10:00 PM, Day Unknown, 2005

  I staggered out of the church after sunset. Or maybe it was earlier? I couldn’t tell anymore. The sky hung heavy and black above me, and the world felt wrong under my feet. It was too thin, too brittle. I don’t even remember walking. My legs just moved, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings.

  But the one thing I do remember is the smell. Oh God, the fucking smell.

  People didn’t feel like people anymore. They were blood in bags. Veins in motion. Names and faces blurred into networks of pulsing arteries, glowing under their skin like constellations I wanted to chart with my teeth. Every time one passed me on the sidewalk, something inside me twitched and clenched like a muscle I never knew I had. I felt an indescribable pain, more intense than anything I’d ever experienced.

  I stumbled forward like a drunk, coat pulled tighter around my shivering frame, though the chill of the night barely registered. It was there, but distant, like seeing a photo of snow and trying to remember what cold feels like. The streetlights buzzed overhead like a nest of hornets, their light stabbing into my skull with every flicker. Passing headlights split the darkness into jagged shards that cut across my vision.

  And the people, the fucking people, their noise drowned me. Shoes slapping against the pavement. The wet rhythm of their hearts thudding in their chests. Breaths whistling through their nostrils. I could smell the blood on a woman’s wrist where she’d scratched too hard. The rusty tang of a man’s nosebleed crusted into a balled-up tissue. The sweet, metallic kiss of a child’s scraped knee, still fresh and sticky. I could taste them, each one layered over the smog and piss and hot asphalt. It was driving me insane.

  I wanted to run.

  I wanted to scream.

  I wanted to bite.

  I wanted to tear someone’s throat out and drink from the wound.

  But I didn’t. Not that night.

  I crashed into a half-demolished parking garage and collapsed under a crumbling stairwell, a wounded animal looking for a hole to die in. Rust and oil stung my nostrils. A broken security light flickered above me in a mechanical heartbeat. I curled into myself, fingers digging into the concrete until my nails cracked, trying to outrun the hunger snarling inside my gut.

  Time became liquid. Dreams and waking blurred together.

  Midnight?, Day Unknown, 2005

  Somewhere between a half-remembered nightmare and a gnawing, empty ache, I followed a junkie into an alley. The shadows closed in around us like curtains. As I stalk behind him, I feel a burning in my chest, like something is trying to tear its way out through my chest.

  I just wanted the pain to stop.

  The moment my teeth found skin, the world fractured. A frenzy. A rush of heat and power and something darker roaring through me like wildfire. My fingers dug so far into his shoulders I drew blood, though not much.

  When I surfaced again, I saw him slumped against the wall, unconscious. Fuck. My mouth was slick with blood, dripping from my chin and down my chest, sticky and hot.

  I stumbled back into the night, dizzy, reeling. I tried to cry, but all that came out was laughter, manic and broken, echoing through the alley like shattered glass falling on tiles.

  Later, guilt gnawing at me worse than the hunger ever had, I crept back to him. I left crumpled bills in his pocket, as if that could pay for what I’d taken. How much is a life worth?

  Unknown Time, Unknown Day, 2005?

  Waking up isn’t waking up anymore. Sleep isn’t sleep.

  It’s a dead black void where I feel nothing, a switch flipping off, and then suddenly on. No grogginess as I throw a blanket over myself and ask for five more minutes. No stretching before getting out of bed. There are no dreams. One second nothing, the next... here.

  I drift into an internet cafe under flickering neon signs. The glow buzzes against my skin like static electricity. I sit in front of a battered terminal, the keyboard greasy under my fingers, and fall down rabbit holes of vampire lore. My reflection stares back at me from the dark screen, hollow-eyed, distorted.

  I try to call my mom. My pockets come up empty. No phone. Probably gone when... when it happened. A fresh wound stings at the thought. Why did it take me this long to try? How long has it been?

  She must be worried sick.

  What would I even say?

  “Hi, Mom. Sorry I haven’t been home, I died. And then things got worse.”

  I think about the things I confessed in that little booth back at the church. Sins whispered in desperation. Secrets I thought would stay between me and whatever God was still listening. Now, they cling to me like a brand burned into my soul.

  Is Time Even Real Anymore?

  I still prey on the forgotten, those who will go unnoticed. Bums, junkies, vagrants, delinquents, women of the night.

  But tonight... Tonight it happens again.

  I almost drain him dry. No frenzy this time. I can’t sit and point at some mysterious stranger and say it’s their fault and not mine. There’s No Beast to blame. Just... need. Just me.

