The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Part 6
My head ablaze, blood boiling, I have never felt such pain before. It is all-encompassing, engulfing me, but through the darkness, I hear it—the beating of drums. They are deep, earth-shaking drums that resonate in my very bones. The buffalo hides stretched wide, shaman power drums of the Tribe above me. Pounding down a beat I know is for me. A beat of the old ways, the ancients living in the earth, the water, the air, and the fire consuming my veins. It is the Old Magic of the land, the ancestors, the elements. The rattle-your-bones, shred-your-flesh, and cleave-your-spirit mystical power of the elders.

Dun… Dun… Dun… Dun…

The beat pounds in my ears, echoing in my head. The chanting starts once more, silently like a forgotten whisper, a prayer on the wind, growing in intensity, louder and louder. The thrashing of the drums, the rhythm of the chants, the pounding of feet on the ground as rattles shake and fire burns. All the burning—oh Goddess, the burning in my veins overwhelms my senses until I finally lose consciousness awash in fire, blood and pain.

All this and more for a soul, for her. For my Willow

PART 5

A spinning vortex of pain I am extracted out of the vision before me of my beloved, back, deep into the agony of my own body. Coughing up dirt and fluids from my lungs. My hands reach out to hit the lid of the box I was buried in.

Why am I here again?

Will this suffering ever end?

Blinded by flashes of light and fire, the echoes of chanting and the weight of the trials consumed me. If I survive this, I will live – truly live-

For the first time in what feels like an eternity. To reclaim my soul, to breathe life once more, to walk in the sun’s warmth for her, For my Willow.

PART 4
The Cries of sorrow shook her small frame, as she was bent down crouching on the earthen floors of the small family home. Wood walls half-collapsed around her as a small amount of hay tumbled down onto her long raven hair, like the remnants of a broken dream. the moon casting long shadows on the scene of a family slaughtered, warm blood still splattered on the walls, with huge gouging claw marks on the body of an elder man and woman with a baby torn in half. All that remained in this once happy home was a shaking screaming broken young lady.
The Lycans I had been tracking left none but blood, and devastation in their wake. For centuries, I pursued them with a singular focus. Indifferent to the carnage they left behind, other that the temperature of the blood to assess how long past they wrecked their havoc.
Why, now, after such a time did this sad spectacle give me pause?
Was it the soul and shattered heart in her screams? The sorrow? The humanity aching? Her small frame of not yet twenty crumbled under the weight of the horror she came upon after the Lycans Ravaged her family?
Family, a word I had long forgotten. A tie to humanity.
In that moment, I knew I’d move hell and earth for her. The raw anguish in her blue eyes like the stars plucked from the heavens themselves, the shattered innocence in her cries-
It pierced my soul if I ever had one, like nothing ever had. Her fragility, her pain, her very essence beckoned to me. Igniting a fierce determination within my very being. I would do anything to protect her, to mend what had been broken.