Secrets Past

Prologue

Somewhere downtown New York- 1940’s

Brogen

I’m on the rooftop in a darkened alley watching this man, or parasite, stalk a woman. He’s following her but trying to be invisible to her. It looks like he’s going to rob her with a hand gun, I can see the bulge of the handle underneath his knee length coat.

I’m sitting on the roofline, with my feet dangling over the edge, watching the scene below me. The man catches up with her, grabs her arm, and pulls her into the alley, pushing his gun against her chest. Suddenly, the man rips open the woman’s dress coat, revealing her soft blue dress underneath.

I’ve just about had enough. I’m watching him as he pushes her up against the stone brick wall of the building, sliding his filthy body against hers. The woman shrieks and is backhanded for her outburst. She falls silently to the dirty ground, unconscious.

Slowly standing up, I gently fling myself over the edge of the building, falling quickly and landing steadily on the balls of my feet. My overcoat whipping behind me in the breeze that I cause as I fall. I suppose, to one on the ground looking up at me, it would look like a cape billowing behind me as I was nearing the ground.

As I land, with very little noise, straight down and in the darkened corner, the man hasn’t seen or heard me. I watch and wait further. My kind doesn’t feel pain. My kind doesn’t die...easily. The woman doesn’t see me, her eyes are still closed. I stay to the shadows and watch what the man might do. Any naked flesh exposed, and this man is a dead man.

I watch this asshole slowly slide his filthy body over the woman. He leans over her and pushes open her knees. He eases her dress up and uses his knees to open her legs further while he fumbles with his trousers. He’s made my decision for me. People like him are the pure evil in this world and I’ve had enough. I step from the shadows, letting the low dim light of the streetlamp reveal me.

My back is to the street as I enter the darkening alleyway. This man has nowhere to go but against the three brick walls of the buildings surrounding us. He looks up and his eyes widen in shock, suddenly seeing a shadow of a man appear in front of him.

He pushes off from the woman on the ground and backs up into the alleyway. He turns his head in every direction, looking for a place to escape. He knows he’s trapped.

I walk over to the disgustingly smelly man and he fires his gun at me. Three times in the chest...BANG...BANG...BANG. I keep walking, little pain, no flinching. I’ve been shot before and I heal quickly. I need to act fast, with the shots fired from the gun, someone will report it and I don’t want the police tracking me down.

I reach for the gunned man, grabbing him by the trench coat and I bare my teeth...or rather, fangs as they slowly distend from my gums. Yanking the man towards my body, I growl low in my chest, showing the man how I’m disapproving of his actions. He suddenly smells worse, as if he’s released bodily functions in fear of me. I flash him my teeth, then quickly sink my fangs into the tender human flesh at his throat. I drink the hot, warm blood from his artery, and let it run through my body, fueling me.

It only takes a few minutes before the man is limp...dead on his feet. The predator has become the prey once again. The predator at the top of the food chain remains. I quickly lick at the blood around the puncture holes, sealing them shut with no scar. My saliva heals human skin quickly. I drop the trash of a man lying there dead in the alley. Someone will find him sooner or later.

Hating the taste of his vile blood in my mouth, I’d spit it out, but I need it so badly. I vowed a long time ago to not hunt innocents. So, I’ve been hunting the predators of the innocent. It’s a much easier idea to swallow if I think of them that way.

Walking back over to the woman lying unconscious on the ground, picking her up gently, I carry her easily down the two blocks to the hospital.

Upon entry of the hospital, the nurses rush over to help. I lay the poor woman on a gurney, explaining to them that I heard a scream, and followed it to find her in an alley. I also let them know there is a man, lying on the ground there as well. The police can use that tip to dispose of the man. With all the commotion around me, I’m able to slide out of the hospital, undetected.

A savior of souls, a predator of evil. I laugh, I’m no superhero, that’s for sure. But an abomination. I’ve been around for centuries now, just surviving. Living, but not living. Vampires don’t live. Do they? Maybe. Just existing then.

Chapter 1

Upstate New York 1968

Sitting in my lounge chair, I’m staring out into the black night. I glance over at the clock: 9:52pm. It’s almost time for me to venture out and find my next sustenance.

I hate calling them victims, because they are not. They are the predators who prey on the weak, the innocent, the less unfortunate and the average Joe.

It doesn’t matter, man, or woman, they will become victims of anyone roaming the late-night streets. This is one reason why I picked the dingy areas of New York to live in for the past few years. Always a string of someone to sustain me, my vicious and violent need for blood.

With me never aging, I must move around before someone notices. Whenever I get sick of the stench of the city I exist in, I leave. I find a new place to exist and find predators to sustain me. They are all over. Easy to find.

Oh, yes, I’ve had an innocent here and there. It’s easy. But I don’t kill them. I can’t. Why take a life if it’s innocent? If they haven’t done despicable things, then I let them live.

I meet them in bars, passing on the street. The innocents are easier to grab, women mostly. I stare into their eyes, cloud them over, then take them somewhere private. Sometimes I take them to the alley around the corner. Occasionally, I take them to my home, willing of course, and only erase the memory of me feeding from them. I allow them to keep the memories of me pleasuring them in my bed, and I always erase the memory on how to find me at my home.

