T-T-Trembling time

We all wear collars. All of us at all times. Tabernacle rules are very explicit. All who clash with them suffer; the tabernacle has never been beaten, and never will be. As long as our kind fails to change. The uniform binds us to the Tabernacle, and displays like neon signs what we are. And what we have done.

The fledglings wear red, being the youngest of our kind, whether they have been beneath the shroud for 10 years or for 50 they must wear the red cuffs and collar. They are regarded as fledglings and therefore have all the rights of fledglings.

None.

We are not allowed color, none of us, besides the required color of our cuffs and collars. Black clothing and silver clothing are all that is allowed besides the small whites of tuxes and suits. Hair color must be changed if it is not black or the darkest hue of brown. Ones hair can be either white, grey or black. My own hair is white. I could not bear to see it fall into the shadow that has shrouded the rest of my world.

After you pass the year that your human life was meant to end, you become an advocate. Your collar becomes silver, your trust is increased, the human’s no longer approach you, eyes glittering with fear, and you have already been through many years of training. In any case, whatever your level of skill, your spirit has been broken. Advocates never try to escape. And if any have I have heard no news of it.
No Advocate leaves the Tabernacle. At any point in time.
You are given to human master, who treats you, as he will. You stay in whomever you are elected to as long as they remain in the tabernacle; within the crimson walls they are your gods. You do their will and ask no questions, nothing they ask beyond your power to grant. Emotional ties hold no power over a vampire.
If your master says “ Kill your lover!” or “ hack off your left hand!” then it must be done. The master must be exalted. It is the way we live. It is our penance for being as we are. Unholy. Godless. Monsters.
If you have been deemed worthy and have earned the love and respect of a human master, a vampire may be ascended to the level of master themselves. They are given a black collar and cuffs; they are allowed to walk beyond the Crimson walls. They are not free and yet they are as free as they will ever be. They may buy their freedom and leave with their master or mistress. They may leave on the condition that they serve their charges faithfully beyond the walls. After a vampire leaves the Tabernacle, they are dead to those of us left inside. We will never see them again. When a vampire leaves, there is much grieving if they are loved. Silent grieving. To the humans we have no emotion. We are not allowed the privilege of emotion.
To become a master, a required step is to leave the Tabernacle and return with a human youth about the age of 17. Younger is frivolous, older is questionable but allowed.
The master must steal this young human life. They must create an apprentice, a fledgling of his or her own; to allot that their position in the Tabernacle is filled before they may depart.

