Prologue

Marius ran the tips of his fingers over the cold, unyielding stones that made up the walls of his castle, his fortress, his home. A cold breeze drifted by, seeping into the cracks that had formed between mortar and stone after years and years of wear, ruffling his long, raven black hair and the dark cape he kept clasped about his strong neck with a gold torque in the shape of a bat. His breath came out in puffs of white clouds that hung about him in the silvery light of the moon light that spilled from one of the many, large cracks in the walls of the great fortress that he had had constructed for himself many, many centuries ago.

 

Looking back on those times, he realized what his life could have been, what it should have been, if only he had been strong enough to take what should have been his. Hundreds upon hundreds of terrified men had worked the stone and mortar of his home, making it exactly as he specified it, or being punished if they made even the slightest, little error in their long and tedious work. He had not been a lineate man back then. Slothfulness and wastefulness were sins in his mind, punished in the most brutal and terrible of ways. The screams of the suffering men would echo through the nights, and their numbed moans would plague the days, but still Marius would not let up on them until his fortress had been built, even though in the end it had meant decimating a whole town of its men, leaving the women and children to flee for their lives, or perish in a world that had forgotten that they even existed. The fires had burned all through the night, the men slaving away under the whips of their overseers, until they fell, only to be replaced by another and another until finally the overseers themselves were becoming the slaves, and only the master of the castle was left to oversee their progress, and oversee it he did, driving them, one by one into an early grave until no living man was left to see the completion of their task, but complete their task was. Upon the laying of the last stone, the last, surviving man of the nearby village drew in his last breath, his tortured, bleeding body slumping over his work the moment it was finish.

That night, after pushing the last of the workers’ corpses off the sides of the parapets to rid his home of their stench, Marius had gazed down at the world from up high, looking over the sides of the great, towering walls that made up the sides of the castle. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but trees, trees and even more trees. Once, he knew he would have been able to look out and see the fires of a small village blazing away the darkness of the night, but that was gone, gone with the fleeing of the women and children and the deaths of their men. He was completely and totally alone, able to pretend that he was the only, living creature left in existence, and at the time, that had been just what he had wanted. He had wanted the world to be shut away from him, and he to be shut away from it. He wanted nothing that the light of day, or the dark of night, had to offer him. Solitude and quiet was what he had desired most in the world, and for that time, at least, he had possessed just that. No one had dared to enter into his lands after the castle was built. Tales of ghosts, spooks and hauntings flooded any village or town within a hundred miles of the place, and no one had dared to see if any of it was true. Superstitions had kept people at bay, once upon a time.

 

Now, he gazed upon a world far different than the one that had existed when the castle had first been built for him. Lights blazed off in the distance, not the flickering glows of fires, but a new light, a light that had not existed in the world up until very recently, or at least recently as his kind saw the passage of time. He would never have thought that he would have been able to see the bright glare of the sun again, but this new world that had sprung up around him had proved him wrong. Now, humanity could make light as bright as the sun, perhaps even brighter, whenever they wished it, and they wasted this power on such frivolous things such as taverns and houses of ill repute. It amazed him how much the world could change, yet how much the vices of men remained the same. The same sins were committed again and again, but the ways in which they were committed now seemed to be ever changing. He glared down upon these lights, casting their reflection upon the heavy cloud cover that had started to move in, hiding the mistress of the night behind their dark covers and away from his longing gaze.

Sighing, he turned back to the crumbling ruins about him. It had been so long, so long since he had sought out any sort of companionship. When his fortress had been built, it had been with the intent of locking himself away from the rest of the world for all eternity. If he had not feared death, he would have destroyed himself long ago. He had thought many a time about simply stepping out into the hateful light of day, letting the burning rays of the sun end his suffering, but he had never been able to bring himself to do it. Something deep within him, something that still fought to live, would not let him end his life so easily, and so he suffered in his solitude and loneliness, waiting. What he was waiting for, he did not know himself, but he hoped with all his being that it would come to him soon, that it would finally let him rest soon. After hundreds upon hundreds of years traveling the world and then waiting in his fortress to rot away, he was growing tired of the long wait. It was wearing down upon him, eating away at him, and yet there seemed as if there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do to change his fate.

