by Rhiannon Brown

Created on: September 14, 2010   Last Updated: May 30, 2012

The light hurt my eyes. Not the kind of pain you might feel if you were to get a fever. Nor the sensation you would feel if you glanced inadvertently at the sun. For I am a vampire. To me, the light felt like opening my eyes to a thousand suns. The pain was unbearable.

Then suddenly, blissfully, I was unaware of anything but darkness. The relief was immense. I heard their voices, tinkling like bells, receding into the darkness. Speaking muffled words I couldn't make out. The scent of them rushed at me. An olfactory wave of evil. My hands were trembling as I lifted them to my face. My normally cold skin felt hot to the touch. I felt a pang of hunger in the pit of my stomach as I tasted the metallic tears which slid to my lips. I brushed them away with my unsteady hand.

Then  it occurred to me. There was a sense that something important was missing. Which as it turned out, it was.

Because I was blind.

At roughly the same time this realisation hit me, I also became aware that I wasn't alone. I heard footsteps, a mans footsteps I wagered, sounding like lightening cracks hitting the ground to my extra sensitive hearing. The sound intensified as the stranger made his way to me, so amplified that I had to hold my hands to my ears in pain. Then the footsteps halted, and he spoke.

In hindsight, I realise that the sweetest lullaby ever sang to a child could not have been as sweet as the sound of his voice. I relaxed physically in response to the dulcet tones he directed at me, slumping to the floor as he re-counted the tale of my woes. He told me that his name was Kern. He had been sent to find me by the elder ones. He told me that he was going to help me in order for them to take pity on his immortal soul. I didn't have any idea why he sought this pity, and at the time, didn't care.  I sat, amazed, unbelieving, hurt to the very core of my being.  My immortal days, it would seem, were numbered.  He explained that I had been betrayed by my own family. That is to say the only family that I had known in my vampire form. My maker, the one who had turned me from my beautiful human self,  had taken my sight for a purpose. They were hoping that without my sight, I could not hunt and therefore I would  eventually starve and turn to dust.  I felt anger swell in my guts as the truth sank in. I didn't know why they had done this to me, not then. But I knew that they were not expecting me to fight back.

They were wrong.

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