HOME | DD

Description
Rule number one. Bars are not good places to pick people up. Beware of that good-looking, pale-skinned, fit-looking chick in the bar.

Rule number two. Do not publish your views that humans are bad and should be kept in check in a blog with your address on it.

"Hey! Hey bartender! Um, yeah, thanks. I'll have your house ale please." He grunted at me and turned away. He poured my drink and slid it to me along the bench. The waitress came to collect my money.

"$2.50 please." I fished in my pocket and dropped the coins in her hand. She turned away and rung it up in the till. I sipped my drink and looked around the bar. Most people here were just relaxing, laughing with friends or sitting on their own, sipping a drink. Except one girl. But she was too good for me. Pale skin, blazing green eyes, fiery hair and the figure to match. She was mesmerising. I swallowed loudly and tried to avert my eyes back to my ale. She looked up and saw me. Her eyes bored into me and I hastily looked away. Sipped my drink quickly. I glanced up again and there she was. Now on the stool beside me. She nodded to the bartender, who winked. The girl smiled dismissively at him, then turned to me. She stuck out a hand.

"Lillith Perne." She had a cute English accent and her voice was smooth and lyrical. I swallowed and looked at her hand. She half smiled and I took it, shaking it up and down.

"Carl. Carl Smith." Her slender hand felt like it could crush mine easily. There was a hidden strength inside that fingerless leather glove. She grinned.

"Nice to meet you, Carl Smith. I love your blog." Wow. She'd found me through that? Of course, I had an address on it. And a photo.

"Thanks."

"I think you're on to something with it. Humans do need to be kept in line. Not only the damage they do to each other, but the damage they do to the environment." They?

"Yeah. Humans can't survive without Earth, and we'll need to band together if we want to protect it at the rate we're going." She nodded.

"I read as much. It was fascinating." We sat in silence for a while. I thought she'd gone when her hand snaked in front of me and pinched my beer. She sipped it and made a face.

"You like this stuff?" She asked. I grinned.

"So-so." She slid it back to me and I drained what was left in the glass. I felt her eyes on me. I looked up and she was watching me intently. She saw me looking and laughed. She hopped off the barstool. I thought she was leaving and started to say goodbye when she grabbed my hand and led me towards the door. We paused outside and she kissed me, standing on tiptoes while I bent down. She nearly skipped down the street towards a parked car. She opened the passenger door and waved me in, then ran around to the driver's side. It was a nice car. I couldn't see what model it was in the dark but the upholstery felt nearly as smooth as the ride, which was taken at close to eighty miles an hour. In the middle of town. Somehow I wasn't scared. Lillith was totally in control. She turned on the radio and sang along.

"Niner nine zush lufballun, ivan vectum howitzontee." I smiled. She didn't speak German. I sung the next lines.

"Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All, Darum schickte ein General." I may have been studying German, but my voice wasn't as nice as hers. She poked her tongue out and sung over me in her garbled version.

"Alam to vin, van zantass caver." I laughed and hummed along to the rest of the song with her. Another song came on. I didn't recognise this one.

"They taped over your mouth, scribbled out the truth with their lies. Your little spies." Lillith changed to whispers. "Cru-ush…Cruush…Crush, crush crush."

We pulled up outside a fancy apartment block. She hopped out of the car and nearly ran to the door.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and gazed around in the flash lobby. There was no doorman present and she giggled and towed me to the lift. She kissed me as we went up, barely able to wait until the apartment door was closed and we fell onto the bed. She tore at me, ripping my clothes. I couldn't get hers off. There was a catch at the top of the zip on her bodysuit. She undid it for me and pulled off her boots.

Then, in the height, there was a stab in my neck. Needle-like. I froze and felt something being injected. Nearly choked. I tried to move but was paralysed. Just Lillith's sweet voice.

"Sleep now Carl. Sleep."