  He sags in my arms like a marionette with its strings cut, still warm, still soft. I watch as life slowly fades from his eyes, his spark extinguished. I stare at him for a long, long time.

  Then I hide the body like a guilty child hiding a broken toy, propping his nonliving form up on a nearby park bench. I Clean myself up. Pretend it didn’t happen.

  It’s easier than it should be.

  Too easy.

  I realize how simple it is now. How easy it is to lie to myself. And that terrifies me more than the corpse ever could.

  2 AhMA215 t?, l: 000rp0i6,

  Lucena’s voice returns, but not in ways that make sense.

  Mirrors, puddles, windows, anywhere my reflection should be. Her voice oozes out like smoke. Sweet, cruel, and seductive. Whispering promises I know better than to believe, no matter how soothing it feels.

  Eventually, I talk back. Arguing with her.

  I know it’s all in my head, but I listen anyway.

  The church creaks and groans under the wind. Somewhere in the dark, a pair of eyes glint, yellow and hungry. I call out.

  They vanish.

  I’m being watched.

  It Either Been Years, or Minutes

  The mirror doesn’t recognize me anymore. Or is it I don’t recognize myself? Is there a difference?

  I find it nailed above a cracked sink, deep in the bowels of the church. The fluorescents overhead hum and flicker, painting everything sickly green.

  I lean in.

  The face staring back is mine, and not.

  Cheekbones. Jawline. Years of sleepless nights carved the bags under my eyes.

  But the life behind them? Gone. Buried. Am I a ghost wearing my own corpse? Or am I a corpse with no soul? Does it matter?

  My eyes are wrong. Too still. Too deep.

  Reflections layer over each other like mirrors facing mirrors. Infinite and distorted, slightly off-kilter. I press my hands to the porcelain basin. Try to breathe onto the glass. Nothing. There is no fog. No breath. No heartbeat.

  I splash cold water on my face. It runs down my skin, alien and heavy, like being hosed down at a slaughterhouse. No flush. No shiver. Just cold data.

  I laugh, a jagged, brittle sound that feels like it belongs to someone else. This place still has running water?

  Six nights of hiding. I finally found a newspaper, discarded in a trash can. It’s been at least six nights of feeding like a gutter rat. Stolen Blood packs. Rats. Pigeons. Hospital theft. Nothing fills the void. Not really. When did I go to the hospital?

  No Lucena.

  No voice.

  Just silence and the gnawing suspicion she abandoned me on purpose.

  Then…

  The laughter came from behind me. An ugly noise that sounded like a cross between a smoker’s cough and a dying animal.

  I spin, fists clenched, and find him. Yellow-eyed. Skin stretched too tight over bone, gray as old ash. His teeth are jagged little knives, but FUCK he’s huge.

  Another vampire. Only the second I’ve ever seen.

  He raises his hands in mock surrender, voice dripping sarcasm as he spoke.

  “You can keep running, new-blood, or you can dive a little deeper.”

  The words rip from my throat before I even think them:

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  It’s the first thing I’ve said aloud in days.

  “Call me Nico,” he says, grinning like a wolf. “I’m Kindred. Like you.”

  “Kindred?”

  He cackles, the sound rough and hoarse, echoing off the crumbling walls around us.

  “Holy fucking shit. She didn’t tell you a fucking thing, huh? Didn’t tell you what you are? Didn’t even leave you a snack? That’s low, even for her.”

  I latch onto the name, a lifeline in the flood.

  “You know Lucena? Where is she?”

  He tilts his head, studying me like a biologist studying a bug.

  “Gone to ground. In the wind. Fly ball right on the foul line. Gone. she left you in the dust while she got the fuck outta dodge.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The revelation guts me.

  Rage and despair war inside me, both screaming to be louder than the other.

  “Why are you here? Why are you tormenting me?” I rasp.

  “Tormenting? You aint seen shit. This is literally the Kindest thing i’ve done in the last 100 years.” He steps back into the shadows, voice a slithering promise:

  “Things are about to get interesting. Camarilla. Anarch Rebellion. Sabbat. Masquerade. Remember those words, new-blood. You’ll need them.”

  He grins one last time.

  “Everyone’s being used by someone. Question is, you wanna be the pawn? Or the one flipping the board?”

  He’s gone before I can answer.

  Leaving me alone with a hollow church and a hollow heart.