 

If only she had not left him, if only she had stayed with him, as she had promised, for all eternity, he knew his suffering would not have been half so great. She had given him an eternity to live, but it meant nothing without her. He had thought she would always be by his side, but he had been wrong. How could he have been so foolish as to believe her promises, dripping poison from her lips that he had greedily, eagerly lapped up? He had thought her to be perfect from the moment he had laid eyes upon her, the last woman he would ever gaze upon with the eyes of a mortal man, the last woman he would ever lust over with the carnal needs of a human. She had promised to have him stay by her side forever, but that had been nothing but empty words. She had used him, played with him, and then tossed him aside once she had finished as she would have any other play thing, as she had with men from times unremembered. She had used him, and then had left him to fend for himself in a world he had barely understood, in a world he had not been prepared to enter into. He could remember crying out for her, night after night, after she had left him. How many years had he called her name with agony in his voice, how many decades had he pined for her? He could not even begin to remember now. That was the worse part of living forever, the passage of time began to mean nothing to one. A blink of the eye, and the world would spin around so many times that one would loss track of the changes that were occurring just around one. His castle had once been safe and sound from the world, and now, before he had even realized it, the world was once again moving in on him.

 

He still felt he was safe, for the time being. The towns with electric lights that were springing up around him were still a good distance off, but they were coming closer and closer with each, passing year. No one had yet dared to venture up to his fortress… well, no one that could now tell the tale anyway, but he felt sure that would change soon. It would not be long before the occasional, lonely explorer would turn into camping partings, then search parties, then the men who surveyed the land for new buildings and townships would soon come in, seeking out new places to encroach upon, taking over more and more of his land until they came upon the castle. Even though the land was in his family’s name, bought by an ancestor not even he could remember the name of, he doubted the men of today would honor that deed, considering no one had come to claim that they owned the land in quite some time. In a way, he was the only living member of his family left, and he doubted he would have been able to present all the necessary items to prove that the land belonged to him, even if he had wanted to bother with the procedure.

 

He turned from the light that had dared to invade his darkness, and headed deeper into the bowels of his fortress, seeking out the eternal darkness there that would never be penetrated by the light of man nor nature, not if he had anything to say about it. He whisked down the stairs, his cape flowing out behind him like the wings of a great bat, gracefully caressing the sides of the stairwell he was traveling down. The darkness of the stairwell did not deter him in the least, did not intimidate him at all. His eye sight, especially his night vision, was extraordinary, just as she had promised him it would be on that night so very, very long ago. He reached the bottom most level of his domain, and stopped, looking about him. The world he had created for his mistress and himself glared back at him in shades of red. It had been a dream, a fantasy, for him that if he built this one room for the two of them, maybe she would come back. Maybe she would somehow sense what he had done for her, and return to him. The rest of the castle had been for him a tomb. This one room, had been meant as a shrine for her.

 

Two, great sarcophagi lay side by side beneath a hand woven tapestry that depicted their rein of terror, so many centuries before. He had loved her spirit and blood lust back then. Now? Now, it sickened him to think that he had basked in the gory, glory that had been her desires. Men, women, children had all died mercilessly at her hands, and he had glorified her for her bloody deeds, taking it in as if it were ambrosia itself. He had even followed in her footsteps for quite some time after she had left him, hoping to bring her back with his own display of bloodshed and terror, but she had not returned to him, the room he had made for both of them, out of a desperate hope that she might one day come back to him, had never been approved by her, and never been graced by her presence, and this had stung at his heart for so long, that the pain seemed to have settled in there, never to be removed.

 

For the first time in his life, he looked about this room with complete and total loathing for both it and himself. He swept to the tapestry in one, swift motion, tearing it down with the long nails of his fingers, slashing through the material as he slashed through his memories of her. With an anguished cry, he pounced upon the sarcophagus that had never been used once in its hundreds of years of existence, picking up one corner of it, and upturning it, smashing the great, stone coffin into nothing more than rubble that scattered about his room of resting. The terrible crash shook the room, perhaps even the very foundations of the castle itself, but he was long past caring. His cries filled the chamber, echoing again and again, driving the vermin from their hiding places to scamper and scurry towards the exits, small cracks that had formed even in these deep walls over time.

