Finally Dead (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 1)

Eve
Benson: Vampire Book One

Finally
Dead

P.
S. Power

Orange
Cat Publishing

Copyright
2015

The
blade was covered with red.

A slick
covering of life, pulsing with energy. Tasty looking and shiny, even in the
relatively dark room. It looked pink to her now, that energy, which was a thing
that she’d been told to expect, but actually seeing it was different. Exciting,
and almost painful to notice. Tiny tendrils of power came off of the dripping
scarlet, as the scent hit her.

It came
at her differently than she could have imagined. The blood smelled like…
Blood
.
Stronger than it had ever been for her before, but still coppery, with an
overtone of iron and salt. The big change up was that now it called to her. It
held something she needed, that hadn’t been there for her even the evening
before.
Life
.

Paying
attention she saw that there was a line of the stuff, the power of life,
stretching between the line of red slowly moving off the glinting silver to the
floor. It was faint, but real and moved directly to the little girl that had
just been sliced open. Young, to be fair. The crying made her seem younger than
she probably was in truth.

The one
she was supposed to attack.

That
part was really clear. No one sane would put a Human in the same room with a
Vampire that had just woken up for the first time. That would end in death,
every single time. Cutting her was a thousand times worse. It was like chumming
the waters to get hungry sharks to feed. Starving ones.

The man
with the knife, well, he wasn’t a person at all, was he? A Vampire, kind of
like Eve was now. His skin seemed pale to her, and Eve could make out the pale
core of pink life within him, too. It ran to him in weak lines, rather than
coming from inside. There were no fangs though, and his eyes weren’t the color
of red that a Classic Vamp would have held. Like hers probably did at the
moment. He looked young. Healthy and strong, with high cheek bones that marked
him as good looking, or would have, if she weren’t transfixed on the knife.

The rest
of him was good, but not movie star quality. That was the pattern for the New
Vampires, she’d noticed. The modern world required Vampires to be good looking,
but being too much that way would turn them into a joke. So he was about a
seven out of ten. She actually hit a bit above that, Eve knew. Her lean form
and clear skin would make her nearly a nine, now. At least once made up. Her
face was structured to be just a bit too round for true beauty, but no one had
ever kicked her out of bed for it, or tried to stick a bag over her head, had
they?

She
smiled at the thought, noticing her new fangs were protruding.
Begging
her to move on the line of pink being offered to her. The one that ran to the
bit of food. The snack. The Human being that she needed to protect, from
herself. If she could. No one would be able to though, would they?

The man
smiled back.

“Your
control is amazing for one so…
Fresh
. Come, take this child. Drink her blood,
and become one of us. There is nothing to be gained through restraint, is
there? Not in this place, or time.”

She knew
the drill, at least in part. As a newly created Vampire, having just woken in
the small dark room, she was
supposed
to be without the ability to
control herself. That was what the new Vamp was probably counting on. For some
strange reason. She could feel the call of that, even though she’d trained for
years for this moment. It was a powerful thing, the desire to get that life
within her. That energy that would keep her going. Animate. Giving her life
when she otherwise wouldn’t have it.

Honestly,
Eve knew that she pretty much had to do it. The thing there was that she also knew,
and had drilled the idea into her own mind, that there was no need for her to
kill
.
It wasn’t just not needed, but was actually a bad idea. The dead fed on the
living. By using a link of blood to form a line to the people that created
energy, which could be drawn on constantly.

The
whimpering girl, who’d been cut on the arm, a bare thing that dripped with red,
called to her, as if
screaming
that she were a snack cake. The iced
kind, with strawberry filling.

“No…
Please! Don’t hurt me. I won’t tell anyone. I want to go
home
.” It was
pitiful.

Also
alluring
,
which was the man’s point, she didn’t doubt.

Eve was
supposed to attack the girl, who looked to be about fourteen. To feed on the
young lady to the death, which would bind the newbie Vamp to him, and no doubt,
his group. Feeders. If that’s what they were. It
could
be something
else. It just really seemed like that kind of thing.

 Feeders
were Vampires that had chosen to go against the Council ruling that said they
weren’t allowed to take blood directly from Humans. Not in most cases. They
were especially forbidden to kill them. Not for food.

It
pretty much
had
to be the plan, didn’t it? Make her kill first thing,
and then tell her that it meant the council would kill her if she didn’t avoid
them and fall in with whoever these people were? What she wanted to know was
how they’d gotten to her, Eve, in particular.The last she remembered was
drinking blood from Edom, her master now, as he drained the last bit of her
life from her veins. She should have woken up with
him
. He might not be
the oldest or strongest of his kind, but this Vampire in front of her wasn’t
going to be able to overpower him, she didn’t think.

That
wasn’t just wishful thinking either. Classic Vamps, like Ed and she were, just
had a raw physical power edge over the new type, like the fellow in front of
her. The being smiled and wiggled the blade a bit, casting the scent off into
the air. On purpose. To get her to kill the little girl.

The
bitch
,
taunting her like that.

Her
mouth didn’t water, but it kind of wanted to. That part was weird and left a
longing inside. Her old reflexes were too strong still. She was, essentially,
still Human, in her head.

He saw
her looking at him and winked. Charmingly, because
that
was sane, wasn’t
it?

“Come,
have this one… It’s all right.”

The urge
to simply do it
screamed
at her. Eve felt her body start to move,
heading toward the girl in what felt like slow motion.
Everything
seemed
like that to her now. It seemed bogged down, and nearly sedate, but she surged
toward the source of energy, the food that the young woman represented to her
now.

