Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #18 (End)

Bad Blood

by Chiri Vulpes

Finally freed from their mortal prison, the newborn immortal discovers that something has gone awry. They awoke too soon, and that... could be the end of it all.

 

My eyes snapped open.

It was dark... but I could see. I could see as clear as day, even. That did make sense, though, because, if my plan had worked, night would now be as day had been before.

A scent of must and old books pervaded my surroundings — a scent much more vivid than it had previously been. In the distance, somewhere outside the room... the scent of a roast — dinner — and... blood. 

Fresh... light... feminine.

I was hungry.

I knew exactly who that was. I also happened to know that, in precisely seven seconds, a bell would toll a single time, marking the first hour past the dead of night. Strange — I had awoken earlier than I had calculated, but... no matter. This toll would remind Alyssa to return to this room, and to bring me what I now needed.

Because, if my plan had worked, blood was precisely what I needed.

Not hers, of course — she was too valuable to me, and I to her. We’d made other preparations, of course, just as we’d prepared everything else that night.

Having absorbed my surroundings, and understood the extent of my new senses, I turned my attention to my own body. This, of course, was the star of the show at the moment. It was the reason why I could see so clearly, smell... it was both the reason why I was chained against the wall in the darkness, and the reason why I needed blood.

No longer was I human. I had escaped those mortal confines. And, to suit the change, my body felt entirely different. 

Firstly, I was fairly certain that I had lost weight. This wasn’t a change I minded. In my time researching immortal rebirths, I’d allowed my own mortal body to slip — after all, I had no interest in attempting to sustain a body I had no interest in inhabiting. Consequently, I had gained weight... I had come accustomed to my own smell. I had been covered in unsightly, unkempt hairs.

She had not minded, of course. She wholeheartedly supported my endeavour, and in precisely six seconds, when the bell tolled one, she would see that endeavour bear its fruit.

She would see, as I did now, that my clothes hung loosely around my taut, springy, pale white skin, skin substantially more smooth and pristine than I had expected. I, however, did not mind in the least to see the departure of hair in this new, immortal form.

Already, I desperately desired to remove the clothes I was wearing. Beyond the lingering, disgusting scent from my old mortal form, and the coarse, rough texture of their cheap material, they also obscured the form that I wanted to lay my eyes upon, the form that I desperately wanted to explore fully. I wanted to see the perfection that the painstaking research had produced. I needed to.

But, due to the cuffs of silver which locked me against this wall, I could not. Not yet.

It was at about this moment when I noticed that I had not breathed a single breath since I had awoken. It would make sense, considering it had only since been two seconds, with precisely five seconds remaining until the single toll of the bell...

However, I knew that it was more than that. An immortal body did not require air. An immortal body could survive without it for hours on end, days, weeks... years. There was no threat of asphyxiation. None.

Whether I would breathe, in my future, would be determined by whether or not I was intending to blend in with the mortals around me. It was the same for blinking. I had no need for the action save for... blending in.

...It hadn’t even been three seconds. I needed the time to pass faster. Every second felt like an entire minute, maybe more... There was only so much that I could consider while I was chained against this wall — my past and my future mattered, yes, but they did not hold a candle to the needs of my present. 

I needed to be freed... 

...And I needed to feed.

Finally, there were four seconds remaining, and these two needs had begun to define me.

If I had been in my mortal body, and I had not eaten for a week or more — something I had done before, on occasion — I would be feeling only a small fraction of what I currently felt. 

I had heard whispers of this. Natural births of the immortals, due to the nature of their formation, often resulted in the newborn attacking the very first mortal they stumbled upon, leaving but a dry corpse for the populace to gawk at. 

My own birth, however, was not natural. This was the result of my research. A birth which required blood in a series of transfusions, alchemised in a certain way using ancient arts that even I, with years upon years of research, had only scratched the surface in understanding.

And on top of that, in the end, my success was little to do with my research and more to do with the fact that, by pure chance, I had wound up with two captured immortals.

Truly, though, could you imagine a mortal researching immortal rebirths, without immortal help, and actually succeeding? Alternatively, can you imagine an immortal being caught in the first place? Hah!

Though others had tried what I had — researching immortal rebirths — most quite reasonably stayed away, believing it to be the fool’s errand that it was. I too would have stayed away, if not for the incredible luck I had been given. That luck had then been the main source of my perseverance, and the primary reason for my disregard of my own health. By pure luck, I had been given a chance, and it was surely a chance that I would never gain again.

I had weighed my odds of success and found it worth the risk. Anything to escape my mortal chains. Anything to escape the waking torment.

Three seconds until the bell would toll. 

Though I was unmoving — not a breath, not a blink, just staring into the pitch dark of this room, waiting for the passage of time — not in the least bit was I patient.

Where before I had succeeded in my research, I had allowed my clothes and habits to fray... now it was my own mind beginning to fray. To an outsider, I would likely appear cold and emotionless, a body of marble or stone, able to be patient for an indeterminable amount of time... But, inside the confines of my own mind? I was screaming. I was crying. I was tearing at the walls of my subconscious, each second only magnifying the pain and panic ever more.

How long would it be before I surrendered to it? How long would it be before I sacrificed my own hands to escape the silver cuffs?

I looked down at them, gazing at the silvery rings around my thin wrists. Was there any way I could release them?

Heh. If not for my mounting insanity, I could almost laugh. Wasn’t it amusing? A substantial part of the preparations I’d made had been to make absolutely sure that at this moment, I would not be able to escape, no matter what I did. That I would have my final transfusion — the first blood I would drink with my own fangs.

The blood from the other room, the blood in the woman I’d known... it called me.

I had made an oath, but it was the oath of a mortal. Did an oath of that type still hold, now that I was immortal?