  10:00 PM, May 7th, 2005

  I hadn’t fed in days. The hunger gnawed at my insides, screaming at me to sate it, begging for blood. I had felt nothing in what felt like years. Now all I felt was a burning, seething rage. An unheard voice screaming at me to feed it before it fed on me. I gave in. I picked a target. Calculated. Clinical. I chose someone insignificant. As I stalked my prey, my senses were sharper than they’ve ever been. My muscles felt tightly wound, like a spring. I didn’t need to breathe anyway, but I did. My chest rising and falling as I stared through his back like I was trying to kill him with laser vision. Each exhale was a growl that felt good. Hunting felt good.

  I fed with intention.

  As his sanguine blood nourished me, I felt power for the first time. And I liked it. I drank, and drank, and drank, never even trying to stop until he was long drained dry. I laughed as my teeth sank into his throat, a snarling and manic laughter that some small part of my brain was afraid of, but I couldn’t hear it. Not right then. When finally I pulled back and licked my lips of the loose blood that stained my lips, I felt true ecstasy. For the first time since this entire nightmare had begun, I wasn’t hungry. For the first time since I woke up on that cold stone floor, the world sort of clicked back into place.

  I always thought the “life fading from someone’s eyes” was just something they said in movies. A grouping of words meant to convey an abstract concept to the audience. But now I know better. I saw it. The way his eyes went from alert and clearly looking at something, then slowly, the eyes unfocused, the pupils dilated, the color pales, then finally the life was gone.

  That was the most terrifying part.

  I stared at my distorted reflection afterward and finally understood:

  Lucena didn’t create a monster.

  She just opened the cage.

  1:30 AM, May 7th, 2005

  They came for me at the church.

  It was a ruin, really. Bones of a godless place left to rot on the edge of the city. Stained glass shattered long ago. Pews turned to pulp by rain and time. The altar cracked, half-swallowed by ivy. I slept beneath what was once a crucifix, but Christ had fallen, face-first, into the dirt. Fitting. The place was dead quiet most nights. It had the kind of silence that hums. It was the only place I could think of. The only place the Beast didn’t feel so loud.

  But that night?

  The air was wrong.

  It was like the whole church had exhaled, every beam and stone letting go of a breath it didn’t know it was holding. The temperature didn’t drop, not really, but my dead skin crawled like it remembered what the cold was.

  I was in the confessional. Not confessing. Just sitting. Hiding. Maybe pretending. Maybe praying to a god that had long since abandoned me. There was something poetic about it, I guess. That booth had heard sinners for decades. What was one more?

  I heard the footsteps first. No creak of the door opening. No scuff of boot on flagstones. Just a steady rhythm, measured and certain. I knew, instantly, they weren’t mortal. No one walks like that without knowing they can end a life with a look. I hid, peeking through the slats of the booth.

  They were already inside.

  Three of them, framed in the doorway like angels gone wrong. One, a black-haired woman in a dark three-piece suit, spotless despite the rain. Another, a white-haired woman with an eyepatch, tall and thin, with a face like a knife. And the last a brute of a baldheaded man in a tattered coat, smiling like he knew exactly how this ended.

  “Ransom,” the suit’s voice echoed, far too clean for this place. How did they know the name Lucena gave me? “The Prince cordially invites you to explain your… unauthorized existence.”

  I tried to stay hidden, hoping that if i just didn’t move and didn’t breathe, they would go away. They wouldn’t find me. It was probably the stupidest idea I’ve had since trying to make a mohawk work in high school. If I had one, I would probably hear my heartbeat in my ears. They probably would too. I shifted slightly and only at the last moment did I notice I had knocked an old, rotten bible from its perch. When it hit the ground with a thud, all three of them turned in the direction of the confessional.

  I ran.

  Not the bravest or most prideful move, but my body was moving on its own. Through the vestry, out the side door, boots pounding over cracked tile and waterlogged hymnals. I leapt down into the graveyard behind the chapel, vaulting broken headstones and rusted fences, heart pounding like I still had blood to pump.

  They didn’t chase.

  They hunted.

  I could feel them, like shadows stitched to my heels. Terror caged the screams for survival clawing in my chest. All that newfound strength I’d leaned on the last few nights? Gone. I was prey again.

  An icy hand closed around my throat mid-sprint.

  One moment I was running, the next I was airborne. Slammed into a mausoleum wall so hard I felt a stone splinter. The brute held me there with one hand.

  “You run like you’re still human, fledgling.” He hissed. His breath stank of old earth and regret. “Let’s see how long you cling to that.”

  I struggled. Kicked. Clawed at him. It did nothing. I might as well have been punching a statue.

  The suited woman appeared beside me, straightening my collar like we were preparing for a goddamn banquet.

