Key to the Abyss
J.S.Danskin (Exegesis)

Author's Note: Woo new fic! I've come up with quite a lot of different ones, new ones I mean. Check them out if you want. But this is my most recent one, a fic about how a vampire falls in love with a human his clan are intending to use to break the curse. It's quite compilicated (yeah I meant to spell that wrong!) but I hope you guys enjoy it. It was inspired by Anne Rice's 'Interview With the Vampire' but I don't think it's really like it. Set in the present day. Anyway! Please review.

Chapter One - Meet My Family

I drew my teeth from her neck and let her drop to her knees, slumping to her side onto the hard ground, face pale, eyes wide and glassy. The hand I had been holding over her mouth to prevent her from screaming was covered in little bite marks, but I hadn't noticed she was doing that. The two punctures in the side of her neck were the roots of my life source, the gateway to the succulence contained in her main artery. This, of course, was her blood. Mmm, blood. I love the sound of that word, it makes my spine shiver and my mouth water just thinking about it.

But for now my thirst was quenched. I looked at her, lying on the ground. She was a pretty little thing, brunette curls that would bounce when she had walked, a small delicate figure lined with silk skin and two pretty green eyes now signifying fear and pain. I can't remember if it hurt, when I was turned from a mortal into the vampire that I now am. I imagine it did at first, but I don't significantly remember the experience as painful. I remember it as being freed, but trapped at the same time.

I am a vampire. I am nearly two centuries old, but have the face of a young twenty-year-old man, and it is my face that draws my victims to me unwittingly. Ah, a beautiful thing it is that these mortals are simple beings and do not stop to think before acting, before accompanying a stranger with intense brown eyes into the darkest street of the darkest town before he devours them. I wonder, was I ever as naïve and consequently stupid as to fall victim to the vampire who sired me, or was it because he more cunning than I was as a man which led to my fate as a cursed being of the underworld. The undead, as we are called by the humans . . . demons, children of Satan, but I see us . . . as rats.

Nocturnal creatures forever doomed to roam the streets of eloquent and heavily populated cities, capitals of crime so our actions are not investigated thoroughly. Like rats, we are confined to picking off the leftovers, except that rats devour the vast amounts of rubbish, while my kind consumes the cutthroats and criminals of this city of Le Mans, a pleasantly designed human town with plenty of Roman ruins and old houses. Soon we will move from the city in which I have stayed and fed from for over fifty years, but I am not sad in the least. In fact, I am glad of this, for we are one step closer to finding the cure to this tedious curse that envelopes me in the powers I never truly wished to possess . . . forgive me. Now, I must introduce you to the 'we' I continue to speak of.

I live with another three vampires; we are all descendants of one of the first vampires in existence, Monsieur Charles Valinos, although only by blood and not flesh or other genetic material his true offspring possess. It is this flesh and the blood of one the last of his descendants that is the reason we are moving from our city home to a much quieter and secluded piece of land, where Valinos' great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great granddaughter, Rose Pullman, lives, in Taurize in the far south of France about 40 miles from Carcassone. It is her we aim to take to the exact spot where Lord Valinos fell, through a forest in Scotland where there is an opening to the North Sea. The forest, (of which we don't know it's exact location but know it is in Central Scotland somewhere) is where our ultimate maker fell to the sword of both his and our enemy, the Yarest clan. Enough, now I am becoming irrelevant, as is a great weakness of mine.

My name, first of all, is Tarach, which was my surname when I was a human but prefer to be known to as that rather than Fitzgerald (for my mortal father was Austrian), for obvious reasons. I do not think Fitzgerald is an appropriate name for a powerful vampire like myself. A vampire I continue and loathe to live with, my sire, Conor, sired me. It is he that I am bound to by blood and so-called appreciation. Ha! So he says, but he is as aware as me that we are cursed and not blessed. Oh, for the life of a common human being without a care or thought to true logic or reality, creating impossible dreams for myself. But unless I work with my treacherous creator to find the heir to Lord Valinos' legacy I am forced to remain a vampire, and that I have become bored of.

Conor. Each night I see him and think "You are the bastard that did this to me. I will make sure you are made human first and then I shall drain your blood." After all, every mortal dies, and I long to die. Conor is the oldest of all the vampires I roam with, which automatically makes him the leader. He boasts to be the strongest of us all, but I can see the wariness and anxiety in his dark green eyes when he sees me attack a victim with such strength and skill. I think he is worried that I am perhaps stronger than him, but I will have to be patient to find out. I do not fear Conor, but I cannot let the other two down.

One of which is Karla, Conor's favourite, but she tells me often it is I that she is in love with. I don't know if she speaks the truth or whether it is another of the games she enjoys so, which mainly play Conor and myself off against one another. No doubt it is amusing to her. Despite this childish annoyance, I am however extremely fond of Karla, who was also sired by Conor like myself. Instead of the black that the rest of us wear, Karla prefers to entice her victims, young men and small children, by appearing pleasant and beautiful by wearing pretty dresses and keeping her hair in gorgeous blonde curls instead of dying her hair black. She has intoxicating blue eyes and a pretty pixie face, which makes her very desirable, but I would not touch her, there are too many consequences.

But by far my favourite of our small and motley family is Sarra Jann, sired by the same mysterious vampire as Conor. She's more of a traditional vampire like me and Conor, with our hair dyed black and grown long, hers slid down her back while me and Conor have hair down only to our shoulders. While mine is straw-like and messy, Sarra Jann's and Conor's hair is straight and sleek. But unlike Conor, Sarra Jann airs a naturally in- control about her, her dark brown eyes survey all that is before her with speed and uncanny observational skills.

Often we sit and talk after feeding, just her and myself looking at the only natural light we can set eyes upon without drawing back with fear from: the moon and the starlight. While we fear the fierceness of the Earth's sun and the rage of the blaring flame, so electricity is our only proper source of light, but we tend not to use it, we do not agree with the new human technology, despite it having being in existence for a while.

We prefer a more traditional, simple lifestyle, feeding on humans in the dark without the cold, meaningless light of the lamppost. Yet I would tolerate it, I would tolerate it again, I would tolerate it forever and maybe even enjoy it and writhe and dance in it . . .

If I were human.

A/N: Did you enjoy that? Please review, yup yup reviewing is good and special!

"Promise to hold you close and pray, watching the fantasies decay, nothing will ever stay the same." - Falling Away With You, Muse.