The room I woke in smelt funny. Like a hospital. There was a kitchenette in the corner and three doors. I got up from the hospital-like bed. The first was a cupboard, filled with medical equipment. The second was locked and the third was a bathroom. All the windows were too small to squeeze through and too high to reach. There was a crinkly, waterproof sheet on the bed and a metal table next to it. It looked like the ones off those surgery programs. I tried not to panic. There had to be a logical explanation for this. I looked in the mini-fridge. There were a couple packets of blood-red liquid. Below that there were lots of snacks. A few chocolate bars and stuff, but mostly meat. I looked in the cupboard next to it. Cups and stuff. I selected one and poured a glass of juice. I drunk it and put the cup in the sink. Unless you liked chocolate and juice, there weren't many vegetarian options in the fridge. I sat on the bed again then got up and used the bathroom. I re-entered the main room and nearly had a heart attack. Lillith had let herself in and was chewing on some beef jerky in the armchair, legs over one arm and head propped on an elbow on another. I tried the door. Still locked. I glared at Lillith and she gestured to the fridge.

"Help yourself."

"Vegetarian." I told her curtly.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. I should have guessed from your blog." She nearly snorted at the prospect of vegetarianism. I wondered if hissing at her would be too animalistic. She didn't look like it would scare her anyway. Lillith sat up and pointed at the other armchair.

"Have a seat." I sat stiffly on the chair.

"Okay. I have a story to tell, and you need to hear it."

"Why am I here?" I interrupted her.

"Ah, now that's the story. So keep quiet, even if my story seems ludicrous at times. I will back it up." I can feel my jaw taking a stubborn set, but I nod anyway. She continues. "This will sound really weird, okay?" She begins. "In 1888, there was a young girl. She was 23 years old and an orphan. Her parents had left her a large sum of money and she lived on her own in a cottage in England. She was near the southwest, in a castle district by the moors. This girl had fiery red hair and a stunning figure, which she had been taught not to flaunt and hid under the fashionable clothes of the time. Her life was fine, she had always been well cared for by her nanny, who adopted her when her parents died. This all changed in her 19th summer, when the nanny died. The girl was heartbroken but she continued to live in the cottage on her own and no other arrangements were made for her well-being. She had no husband, nor was she betrothed. She had been to a couple of balls and parties and was looking for one, but most marriages in those days were arranged through mothers and she had none. Then one night, her life changed forever. She was walking late at night, because she couldn't sleep. She walked around the countryside near her house, until she came to a nearby village. She was walking along the wharf when she was kidnapped. The man who took her, Desmond, took her to a castle. While she was there he made her, against her will, a vampire." I snorted in disbelief. She ignored me and continued.

"He drunk from her until she was left unconscious." Lillith unzipped her suit a little way. She showed me two small sets of puncture marks on her neck near her collarbone. In pairs, spaced canine-to-canine tooth width apart. She zipped up her suit and did the catch up again.

"Then while she slept, he gave her a blood transfusion. He allowed his blood to be pumped into her body, to fill the space he had left. He cut their fingertips and pressed them together. His blood forced its way into her body and the vampridium in his blood cells infected hers. There was not enough vampridium in the first load to make her a full vampire. It heightened her senses but that was all. So he did it again the next night." She showed me her hands, palms up. On each fingertip there was a small slit-shaped scar.

"This caused her to become a full vampire. She could now hear well enough to pick up one human's small sips from his drink across a crowded, noisy bar. She can see well enough to spot his neck pulsing from where she sat, and see his pupils dilate as he looked her up." I scowled.

