Return To Innocence

RETURN TO INNOCENCE

By Travis Hill

Copyright June 2014

Cover illustration by:

Rebecca Weaver

http://rebeccaweaver.com/coverdesign

I.

Sir, Konrad said, poking his head around the doorway into the library. Davis is here to see you.

Davis? I asked, looking up from the history volume I’d been engrossed in.

Yes, sir. He states that he is in distress and must speak to you right away.

Very well, I said, closing the cover of the thick tome and laying it on the small end table next to my chair. Show him in, please.

Sir… Konrad trailed off, seeming a bit indecisive. It was unusual for him.

I gave him a questioning look, but he shrugged his shoulders then disappeared. Less than a minute later, Davis walked into the library.

Davis, I said warmly. I stood up and took a step toward my old friend.

Stay back, Elian, he said, reaching into his coat pocket.

I paused, not understanding his brusque warning. I studied his face, one that was intimately familiar to me after two hundred years. My brain was unable to process the meaning of the light sunburn on his cheeks. Then the scent hit me, almost driving me into a frenzy. I stepped backward until my calves met the leather recliner I’d been reading in. I sat down hard, suddenly afraid. I hadn’t felt fear for at least three centuries.

You can smell it, can’t you? he asked, slowly making his way to a chair a few feet from mine.

Davis, I breathed, trying to get my hunger under control, what… you’re mortal again.

Not one hundred percent, he replied. The glow of his skin, the pulse in his neck pushed my hunger to new heights, frightening depths. But enough to walk in the sunlight again. Enough to eat and drink real food and actually enjoy it as I once did. Enough to know you are fighting your desire to infect me all over again.

He knew me as well as he knew himself. As a creature of the dark, it would be impossible to not know how hard it was for me to restrain myself from flying out of my chair and lunging for his throat. He watched me struggle for a few seconds, which only fueled my need, turning it into panicked desperation. I couldn’t fight it anymore. I launched myself out of the chair too quickly for any mortal eye to follow.

Davis still had enough of his vampire side left to react before I reached him. He pulled his hand from his coat pocket and held it out toward me. I was moving too fast to stop in time. The crucifix touched my bare forearm for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to instantly sear my flesh. Pain unlike anything I had ever felt shocked me into paralysis. The burning, agonizing sensation made me shriek, breaking my paralysis. I stumbled backward, hands up to guard against the cross, the fear of it touching me again overpowering the constant hunger that burned within me because of Davis’ mortal blood. He ran forward, the crucifix extended in his right hand, a glass vial of clear liquid in his left.

Please, Elian, Davis begged. Don’t make me hurt you anymore.

Neither of us could mistake the stench of scorched, rotting flesh.

How dare you bring such things into my home! I screamed while cowering on the floor.

I’m sorry, Elian, he said, shaking his head. He looked completely distraught, truly sorry for what he had done to me. I came to tell you before you stumbled across it yourself.

What? I asked. What the hell has happened to you?

I felt like crying, another emotion I hadn’t succumbed to for over a century, since my beloved Miklas and Sondra had been destroyed by an excavation crew exposing their lair to the sun.

Elian, Davis said softly, backing up until he found the chair behind him. He sat down, never taking his eyes off me. I need you to listen carefully to me. Something has happened, and not just to me. Depending on your view of it, it’s either a miracle, or the apocalypse.

I pulled myself up into my chair. Konrad appeared, hand in his housecoat pocket, where I knew he carried a pistol. As my faithful manservant for almost half a millennium, he was my protector against threats during the daylight hours.

Are you in need of assistance, sir? he asked, glaring at Davis while somehow looking worriedly at me.

Konrad got a good look at my arm, gasped, and pulled the gun from his pocket. He pointed it at Davis while taking a few steps toward the visitor, until the barrel of the weapon rested against my friend’s temple.

Put the gun away, Konrad, I said, waving my hand toward him.

When he gave me a questioning look, I nodded to assure him the gun wouldn’t be necessary. Konrad returned the gun to his housecoat pocket, then came to my side. He clucked and tsk’ed as he examined my wound, a festering, blackened blister on my right forearm. The pain was intense, but I could at least feel my fingers again.