 

Marius turned from the room, flying up the steps he had just recently came down, unable to bare the sight of that room any longer. There were other places he could rest during the day throughout the castle, he had made sure of that. He would seek out one of these places tonight, and rest there through the day. Never again would he set foot in that room he had made for the two of them to share. Never again would he lay in that sarcophagus, imaging that she was in the one right next to it. Never again would he dream of waking to see her rising up beside him, embracing him in her arms and telling him how much she loved him, how much she had missed him, how much she cared about him. Never again would he even pretend that he had meant a thing to her. He had been nothing but a toy, and that hurt him to his very bones.

 

It had been decades since he had moved so freely about his castle, and he had not noticed the amount of decay and destruction that time and the elements had imposed upon the once impenetrable structure. Time had done what no army would have been able to accomplish. Many of the halls and corridors were now impassible, being buried under tons of stone and mortar that had given out over many, many years of neglect and disrepair. Holes, cracks and crevices could be found throughout most of the building, letting in the cool breeze of the night to the point where it seemed as if the walls that did exist held back nothing at all. The wind would have chilled a mortal to the bone, but Marius barely even noticed the slightest nipping of its frosty teeth against his cold, gleaming white skin.

 

Soon, he was once again near the top of the fortress, looking down upon the night. A pain grew within his chest, a pain he had not felt in some time. He had thought he had forever rid himself of it, but it was not to be so. No matter how much stone and mortar, how many bricks and walls he put between himself and his past, he could not escape the pain she had caused him. He could not escape the influence she had placed over his heart, nor could he ever rid himself of the suffering she had caused him so long ago.

 

He continued on through his fortress, dodging and weaving his way through the debris that blocked his path down more than one corridor. Finally, after having to abandon more than one of the routes he had planned to take to one of the many resting spots he had hidden throughout the structure, he came to a large room dominated by a canopy bed that had seen much better days. The drapes hanging down about the bed were tattered and worn, looking like nothing more than bits of gossamer hanging from the ceiling, and one would have been hard press to guess at their original colors. The bed itself was in a state of ruin, the frame having given way under the weight of time some years ago, and mice and other vermin having gotten to the soft bedding. Tuffs of cotton stuck out of the worn mattress here and there, testifying to the horrible treatment its former occupants had done to it.

 

Marius did not even cast the bed a second glance, moving instead to a place in the floor off to one side. He moved aside many of the stones that made up the floor to reveal a secret compartment with a heavy, stone cover. He removed this cover with ease, and looked down upon the soft, red, silk bedding he had laid for himself here long ago. The air tight chamber had kept this area in better condition than the rest of the room, insuring him a place to lay through the harsh hours of the day that would be somewhat pleasant and comfortable. He sighed, knowing he would be safe here for the night, even though it was much too early to even think of bedding down just yet. He carefully replaced the stone cover, and moved back up to the upper parts of the fortress, seeking the night air and the light of its mistress once again.

 

Returning to the parapets, he could see by the light of the moon filtering through the stormy clouds above that very little time had actually passed at all, although it had seemed like hours ago that he had went in search of the room he had made for his mistress and himself to lay in so long ago. A tickling sensation in his throat alerted him to the fact that it had been some time since he had last fed. Several weeks had passed, to be precise, since he had last tasted the sweet, bitter taste of blood. He could remember back to when he had first become immortal, and the terrible, burning thirst that had always been upon him. It had seemed at the time that his need for blood was insatiable, as if it were impossible for him to get enough of it, no matter how often or how much he fed. He had been told at the time that this was the greatest weakness of his kind, why there were so few of them compared to the humans they hunted. The young of their kind often feel prey to their own, veracious appetites, unable to control themselves enough to keep from being killed, caught or simply dieing in the first few months of their immortal life from one stupid act or another in the search for sustenance. It was only after several long years of life, that their kind could gain the control they needed to keep from being driven by their bodies’ own needs. It was not often that one was turned that would live for more than a month or so, especially if that one did not have a master to look over him, and not all vampires were inclined to keep such a risk to themselves around for very long, so it was only those that had been strong of will, like his mistress, that made it to a very, very old age, and she had been old indeed. She had talked of the building of the pyramids as if she had been there herself, and he had no reason to doubt this. Then again, when she had told him these tales, he had had no reason to mistrust anything that came from her beautiful lips.