"Her skin was so sensitive that just the kisses and the touching was exquisite. She could smell lust from one particle in a million in the room having it. She also found that she could escape the room Desmond had locked her in. She charged the solid oak, stone set door and it fell like cardboard. She jumped from a castle window, fell a hundred feet onto rocks and was able to get up and run across the moors and home, nearly as fast as the speed of sound. She reached home and found that her favourite drink, tea, no longer satisfied her thirst. She also discovered that the vampridium in her blood would turn a rose black. She was still in that same torn dress she had left her home in nearly a week ago for a peaceful walk when she came to her senses on top of a cliff throwing a mans body off it. She was mortified that she would kill for blood and threw herself off the cliff. It didn't kill her and she went home. Over the next few years she trained herself to drink in small amounts using the convicts on death row. When she managed that, she allowed herself to leave for the wider world. She drank little and often, her victims feeling nothing and just awaking sleepy in the morning. She continued to live in the cottage where she had grown up, feeding from the generations in the nearby village. She observed these generations of humans. She watched the Suffragette movement with amazement, like many others in this quaint town. She watched the villagers slowly destroy their environment more and more as the First World War came and went, then the second. She watched the technology arrive in the 50's, humming machines that made it even easier to sneak without the humans hearing her. She became excited with the peace and love hippie movement in the 70's; however, it didn't last and was just a fad. She held on to these peace and love ideas, believing life is precious, and should not be wasted. As science developed and the atoms became common knowledge, she became even more amazed at the miracle of life, knowing that if one atom had gone the other way at any point in history, the universe may not still be here, or our sun may have never been born, or even a different sperm may have made it to the egg and resulted in her not being there. She lived her life peacefully, until 2005, when Desmond kidnapped her again. It was here she discovered that her body had learned to heal itself. He shot her and she died. The bullet went through her stomach and lung and she bled to death in the cold dungeon. Or so they thought." Lillith peeled back her bodysuit to reveal her bra and two small round scars, one to the left of her bellybutton and one level with her elbow on her side by the back of her ribcage. They were healed cleanly but pinker than the rest of her white skin.

"The girl confirmed that her body could heal herself on many occasions. The first was in the dungeon, where, after she escaped the chains, she opened a small cut on her arm and it healed before her eyes." I knew what was coming next and had an urge to turn away as she pulled a knife from her boot. She opened a small cut in her lower arm and I watched it heal. I felt sick but she kept talking.

"She tested her body's healing limits soon. She escaped the dungeon and nearly the castle. Desmond found her and they fought, her with knives and him with a sword. Many deeper cuts were opened on her body but they healed within a few hours."

She put the knife into her arm again and pushed it down half an inch, then dragged it along, opening a deep cut. I wanted to throw up, seeing her do that to herself so brutally without pain. She laughed at my green complexion and got a thick towel from a cupboard. She put it under her arm to catch the blood. I wasn't squeamish, but some things just aren't natural. The whole duration of the cut she looked at peace and watched me. She even laughed as she removed the knife. She licked the blood off the blade and slid the tiny knife back into her boot. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. I heard her chuckle as I wiped my face and returned to the chair. I glared at her.

"The fight ended badly. Although she knew he had taken many many lives and would take many many more, she wept as Desmond died, knowing that he was the cause. The girl was rich and moved to America, where she remains now. She decided that it was time to get some help in controlling the human race. So she dipped into her trust fund, which had grown to millions by this time and bought an apartment in New York, news capital of the world. She bought out the whole building, allowing the tenants to continue living there without even knowing. She even employed the old landlords for a large sum to keep doing what they were doing, and like good little New Yorkers they shut up and swallowed the cash. She dug out the basement, adding another floor to the building. She moved the tenants from the top floor into it, spending a lot of money to make it even better than before to make up for the lack of windows. Then she turned her attention to the top floor. She split it in half, and turned one half into her own luxury apartment, almost like a house. Then she split the rest into the not so nice apartment in which you are sitting and another smaller version of her own. Then she looked for a protégée to fill it. She scoured the Internet, looking for a human that would believe in her cause and help her protect humanity from itself. Then she found Carl Smith. A New Yorker with insight, able to see what humans were doing wrong and working out peaceful solutions to the issues. His blog was popular and love him or hate him, many people read it. Most just thought he was a nutter and it would never work. Humans would have to work together for his solutions to work. Or there would have to be an alternate race. He didn't pursue the alternate race bit, thinking it impossible and deadly if it got out of control. But she knew. He was her man. Luckily for her, Carl had published his address and photo on the blog. She watched him for a week, seeing what he did and where he went. Then ambushed him in the bar. She took him home and set him up in the less comfortable, medical-y apartment. And here they are. Her and him."

She looked at me. Do I believe her? She has the scars. But anyone can fake scars. The way she cut herself… could you train yourself to do that? She sighed and got up from her chair. I stayed sitting, in a dazed state. But the healing… No human could heal like that… Her arm had already healed, a deep cut that would take months for a human. She put out her hand and I held it absentmindedly.

