The Vampires #1: Alaric and Faina

Prologue: The Creatures

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

On an archeological dig site in Atapuerca, Spain, present day

As an archeological student and now a PhD candidate, Kristine had seen some strange things unearthed on digs before, but this one...this one was buried in layers so deep it was hundreds of thousands of years old. For days now, she'd been carefully exposing the partial upper and lower jawbone that was human-like but wasn't. Nor was it like any animal she'd ever seen.

She'd been referring to it in her mind as The Creature. A hybrid of sorts. 

In place of the cuspids, top and bottom, were a set of just slightly curled...fangs. Fangs instead of canines, as if canines weren't enough to rip and tear through flesh. What kind of creature with a set of teeth needed fangs more than canines? 

She sensed a subject for her dissertation was right at her fingertips.

More than four thousand years ago near what would become Carnac in France...

From the shadows of the forest, the creatures were watching the townspeople. 

The people living nearby didn't know when the shadow beings had arrived or where they had come from; they only knew that one day, the creatures were there. Unseen except for brief flashes of their red eyes but the people felt them watching from the shadows. Always watching. The simple, superstitious people were uncomfortable, as they should have been, and knew they were being hunted.

They just didn't know when the creatures would attack. And there was no doubt in their mind that they would attack. You wouldn't hide in the shadows if you were a creature of the light. You wouldn't hide if your intentions were good.

The people called them the watchers. The children were warned and kept close to home. No one went out after dark, such was the fear of the beings. The simple farming community didn't know what to do, and although they had talked about it, they never took action. The men refused to go into the forest to confront these creatures who watched, maybe even try to drive them away. They were farmers, not fighters, and the fear of the watchers was that great.

Many believed they had risen from the mysterious menhirs, those ancient megaliths that were near the town, not knowing they were much, much more ancient. The stones had been standing long before the people settled there, but no one would live close to the stones because they were unknown, mysterious elements, and what was unknown was imbued with a sense of the sinister. Of the forbidden. 

The villagers were so careful, however, that the watchers had no choice but to come out of the forest and into the town one evening just after the sun began to set. Their centuries-old bodies were dying and they needed more than blood now; they instinctively thought to save themselves by transferring the Hunger inside to new hosts, younger hosts who would create the next generation and the Hunger would continue in the males of all future generations.

If the men could withstand the Hunger and its needs.

So, the watchers attacked. Some men died, but the stronger ones survived and the Hunger lived within them. It would control the men, driving their need for blood and many women died at first, drained of their blood, until the women adapted. They realized they could stop the feeding after a certain point by offering sex. If you're reading this anywhere but wattpad, you're reading a story stolen from the author, groveltohea. And as that helped, the women also evolved over time to have more blood in their bodies so they could survive a feeding more easily. Between the two adaptations, the women began surviving, becoming enough to satisfy the Hunger within the men. 

They soon discovered the male children were born with the Hunger inside of them, ready to come out when the boys became men and began feeding regularly once they married. These hybrids of the watchers and the humans didn't have the fangs in place of their canines; instead, their razor-sharp canines would draw down and lengthen from the top for a feeding, and the lower ones would push up, too, if they were needed to fight.

Over thousands of years, they adapted, evolved, learned to hide their needs and their natures so others didn't come after them and hunt them. Many times they'd had to leave towns because the Hunger had killed those by feeding from those who were not like them and the villagers came after them. Rules evolved and were strictly followed. The vampire communities were brutal societies that enforced the laws and traditions of their communities. Those who carried the Hunger in them turned only to the vampire females who could provide the blood they needed. The vampires learned to conceal what they were by maintaining strict controls over the feedings. 

Since they were long lived, whenever a community grew too large, members of the original twelve ancient families were sent to form new communities along with lesser families and vampires spread throughout the continents until, eventually, there were communities all over the world. Communities led by the twelve and adhering to their laws and traditions.

And though they may have learned to control it so they could lead relatively normal lives and move about in society while hiding their secrets, the Hunger still lived within the males, waiting. Wanting blood. Needing it.

No amount of civilization could change that. It was the most basic of truths: the Hunger needed blood and would have it.

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA