Life was not anywhere near pleasant at the prison however

Life was not anywhere near pleasant at the prison however. Vitale and his fellow prisoners were worked near to death, plowing fields and getting ride of the bodies of prisoners who died almost daily. It turned out that the weekly baths they were allowed were an attempt to keep the smell at a bearable minimum.

Food was given out at a minimum as well. They were given a ration of bread, which sometimes had maggots in it, and, if they were fortunate enough, a small piece of dried beef as well. Food was the only real position that most of them had and was enough to kill for. If you didn’t die of a disease or from malnutrition, chances were that you wouldn’t live very long simply because you possessed a scrap of food.

The only other possession prisoners were allowed to keep were Bibles. Vitale, when he wasn’t toiling away in the fields a mile away, continuously flipped through a Latin version his father had left to him. He couldn’t read Latin, but it was a great comfort to have it at any rate.

Things progressively got worse over the next two years. Several times Vitale tasted death in fights with fellow inmates over food rations and water. Usually the fights were broken up after a few minutes but there were a few times when the guards simply stood by and watched. After those fights were over, one person was usually left dead, and the winner was made to carry the body off to a mass grave.

Vitale truly believed he was going to die in the horrible prison. He was so tired and hungry, barely able to move at times, even his Bible didn’t lend any comfort. He was worthless and had nothing.

One night, while tossing on the cold floor with a mild fever, he heard a voice. At first he thought the fever was beginning to make him delirious. He was wrong.

Looking through bars of his cell, he saw a man roughly the same age as he was. He wasn’t dressed in any particular finery, only a simple suit that any common man would wear. His skin however glowed with an eerie pearl sheen, and he was beautiful despite his simple attire, even Vitale would admit to that.

His crimson eyes scanned Vitale’s emaciated form as he moved a stray strand of hair from his face and tucked it behind his ear. There was no real expression in his face, only a kind of pity shining in the eyes that looked Vitale over. It frightened Vitale a bit.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” the unearthly man said, almost as if he sensed Vitale’s fear,” I mean you know harm. I’ve only come to offer you a path of redemption. Long ago, I was in a situation much like yours. I had killed a person of higher status than myself, and I was given a most grievous punishment. I was given a way to redeem myself, however, and I have made it my life’s mission to give others another chance as I was given one.”

Vitale used what little strength was left in his body to drag himself to the bars. It frightened him that this man knew what his crime was when he had never seen him before in his life, but the voice with which he spoke was so beautiful, so seductive, that he couldn’t help but listen to him. He wanted this redemption. He wanted the chance to start his life anew.

The man smiled, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “You have wronged and have been wronged,” he whispered, gripping the rusty bars of the cell door with his pale hands,” You want to prove yourself worth something, prove that you are truly sorry for the crime you have committed.”

“Yes,” Vitale croaked, his throat raw from screaming because of the lash.

The man closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration. Suddenly, Vitale heard the soft clink of the cell door lock, and the door slowly opened. He was amazed. The man had no keys on him to be seen, and he had not moved a muscle to open the door.

“Are you afraid of darkness?” the man asked, holding out his hand with his eyes trained on Vitale.

Vitale nodded, and the man’s smile widened. “You shall be sent down the proper path then,” he said, closing the cell behind Vitale.

Vitale was whisked away to a small house a league away and taken to the wine cellar. No light shone into the tiny room and there were no distinctive features to be noted. A chill went down Vitale’s spine. What had he gotten himself into?

He felt the man’s breath upon his neck and stiffened.

“Are you ready, Vitale?” he whispered.

Vitale wasn’t sure of his choice anymore, but he knew that nothing could be worse than starving to death in the hell hole of a prison he had been sentenced to. He was willing to take the chance and give himself wholly to whatever path the man next to him spoke of.

He swallowed and nodded, sealing his fate.

A white hot pain worse than that of the brand spread through his neck and into the very pits of his soul. He could feel his entire being twisting inside of him, and had the man not been supporting him with an arm around his waist, he would surely have collapsed in an unconscious mass on the floor. It was as if the very life was being sucked out of him.

As quickly as the excruciating pain had begun a warm, soothing liquid passed through his lips and down his parched throat. It was a glorious feeling that spread through his being. He felt as if he were feasting at a grand banquet held in his honor, celebrating his return to society. He was filled with a comforting feeling, almost as if his wife was there and he was holding her.

Then, darkness came.

Vitale fell into a deep, deep sleep, and he was almost afraid that he was never going to awaken. He struggled his way to the surface of the dark waters of sleep, but the abyss seemed to never end. Maybe he was dead and this was the afterlife, his punishment for his sins.

He awoke with a start, staring his surroundings as if he had never seen them before. In fact, he was looking at everything with new eyes. Though there was no light source within the room, he could see every detail as clearly as the sun had been shining in it. The walls were made of brown bricks of mud and the wine racks of a simple wood from the surrounding forest. The floor was of the same wood as the racks, though rotted in places.

The man who had taken him from the prison leaned against one wall, his foot on the wall and his arms crossed across his chest. He wasn’t nearly as ethereal has he had once been to Vitale. He simply appeared as a man would on any given day.

“Finally awake are we?” he asked, looking keenly at Vitale,” I was afraid that I had taken a bit too much, that you were dead.”

Vitale rose to his feet and dusted himself off. He could feel that he was not longer emaciated, that his body was as fit as it had been in his military days. He looked at the man, questions flashing through his mind.

