The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

KISSING DAWN

By Steb



Chapter One



P

ale fingers of golden light painted the rose tinted clouds beneath Justin as he broke through the canopy. Of course, he couldn’t see the sun, the morning was far too misty, but he could still feel the warm radiance bathing his partly transformed body. His weightless condition was due to a phase shift - his body was half in this world, and half in another, but he lacks the experience and knowledge to complete the transition. Not that Justin was aware of this; like many of our kind, he knows next to nothing about his own abilities. All the same, he knows enough of his limitations to know that he can only remain in such a state in the darkness of night, and with the dawn he must plummet like a stone.



Sure enough, even as waves of cloud-filtered sunlight pulsed through his body, intoxicating him, he fell from the sky as his body became solid.



“You fucking stupid pratt!”

Justin just giggled inanely, as Juliette slapped his face again.

“How many times do you have to be told? Do you want to go up in flames?” she slapped his face once more, but Justin still didn’t seem to notice - I think he was still intoxicated.

“He won’t flare up” I told her, “Only Truebloods flare in sunlight.”, but that didn’t mollify her. I just knew I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help but sympathise with Justin - I’ve done it myself enough times.

“Oh, mister wiseguy knows all about sunlight does he?” Juliette turned on me, and I knew I was going to get the full brunt of her tongue-lashing. “What if a sunbeam hit him in mid flight? What if he’d fallen asleep on a railway track? What if he just dropped in a public place, and someone found him? Anything could have happened.”



Of course, that is the whole point. We aren’t quite immortal, but even the freshest of our clan has lived long enough to have developed a need for thrill. It’s really a part of the “human” condition – you need to feel the fear of death to maintain the zest for life. It’s only when we are close enough to death to touch it, to feel the bony hand on our shoulders and icy breath on our necks, only then do we appreciate how much life really means to us. But try telling that to a Renny.



To bring you up to speed, Renny is short for a Renfield – a popular term for a retainer / guardian who is still mortal. Every clan has at least one, and we can’t survive without them, particularly in the 21st Century. The flicks have got one thing right at least – we have to die before we can be reborn transformed, and dead people can’t own property, dead people don’t have bank accounts, dead people don’t have national insurance numbers. Someone aught to campaign for Dead Rights. Also, there’s the vulnerability to consider. Daylight doesn’t destroy us, but it does have a peculiar effect on our blood, causing us to produce something like alcohol in our bloodstreams.



That silly little book by Stoker has quite an influence on our culture, despite it’s many inaccuracies and myths. For one thing, most of us are not aristocrats – we’re mostly poor. Oh, there was a time when we recruited minor aristocrats because they made useful Rennies but before long their money ran out, and they lost their stately homes. Besides, when someone is high profile and important to the community, it’s hard to hide what they are. All the same, there are still quite a few Vamps calling themselves Count or Baron, but most of them have never even met a real aristocrat.



Apart from Renfields, other terms in common parlance are Helsings – obsessive vampire hunters, Minas- reincarnated soul-mates (I don’t know if they exist, but every Vamp likes to believe in them), Stokers – people who think they are experts on vampires, but really know nothing, and of course Harkers. Yes, hmm, that’s a bit embarrassing. Like cats, some of us enjoy playing with our food, and though it’s a bit risky, we sometimes indulge in keeping a living host as a sort of pet or toy. Usually, they are victims we originally intended to groom as Renfields, but turned out to be unsuitable. We don’t do it often though.



Again, horror fiction gets it wrong; we rarely kill our victims and turn them into vampires – that would be ridiculous and unnatural. Before long, we’d be in a world full of Vamps, and hardly any humes. Instead we put a glamour on our prey, and then just take a little blood – just enough to nourish. Humans only need six pints at most, but generally carry eight, so can easily spare a pint or two without any ill effects. Where fiction does get it right is our hypnotic powers – mostly due to our pheromones that are a powerful aphrodisiac to our kind – let alone humes. The effect on a hume is quite narcotic, and when we use our telepathic mind control too, the prey is totally under our power, and remember nothing in the morning.



Don’t bother looking in the mirror for marks on the neck either – our saliva contains an anticoagulant as well as fast healing enzymes, so the tiny pin-prick marks also fade within a couple of hours. If you regularly frequent nightclubs, you’ve probably fallen victim to one of us before, and don’t even know it.



At the moment, Juliette is tucking Justin into his soil filled coffin – another Stoker myth, but Justin likes the idea, and he’s so very pretentious. Juliette is a hopeless romantic, and is only too happy to indulge him. I prefer to sleep on a warm rock myself, but they aren’t easy to come by in the city. Sometimes I go to sleep on the roof of one of the stone buildings – I even went to sleep atop the castle a couple of times; but it’s risky, and as Clan leader, I should be setting an example.



Juliette – Jules for short – is totally devoted to Justin, though she’s supposed to serve us all. Despite his flirting, and frequent teasing of the girl, I believe Justin is genuinely besotted with her too. We really must do something about those two – and soon. Jules has been our Renny for over a year now, and her relationship with Justin is very obvious. That’s partly why he’s been playing “Kissing Dawn” so much lately, as an outlet for his frustration. When we mate, it is with such a wild passion, that it would kill a mortal – which isn’t really a problem for Jules – she’ll be reborn as one of us – but then we’d be without a Renny to take care of us. We haven’t found a suitable replacement Renny yet, even though Jules was always meant as a temporary replacement for our last Renny, who met with an unfortunate accident. It doesn’t always work out – those damned pheromones of ours can have a long term effect on mortals who have close contact with us, and they often go mad after a while. Jules is very strong willed though.



To be honest, right from the start, I intended Jules to be one of us. I knew from when we first met that she was right, and though I’ve never told anyone, I’ve been secretly grooming her to replace me as clan leader. I never wanted to be clan leader, but after Cornelius died, I was the natural choice. All the others are barely a few hundred years old, and know nothing of our history. Cornelius taught me a lot – probably all he knew, and was probably the last of our kind to have been raised by a Trueblood.



I’ve been clan leader for nearly two hundred years now, and I yearn to be free from the responsibility – I want to travel again, maybe find a Mina. Maybe, in a couple of hundred years, I’ll start a new clan, but for now I want to be free and reckless. I want to play kissing dawn again.



End of chapter one.