  “You’ve made quite a mess, young blood,” she said. “But don’t worry. We’re very good at… cleaning up.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but that’s when the stake found my heart.

  I wasn’t dead. Not unconscious. Not asleep. It felt like a pull, like the shadows themselves reached into my skull and folded me in half.

  I woke up in a room I didn’t recognize. Rich and cold marble floors, tall windows with blackout curtains, flickering sconces that bled golden light. There was incense in the air—sharp, clove-like, clinging to the back of my throat. The scent of ritual.

  Someone had put me in clean clothes, meaning someone had changed me while I was out.

  Across from me, behind a desk of carved obsidian and old blood oaths, sat the Prince. It had to be him. He just gave off that aura. Regal without trying. Immaculate. Unsmiling. Watching me like a wolf in human skin. He said nothing for a long time.

  Then:

  “Tell me, childe… how does it feel to know someone stole you?“

  The Prince didn’t speak again after that first knife-edged question. He let the words hang in the air like smoke, watched me choke on them. I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

  He pressed a button under the desk.

  A door opened behind me with a hydraulic hiss, and in walked a woman dressed like a mortician who moved like a shark. Clipboard, gloves, that flat look professionals wear when they’re about to do something unpleasant in the name of “procedure.”

  “This is Seneschal Vatora,” the Prince said lazily. “She will determine the depth of your… involvement.”

  Before I could speak, Vatora was in front of me.

  “Ransom,” she said, reading from a file. “You have no record of registration, no sire declaration, and no acknowledged domain. You’re a walking Masquerade breach.”

  I managed to croak out, “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

  She smiled. It was the kind of smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “No one ever does.”

  She circled around me, observing, appraising.

  “So here’s how this works,” she said smoothly. “You tell us everything you know. Every detail. Every night. And we decide whether you’re salvageable… or if we clean the slate.”

  “Salvageable?”

  I spat the word like it contained the venom it felt it did.

  “You’re either reclaimed or removed,” she said. “Don’t take it personally. This is just business.”

  Looking around, I realized they didn’t tie me down. They didn’t need to. The room itself was a cage. Low ceilings. No shadows in any corner of the room. And they had a presence, the kind that suffocates those who sit in it for too long.

  What followed wasn’t an interrogation.

  It was a ritual.

  Someone threading questions, like needles, into my mind.

  “Name your sire.”

  I hesitated. Why, I don’t know. But I did.

  “Lucena,” I finally said. “She said her name was Lucena.”

  Vatora’s pen didn’t move as she and the Prince exchanged glances.

  “Clan?”

  “I... I have no idea. What is a ‘Clan’?

  Now she wrote something.

  “Why did she choose you?”

  A flicker of shame twisted in my gut as I thought back to the few short nights between our first meeting and that night in the church.

  “I don’t know. We met at the bar I was working at. I was in law school. I was on the phone with a client who was… frustrating. I bent the rules and was brutally honest with her. Got her to sign a plea deal she didn’t want to. Lucena… She liked that. She… played games. Got inside my head. She made me need her. She said things like I was ‘cracked enough to let the darkness in’ and ‘I would always be hers.’ Stuff like that. Every time we met, she would give me some kind of test, and if I passed, she would give me some kind of... liquid. Thinking back, I think it was... No, it was her blood.”

  “A blood bond,” Vatora said coolly.

  The Prince leaned forward, just slightly.

  “And you allowed this?”

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure how to.

  “When did the Embrace occur?”

  “What-? Embrace?”

  She sighed before responding.

  “When you became Kindred. As you are now.”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I said, struggling to piece time together. “Maybe... six nights ago? Maybe more? Since the… The Embrace, time doesn’t feel like it’s flowing right. Like i’m losing time.”

  Vatora’s eyes were knives. If looks could kill, I would have died a thousand times over.

  “Has she taught you the Traditions?” she asked, voice sharp.

  “No,” I said, barely keeping my voice steady. “I dont know what those are.”

  “Did she show you how to feed without killing?”

  “…No.”

  The silence after my answer was suffocating. If I didn’t know any better, this would feel like one of those RPG games I used to play as a kid when I chose the wrong option in dialogue.

  “How many have you killed, Ransom?” she asked, her tone a scalpel, peeling back the lies I told myself.

  I felt the floor drop out from under me. The dead bodies I had convinced myself hadn’t happened… had indeed happened. There was no hiding from that in this room.

  “I—I didn’t mean to…” I stammered.

  The Prince’s voice cut through like a blade. “Answer the question, please.”

  “…Three.” I whispered.

  A pause. Ink on paper. The only sound in the room.The moment stretched on into eternity during the silence.

