Prey

Prologue

After 200 hundred years of living you would expect a vampire to know what he’s doing, but as for me, I’m just beginning my life. I was forced into this accursed dark gift. I was completely senseless. I mean, what do you expect a drunk seventeen year old to do when a beautiful girl with mesmerizing hazel eyes is standing alone on the street? After the change had occurred I began to think: Why would a helpless girl just stand there alone without any fear like what I had seen? It was suicide. I couldn’t believe I had fallen for it.

Yet, after everything I still despise being what I am. I hate the killing, the lying, and the stalking. I would give anything to see the light of the sun again without my eyes burning and my body reducing to ashes. Well, I guess I should tell my story before I lose interest.

XxxxXxxxX

Chapter 1

My life was in the gutter. I was seventeen and living in Paris, France with my family of seven. I was the second oldest in the Laurent family with four other siblings. The youngest, my sister, Sofia died of bronchitis a year before the Change; she was only five. After all, in the 1800’s we didn’t have all the right medications they use today. Anyway, everything changed after that: my father became a drunk; my mother hardly came out of her room. If she did, it was to walk in the garden for an hour before going inside, again, and not to be seen for the rest of the day. My other sister, Serena, disappeared a week later after Sofia’s death. She was only fifteen. My family never laid eyes on her again. I remember that night clearly, too. She was too quiet, just standing out on her balcony and staring out into the night. We tried talking to her, but it seemed so useless. She struggled inside, and I knew that much, now. Her light brown hair was in a loose braid that reached her back as she stared out into the darkness with her hazel eyes that seemed to show no emotion. Her life was falling apart with Sofia’s death. She loved her, and I loved Serena. I would have done anything to change her back into the person she used to be, but even that was out of the question.

My two brothers, Frances and Stephen died of overdrinking two months after Serena’s disappearance. Half of our family was gone by then, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t care if I died like my brothers. We had all gone out of our minds after all that had happened. Even our servants had run off so our house was empty except for my parents and me. I spent most of my time in bars drinking, gambling, and starting fights. I was lost completely. I could barely find my way back home in three in the morning. The bars were surprisingly open until then while the bartenders were trying to pry my drunk and unconscious body off their floors. Of course, this didn’t last very long. It was only two weeks after when I realized that drinking myself to death wasn’t a good way to spend the rest of my life, which I thought wouldn’t be very long. I shortened my hours at the bar and began painting. If I wasn’t painting I was playing my sister’s violin.

When I began, everything seemed to lose sense. I began to feel like I was being watched, and sometimes I caught a glimpse of a retreating figure even if it was only a blur at the corner of my eye. My father, however, couldn’t handle what I told him. He would get blinded with rage and break everything in the room. My mother begged me to talk to him outside after the fourth “little” accident. I obliged, but after she saw her roses…well, she came out of her room more often just to scold me. My father was gone more often, now. He went to bars or bought enough gifts to last years for a random waitress that served him one time or another. Soon enough he would be gone for days at a time leaving my mother and me to run the house alone. A month later he was found dead in an alleyway; his blood had been drained from his body with no witnesses.

I did everything, now, to keep my mother alive. She was all I had. I played the violin for hours in front of her door just to get her out of her room so she could look at me. When she did come out, all she ever did was place a hand on my cheek; look straight into my eyes with her deep blue ones than walk away to tend to her garden for a few minutes. I would watch her from my bedroom window while she pulled the weeds that choked her white roses. I wanted to say something to her, to make her talk to me again, but she had already forgotten everything that used to matter. It was what happened five months later that took me off the edge.

It was in the dead of winter when we kept the fireplace burning twenty-four-seven. My mother just sat on a rocking chair in front of the window. Her eyes never left the arched window. Sometimes, I would sit beside her on the armrest of the sofa and watch her. I knew she would never be the same again. I mean, how could I expect her to turn to what she used to be? In less than a year most of her family had died. What would you expect? That day, I was sitting beside her and watching the snow slowly fall. I didn’t expect her to turn and look at me.

“Why are you still here?” her voice was raw and barely audible.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her. She was looking up at me like she was fighting a battle inside.

“The others have left. Why do you stay here?” I was completely stunned. Why was she asking me this?

“Mother, what are you talking about? What are you saying?”

“They left me…all of them…” she gazed at the fireplace behind me.

“I didn’t leave you.” I whispered, taking her hand from her lap to reassure her of what I had said.

Her eyes traveled to me and replied, “You will.” I stared at her in disbelief as she turned her attention once again to the lit fireplace.

“Why do you say such things? I am still here and I won’t leave you. I swear it.”

“How can you be so sure? You could leave any day now. You don’t know what is out there. When you go to the market to buy food or to the shop where you work I don’t know if you will ever come back. I want to know that you will never leave me.”

She watched me with glazed eyes as I stood up and walked over to the fireplace. How could I answer that? Why did she want me to answer that? I could feel my anger rising for no reason. There was no point to be angry with her, but how could I not when I knew she didn’t trust me?

“What does it matter?” I asked as I craned my neck enough to see her through the corner of my eye. “I’m here, now, aren’t I? Believe me, mother. I won’t leave you.” She turned away from me and stared back at the window. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t talk to me after that. How could she? I had no idea that she had seen a brown-haired girl with hazel eyes staring at her through the window. After that night, she went crazy. I mean, literally, crazy. She had to be institutionalized. I visited her every week, but the nuns never allowed me to be in the same room with her without a guard and a nun posted to my side. They told me she talked of monsters that visited her at night in her room when they didn’t know, and that she had seen her daughter trying to “feed” on her. How? She wouldn’t say. She called her daughter Serena.

I rushed out of the foundation before I could hear anymore. I didn’t want to face reality so I did what I used to do before all of this happened. I went to the nearest bar and by nine o’clock at night I couldn’t even remember where I was at the moment. Do you see now when I mean that my life was in the gutter? There was nothing left for me and I felt like anywhere that I went I wasn’t safe. The words of my mother never left me, and I finally realized she had understood what I had been trying to tell my father all along. She had seen them, too. Why would she hide it? I had to see her. I dropped the money on the counter and shuffled towards the door.

That was when I saw her: the brown hair, the familiar hazel eyes, and the long, flowing gown that rustled in the wind. Her skin was almost as white as the snow as she watched my clumsy footsteps on the dirt road. I fell on my hands and knees without thinking of it. I didn’t mean to fall. I didn’t want to fall, but when I saw her staring at me I realized she was causing me to do this.

“Derek, what has happened to you?” her voice was smooth when she spoke, and familiar when she said my name. She bent down to look at me straight in the face. She brushed a lock of my curly brown hair away from my eyes when I finally realized something… Serena. My sister who I had lost months ago was right in front of me. The last thing I remember from that night was a sharp pain on my neck before I completely lost consciousness.

Hope everyone enjoyed this. I would love to hear what you think of the beginning of this story, so please review, and tell me what you think. It’s really appreciated. Thank you!