Okay, so, I finished reading Wild Seed tonight, and it was, er, interesting. Well-written? Without doubt. Interesting? Certainly. Good? Um. Get back to me on that. But, it got me thinking about immortals and stuff, and that made be think about our vampire story idea, and because I was feeling like writing someplace and poor Rabin's run off <sniff> I decided I'd prewrite something from it. I'm sure there are some glaring cliches, but please be forgiving, as I've only read one or two novels about vampires, and they were rather unconventional.Oh! And Amy! Idea! You were going to write a vampire who was like my vampire's enemy, right? What if my vampire created yours when he was still young, but didn't take care of you as a fledgling (cause he was still learning himself)? Your vampire could have abandonment issues and hate him!
Hehehe, okay, here it is. Don't laugh too hard. Not while I can hear, anyways ;D
His name was Azrael, but no one called him that.
His birth name, given to him twelve hundred years prior, was Daishi Masamune. His parents had been peasants, toiling in the fields of the local lord. So they had lived, and so they had died. Azrael had few images of them now; they held a place in his memory, but they were indistinct. Part of another life. Perhaps part of a dream.
He was a priest. For most of his exceptionally long life, Azrael had been a priest in one form or another. At some time or another he had followed the ways of every religion he had yet encountered. That was a long time ago; faith no longer brought him comfort.
Nevertheless, he was a priest. But for the past eight hundred years, he had overseen his own order. He was hardly the first of his kind to think of keeping a flock. There existed a subculture which considered it the only civilized way. But generally, shepards either kept a very small group, perhaps two or three mortals, as close companions and lovers—or, conversely, herded together a large number of them like cattle, and reveled in presiding over them as their god. Azrael did not consider himself a god, nor had he any desire to become one. His disciples, however, had shown themselves over the centuries to harbor a disturbing need to see him as one. Thus, he kept twelve disciples at all times. Not so many that he did not know each at least as completely as he or she knew themselves. But not so few that they began to believe themselves above their station. He protected his disciples, from any that might harm them. He made certain they were comfortable in their lives, that they were happy. He told them things they wanted to hear: that he was the messenger of God here on Earth, and that when the time came, he would need their help to deliver his message to the world. He even loved them. After a fashion.
But he did not let himself care for them, not as individuals. That was why he kept them at a distance. He never gave any of his disciples any word or look to mislead them, to make them think that he favored them above the others. The Rapture was the only physical contact he permitted. He was so old now that he could not remember the feel of being alive. Even the Rapture, glorious as it was, could not remind him of what it was to have warm blood in his veins that was his own. Any of his disciples, male or female, would happily have offered their bodies to him had he asked it of them. But Azrael did not torture himself. Their warmth could never again be his, not truly. The Rapture was as close as he came to feeling alive. Someday that too would lose its effect on him. He would feel nothing when he drank from his flock. He eagerly awaited that day. An eternity of cold would be infinitely easier to bear without the torment of that sweet agonizing warmth.
Above all, Azrael never let himself start to believe the lies he told his disciples. They needed those lies, because if they did not believe him an angel, then he must surely be a devil, for there existed no other beings that could bring them such ecstasy. But he knew better. There were no angels. Devils he had met, but they were not so rare as these mortals thought, nor so difficult to deal with. And as for gods...
Azrael had spent centuries searching the world for something to help him believe. He found nothing.
The name by which he was known to his current disciples was Hiro Nakamaro, but it was just a name, like the hundreds of thousands of others he had used in his long life. It had not been long after his transformation that he ceased to use his birth name, even within his own mind. The change had altered much more than his body. His mind had changed as well. He was not the man he had once been. He was not a man at all.
Where he had come across the name Azrael, he could not remember. During one of his many journeys through Europe, surely. But on one such journey, he had seen a painting that had stilled him. It depicted an angel, bent over a book and writing in it by candlelight. The angel looked weary, and not simply because of his task. He was worn down by more than tired hands and poor light.
The painting's owner had explained that he had acquired the painting from an artist of little success—or talent, for that matter. That this painting was exceptional seemed simply to have been the owner's luck, for he had been able to purchase it for surprisingly little. He explained that it depicted the angel Azrael, perpetually consigned to writing the names of every human being ever born, and erasing them again as they died.
Staring into that painting, Azrael knew that he had found his true name. And something else: he had to have that painting.
The owner, already a wealthy man, had insisted that it was very dear to him and that he could not bear to part with it for any price. Azrael had killed the man with his bare hands and took the painting, though he washed first to keep from getting blood on the frame. It now hung over the fireplace in his home, though with a much nicer frame.
Azrael's life, such as it was, centered mostly around routine. Nations rose and fell; mortals lived and died. Azrael replaced his disciples as necessary. He increased his holdings, investing his fortunes in long-term ventures with patience few mortals could manage. The years went by with little notice from him. The passage of time was felt most acutely by Azrael in the Rapture. Year by year, he could feel its effect bleeding away. And he missed it. How he missed it. But he knew that when it was gone, he would be at peace.
Perhaps, when the blood of the living ceased to warm his ancient body, he might finally die. A part of him yearned for such unconditional release. Yearned for escape from this eternity of cold and loneliness. He watched the people around him grow up and grow old and die. He was Azrael, watching their short, meaningless lives flash by too quickly to count, too quickly to remember, and he could only write their names, and then they were gone. How he longed to follow them. To see if there was a creator on the other side of the void. And demand to know why an abomination such as himself had been allowed to exist in the first place.
But Azrael did not believe the loss of the Rapture's effect on him would be his end. He had known kindred in his lifetime far older than he. He had not known any recently, not for centuries; he avoided his own kind now. The last time he had been in the presence of an elder, he had not yet started to feel the loss of effect. He had been too young to know to ask. But in his bones, in his still heart, Azrael knew that his unlife would not wink out so easily. He was immortal. His existence would pale further and further, but colorlessness would not be the end. And perhaps it would be easier then. Perhaps he would not envy the mortals so much.
Such was Azrael's existence. Grey. Habitual. Each day, each decade like the last.
Until someone came and shattered his neatly-arranged little world.
Until one of his disciples was murdered.
).