The Reborn (The Reborn trilogy book 1)

Prologue

  Moving silently and stealthily through the night, I use all fifty years of experience I've gained to track my target. The scent lingering in the air. A wave of alcohol and cologne trailing behind like a bread-crumb trail. The streets are quiet on this stretch. Vastly different from the area I first started tracking from.

The clubbing strip, while not something that interests me does attract the perfect targets for my needs.

For fifty years now I have been a creature of the night. One of the un-dead. A vampire. The blood of my former race the much-needed nectar that keeps me alive. So, to speak. Stuck forever in the body of a seventeen-year-old girl.

Not that that girl exists any more. She died the night I was sired. The need to survive creating a new and stronger being that was able to escape my so-called master's clutches. Two decades stuck doing their bidding, a pawn in a useless supernatural war that I didn't want anything to do with in the first place. Two decades living in hell, forced to do things that would give even a horror fanatic nightmares. Yeah, compulsion is real and a serious head ache. You're awake the whole time, seeing and hearing everything but with no control over your body's movements. It's like being stuck in a run-away train with no controls on the carriage. You can scream all you want but even that won't get out.

The things I did.

The day I escaped was the start of a new life. Yes, I may still be a vampire, forced to live life in the shadow, but I was free. Took a few years before I could start to relax with my nomad life style, you don't disobey your master after all. But after a decade the old master moved on from chasing me down, creating more victims to do his miserable bidding.

More than fine by me.

Maybe I haven't lived as a saint the past thirty years but it is still a damn step better than I was living before. For a start I found out that I don't have to kill my food. I can quite easily drink enough to keep me going without draining the person. If anything, I find I have more energy by drinking less, not being as bogged down with too much blood in my body.

It's funny really, when I was human, I couldn't stand the sight of blood. Would get queasy at a single drop, now I live off the stuff.

Talking off blood, my target is in sight.

The male stumbles slightly as he meanders down the road. Drunk college males, the easiest target, they all think nothing of walking home alone. If only they knew the true horrors living in the night.

Using all my assets from my life as a vampire I'm on the guy's neck before he even knows what is happening. My fangs sinking into the soft flesh with practised pressure and the sweet relief of blood touches my tongue. The guy giggles, yup an actual giggle, as I take a final sip. Closing his wound, I'm gone before he can even turn around.

I get two streets away before my whole body feels weird. I slow down and end up leaning against the nearest wall. Pain wracks through me before the world goes dark.