Tainted blood just feels different.
It’s sluggish, cold, bordering on gelid, all but congealed, but it’s not. It’s a slow flowing river without a current. If it were a pool of water, it would be stagnant, ripe for algae and mosquitoes, but somehow, it’s neither.
I was newly made, and when I finally pulled the caul from my eyes, the stars had never been so vivid.
The old gods still cry out…the old demons have not died.
This was the earth before the One came to drive out the Legion.
So be it, then.
We are to dwell here, it seems, feeding off the carrion of sinful souls that crawl like ants in the cities, and we snatch the few butterflies wherever they may be, and break their wings of gossamer to replace them with wings of venous leather, if they choose.
They do not always choose. I myself was left no choice, and I never saw who did it.
I was on my way home, and then I wasn’t. Something seized me, and I felt my body hit the ground when it was done with me. I could hear it breathing, a relieved satisfaction.
Poor thing. It was thirsty.
My body was so cold, and growing harder to move as I crawled out of the shadowed, piss-pooled alley into the shallow light of a flickering streetlamp, before I breathed my shallow last, a vaporous prayer asking forgiveness for an unrepentant heart.
I hope to one day meet the one who did this to me, but what I’ll do then, I don’t know.
This is a vile existence in a vile place.
There are no angels here. Not even fallen ones.
We are a breed apart with a special place, I think, in damnation.
Perhaps we are the harvesters for hell, putting the torch to the pyres of those we’ve captured, gathering their souls like sheaves into sacks to bring them here.
They go under the obsidian altar, these souls, and turn the blood into wine, and the wine into gall.
Then we feed and feast, reveling in the red tide that blesses our doomed purgatorial homes until we are made to twist and writhe and scream tirelessly in the flames set aside for us.
I don’t look forward to that day, but for now, I revel in what I am.
Will you come to me, walk with me, and be my friend?
Nightshade Stories 