My Great Grandpa got around. He was prolific, prodigious, progenitorial. He was a slut. He had so many lost children that I didn’t even know I was one of them, not until that floozy found me in the local inn and drank me under the table. Literally. That was the night I became a man. It was also the last night I was a man… at least, of the living variety.
But I’m going to start this story way before that. Well, a few hours before I gained my manhood and lost my humanity. You see, I had grown up in the noble house Newland. Stupid name, right? Given to them literally because they set off to colonize new land during my Great Grandpa’s reign. A delegated house, with much owed to them.
Including the life of my family, which served under them. At this time, I was yet unaware that I was a descendent of the Bloody King’s own progeny. Most of them were hunted down long before my time. I was lucky, each of my ancestors in turn kept as a servant boy after the fall of the Bloody King. I never met my father, or my grandfather, or my mothers… in fact, I never met any member of my family at all.
At least for the day, Luther was the head of the house. He was young, presumptuous, and only 22. Before he took control of the house, I was being raised as a ward, but he saw more fit to use me as a jester. We never got along, you see, with me being outstandingly popular, and him being outstandingly hated. He was in fact the third son of the noble house; a noble in name alone, but he was exceedingly lucky. For a while.
Both his father and one of his older brothers had died in the civil war that directly precluded his rise to power. The other one of his older brothers died of mysterious circumstances; it was a poorly kept secret that he had murdered him. Well, Luther Newland couldn’t murder a fly, really, he as as incompetent as they come. It was the Bailiff who had murdered him; a self serving man who saw the young lord as an easier target to manipulate. That’s how I started out; frustrated from the shit end of the stick I had received.
Slap.
I winced at Luther's strike, a fresh red mark appearing on my face. The woman he was courting, a bitch of a noble named Marceline, laughed. Sadist.
“Come on, songbird! Show us that voice you’re so famous for!” I gritted my teeth, turning to face the derisive glare that Luther gave me. He laughed as I turned back at him.
“Fuck this.” I said, making my way out of the Baron’s court. I had endured years of mental and emotional abuse up until this point, but I drew the line at physical abuse. It had slowly escalated over the few weeks before. If only Luther had known how bad he fucked up. Frustration burning hot in my heart, I resisted the urge to deck the little shit across the court floor and made my way to the streets.
“You can’t leave! I own you! Get back here—” I slammed the door behind me.
The city of Westray was a rancid pit before I took over. Granted, it was a rancid pit after, but we kept the homeless beggars off the street. I still remember being accosted by the beggars there. I was glad to drain the noble purse. The noble clothes didn’t help.
I waved at my favorite shop keeper, grabbing an apple with one hand even as I flung a coin with the other. It was a good idea to eat before you got drunk. Really drunk. No, really. Drunk.
I made my way to my favorite tavern, a shoddy little hole in the wall. It was literally The Hole In The Wall, as it was literally build into a wall. The owner got a nice little kick back for helping maintain it; though not enough that its door wasn’t made of rotting or splintered wood that fell lopsidedly off its hinges as I slammed it open.
The mismatched floorboards were covered in many stains, and the room smelled like alcohol and piss. The population was sparse this early into the afternoon, but there was still time for it to grow. The disenfranchised beggars who haunted it's tables raised wooden mugs at me. “Songbird!” One of them weakly cried my nickname. I gave a weak smile before leaning over the bar itself.
A wooden cup slammed down next to me.
“Why so down, songbird?” Bjorn leaned over the bar conspiratorially.
“That shit Luther.” I replied, earning a cheer from a beggar near the bar.
“Oh ho! Be careful lad; you’re speaking high treason!” Bjorn shouted. I smirked.
“I’d need a few more down me for that!” My afternoon started as I downed my first mug.
I had a rather embarrassing habit in my youth; One that led to me being known around my city under the epithet “songbird”. It was unbefitting of my title of Vampire King. Nonetheless, I am a proponent of accurate representation.
“—The bloody king ruled men no more!” I raised a mug in the crowded tavern, earning several more raised in reply. My hand stuck to the top of the table where I had set it down. The room was crowded and rowdy, filled almost shoulder to shoulder with dirty, ragged peasants. Several tankards were raised in reply. Several more people, though, shouted back.
“For his head did roll across the floor!” They replied in a drunken cheer as I staggered away from my seat and into the crowded room, gaining new stains on my noble clothes from the dirt that ground off as I bumped into miners and beggars.
“And in the room he painted red—” I began to shout.
“—He spawned a wave of new undead.” A chiming, high pitch voice replied. I scanned the tavern for its source, but that was the only verse it interrupted with. I furrowed my eyebrows, but continued all the same.
“—No more was he extolled!” I finished the verse, looking around the room for—
“At least as far as we were told.” The source of the voice hooked her arm around mine, grabbing the ale from my hand and knocking it back in one go.
I continued, unperturbed. What a pushy woman. Although, I didn’t know the half of it yet. “The red banner saw its end!”
“No longer did the lords knee bend!” The bar shouted back, the energy in the room dampening as the song fell off of its usual beat.
“The bloody kingdom disavowed!”
“At least, it is for now.” I took a hard look at the woman at my side. Her eyes were a nearly glowing amber, her skin almost porcelain and of remarkable complexion; clearly not the variety of woman you find hanging around with peasants. Porcelain is what I thought at the time; retrospectively, or maybe even just sober, I would have realized it was abnormally pale. But a few drinks deep? She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. And her smile was beyond dazzling.
A smile seems like a small thing to fixate on, but that's only if you don’t understand what malnutrition will do to your teeth. My sober brain might have focused more on how she was speaking of undead and whispering conspiracies about the vampire king, but my drunk brain… my drunk brain was focused on her chest, as she pressed against my side, and the feeling of her breath on me, far too fixated on the sensation to care that she was hovering inches from me. The tavern around me had returned to the noisy chatter of drunkards, but even that would soon fade as all but the most devout denizens slipped away into the night. Me and Evangeline, however, would spend another few hours chatting over a table.
I don’t particularly remember the topic of the conversations; she was a great conversationalist, though. She asked lots of questions. Questions about my ancestors, the noble family that raised me, and my opinions on the bloody kingdom. Lots of my memories around this point are fuzzy; it might have been a symptom of the alcohol, or a symptom of the transition, or perhaps just something I forgot in my old age.
What I do remember, though, is Evangeline against the wall.
“Your hands are as cold as death!” I said in shock.
“I’m cold blooded. God’s, you look just like him.”
“Like who?” I asked, staring into her glowing eyes. Back then, I thought that my vision was just blurry and it was a trick of candle light playing against them, but knowing what I do now, I know that her eyes were actually glowing. She slid her hand up my neck, then over my mouth. She leaned forward, her lips caressing the skin of my neck.
Then she sank her teeth into me.