That was the situation in which I found myself one frigid October night.
I had been sitting at my window, my legs drawn up, looking out at the moonlit roofs of London and the brilliant sprawls and patterns the shadows made upon the ground as the bats weaved and danced through the black night. My disposition had been miserable that evening, as sodden as my rain soaked bedclothes. I don’t remember what had displeased me but my vision had been blurred with tears and the cold night scenery had shimmered as I blinked said tears away.
When I opened my eyes I was met with a nightmare. I knew his identity before my mind could capture his image. My heart, my constitution, knew what he was while my brain went out to tea in a panicked flighty and well placed escape.
He was kneeling at my side, dwelling as close as a lover might, his violet eyes locked on mine, his full lips pulled into a cruel derisive smile. Long canines protruded from his mouth, jagged and feral. His eyes pinned me like a butterfly to a wall. I opened my mouth to scream, to move. But I was paralyzed in terror; I didn’t even have the intelligence to force myself from my perch into the open air. But Vivaldi was not one to underestimate. Before I could heave the air back into my lungs, he lunged forward and pressed his fangs to my throat. I froze as if I’d been shot. My heart hammered in my chest like a caged bird. He pulled back slightly; the bitterly cold fangs drew away. And to my amazement he placed his icy lips to my ear in a soft laving kiss before whispering, “ I will spare you if you can answer one question” he purred in a voice so heavily Italian I had trouble discerning him. I did not scream, my blood had solidified to frost, I could no more think than I could fly.
“ With what-” he whispered and his long black tresses floated of their own accord over my face, my eyelids and lips. “ Do you paint a person’s heart”?
An object, my lethargic shell-shocked brain, decided. That’s what it must be. A paintbrush? Too easy? Yes much to easy.
The vampire, Vivaldi brushed his lips lightly over my throat. I shivered. I shiver to this day, such control he had, not to tear the flesh from my throat as I sat there, utterly helpless and vulnerable.
A heart was filled with blood. My brain pressed. If punctured it would erupt in red yes? Painting it yes? Yes?
A tooth grazed my throat; I started and then desperately cried out in my loudest whisper, which was all I could manage trapped on my windowsill by a fairytale villain, “ a rock! The blood from within would spill and paint the heart outside and in.” relief flooded through me. No stammering. Even in his broken English, he would understand, I felt weak with reprieve. A smooth forehead rested lightly and suddenly on my shoulder.
“ Close.” he whispered with no little into of warmth and I stiffened. “ But no candle, kitten” and with that he reared back and sank his incisors into my neck. I cannot find the words to express the feeling, the horrible drowning feeling of having your life betraying you, your blood fleeing your body, your world growing small and black and numb. I sank back into his arms, my hands grasping weakly for something, anything to keep from falling into the darkness I saw before me. He was gentle and drank silently for which I am eternally grateful, I would have surely lost my senses were I to have heard this creature draining me of my lifeblood. My only complaint is that he went too fast, gave me no time to adjust or to understand. I do not know whether that was a curse or a blessing. I still do not know.
I felt myself being encompassed in now warm warms and being lifted slightly. I reached for his chest like a child in the throes of a night terror. My body wanted nothing more than to cling. Such a human instinct. It must have moved him. His piano suited fingers curled suddenly but lighting over the back of my head and I was forced forward, my lips to his neck. And like a red tide, blood flooded my mouth, seemed to fill every orifice, I couldn’t breathe, all I saw was red.
I was drowning in it, drowning in a turbulent sea of red and black with heavy hot blood running down my throat, all the time. I was sure I would have lost consciousness had I been any younger. But my age sustained me and then suddenly it was gone. It was all gone.
There are no words.
For that moment. When you realize god has turned his back on you. Everything around you goes cold and hard and unreachable. The stars swiveled and collapsed down on me, the entire sky plunging towards me , its darkness like wide black jaws seeking to swallow me whole.
I can honestly confess that I thoroughly believed the world to be at its end.
I heard my heart release its final breathes in my ears. My eyes closed on the night.
And would never again wake to the day.

I opened my eyes to a purple wonderland, mountains and forests and rivers of mauve dancing and shifting before me. I blinked to clear my stinging eyes. There was no wonderland. Only Vivaldi and his lavender eyes. He was sitting at my side and I was leaned against him, my head turned up to see his face. Our noses were not but an inch apart. Were I human I would have blushed and pulled away. As a vampire, I did nothing. I felt only the slightest brush of emotion. Embarrassment, my concise brain said coolly, Well wouldn’t you know, fancy that?
Then I felt the hunger, raging inside me like a beast that I have only managed to cage in recent years as an Advocate.
The hunger that eats you from the inside out and makes you hollow and aching. It steal your humanity, your principles your memories and values right form under your nose.
It makes you an animal.
I needed to feed.
He must have seen it in my eyes for he gathered me in his arms fondly. “ Enjoy the night child. Paint your heart with it. For you will soon paint it with the blood of others.”
Blood of others. I had been close. So close.
Would he have let me go? Probably not.
Definitely not, I noted as he had smiled affectionately into my once mahogany hair.
After you pass the year that your human life was meant to end, you become an advocate. I have been an advocate for several years. Y mortal life was to have ended at the age of 18. I had not had a future. My vampirism changed nothing. I was dead. And dead I would remain. It was meant to be. I didn’t have a choice.
Did I?

* * * * * *