My fangs are sharp enough, once they puncture the skin, they slide right in and I drink quickly. It only takes a few minutes to take what I need. When I’m finished, I ease my mouth off them, I lick over the small prick holes and they seal shut within seconds. Once the two pin holes are healed, there is no scar. No mark. No way of detecting of what happened. No trace that I was even there. Then sometimes I erase their memory of meeting me and for sure on what I’m doing to them.

It’s more intimate if I drink from their neck or groin areas, verses their wrist. The blood is warmer and sweeter when it’s closer to the heart or from a main artery. When I drink, from man or woman, it doesn’t matter, the blood is the same.

Sometimes, if a human has been drinking or doing drugs, I can taste it. Drugs are the worst. It can taste foul and I have learned to leave those unhealthy humans alone. I’ve learned my lesson on those. It’s like eating rotting flesh, or meat. I would assume so anyway, from what I can remember from my human life many, many years ago. I still eat human food, occasionally, and it can tide me over for a few hours, but blood is my first food source.

It doesn’t matter the sex, age, race or weight, blood is blood. It all goes down. Each person has their unique flavor. Just like a perfume they might wear. Some are better than others and I have sometimes, come back time to time to the same person.

But after time goes by, and a few decades later, those humans die. And I look for other humans to go to. There are other vampires out there, some are rogues and we tend to avoid each other. We stay hidden as much as possible from humans.

I go out during all times of day or night. Night is better as the sun makes me tired after prolonged exposure to the sun’s rays. It heats my flesh, making it a few degrees warmer than my normal cooler temperature than a human. Ninety-six degrees is fine for me.

I’m a non-living being, as some people and old wives-tales may say, but I’m not cold to the touch. I have warm skin, I eat human food, my heart beats, just slower than a normal human heart does. I fuck, I take women and men to my bed. Mostly women, because men are ashamed by their choice of wanting a man verses a woman. I don’t care. A fuck is a fuck.

I’ve been fucking men almost as long as women. But I do not use them in any other manor but for sex and feeding. The need for sex is less than the need for feeding. I feed a few times a week on blood. Longer if I can hold out. Sex, occasionally, just to have a willing partner and for a sexual release. Sometimes sooner if the need for a frenzy is on me.

A frenzy only hounds me every few months, when the moon changes, unless I can hold it off. That’s when the need to feed and the need to fuck is so over powerful and I do both, and it’s lovely. Normally, the human is with me for a few days to heal. Wounds made while in the sexual feeding frenzy can take a bit to heal, even with my saliva. It’s not like I intend to hurt them, it’s the sex that’s so over the top, and the person I’m with needs the time to be able to walk again. I chuckle to myself at that thought.

It’s the feeling to bury yourself in someone so badly, you can’t see where you end, and they begin. It’s a feeling of completion, an integration, a need to feel one with someone, I guess. I’ve only felt that at one time in my life, but that was a few centuries back.

The frenzies can be intense, but I haven’t killed anyone in a few centuries. There are those out there who kill every time, but I’m centuries old. I’ve learned to control the wildness and violent within me. It’s all about control over the monster inside us as vampires.

Time passes quickly for us. Most tend to sleep their non-living selves away. Sometimes only waking long enough to find out what year it is, and maybe a quick feed. Some chose to wake when there is war, and to feed on the dying, like what was done to me. But that vampire chose to change me, for some reason.

I choose to walk among the living. Remembering what it was like to be human. To feel the skin of another against mine. Contact. Interaction with another. Conversation. I can feel the sun warm this flesh. The cool rain hitting my skin. I feel everything. Except my slower beating heart and the need to love again.

My heart is slower than a human. It beats, but with our need for blood, I process it much slower. Hence, the need to feed a few times weekly. We have super speed. Strength. Agility. Healing. Some vampires even have ‘special powers’ if you will. I haven’t seen to many, but there are some out there with them.

Me, I can do a few things. I feel emotions floating from others. I feel anger, sadness, fear. I can tell when someone is not telling the truth, which has become handy a time or two. When I erase the mind of a human, I can give them a false story for their time loss. Or why they might be in a different place than they originally were.

I can also ‘hibernate’ longer than other vampires. I can go into a deep sleep mode not needing to feed for a few decades at a time. It’s a good thing when my ‘human life’ must die or something happens, and to many of the humans see. I make myself ‘die’ to make it more normal for humans to process.

We bleed, so if I’m shot, or hurt, it’s real. But it takes a lot more than a gunshot to kill me. That’s happened only a handful of times and it’s not an over joyous time for me. I can also levitate off the ground and ‘fly’. I can think of a place to be, and I can be there in a matter of seconds.

I’m one who likes to watch the world, and those in it learn, evolve and continue with life. I’ve seen so many human ideas take shape and excel on earth. Automobiles. Airplanes. Electricity. Indoor plumbing. That’s a good one to have.

Connecticut- 1985

Traveling around this country every twenty years or so gets boring. But on the other hand, things change, people change and surely the styles change. In the past twenty years, humans have changed so much and have come so far in evolving with technology. It’s an amazing thing watching the human mind rip through ideas and make them a real thing you can hold in your grasp.

The styles in clothing, hair and jobs. It’s funny to think back when I was fighting in the war, what we had then, and what we have to compare to now.

Its mid-summer in Clinton, Connecticut, and I’m sitting in a quiet coffee shop, sipping my tea, reading a novel I borrowed from the local library. The coffee shop sits on the Clinton Harbor, overlooking the Harbor view. I love the water. It’s quiet here and fills my soul with peace. Something, for someone like me, it’s greatly desired. I’ve seen