It’s good for both of you to hear, Davis said, leaning back in his chair. He put the crucifix in his lap and the glass vial into a coat pocket. I apologize, Konrad. I truly do, but this concerns you as well.

Konrad simply nodded, knowing Davis would never harm either of us unless something far out of the ordinary was happening. My manservant stood and left the library without a word. Davis and I were silent for two uncomfortable minutes until Konrad returned with a jar of salve and cold blood bag. He punctured the small bag, dripping a small amount directly on the putrefying wound before handing it to me. My fangs easily punched through the bag material, and I began to feed while Konrad applied salve to my arm. When he was done, I gestured for him to pull up a chair and sit with us.

Go on, I said to Davis, letting him know it was time to bring us up to speed.

II.

I’m not even sure where to begin, Davis said.

He looked sad, nervous, and yet… truly joyous, as if he’d been a slave who had finally earned his freedom. That thought made me sad, as Davis, unlike most of us, had been given a choice.

Davis Walton Alder had been falsely accused of adultery and murder, and was two days from his own execution when I rescued him. He’d been a good man, noble, genuinely fair to everyone below his station. I knew for a fact that Davis wasn’t guilty. I was the guilty one. I had fed on the husband and wife who he’d supposedly killed. Their hearts were pitch black with evil, but I never told him how they’d been plotting his murder when I’d made my move.

After Davis and I had made our way far beyond the city, the sounds of pursuit non-existent at this distance, I gave him a choice. Even if he didn’t want to be like me, undead, immortal, eternally beautiful, and incredibly powerful, I would let him go. I tried to only feed on those whom no one cared about, who no one would miss. Once in a rare while, I stepped in, as I did in Davis’ case, and made awful humans leave the mortal realm for the afterlife. Feeding from the bottom of the social ladder was safe, easy, and generally free of repercussions. Merchants, nobles, and royalty tended to have the funds and the influence to make life difficult for our kind.

I told Davis the truth about the longing he’d feel to see the sun once again, how food and wine would still have the same taste, but it would be hollow. Drinking a bold, perfectly aged merlot while enjoying a king’s feast would be no more pleasurable than dining on stale bread and brackish water. I warned him about the hunger, the guilt, then the shame that would torture him when there was no longer any guilt left. I held nothing back except the truth of my crimes against his wife and her lover.

Davis’ life was over either way. He chose to join me, and we traveled the world together for decades. Even up to the last time Davis and I had gotten together, almost three years ago, we were still as close as ever as we hunted at night in exotic, foreign locations. It hurt to think none of that meant anything, but I couldn’t deny the desire to walk in the sunlight, to taste wine, food, and women in a way that I hadn’t been able to for nine centuries. Sex, like everything else in this life, was bland and empty. No matter the passion, the intensity of the love and even the lust behind it, sex was nothing more than a cardboard cutout when matched against my distant memories of engaging in it during my mortal years.

Tell me how it is you are turning back into… I trailed off, not sure what to say that wouldn’t cause any more distance between us. I had to look away as well, the throb in his neck beginning to make my thoughts pulse in a steady drum beat.

A human? A mortal? Davis snorted. What if I’ve somehow fed on a mortal with a disease? One that affects us?

I frowned, unable to discern whether or not he was joking. His heartbeat told me he was deadly serious, but it was an impossibility.

Davis, in my nine centuries, no mortal disease, bacteria, virus, nothing other than sunlight and the holy power of true believers has harmed our kind.

Losing one’s head would be most unfortunate, Konrad said in the silence following my light rebuke.

Yes, that as well. I suppose that while we do have… extensive healing abilities, we can’t heal without a brain to instruct our bodies what, where, and how to do it.

Davis barked a short laugh. We’d be no better than brainless mortals with wooden stakes.

I laughed, and even stoic Konrad cracked a small smile at the corners of his mouth. The three of us were quiet for a few moments, me lost in the memories of a gang of