Chapter 1

It's rewritten and shorter than the first one. I'm making the chapters split up more. Very small differences from the first version

I struggled and stumbled, trying to keep pace while the chains chafed my wrists. Two masked doctors were walking with me, with quick feet and short tempers, their hands tight circles around the opposite ends of the chains that were binding me and cutting into my porcelain skin. I felt like a dog on a leash.

 

They seemed so anxious to get my transformation over and done with. I was terrified to the point where I couldn't concentrate and could barely breathe. How different would I feel, as a vampire? Would my omnipresent thirst for blood truly drive me to kill people? Innocent people who hadn't done anything wrong. How would I help to protect the city of Devadas? Would I fight against our enemies to keep the city safe? The city that had imprisoned me, that is. Would everyone at the hospital accept me more, once I'd become one of them? Once I was free of disease?

 

Most importantly, would I be allowed outside?

 

These ideas swirled disjointedly in my mind, like the long white coats of the doctors, swishing purposefully around their legs as we descended from the third floor, where I was kept, and to the second floor, where all the chemicals and laboratories were. Finally, we near-jogged down the last set of dark stairs to the first floor, where there was a quaint cafeteria, the doctors' bedrooms, and the hall we were facing directly off the stairs. The hall where I'd be transformed.

 

My dirty bare feet touched clouds. The Transformation Hall's floor was covered with billowing, purple and gold silk that felt like pudding seeping through my toes.

The walls were also adorned with silk and I felt the blush creep up on my cheeks as I looked around the room. There had to be more than fifty people here! I'd never been in a room with more than two vampires at once, and here were so many, all of them staring at me. Men with guarded eyes clothed in suits and high nosed females with pointed chins were all looking expectedly at me. Had they all come to see my transformation?

 

I hadn't realized how popular I was, simply because of my horrible, life-threatening illness. Did these many, many vampires also know it was my birthday? Hopefully, after tonight, they would stop staring at me with huge, scared eyes, like I was an oddity. They'd start to see me as an equal.

 

There, at the top of the hall, sitting in a solid gold throne, sat the most important vampire of the night, who I recognized at once even though I'd never seen him in person before.

 

He was a tall, slouching vampire, with long black hair. He was as pale as salt. The tips of his long fingers were touching, dirty nails stretching over the tips. Observing me with a curious expression on his gaunt features, the man's thin, almost nonexistant lips sread into a wide smile. Pointy, yellowing teeth. This ugly smile didn't reach his black, unblinking eyes. This man's name was Landry. The King of vampires, the Ruler of Devadas.

 

"Hello, Ms. Ayuri Natsukawa," He said in a satisfied, smooth as baby oil voice. He said my name slowly, cautiously. Like he wasn't sure of how it would sound on his tongue. His eyes were stuck on my face, unblinking. "Dear guests, you are finally seeing with your own eyes our special, special Ayuri. Our doctors have done a wonderful job with her, have they not?"

 

The guests nodded apprehensively, not once looking away from me. I was a very self-conscious girl, since I'd never been around so many people. People who all viewed me as diseased and strange. Otherwordly. The cuts across my arms and legs might have given them reason to stay away also.

 

Landry stepped down from his throne with the lazy smile of a leader who knew that he would get everything he wanted. Catlike, his limbs stretched long and wide as he made his way over to me, his paleness was overwhelming. He began to circle me, taking in every inch of my starved body with his black, ravenous eyes.

 

"Will the bite hurt?" I asked, finding my voice. It was hoarse, almost a whisper, and I paused to wonder if that was from fear, or lack of use.

 

Landry laughed a loud, booming laugh that made me hunch my shoulders and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Only for a minute," he promised, with the same unemotionless, practiced smile. A few moments passed in silence, then he leaped.

 

I collapsed under his weight, screamed and tried to throw him off of me, but to no avail. The doctors hadn't told me it would be like this!

 

Overpowered, I succumbed to the cold, chapped lips I could feel opening just above my collarbone. Then there was nothing but excruciating pain. From the minute his sharp teeth pierced my skin, the blood rolled down my shoulders and onto my dress. Cold sweat on my forehead, I started shaking and panting uncontrollably.

 

I wasn't conscious enough to realize the horde of vampires closing in on me, excited looks on their blurred faces.

 

And then all was black.

 

I woke in the same room. My eyes flung open and I gasped, sitting bolt upright on the floor. The same place where I'd landed. I placed my shaking hand slowly on the left side of my neck, on the bitemark I'd just recieved from Landry. The blood had stopped flowing there, but I could feel the scar.

 

I felt unfamiliar clothing on my chest, and looked down. I was wearing a simple, pink dress. I'd never owned anything pink before. I took it as an omen that things were about to change. Then I looked up and realized that I was not as alone as I thought I had been.

Landry was standing furthest back, surrounded by a few guards, a pleasant smile on his skeletal face. All six of my doctors were surrounding me, looking anxious and unsure, peering over one another's shoulders to get a better look at me. I grinned with a new set of teeth, sharp and deadly.

 

I was one of them.