Pah. Of course it did. But my mind was grasping more at straws by the moment, panicking to an ever-increasing extent at the continual lack of that final, most-important transfusion. 

I already knew it wouldn’t be long until I lost that ability to reason.

Two seconds.

I was almost there. If I held on just a moment more... Everything would be okay. 

I simply needed to resist the urges. If I resisted the urges, and I had my final transfusion, I wouldn’t need blood again for years to come. I would never feel this way again.

But on the other hand, if I failed to resist? 

I would lose everything. All of that research, all of the time spent perfecting the formula, becoming an immortal through artificial, guided means... It would all be for nought if, at this time, my willpower were to run dry.

I found myself looking once more at the cuffs, begging them to open, begging them to release me early. I would be good! I would be strong! I would resist the temptations. I would get the transfusion I needed. There would be no senseless killing.

...My wrists were very thin.

My fingers were thin, too, with delicate fingernails. Hands unlike what I would have expected from my immortal form. Hands unlike what the cuff had been designed for.

After everything, had all of our preparation been useless? Had something gone awry, and my immortal form had not been to our expectations? Had the blood been... bad? I’d woken up early, and... This cuff... it could not hold me.

Carefully, in order to not touch my delicate, wonderful marble skin against the silver, I compressed my hand and slid it up through the cuff. Hahaha! It had taken much, much less than a second to do that.

I slid my other hand out, more confidently this time.

At one second remaining before the bell would toll, my entire upper body had been freed. Only my legs remained in the cuffs.

But they would not remain that way for long. I ripped the disgusting, mortal cloth from my immortal flesh, tearing and tossing it asunder and subsequently comprehending the reason why my immortal form could not be contained as we had predicted.

I didn’t spare a moment to consider the implications. The same thing which had happened to my arms had also happened to my legs — they were much more thin and... lithe than we had previously anticipated. It took nothing more than to sacrifice a bit of the perfect skin on the backs of my feet, and then I was...

Free.

At this precise moment, I heard it, in the distance. The toll of a bell. A single toll, ringing out and echoing throughout the town. 

My mouth contorted into a smile.

Then, the sound of the bell still yet to fade, I used my newfound strength and pushed off of the stone floor, my toes digging into the material as if it was dirt. 

Boom!

The door shattered outwards at my sudden force, slamming into the opposite wall and bursting apart into splinters of wood, nearly caving in the stone.

I was vaguely aware of a shriek originating from the woman down the hall to my right, but I was much more aware of the glass in her tray and... the blood in her veins.

Thump, went her heart.

I exploded in her direction, once more tearing into the stone like putty between my toes. The scent from the glass... the melody of her heart... it was... it was all divine...

Thump.

The glass was enticing, but there was also her. 

The glass? Or the woman?

Glass?

Woman?

The tray slipped from her hands as she began to fall backwards... 

But it didn’t matter. I was moving far, far too fast, faster than any mortal could ever hope to perceive. I was immortal. I was beyond the laws that bound their tiny world. 

I arrived in the same moment, and I caught the glass before it had slipped even a hair’s breadth toward the ground, the red liquid within it not even disturbed.

Thump.

I ignored her obnoxiously-loud heart, and raised the glass to my lips. My fangs were submerged in the liquid, and for a moment it was cold, and then something inside me clicked and everything was pure bliss. 

I drank from that glass. Quickly at first, but slower as time went on, slower and slower until there were only a few drops remaining, which I just tossed back into my once-parched throat.

I licked my lips, completely and totally satisfied... Finally. 

After all that time, after feeling as though my mind was going to completely come undone... I had fed for the very first time. It was wonderful. It was delicious. It was everything I could have dreamed and so, so much more.

And in addition, I also knew that I wouldn’t need that again any time soon. Not for a long, long time would I need again to feed. See — I felt the blood inside me, and I understood it. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t what we had expected, but it wasn’t bad. And it felt amazing, the sensation of the final transfusion, the feeling of it coursing through my immortal veins. The feeling of it mixing with and completing my immortal blood. And with each passing moment, I felt my life force growing steadier, more stable. It wasn’t what I had thought it would be... I wasn’t what I thought I would be, but... I could tell... I was perfect. It was more than just my blood that was complete... I was complete.

And then I reached out and caught my assistant before she fell any further. 

If I had still been processing everything at the previous speed, that moment, then? It would be one to stretch on for an age. Eventually, she began to recover, taking deep breaths as she stared at me with those adrenaline-filled, dilated eyes, her ears up straight. 

I gave her a playful little scritch behind those ears. “I’m sorry for frightening you, Alyssa,” I smiled. That smile only grew, too — half at my cute companion, whose face was turning red, and half at the sound of my own voice, which was so much... more... full of life, far more melodic than it had been before. 

Alyssa blinked, tears starting to form in her eyes as those big, furry ears of hers trembled a little bit. “It’s... it’s okay. You did warn me that this was the most risky part, after all...”

I nodded. “We were lucky. I very well might have been lost to vampire instincts if not for the blood mixture being prepared in the glass as it was. However... now it is over.”

She took a shaky breath, looking me up and down.

“We have succeeded,” I said simply, still smiling wide.

Alyssa hesitantly smiled back, tilting her head slightly. “Hey, um, I have a question. Actually, two questions.”

“What is it?”

“Why are you a girl now? And why are you naked?”

 

This story was written in early 2020. I had bigger plans for where it was going, but... well... I never managed to take it there, so it shall remain a oneshot. Ah well. I hope you liked this at least!

If you're interested in my stories, take a peek at my website, chiri.works. There's lots more links there to all my favourite stuff I've worked on. Thanks!

— Chiri Vulpes

Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #18 (End)

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