The Blood of Life - Chapter 1 - The Twisted Vines of the Past

I've been working on a novella called The Blood of Life based on the characters from my short story, "Loving You is Wrong." I posted this chapter last year, but I've finally been working on the book these last few months. I ran this by my writing group earlier this month, and I've made a few tweaks to it to that I'm sharing.

Also, I'll be posting a new chapter each month going forward until it's done.

My footpaws sink into the grass of the cemetery, as I follow the priest through the dark. I can feel the connection to the earth within myself. It is spring, the insects sing of the coming summer, and the trees are alive with new growth, awake after their long winter slumber, yet I find myself among the dead in the cool night air. I’m not sure I should have come, but I had to return to finally pay my respects.

It’s been a hundred years since that night, but I remember it as if it was only yesterday. The fangs that sunk into my neck and stole my life away are forever burned into my mind. I cannot forget that moment, that feeling of helplessness. I was his prey, and nothing more. To him, I was a vessel to be drunk till it was dry and tossed aside unwanted and unneeded. He cared not for what happened to me afterward, even though he must have known what his curse could do.

He was sloppy. I don’t know what happened to him, but I never saw him again. Someone must have found him and staked him. As for me, he left me where I fell by the side of the road. Whoever buried my lifeless body didn’t do their job right and perform the rituals to stop the curse, because in the cemetery is where I found myself when I awoke the next night, hungry and desperate to feed, forever changed.

The priest stops at the plot of graves, and I kneel down in the grass in front of the stone that guards my secret. I reach out to touch it, to feel its coolness in the night against the pawpads of my hand.

The first ten years were hell as the hunger ripped at me, and I did things I will never wash the stains away from my soul. The next ninety were miserable suffering spent trying to gain control of myself, trying to understand who I had become. You would think in a hundred years someone would have realized something was amiss and dug up the plot, but I guess when everyone you know dies, there’s no one left to ask questions. Maybe my parents didn’t believe what the gravediggers told them when I escaped from the coffin because the headstone is still here. Maybe they knew I would someday need closure.

“Was he a relative of yours?” asks the priest finally. He’s carrying a lantern for both of us and is watching me patiently. He has made no comment about my odd request to visit his church’s graveyard in the middle of the night.

“You could say that,” I say, running my black furred digits across my name, Radic Horban. “I owe him my life.”

“I heard he died suddenly, violently,” says the priest.

“He did.”

The priest comes and places a hand on my shoulder. “You should come to the chapel and pray, my son.”

“I can’t, Father.” I look up at the old wolf looking down at me in his vestments. “I just can’t, but if you could say a few words for him, and all of his family, I’d appreciate it.”

“Of course, I’d be happy to. The family were all red foxes like you?” he asks.

“Yes indeed.”

For his part, the priest does not seem bothered by any of this but has taken to seeing to me through this. Maybe he knows who I really am; maybe he doesn’t. I don’t plan to stay long enough here for it to matter. He prays for the souls of my parents, my sister, and me. He doesn’t ask why a fox in his late twenties is pining over tombstones for people who died long before he should have been born. He doesn’t remark that I share the same first name. Instead, he says a blessing and reads by lantern light from a prayer book he produces. I mouth the words with him and bow my head.

When he’s done, he looks at me. “Peace be upon you,” he says.

“And to you,” I say, “and thank you for this. I’d like to be alone now.”

The priest nods and walks back to the church and the rectory, carrying his lantern. When he’s gone, and I’m finally alone in the darkness, I finally let myself cry. Tears of blood drip onto the ground. I never did find out the name of the man who cursed me, but I wish I had. I’d have cursed him to hell if I could have, but it’s been too long to be angry anymore. Now I just have sadness and a dull ache from a hunger I can never truly satisfy. The need for blood is always with me, but I want to pretend I’m still normal right now.

Tonight, I prefer to starve.