Then she threw me across the room. I yelled as I flew through the air, certain to break a bone on landing. She caught me. Leapt into the air and caught me like a baby. She slammed against the wall with the force of my momentum but landed on her feet and put me down on mine. I was panting. Lillith wasn't. She teleported to the other side of the room. Then she teleported back in a rush of wind. I realised she was running. She got an iron bar out of the cupboard and squeezed it with one hand. She opened her palm again and it was squished into the shape of her fist. She gave the bar to me and squeezed it as hard as I could. It did nothing, just like an iron bar should. She took it back and squished it back into shape then put it away. She closed her eyes and counted in time with my pounding heartbeat. She read something out, and I realised it was the ingredients off the beef jerky wrapper in the trashcan near where she sat before. I walked over and read it myself. She was right. But maybe she memorised them. I chose a book off the bookshelf, one with tiny writing. I held it up in the shadow of my hand and she read it out to me:

"Here is a letter lady, the paper as the body of my friend, and every word in it a gaping wound, issuing life-blood." I closed the book and slumped into a chair. Lillith wasn't truth-slanting. All of it was completely true. And I knew what was coming next.

"Carl. You are my protégée. And after telling you this, you must become a vampire. I refuse to kill you and cannot let you go. Are we going to do this the hard way or the easy way?"

"What's the hard way?" I asked warily.

"The hard way. Is that you say no. And try to run. And I catch you. And strap you to this here bed. And do it the painful way. Where I cut your fingertips open with my nails. And cut mine too. And force the blood into you while you struggle and scream."

I felt my mouth gape open.

"The easy way?" I asked.

"The easy way is that I strap you willingly to the bed, rub some anaesthetic cream into your arm before hooking you up to a drip of my blood." She opened the fridge and pulled out one of the blood-red packets of liquid. I gulped.

"The easy way please." I walked over to the bed and lay down on it, the same premonition as when the dentist starts moving the chair backwards. Lillith got some cream out of the cupboard and rubbed it in the crease of my elbow.

"The human body dislikes foreign substances, I will have to strap you down." I nodded meekly and she strapped my wrists to the handles on the side of the bed.

"And it will hurt. Do you want a knockout shot?" I wondered how she got all this medical equipment, but nodded anyway. She inserted a needle into my arm where she rubbed the cream in. It didn't hurt much. She wheeled a drip stand from the cupboard and hooked a bag of blood up to it. She prepared it to be attached to the needle in my arm. Then she prepared an anaesthetic and injected it into the needle in my arm. After a minute or so, the room began to fog out.

"Sleep now Carl. Sleep." She told me once again. The room went black and I felt the needle being jiggled as I slipped into nothingness.

The fridge is so loud… Like a jet plane. And the room is as bright as day, lit from the streetlights outside. The room smells like Lillith and me. Beef jerky and anaesthetic. Crinkly hospital sheets and medical equipment. Like blood. I sit up and the restraints around my wrists snap. Blink. The cross around my neck falls down over my bare white chest. My tan is gone. I find the cross mildly repulsive and tear it off, dropping it on the floor beside the bed. Lillith talks to me.

"Hey, welcome to the fold sleepy-head. Can I have my needle back?" I look at my arm. The needle is still in. She reaches over and holds my arm steady while she pulls it out. She licks the blood off it and nods, then throws it in the bin. I lick the blood on my arm. Then I suck at the hole where the needle was. My spit makes it heal before I can do damage, and Lillith is already heating some blood up in the microwave. She throws a beef jerky to placate me and I wolf it down. Then the blood is ready and I gulp it eagerly. She forces me to stop just before I finish the bag, then she puts it in the fridge.

I stand and walk around the room, examining everyday objects with new eyes. Then she hands me a laptop open on Word. I know what to do. It won't be published but will help our other protégées. I pause for a moment then title it.

'A guide to life in the underworld: Prologue'

Press enter enter. Then start to type.

Rule number one. Bars are not good places to pick people up...