  The Prince steepled his fingers, his brow furrowed deep in thought.

  “So. You were turned illegally. Abandoned. Left to ravage and risk the Masquerade. Someone violated you, Ransom. Made you into a danger. An embarrassment. From your perspective, someone stole your life. I’m sure you left someone behind. Someone you can never see again.”

  He stood. The shadows clung to him like silk.

  “But we are merciful, in the Camarilla. We don’t discard broken tools. We mend them. You are a Fledgling, after all. And the sect has… obligations.”

  He came close enough that I could smell the iron on his breath. It roused something inside me just a touch, something I suspected was entirely intentional.

  “You belong to us now, childe. Forget your sire. Forget her lies. “Your bloodline may be stained, but we will make you useful.”

  He turned to Vatora and waved a hand dismissively. “Continue, Seneschal.”

  Vatora spoke again, her voice like ice sliding off glass.

  “Do you have any residual contact with your sire? Dreams. Visions. Telepathic connections?”

  “No,” I lied, the word feeling useless on my tongue, as if they already knew the truth.

  She didn’t blink as she scribbled on her clipboard.

  “I will verify that.”

  Behind her, a second figure entered the room. He didn’t speak. Didn’t introduce himself. He simply moved with a practiced detachment. An examiner, I think, not an interrogator. He carried a polished silver box.

  “This is Protocol. For unverified sires.”

  She gestured without looking. The man opened the box. Inside: a needle, a vial, and a few glyph-etched metal rods arranged with surgical precision.

  They took my blood without a word of warning. The needle went in like I was livestock. The rod followed, chilled metal against my skin, then deeper. My vision swam.

  “This will allow us to trace lineage. Her blood runs in yours. We’ll extract her signature. Cross-reference it against known Kindred in our registries. But for now, I can use it to determine your clan.”

  I winced. It burned. It itched, like something slithering beneath my skin.

  “You are not unique. There have been others. Renegades. Anarchs. Strays who thought they could cheat the rules,” the Prince said behind her, his tone dry as parchment. He walked past me again, each footstep echoing like a gavel.

  “But the Camarilla endures because it remembers. We keep order where others let it rot. You’ll come to see that… in time.”

  The assistant, Senechal, squeezed the blood sample onto a small silver plate as she exerted her will over it. The small globule of blood levitated off the dish and moved through the air before bursting into flames. Seneschal’s eyes went solid, crimson red, and her voice seemed layered over itself as she spoke in some kind of trance.

  “Lasombra… Of the 9th generation… The shadows flow through your veins…”

  As she blinked and her eyes returned to normal, she looked at the prince with a look that was impossible to read, but the prince seemed to be able to glean what he needed from it. Before I could ask about that, someone else jammed another needle into me, extracting another vial, sealing it, and handing it to another silent attendant who briefly appeared to retrieve it before disappearing. Not a word passed between them. It was all choreography, a ballet of bureaucracy.

  “We will place you with what amounts to... a surrogate, sire. We call them your Patron.” the Prince announced. “They will educate you in the ways of our society.”

  He grinned, as if he had just given me a magnificent gift.

  “This is the part,” he added, turning back toward his throne-like chair, “where you thank us.”

  I stared at him, my eyes burning, jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. Thank them? I wanted to leap across the room and tear his throat out with my teeth.

  Vatora made a note on her clipboard.

  “Lack of vocal gratitude. Noted.”

  Another attendant entered the room silently.

  “The quarters are ready,” they announced.

  “Take it to holding,” Vatora instructed, her voice utterly devoid of emotion.

  Not him. It.

  The room they took me to was a simple concrete box. No windows. With no decorations. No bed. Nothing but a mini fridge humming quietly in one corner. A five-by-five cube, dimly lit by a single low-watt bulb.

  Before I could ask questions, the attendant closed the door behind me. I heard several locks click into place.

  I sighed and crossed the room to the fridge. Inside, there was a single blood bag. No more. No less.

  I plucked it out, pierced the plastic with my teeth, and sipped from it like a damned Capri Sun, letting my thoughts stew.

  She abandoned me.

  She stole my life.

  Made me do… horrible things.

  Tore me open and rearranged my mind.

  Then left me in the trash like I was nothing.

  The clawing sensation inside me thrashed and pounded against my ribcage, desperate to break free. The shadows in the room, just for a moment, seemed to grow larger, reaching for me, begging to embrace me. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I could hear her chuckle.

  Eventually, I slid down the wall, the cold concrete biting through my clothes, and let sleep take me.