affection, yet they were as thick as loyal thieves. They were known as the Slaughtergus. They became urban legends overnight.

I didn’t care about life, beauty, or emotion. The only thing I loved, the only source of life I craved, was blood. It became an addiction.

We visited Europe, Greece, and every island in between for food. We called that family time. When we arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, we stumbled upon a secret cult while scouring across a sandy desert in our quest for blood.

While we feasted on royal members of the secret cult, a funnel of thunderous smoke appeared in the room of high columns and pillars. With supernatural speed, nine enormous mountain lions burst from the smoke and attacked us.

With manes of sulfuric fire, poisonous metal spikes extended from their electrified body armor. We were no match for them.

We managed to escape, but one of the lions bit my right ankle before we jumped in the air and flew east. I sought a safer way to hunt and entertain myself without acting on impulse alone.

Impulsive attacks came with consequences. Part of me felt guilty about changing my vampiric family into savages against their will, but it was too late for regrets.

With that in mind I was unnaturally hungry. I wanted blood. I needed it so much that my stomach burned without it.

I hadn’t seen my fledgling in a few weeks. I was sure they could manage without me. I wasn’t their parents or babysitter, plus they were adults.

I watched my prey like night and day.

A tall, burly man with a complexion darker than my own searched for a place to rest. He seemed lost in the wilderness. I was hungry. As his feet scampered across the wet grass, he tripped over a wrought log. A small cut was on his upper arm. I lost it.

I ran at him and tore through his flesh like I hadn’t eaten in a decade. After I fled, I wound up behind a hidden castle in Europe. I was surrounded by towering trees and brush shortly after I transitioned from human to freak of nature.

I could taste the end of summer and the birth of autumn in the breeze as a huge glowing moon beamed down on my exhausted naked body. I was covered in blood.

I was wrought with temporary amnesia as I floated along a beautiful rose garden leading to the entrance of an infrastructure built by slaves.