raised by wolves

What the Spider Lady told me was laden with double meanings, conundrums and gypsy-speak. Riddles and word games, most of it, but the important parts were these:

Long ago, an evil magician summoned a manifestation of a dark and forgotten god into our reality. This manifestation, the magician believed, would put him in a seat of unquestionable power for the remainder of time. Instead, the dark god manifested as a light in the sky—a comet or a meteor, whatever you want to call it—and brought with it the curse of vampirism. This magician was the first. Those among his disciples were next. Those in the village they inhabited followed, and soon the long forgotten nation was bathed in blood, like a black tide rolling in to sweep away dry land forever.

But, as things often go with dark, forgotten gods, the magician did not quite get what he bargained for. The comet, which intersected the path of the sun’s rays to Earth continued on an uncharted path across the sky, and eventually it’s influence was lost. The magician and his followers were suddenly no longer able to move in the daylight, and so became the nocturnal horrors of legend. Time continued to relentlessly pass until all but the event itself was forgotten. No names recalled, no genealogies to chart. Just a curse that would last until the end of time, a curse just strong enough to keep vampires from overrunning the planet and finally wiping themselves out when there was no more fresh blood to be spilled.

And now, the meteor had come back. After thousands and thousands of years floating through the abyssal blackness of space, it had returned on the end of it’s long forgotten orbit to block the sunlight and unleash the terror of us on the world once again.

“You hesitate, little Cyril,” the Spider Lady said. “You do not see anything wrong with this picture. Let the comet come, you are thinking. Vampires will certainly do a much better job of running this world than humans ever could, yes? No, little Cyril. Vampires are monsters and you know this to be true. You live with this notion every day, every time you suck the blood from the neck of a living person, you struggle with what you are. And you know the rest of your kind are no better, and in many cases worse.

“Even now, there are cabals assembling, the most ancient of your kind summoning one another and speaking of these legends in hushed tones, fearful that speaking aloud will wake them from a dark and pleasant dream where they will spread and conquer and rule for all time. But vampires, for their ability to resist the lash of ages, are short-sighted. Many others, less discrete, less experienced, but just as strong and vicious and intelligent as you, are making moves as well. Even now, there are young firebrands shrieking for other vampires to rise and take back the day from the living.

“And you must stop them, at all costs.”

A thousand questions flooded through the space between my ears. Chief among them was “Why me?” but I knew better than to ask the Spider Lady such an open-ended question. “Why not?” was next on the list, and the Spider Lady answered it without my even having to speak.

“Because, little Cyril,” she said with a wheeze, “If vampires rule the planet, who will they feed upon? Humanity will be doomed, certainly, and I could not expect you or any other undead beast to care about the plight of humanity, but the vampires will be doomed as well, doomed ten fold even. Have you ever seen a vampire who is unable to feed? Have you ever felt the madness, the fatigue, the constant thirst that stabs at you like a jackhammer until thirst is all that you know? No, you have not. You have been a very lucky little vampire, my Cyril. Others have not. And these others are all that will be left if your cohorts are not stopped from spilling every last drop of warm blood on the planet. You must stop their terrible feast, if only for the sake of sating your own foul thirst. They will not leave you any table scraps, little Cyril.”

The Spider Lady leaned back and folded her arms across her sunken skeletal chest. I felt the feeling returning to my body. The charm was lifted. I took a deep breath of my own accord and thought vaguely of throttling the Spider Lady, but decided against it. I flexed my hands and made my knuckles pop, then stood.

“I’ll do it,” I said finally after a long, tense moment. “I’ll do it, but I’m not going to like it.”

I turned and walked towards the rickety screen door as the Spider Lady laughed.

“No, little Cyril,” she said as I passed through the door. “You most certainly will not.”

The screen slapped shut behind me, and then I was back on my street. I turned and looked to where the small white building had just stood, but there was nothing, just a row of storefronts, all painfully familiar. I spat and reached in my pocket for my cigarettes and looked up at the sun for the first time since practically forever. There was something odd about it, that old ball of fire, something I hadn’t noticed. It’s light was bright and yellow, but the color of the orb itself seemed different. It was the color of butter, fresh yellow butter from a crock on the country side, with just a few drops of blood mixed in to give it a red tint. I scowled and pulled up my hood and began walking.

The city hummed with activity, a distant humming that reverberates endlessly through your ear canals and makes your head hurt even when you are by yourself in silence. It is different from the silence of the night. So much life all around, so much bustling and moving, so much motion that your stomach starts to hurt from thinking of it, like the insides of a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle forever.

Slowly, invisibly, I made my way across town to the den of a friend of mine. Unless he had awoken from the same troubled sleep with the same amplified thirst as I had, he was very likely to still be asleep.