 

"Excellent!" proclaimed Landry, clearly sharing my happiness. He stepped a little closer to me. "Excellent. Your training will begin at once, Ayuri."

 

"Training?" I asked, still examining my new body. I felt stronger, with more purpose in the world. No longer diseased. Able to move freely throughout Devadas.

 

"Yes, yes, my dear. You must be trained. You must help protect the city, it's your role as a citizen, child."

 

"Yes, I remember..." My obligations, of course. I'd been locked up and now I had to serve the city. In repayment for the cure they had given me. I could now be a part of the city, find a place there, free of the horrible disease that had claimed me just minutes before. And my part in the city would be as a protector. It wasn't exactly how I'd want to live my life, if given the option, but I needed to repay Landry somehow. My fate had been chosen for me before I could even think for myself.

 

 

I leapt down from the table and the world went spinning, but once I stood up straight I was able to see more clearly. Anything I looked at, like the shiny black shoe of my doctor, was sharply in focus.

 

The doctors and I walked again, my Keeper in front and Landry behind. His guards kept up a steady pace even further back. Finally, I was able to stretch my legs.

 

"We need to go underground, Ayuri Natsukawa," my Keeper said. This shocked me so much I almost ended my steady pace. My Keeper hadn't spoken to me in years, and he never used my full name. He had always called me "child". He continued. "It will be a quicker route to the training area."

 

He turned his bald head slightly to smile at me, and I smiled back. I had never been looked at with such intensity before. Except by Landry. I had never seen Landry look at anyone but me with such intensity in his eyes.

 

"Okay." I kept it short. This conversation thing was still new to me, and I had trouble keeping up sometimes. My doctors had taught me how to speak when I was very young, but as their visits were staggered and infrequent, I didn't grow fluent until I was about nine years old. To this day, I had trouble with speech.

 

We were walking around the first floor, to where I had no idea. After we left the hall where I had been transformed, everything looked so white and clean. So free of disease, just as I now was. Everything was new and touchable. It didn't feel like a hospital anymore. There were two long hallways leading away from the transformation hall's large oak doors, and a long, rickety stone staircase that ascended into the darkness and the floors above.

 

One hallway I knew led to the bedrooms of the doctors and their families. They lived here with me.  The other hallway, the one down which we were now walking was completely new to me. We passed by a long, scrupulously clean white counter, behind which were two equally clean white tables filled with wooden chairs, but currently empty of vampires. There was a refrigerator full of blood, and I could smell it. My throat burned like acid, and my eyes were clouded with all but a desire to swing the refrigerator's door open and release its blood into my greedy mouth, letting it trickle hot and lovely down my throat.

 

Blind to all else, I directed my footsteps towards the refrigerator. Instantly, fourteen hands grabbed me, keeping me away from the blood. I screamed, fighting them, but they were altogether too strong. All else but the fresh, sweet stock of human blood was clouded by a black haze around my eyes. I whipped my head around to see my doctors and Keeper holding onto me, Landry standing calmly behind them.

 

"Let me go!" I demanded, ripping my right arm free and struggling with the left.

"Come, Ayuri." Landry ordered, his voice full of authority. His tone was so final that even my thirst began to recede, and it lowered itself to a dull, thudding feeling in the back of my throat. My breath slowed.

 

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. The doctors had told me it would be like this at first, but that eventually, thirst would not only be controllable, but very bearable. I wouldn't even think of it after a while. Its quench would just be a necessity, inescapable.

 

If I didn't get blood, I'd become temperamental and weak, and I could eventually die. It was sad fact of vampire life. Kill, or be killed by your desire not to kill.

 

We walked away from the refrigerator filled with its sweet smelling blood and the unnaturally clean and bright white counter to the end of the hallway, where there was a white door. My Keeper opened it, and we followed him down a dark, cold staircase.

It was not lit very well at all, with only a torch in the wall every few hundred yards. We did not get tired as quickly as humans did, of course, and we could see clearly enough without the torches, but I did grow impatient and I felt the sharp taste of anxiety under my tongue, burning and curling it into a dangerous knot. I'd become more impatient as a vampire. When were we going to reach the training area?

 

The ground leveled and we walked for about four miles. We must be far from the hospital now. That thought alone gave me hope. Now our feet tread upon dirt rather than stone, and there was a row of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, each bulb spaced out about fifty feet from one another.

 

A few unspeaking minutes later and our walkway began to incline. My bare, dirty feet shuffled on the ground, trying not to scuff the back of the black leather shoes of my newly friendly Keeper. I was so impatient to get out into the fresh air, I let out an annoyed puff of breath.

 

We were climbing cold stairs and came to a halt at another door. My Keeper opened it with a small, silver key and I followed him outside, for the first time in my life.

Reviews

[snopadelic]

I enjoyed reading this. Vampires, i love and this was a slightly different version to what i was expecting. You made your King vampire less glam than you raverage vamp. There a classic transformation scene. I'm still very curious as humanity being treated as a desise or is there another kind of diesase?. I'm very interested in what direction this will go because at the moment its looking very original.