Description
Rule number one. Bars are not good places to pick people up. Beware of that good-looking, pale-skinned, fit-looking chick in the bar.

Rule number two. Do not publish your views that humans are bad and should be kept in check in a blog with your address on it.

"Hey! Hey bartender! Um, yeah, thanks. I'll have your house ale please." He grunted at me and turned away. He poured my drink and slid it to me along the bench. The waitress came to collect my money.

"$2.50 please." I fished in my pocket and dropped the coins in her hand. She turned away and rung it up in the till. I sipped my drink and looked around the bar. Most people here were just relaxing, laughing with friends or sitting on their own, sipping a drink. Except one girl. But she was too good for me. Pale skin, blazing green eyes, fiery hair and the figure to match. She was mesmerising. I swallowed loudly and tried to avert my eyes back to my ale. She looked up and saw me. Her eyes bored into me and I hastily looked away. Sipped my drink quickly. I glanced up again and there she was. Now on the stool beside me. She nodded to the bartender, who winked. The girl smiled dismissively at him, then turned to me. She stuck out a hand.

"Lillith Perne." She had a cute English accent and her voice was smooth and lyrical. I swallowed and looked at her hand. She half smiled and I took it, shaking it up and down.

"Carl. Carl Smith." Her slender hand felt like it could crush mine easily. There was a hidden strength inside that fingerless leather glove. She grinned.

"Nice to meet you, Carl Smith. I love your blog." Wow. She'd found me through that? Of course, I had an address on it. And a photo.

"Thanks."

"I think you're on to something with it. Humans do need to be kept in line. Not only the damage they do to each other, but the damage they do to the environment." They?

"Yeah. Humans can't survive without Earth, and we'll need to band together if we want to protect it at the rate we're going." She nodded.

"I read as much. It was fascinating." We sat in silence for a while. I thought she'd gone when her hand snaked in front of me and pinched my beer. She sipped it and made a face.

"You like this stuff?" She asked. I grinned.

"So-so." She slid it back to me and I drained what was left in the glass. I felt her eyes on me. I looked up and she was watching me intently. She saw me looking and laughed. She hopped off the barstool. I thought she was leaving and started to say goodbye when she grabbed my hand and led me towards the door. We paused outside and she kissed me, standing on tiptoes while I bent down. She nearly skipped down the street towards a parked car. She opened the passenger door and waved me in, then ran around to the driver's side. It was a nice car. I couldn't see what model it was in the dark but the upholstery felt nearly as smooth as the ride, which was taken at close to eighty miles an hour. In the middle of town. Somehow I wasn't scared. Lillith was totally in control. She turned on the radio and sang along.

"Niner nine zush lufballun, ivan vectum howitzontee." I smiled. She didn't speak German. I sung the next lines.

"Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All, Darum schickte ein General." I may have been studying German, but my voice wasn't as nice as hers. She poked her tongue out and sung over me in her garbled version.

"Alam to vin, van zantass caver." I laughed and hummed along to the rest of the song with her. Another song came on. I didn't recognise this one.

"They taped over your mouth, scribbled out the truth with their lies. Your little spies." Lillith changed to whispers. "Cru-ush…Cruush…Crush, crush crush."

We pulled up outside a fancy apartment block. She hopped out of the car and nearly ran to the door.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and gazed around in the flash lobby. There was no doorman present and she giggled and towed me to the lift. She kissed me as we went up, barely able to wait until the apartment door was closed and we fell onto the bed. She tore at me, ripping my clothes. I couldn't get hers off. There was a catch at the top of the zip on her bodysuit. She undid it for me and pulled off her boots.

Then, in the height, there was a stab in my neck. Needle-like. I froze and felt something being injected. Nearly choked. I tried to move but was paralysed. Just Lillith's sweet voice.

"Sleep now Carl. Sleep."