 

She had taken him in after turning him, had helped him through those first decades when he would have foolishly allowed himself to be killed for the taste of just one drop of blood. As she had promised him, the need to fed did indeed slack off after time until he felt the drive for human blood only once every few weeks, living sufficiently off of just one victim during all that time. After one feeding a month, he was free to spend his time as he wished, feeling no bodily desires until the next feeding time.

 

He lifted his face to the night air, tasting the moisture upon the air. It would rain soon, within the next several hours, not that it would bother him in the least. He tended to enjoy the rain anymore, as it seemed to wash away his pain and suffering, at least for a short while. He returned his attention to his need to fed, casting his mind outward in search of prey. Bright flashes of light made themselves aware to his consciousness, the life force of the humans around him. At one time, there had not been nearly this many beings in range of his mind, but now, hundreds, perhaps closer to thousands of bright lights flared across his mind, the short, brightly burning life of mortals. How would they feel if they could see themselves as his kind did, if they could see the intenseness of their short existence? Would they be made aware of how short their lives were? Would they think to take their time on earth more seriously if they saw how they burned like a blazing candle, melting itself into nonexistence?

 

Off in the distance, he noted two dull embers smoldering at the very edges of his territory. More of his kind, and fairly old at that. The young of his race tended to flare with almost the same intensity of that of a human, so close to the lives they had once lived as they were. It was only after decades, centuries that their life force faded to a slow, dull light. He focused on this two crimson points, but soon realized that neither one was her. One was an ancient male that was merely passing through on his way to other lands. The other was a female who was in pursuit of the first one, perhaps seeking out a mate or a simple companion to spend a few centuries with. A smirk marred Marius handsome features as he kept his attention trained on those two. If he had wanted her, he could have easily sensed her by now, and would have turned back to her. As it was, it seemed he was speeding away from her, and she was too much the fool to realize that he had already shunned her, just as he had been too naïve to realize that his own mistress had shunned him so many long years ago.

 

He kept his mind focused upon them both until they had left his domain. Even though his realm held little of value to it now, he did not want to let his defenses drop for even a moment, just in case the ancient male had changed his mind about passing through and had thought to challenge Marius for his land. He knew the female, as young as she was, would not have been much of a match for him, but the ancient ones still worried him. He had yet to evolve to their level of strength and power, and it would only be foolish to try to fight one, but he would have attempted to do just that if the male had tried to claim his land. He had lived here for far to long to even think of giving it up now, even though it no longer meant as much to him as it once had, back when he had thought she might return to him.

They finally departed after only a very short while. For all he knew, they had not even sensed his presence. The only reason he had noticed them was because he had been actively searching out with his mind. With the threat passed, he turned his attentions back to seeking out his victim for the night, searching for one who was alone, distant, already lost from the rest of humanity and would therefore not be missed when he simply disappeared. He had just about honed in on a potential target when a bright flare blazed across his mind, more powerful than anything he had ever experienced before.

 

“What the Devil?” he cried out, reeling back from the pain that had recently exploded through his mind. Catching hold of the stones before him, he steadied himself, his breath hissing in and out through clenched teeth. His mind had instinctively closed against that pain, blocking him from it but also keeping him from detecting it now. He cautiously opened his senses back up, probing lightly for the flare that had so startled and hurt him.

 

There, there it was once again, as bright as it had been only moments before, and he had to swiftly shut his mind from it to keep it from burning him yet again. Cocking his head to one side, he uttered to himself, “And what are you?” He lifted his head once again to the sky, and scanned the thickening clouds. It would not be a pleasant, spring rain this night, but a raging storm. Still, he was curious to see what could possibly have pressed upon his mind as intensely as this being had.

He spread his arms wide, his cape flowing up in the whipping wind. His fingers began to elongate as he let go of himself and flowed into another form, a trick only the older members of his kind were able to perform. The cape flowed into his fingers, fusing with them to form a new appendage. Dark hair sprung from every part of his body, making a shaggy mane about his head and neck. Great fangs jutted from his mouth, now more of a snout than that of a human face.

 

The great bat spread its wings to the sky with a thunderous crack as it sprang from the fortress that was his home. With a powerful, downward stroke, he sent himself off into the night in search of that being that had had the unfortunate luck as to catch the attention of Marius Neros.