One moonless night I was awoken by a sound. It was not loud but it was peculiar. Like the sound of nails scraping over a blade. I looked next to me where my lover lay in the dark sound asleep beside me. I slipped from my bed, and padded softly outside in the darkness.


He came from behind me as he often used to when we were friends. I sensed his presence, his inhuman being. “Abel,” I whispered.


“Sita,” his voice whispered in my thoughts.


I whirled around and started to shout, but he was on me before I could make a sound. For the first time I could feel Abel’s true strength. His hands, with their long nails, were like the paws of a beast around my neck. He choked off my air, and leaned forward and took a deep breath of air against the nape of my neck. Burying his face in my hair as his voice filled my thoughts.


“You betrayed me, Sita.” he said. “If I let you speak, will you scream? If you scream you will die. Understood?”


I nodded and he loosened his grip, but he still kept me pinned. I had to cough before I could speak, gasping for air. “You betrayed ME. You killed my father and his men.”


“You do not know that,” he said.


“If you didn’t kill them then where are they?”


“They are with me, a few of them, in a special way.”


“You liar! They are dead, my father’s dead!”


“Your father is dead, that’s true. Only because he refused to join me.” He shook me roughly. “Do you wish to join me?”


It was so dark, I could see nothing of his face, but I was almost positive he was smiling at me. “No,” I said.


“You do not know what I am offering you.”


“You are evil!”


He slapped me, hard. The blow almost took my head off. I could taste my blood in my own mouth. “You don’t know what I am,” he said, angry but proud as well.


“But I do! I was there that night! Didn’t David and the others tell you before you killed them?”


“Keep your voice down!”


“I will do nothing you say!”


He gripped me so tight again it was hard to breathe. “Then you will die, Sita, after first watching your lover die. Yes, I know he’s asleep inside this house. I have watched you from afar for awhile now.”


“What do you want?” I gasped, bitterly, tears stinging my eyes.


He let me go, his tone in my head turning light and jovial, and the cruelty of it sickened me. “I have come to offer you two choices. You can come with me now, be my childe, become like me, or you can be buried beside your lover tonight.”


“What do you mean, become like you? I could never be like you? You...you are born one way...not another.”


“My difference is my greatness. I can make you like me, if you will consent to our blood mixing.”


The thought terrified me. That even a little of his blood should get inside of mine. “Wh..what would your blood do to me?” I stammered.


“You see how strong I am? With my will and blood I can have the strength of ten men. I can hear the leaf break off that branch. I can smell the blood of my prey through their skin. But most of all I can see things that you’ve never dreamed of Sita, and you can be a part of that dream, or you can begin to rot in the ground beside your lover tonight.”


“You watched me, then you know I always speak my mind. How can I be your childe if I hate you like I do? Why would you want a childe like me?”


His voice in my mind turned serious. “I have wanted you for years now.”


I turned my back on him then. “Then if you want me so badly, it must mean you care for me. If you care for me, then leave this place. Never come back. I am happy with my life.”


I felt his cold hand on my shoulder. “I will not leave you.”


“Then kill me, like you did my father, but leave my lover be!”


His grip on my shoulder turned to crushing, and I realized if I cried out, Andrew would be dead a moment later. Pain radiating in my shoulder forced me to stoop.


“No,” he said. “You must come with me. It was your destiny that you were there that night. It is your destiny now to come with me, to the edge of night.”


“The edge of night?”


He pulled me up and kissed me hard on the lips, and I could taste his blood mix with mine. “We will live for eternity,” he swore. “Just say yes, you must say yes.” He glanced down and then to my house. He didn’t have to say it again. I felt his full meaning. I was beaten.


“Yes.”


He hugged me. “Do you trust me?”


“Yes.”


“You lie, but you will trust me, you will be a part of me forever.”


He picked me up and carried me away. Past the beautiful remote paradise of my home, and deep into the redwood trees. To a place of darkness and quiet. He unleashed the unnatural dark and I drowned in a blackness that seemed to hold us both. It was there he opened my veins and gave me his kiss. He held me for such a long time that it felt like eternity. In that night all light was lost and love tainted. The darkness spoke to me as he changed me, but I couldn’t make out the words-the sounds demons must make when they mate in their black hells. He kissed me once and stroked my hair, before pressing my mouth to a self inflicted wound.


The power of the transfusion began to overwhelm my body. My breathing, my heartbeat, they raced faster and faster, until they seemed to chase each other and stop entirely. The worst of the agony was that I couldn’t get enough of his vitae. That it thrilled me more than the love any kine could give me. In that moment Abel became my sire, my lord, my dark father. In that moment I forgot my humanity, my god, the light, and screamed in wicked pleasure as I was embraced by the son of the abyssal darkness.