The room I woke in smelt funny. Like a hospital. There was a kitchenette in the corner and three doors. I got up from the hospital-like bed. The first was a cupboard, filled with medical equipment. The second was locked and the third was a bathroom. All the windows were too small to squeeze through and too high to reach. There was a crinkly, waterproof sheet on the bed and a metal table next to it. It looked like the ones off those surgery programs. I tried not to panic. There had to be a logical explanation for this. I looked in the mini-fridge. There were a couple packets of blood-red liquid. Below that there were lots of snacks. A few chocolate bars and stuff, but mostly meat. I looked in the cupboard next to it. Cups and stuff. I selected one and poured a glass of juice. I drunk it and put the cup in the sink. Unless you liked chocolate and juice, there weren't many vegetarian options in the fridge. I sat on the bed again then got up and used the bathroom. I re-entered the main room and nearly had a heart attack. Lillith had let herself in and was chewing on some beef jerky in the armchair, legs over one arm and head propped on an elbow on another. I tried the door. Still locked. I glared at Lillith and she gestured to the fridge.

"Help yourself."

"Vegetarian." I told her curtly.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. I should have guessed from your blog." She nearly snorted at the prospect of vegetarianism. I wondered if hissing at her would be too animalistic. She didn't look like it would scare her anyway. Lillith sat up and pointed at the other armchair.

"Have a seat." I sat stiffly on the chair.

"Okay. I have a story to tell, and you need to hear it."

"Why am I here?" I interrupted her.

"Ah, now that's the story. So keep quiet, even if my story seems ludicrous at times. I will back it up." I can feel my jaw taking a stubborn set, but I nod anyway. She continues. "This will sound really weird, okay?" She begins. "In 1888, there was a young girl. She was 23 years old and an orphan. Her parents had left her a large sum of money and she lived on her own in a cottage in England. She was near the southwest, in a castle district by the moors. This girl had fiery red hair and a stunning figure, which she had been taught not to flaunt and hid under the fashionable clothes of the time. Her life was fine, she had always been well cared for by her nanny, who adopted her when her parents died. This all changed in her 19th summer, when the nanny died. The girl was heartbroken but she continued to live in the cottage on her own and no other arrangements were made for her well-being. She had no husband, nor was she betrothed. She had been to a couple of balls and parties and was looking for one, but most marriages in those days were arranged through mothers and she had none. Then one night, her life changed forever. She was walking late at night, because she couldn't sleep. She walked around the countryside near her house, until she came to a nearby village. She was walking along the wharf when she was kidnapped. The man who took her, Desmond, took her to a castle. While she was there he made her, against her will, a vampire." I snorted in disbelief. She ignored me and continued.

"He drunk from her until she was left unconscious." Lillith unzipped her suit a little way. She showed me two small sets of puncture marks on her neck near her collarbone. In pairs, spaced canine-to-canine tooth width apart. She zipped up her suit and did the catch up again.

"Then while she slept, he gave her a blood transfusion. He allowed his blood to be pumped into her body, to fill the space he had left. He cut their fingertips and pressed them together. His blood forced its way into her body and the vampridium in his blood cells infected hers. There was not enough vampridium in the first load to make her a full vampire. It heightened her senses but that was all. So he did it again the next night." She showed me her hands, palms up. On each fingertip there was a small slit-shaped scar.

"This caused her to become a full vampire. She could now hear well enough to pick up one human's small sips from his drink across a crowded, noisy bar. She can see well enough to spot his neck pulsing from where she sat, and see his pupils dilate as he looked her up." I scowled.