Halfway
to the girl, she changed direction. It was hard to do, because really, she
had
to eat soon. It was the first thing that anyone like her had to do. In fact,
most of her kind just killed the first
few
people they fed on. Or
animals, if that was all they could find. Even if there was a powerful Vampire
mentor there to try and stop them from doing it. That was the real deal here,
no doubt about it. This tool in front of her, the New Vamp, had somehow stolen
her from Edom, and wanted to…

Force
her to kill?

To tie
her to him, so that she wouldn’t be in with the people in charge?

Or
something equally stupid like that.

She
lashed out at him, instead of the bleeding girl like she was supposed to. There
wasn’t going to be a lot of second chances to get the job done, Eve knew. She
was weak, and felt starving. Like there was no way to even stand, much less
fight. The part of her that let the dead move needed
something
to keep
it going. It felt like there was nothing else she could do, other than drink
the life of the girl there.

Reminding
herself of that, her need to feed, but not kill, she punched at the decent
looking man, grabbing at the blade with her left hand, and
pulling
. It
was all so very
trudging
though. Painfully slow. He
tried
to move
back, to avoid her, once he got what she was doing, but it was too late. She
had the weapon, which was covered with blood. The knuckles of her right hand
impacted with the white chin, casting the other Vampire backward. Then she…

Stopped,
to lick the knife. Like a little kid licking the beaters of a mixer, to get at
the frosting residue on them.

The pink
energy hit her tongue, causing a spasm in her chest, as her body, altered by
death, and the blood of her new master, picked up on the bits of life still
held in the fresh red liquid, and built a gate to the young woman who was tied
to the chair next to her.

It was
tempting to stop and linger over the whole experience. She could feel life
surge into her then, the link solid between the victim, her food for the
evening, and herself. It was actually best
not
to kill the girl, she
knew. To string the energy out, and leave her alive. That way she would have
power for about ten days, until that bond shrank and faded. Killing was the
natural
response of her kind when new, but it was the weakest way. The path of those
lacking in self-discipline.

That
wasn’t her. She’d freaking trained for this shit, for years now.

She
whipped the long blade outward. It was thick, and at least ten inches long,
making it pretty easy to use. After she slipped it along the jaw line of the
man that had taken her, she pressed it into the veins along his neck. That took
him to the ground, grabbing at the side of his face, a look of shock on it.

Not that
she could afford to stand and gloat. She was far too new to all of this to let
him have any kind of a break. That meant she hit him with the sharp line of the
blade many times until he stopped moving.

It
wouldn’t kill him. Even a weak, new form Vampire like he was would be back on
his feet inside ten minutes. Maybe sooner than that, if he was older than he
looked. That was hard to tell, she knew. What he seemed to be. A beings age on
the outside was almost certainly going to be different than the truth internally.

She
turned on the girl, still tied to the wooden chair, and moved in fast enough
the child screamed.

Eve
growled in response, because the screaming didn’t help them at all, did it?
Worse, it made her
want
to lash out and kill the little thing. It was a
reflex, and a thing she really hadn’t expected to be there. Oh, she’d been told
it would be, but the desire to simply do it was nearly overpowering.
Nearly
was the catch phrase though, and she knew it. How she felt didn’t matter, only
what she did.

“Quiet!
We need to get out of here. I don’t know how many others are around. When I cut
the ropes, we need to run. Get behind me.” There was someone coming, she knew.

Running
toward them.

It was
the low thumping sound that gave it away. A slow thing that pulsed in the air.
She felt it, rather than heard anything. It was loud though, and faster than
she figured a Human could manage. Infrasound, she knew. A thing too low for her
to have made out the day before. Now, well, it was all around her. There were a
thousand different things that tried to call her attention, all at once. It was
blinding, and
confusing
. For one thing, she was in a room that didn’t
have a light source, but she could still see. It was monochromatic, but
everything kind of had a shine to it.

It meant
she needed to cut the girl in the tank top some slack.
She
wouldn’t be
able to see shit, after all.

“Stay
quiet. I have the knife, and the man that’s here is down, but not dead. We’re
going to have to fight though.”

She
probably shouldn’t have said that part, since it got more whimpering. Sweet,
sweet sounds that signaled where the food was. Her teeth actually
ached
,
she wanted to bite the little piece of bloody meat so bad.

It was,
she knew, fucked up.

The
ropes were cut, and she moved toward the door, a black chasm in front of them
both, just in time for it to be filled with a pale form. One that had chalk
like skin, rows of fangs, and blood red eyes. A male Manthori Vamp. He was very
tall, and impressive that way, if thin. She didn’t stop, just attacking for all
she was worth, trying to review what she knew about that sort of being, as she
did it.

They
were
strong and fast, but their real power was that most of them had extremely good
compulsion skills, and often other psychic abilities. Telepathy, precognition
and telekinesis weren’t uncommon. Fire starting, too. This one had
that
,
it seemed, since his right hand burst into brilliant blue flame as she used the
knife on his face.

This
fight was a lot closer to being even. The man on the ground, the first one that
looked very Human and normal, had gone down easy, compared to the Manthori. It
wasn’t totally one sided at least, since Eve realized something. Armed with a
knife, she was the equal to this one. Not him
and
his friends though,
meaning she had to hurry and finish up. She burned where the large fist caught
her, but the pain didn’t distract her all that much.

Eve had,
after all, been hurt before. It would happen again. That was part of the
bargain that she’d made for power. Edom had made her promise to never give up,
and to be willing to suffer if she had to, in order to be strong. She had, and
wasn’t going back on her word now.