“Yes,” he answered, reading each question in Vitale’s mind as if it were an open book,” You are not alive, nor are you dead. Immortality courses through your veins and only the sun will ever be able to cause you any measure of harm; though over time that may cease to be the case at all. The darkness is you friend, your lover. It will provide for you all that you will ever need, the blood you will need to keep strong.”

Vitale’s eyes widen in shock. He knew what he was. He was the very essence of legends and myths. He would live forever, traveling the world and tasting of the things that were not within his reach before!

“Tell me,” Vitale asked,” if I am to drink the lives of others to survive will I have the misfortune of being caught?”

The man shook his head. “Only if you are stupid enough to allow it, my friend,” he answered,” and if you ever leave behind any solid evidence of the existence of our kind, others will hunt you down and destroy you.”

Vitale laughed, blinded by the prospects presented by his new life. He walked over to the door of the cellar, looking back at his savior long enough to nod farewell. His first stop was to be the warden’s office in the prison. He knew the man spent almost every night in his office and rarely went home. It would be the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge.

He found the new speed provided by his new body invigorating and quickly reached the prison. Scaling the walls to the only window in the prison, Vitale slipped in without a sound. There was only a single guard in the warden’s office, and he made quick work of him, draining him as his rescuer had done to him. Placing the man’s body in the warden’s chair, he sat on the desk and waited, knowing the man was making his nightly rounds of the prison.

It was just reaching midnight when the warden entered his office. He turned and saw Vitale sitting on his desk, the dead man limp in the chair, and turned ghostly pale.

“Th-the guards said you were dead!” he cried, backing against a wall,” They said that your body was thrown in with the others!”

Vitale chuckled. “They were only covering up for their own skins,” Vitale replied, rising from his seat and approaching the warden,” But I have returned from the dead in a sense.”

He slammed the warden against the wall, his hand around his throat. The warden began to choke and gag as Vitale squeezed throat, begging for his life. Vitale wasn’t hearing any of it though. He dragged the helpless man over to the fire where the brand sat in the blazing fire and pinned him to the wall once more.

Taking the brand, he regarded it for a moment, the memories of his first few hours in the jail flashing before his eyes. He looked from the brand to the warden and then placed it on his skin just below his right eye.

“You will suffer as I have suffered,” Vitale hissed, placing the brand in nearly the same place as the warden had on him. Twenty three times he did it. He wasn’t about to give the man anymore mercy than he was shown.

The warden fell from Vitale’s grasp writhing in agony. He begged to be allowed to live; that his three daughters had no mother and needed their father to support them, but Vitale wasn’t buying any of it. He simply regarded the warden with contempt, taking his words blatant lies to save his own skin.

He bent over and grabbed the warden’s head, looking him straight in the eye. “May God have mercy on you,” he whispered, and with a jerk of his hands, the warden was dead in an instant.

Vitale heard guards rushing down the hall to the warden’s office and jumped out the window. He ran as fast as he could back to the house where his savior was stood. He was just as he had been when Vitale had left, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

“Do you know what you have done, Vitale?” he asked, he brow furrowed in displeasure.

“I destroyed the man who has caused so many so much pain,” he answered, his cheeks flushed with the life of the guard.

“And you have damned three little girls to lives of suffering and hardship,” he hissed, getting up and looking at Vitale with severe disappointment in his eyes,” Not everyone lies to you, Vitale. You think you are the only truth in this world, but you are not. Think before you act next time or you may end of destroying something that you once held dear. I expected so much more of you. Apparently you are no different than the others I have come across.”

He left, and Vitale never same him again. His harsh words stuck to him though and made him feel more guilt than he had ever felt in his life. What was he to do with his life now? He was going to live forever, but if he had so little control over himself how was he going to make anything of it?

For fifty years he wandered, contemplating this question. He never fed off of innocent people he passed on the street but only those rats, and the occasional cat or dog, he came across on his travels. It was enough to keep him in his right mind but never enough to satisfy the thirst lurking deep within his soul.

He spent most of his time watching people pass him by, blissfully unaware that he could end their existence in a second. It was difficult for him to control his hunger when he could smell the unique scent of everyone he came in contact with, but he managed it. It wouldn’t kill anyone at all if he could help it.

His abstinence was not to last.

It had been weeks since he had come across and real decent game from which to feed. His hunger was gnawing at his insides, and he was barely able to keep himself from falling over as he walked towards a farm in search of food. He had to have something, anything, to keep himself from going completely insane.

Sadly, the farm was without any cattle or horses. The only inhabitant was a young girl around the same age his sister had been when he had last seen her. It was winter, and her parents had taken all they had to market to sell for food and wood.

She had a dark colored shawl drawn over her head, and Vitale couldn’t see her features very well, even in the light of the fire burning in the hearth of the farmhouse. He sat in a chair she offered to him, and she set to making him a meal of what was left in the house. After setting the plate of bread and cheese in front of him, she stood over by the fire, watching him.

It was clear that she would tell he was different from any normal person but apparently it didn’t bother her. She regarded him with a sort of fascination and curiosity. She was young and inexperienced, not knowing any better in life.

Vitale didn’t touch the meal the girl had laid in front of him but rose to his feet. His thirst was far too great for him, and he could no longer think of the morals he had tired to hold on to for so long. He could smell her, almost taste her, and he wanted her more than anything else in his life.

He walked to her and caressed her cheek. She didn’t shudder or jump back at the cold skin of the back of his hand but leaned into it, cherishing it.

“Do you know what I am?” Vitale asked, putting an arm around her waist.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Are you afraid?” he continued, moving her shawl and tilting her head to one side.

“No,” she whispered.