"Her skin was so sensitive that just the kisses and the touching was exquisite. She could smell lust from one particle in a million in the room having it. She also found that she could escape the room Desmond had locked her in. She charged the solid oak, stone set door and it fell like cardboard. She jumped from a castle window, fell a hundred feet onto rocks and was able to get up and run across the moors and home, nearly as fast as the speed of sound. She reached home and found that her favourite drink, tea, no longer satisfied her thirst. She also discovered that the vampridium in her blood would turn a rose black. She was still in that same torn dress she had left her home in nearly a week ago for a peaceful walk when she came to her senses on top of a cliff throwing a mans body off it. She was mortified that she would kill for blood and threw herself off the cliff. It didn't kill her and she went home. Over the next few years she trained herself to drink in small amounts using the convicts on death row. When she managed that, she allowed herself to leave for the wider world. She drank little and often, her victims feeling nothing and just awaking sleepy in the morning. She continued to live in the cottage where she had grown up, feeding from the generations in the nearby village. She observed these generations of humans. She watched the Suffragette movement with amazement, like many others in this quaint town. She watched the villagers slowly destroy their environment more and more as the First World War came and went, then the second. She watched the technology arrive in the 50's, humming machines that made it even easier to sneak without the humans hearing her. She became excited with the peace and love hippie movement in the 70's; however, it didn't last and was just a fad. She held on to these peace and love ideas, believing life is precious, and should not be wasted. As science developed and the atoms became common knowledge, she became even more amazed at the miracle of life, knowing that if one atom had gone the other way at any point in history, the universe may not still be here, or our sun may have never been born, or even a different sperm may have made it to the egg and resulted in her not being there. She lived her life peacefully, until 2005, when Desmond kidnapped her again. It was here she discovered that her body had learned to heal itself. He shot her and she died. The bullet went through her stomach and lung and she bled to death in the cold dungeon. Or so they thought." Lillith peeled back her bodysuit to reveal her bra and two small round scars, one to the left of her bellybutton and one level with her elbow on her side by the back of her ribcage. They were healed cleanly but pinker than the rest of her white skin.

"The girl confirmed that her body could heal herself on many occasions. The first was in the dungeon, where, after she escaped the chains, she opened a small cut on her arm and it healed before her eyes." I knew what was coming next and had an urge to turn away as she pulled a knife from her boot. She opened a small cut in her lower arm and I watched it heal. I felt sick but she kept talking.

"She tested her body's healing limits soon. She escaped the dungeon and nearly the castle. Desmond found her and they fought, her with knives and him with a sword. Many deeper cuts were opened on her body but they healed within a few hours."

She put the knife into her arm again and pushed it down half an inch, then dragged it along, opening a deep cut. I wanted to throw up, seeing her do that to herself so brutally without pain. She laughed at my green complexion and got a thick towel from a cupboard. She put it under her arm to catch the blood. I wasn't squeamish, but some things just aren't natural. The whole duration of the cut she looked at peace and watched me. She even laughed as she removed the knife. She licked the blood off the blade and slid the tiny knife back into her boot. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. I heard her chuckle as I wiped my face and returned to the chair. I glared at her.

"The fight ended badly. Although she knew he had taken many many lives and would take many many more, she wept as Desmond died, knowing that he was the cause. The girl was rich and moved to America, where she remains now. She decided that it was time to get some help in controlling the human race. So she dipped into her trust fund, which had grown to millions by this time and bought an apartment in New York, news capital of the world. She bought out the whole building, allowing the tenants to continue living there without even knowing. She even employed the old landlords for a large sum to keep doing what they were doing, and like good little New Yorkers they shut up and swallowed the cash. She dug out the basement, adding another floor to the building. She moved the tenants from the top floor into it, spending a lot of money to make it even better than before to make up for the lack of windows. Then she turned her attention to the top floor. She split it in half, and turned one half into her own luxury apartment, almost like a house. Then she split the rest into the not so nice apartment in which you are sitting and another smaller version of her own. Then she looked for a protégée to fill it. She scoured the Internet, looking for a human that would believe in her cause and help her protect humanity from itself. Then she found Carl Smith. A New Yorker with insight, able to see what humans were doing wrong and working out peaceful solutions to the issues. His blog was popular and love him or hate him, many people read it. Most just thought he was a nutter and it would never work. Humans would have to work together for his solutions to work. Or there would have to be an alternate race. He didn't pursue the alternate race bit, thinking it impossible and deadly if it got out of control. But she knew. He was her man. Luckily for her, Carl had published his address and photo on the blog. She watched him for a week, seeing what he did and where he went. Then ambushed him in the bar. She took him home and set him up in the less comfortable, medical-y apartment. And here they are. Her and him."

She looked at me. Do I believe her? She has the scars. But anyone can fake scars. The way she cut herself… could you train yourself to do that? She sighed and got up from her chair. I stayed sitting, in a dazed state. But the healing… No human could heal like that… Her arm had already healed, a deep cut that would take months for a human. She put out her hand and I held it absentmindedly.

