It is truly terrific how long love will remain patient.



As a rule, we vampires choose our victims carefully. You have to be sure it is someone who would not mind dying, or someone so horrific an excuse of a human being you’d be doing everyone a favor. You can’t just go biting someone on a whim, someone who could have family and friends and an actual life to go out and live.

But that’s what I did. I took a bite on impulse and for that I must endure the shame and pain of my consequences.

But first, allow me to explain a little bit about myself so this story makes more sense. My name is Beau Rider and I am an Exorcist in Training with the Scythia Coalition. I am also a vampire.

Yes, I do know that probably just confused you more. But never fret, I shall explain.

First off, I was not always a vampire. I was born a human, but not a normal human, mind you. From the moment of my birth, items would by no fault of their own fall off shelves or doors would blow open, a wonderful variety of oddities galore. I had these rare powers, ones that even as I got older I would not fully understand.

My main power is of transformation and shape shifting, which can be quite entertaining if I do it right. But most of the time when I did not understand what I was, it was far from such. If I did something foolish and felt like an ass, I would feel big furry ears sprout from my head and words would become brays. If I felt nervous or afraid and I wanted to hide, as I often did, being shy by nature, I would vanish into the form of a weasel or ferret of sorts and dash off until I could collect myself. The worst part was that I did not know binding spells to keep my clothes with my body when I changed, so whenever I returned to my human form I was quite nude and supremely embarrassed.

School was both easy and hard for me. Academically, it was like breathing to me. I have always been called a ‘genius’ and my IQ has been estimated to be far over 200, so I skipped grades like skipping stones. I was out of Harvard before my sixteenth birthday.

But socially, I was dumb as a rock. No, rocks are quite intelligent, if quiet, creatures, I should not insult them so. Well I was very clueless with my social graces, let us stick to that. I made very few friends, as I was often years younger than my peers anyhow. Feeling that this would hinder my mental growth dramatically, I requested to repeat my high school senior year for the sake of my social development. I was permitted.

It was that year that I met the first love of my life, and when I also discovered myself to be very homosexual. His name was Annatto Yoren, a unbearably beautiful man I was lucky enough to have in all of my classes. He was Dakota like me, but completely so while my mother is also Comanche. He was over six feet tall, towering over my modest 5’6, and deliciously muscular, with long hair brushing his lower back and…oh my, I am blushing just thinking about him.

Well one day my love approached me to ask me out, and I was so stunned I was shocked that I didn’t float up into the air or turn into an octopus or some other humiliating gesture on my part. After that, our relationship progressed rapidly and we were so madly in love. I remember the days we would spend just at the beach or the park or wherever we wished to roam, him holding me close to his hard body with his face buried into my hair, me leaning my head against his chest and just feeling so close and warm and loved-oh there I go digressing again, so sorry.

He used lilac conditioner. His hair smelled amazing.

And it was also that senior year that something else happened to me. Annatto had walked me home and we shared a steamy good night kiss before I went inside, greeted my parents and went to my room. Bless my parents, they have always accepted everything about me, from my powers to my sexuality.

And I was asleep when I felt something heavy on top of me. I had no idea what it was at the time, I tried to move my arms to grab my glasses (my eyesight is really quite poor without them) to see but found them pinned down. I tried to scream for my parents but found something clamped down on my throat, along with a stabbing pain, and some other odd sensation.

We vampires have a very curious adaptation to keep our prey from thrashing about or trying to escape once they are bitten. Once touched by the mouth of a vampire, the victim feels an overwhelming sense of arousal. The bite is so sensual that they completely stop trying to escape, they in fact want more.

And that is what I was feeling as I was being drained. I was trying to move my legs to wrap them around them, my fingers clawed at their back, my eyes were rolling around like marbles, I wanted more and I wanted it badly.

But my body was getting weaker and weaker, my mind was going blank. Everything was hot and fuzzy then cold and fuzzier and soon I was completely out. The next thing I remember was waking up and seeing two strange men with pointed ears standing over me, looking very calm for what they were about to tell me,

“Kid, we got some bad news for you.”

I had been bitten by a rogue vampire and as now had become one. I would now be so severely photosensitive that just the touch of sunlight would cause me to blister and burn immediately, and prolonged exposure would quickly result in severe peeling and skin cancer. Though now I could not be injured or killed unless my body was damaged in such a way that it physically could no longer function, such as my heart being damaged or my head separated from my body. I would no longer age either, as long as I kept up with my blood drinking.

It was like being a super hero or something.

I asked them if my inborn powers would affect this at all.

Now that got their attention.

By the next day, the Scythia Coalition, a secret organization of magical peoples commited to keeping all paranormal and magical activities on this world anonymous, had appointed me a trainer to teach me to deal with my powers and the ways of the Coalition. Basically I had been drafted into Exorcist training.

But I understood; they had to keep track of all the paranormal goings-on and so I would have to be registered at the very least with them, but the opportunity to finally learn how to control my powers was too much to pass up.

It was my trainer Sphen who came to pick me up. He’s British, in his late forties and isn’t such a bad guy once you get to know him. He was dressed like someone out of the Matrix (he just likes to; Sphen is odd) and he handed me a black umbrella.

“You’ll be needing this, laddybuck.”

I use it to walk around during the day. I tell people it is because I am photosensitive and they understand, usually. I spend most of my time, along with the city’s other vampires, in the abandoned projects, where there is little sunlight any time of day. I like to wear Gothic suits to look the part, though my braids look a bit odd with them. I have been told I look cute. I get my blood from the blood bank, most of us do so we don’t have to hurt anyone. Everyone’s blood tastes different to us vampires; we can tell the differences in DNA, diseases, everything. We are like our own CSIs and doctors all in one.

Sphen told me I would be training in Codename Scythia, the Other World filled with magic and creatures, to better adapt to my situation. I asked for how long, and he said a long time.

Remembering my goodbyes with Annatto is still painful. I was packing my suitcase when I felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist and a heavy head on my shoulder. A tear fell onto my lapel.

“Please don’t leave me…”

We held each other for a long while and we were both weeping. We both whispered ‘don’t forget me’ back and forth and stayed clamped together for as long as possible until Sphen finally dragged me away. This page is blotchy now from my tears.

It was a very long time I stayed in Scythia. Until I turned twenty three, to be exact. I have been back home for a year now; not much has changed and that comforts me.

There was one big change, though. Someone new moved into the neighborhood. Someone who was about my age or a bit older when I had left, he was a college freshman. A quiet boy with a soft smile and glittering eyes and a feather earring in one ear.

Someone to bite…