Then she threw me across the room. I yelled as I flew through the air, certain to break a bone on landing. She caught me. Leapt into the air and caught me like a baby. She slammed against the wall with the force of my momentum but landed on her feet and put me down on mine. I was panting. Lillith wasn't. She teleported to the other side of the room. Then she teleported back in a rush of wind. I realised she was running. She got an iron bar out of the cupboard and squeezed it with one hand. She opened her palm again and it was squished into the shape of her fist. She gave the bar to me and squeezed it as hard as I could. It did nothing, just like an iron bar should. She took it back and squished it back into shape then put it away. She closed her eyes and counted in time with my pounding heartbeat. She read something out, and I realised it was the ingredients off the beef jerky wrapper in the trashcan near where she sat before. I walked over and read it myself. She was right. But maybe she memorised them. I chose a book off the bookshelf, one with tiny writing. I held it up in the shadow of my hand and she read it out to me:

"Here is a letter lady, the paper as the body of my friend, and every word in it a gaping wound, issuing life-blood." I closed the book and slumped into a chair. Lillith wasn't truth-slanting. All of it was completely true. And I knew what was coming next.

"Carl. You are my protégée. And after telling you this, you must become a vampire. I refuse to kill you and cannot let you go. Are we going to do this the hard way or the easy way?"

"What's the hard way?" I asked warily.

"The hard way. Is that you say no. And try to run. And I catch you. And strap you to this here bed. And do it the painful way. Where I cut your fingertips open with my nails. And cut mine too. And force the blood into you while you struggle and scream."

I felt my mouth gape open.

"The easy way?" I asked.

"The easy way is that I strap you willingly to the bed, rub some anaesthetic cream into your arm before hooking you up to a drip of my blood." She opened the fridge and pulled out one of the blood-red packets of liquid. I gulped.

"The easy way please." I walked over to the bed and lay down on it, the same premonition as when the dentist starts moving the chair backwards. Lillith got some cream out of the cupboard and rubbed it in the crease of my elbow.

"The human body dislikes foreign substances, I will have to strap you down." I nodded meekly and she strapped my wrists to the handles on the side of the bed.

"And it will hurt. Do you want a knockout shot?" I wondered how she got all this medical equipment, but nodded anyway. She inserted a needle into my arm where she rubbed the cream in. It didn't hurt much. She wheeled a drip stand from the cupboard and hooked a bag of blood up to it. She prepared it to be attached to the needle in my arm. Then she prepared an anaesthetic and injected it into the needle in my arm. After a minute or so, the room began to fog out.

"Sleep now Carl. Sleep." She told me once again. The room went black and I felt the needle being jiggled as I slipped into nothingness.

The fridge is so loud… Like a jet plane. And the room is as bright as day, lit from the streetlights outside. The room smells like Lillith and me. Beef jerky and anaesthetic. Crinkly hospital sheets and medical equipment. Like blood. I sit up and the restraints around my wrists snap. Blink. The cross around my neck falls down over my bare white chest. My tan is gone. I find the cross mildly repulsive and tear it off, dropping it on the floor beside the bed. Lillith talks to me.

"Hey, welcome to the fold sleepy-head. Can I have my needle back?" I look at my arm. The needle is still in. She reaches over and holds my arm steady while she pulls it out. She licks the blood off it and nods, then throws it in the bin. I lick the blood on my arm. Then I suck at the hole where the needle was. My spit makes it heal before I can do damage, and Lillith is already heating some blood up in the microwave. She throws a beef jerky to placate me and I wolf it down. Then the blood is ready and I gulp it eagerly. She forces me to stop just before I finish the bag, then she puts it in the fridge.

I stand and walk around the room, examining everyday objects with new eyes. Then she hands me a laptop open on Word. I know what to do. It won't be published but will help our other protégées. I pause for a moment then title it.

'A guide to life in the underworld: Prologue'

Press enter enter. Then start to type.

Rule number one. Bars are not good places to pick people up...