Waning Moon : Carlisle's Story

Chapter 2

Carlisle opened his eyes. For a moment he was paralyzed and his eyes swept the room. The dawn of the third day had broken. The sun had not risen and the sky was barely purple, but compared to the pitch black of the cellar a dim light was visible through the cracks in the cellar doors. Carlisle knew he was missing a short period of memory because he had last been aware of his fading breath, and it had been completely dark outside. Had he…?

Suddenly, he sat straight up as an explosion of every smell, sound, and color around him overwhelmed his senses. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. But just as quickly his mind filtered the noise, so when he opened his eyes again he noted that he could perceive every moving creature's sound in the house, could identify every smell within a six-block radius, and saw with perfect acuity even in near complete darkness every object in the room.

For a moment, Carlisle was exhilarated and easily pulled himself out of the pile of rotten potatoes, but when he was free he smelled and then looked down and saw the dry blood that covered his shirt. He was overcome with the desire to suck his own blood out of the fabric. And then a deep, ravenous thirst suddenly stabbed at his insides but he did not desire the shelves of wine, or sacks of turnips or pickled meat in the cellar. His instincts took over, and he sniffed out the closest available source of what he desired – a small female, just at the top of the stairs to the cellar beyond a flimsy wooden door, which he knew he could pulverize quite easily.

A CHILD! I want to drink the blood of a CHILD? I am plotting to kill a child! Carlisle backed up toward to cellar doors, struggling to push down the monstrous craving that was rumbling deep inside him. Several times he started toward the stairs leading up to the playing little girl who was so close, such an easy meal… Finally, he managed to open the cellar doors and forced himself to walk up the steps to the street. He looked up at the purple morning sky, which was starting to turn slightly pink in the east as the sun crept higher, and he closed his coat over his bloody shirt so he would not attract attention, but that reminded him of…

He put his hand up to his neck, where the vampire had bitten him. The bite on his neck was healed over to a soft scar. Then he realized that it was more than a bite mark, one soft raised line lead to another, and another. The vampire had torn apart his neck in the attack. Suddenly he was seized with rage, and he slammed the cellar doors with such force that they splintered. The door handle had come of in his hand and when he looked at it he saw that his stone-hard fingers had squeezed the thick metal as if it were clay. He was shocked by his strength, and he ran down the alley for fear of being caught but realized that in a blink of an eye he was two miles from where he had been. Carlisle gasped and looked around him. There were not very many people around yet, and those that were out apparently had not seen him moving too fast for their eyes to perceive. Fear gripped him, anger pulsed through him, thirst called him in all directions toward the humans nearby who were completely unaware of the newborn vampire that was cowering between two buildings in London, covering his head trying to block out all of the heartbeats pounding in his ears.

When Carlisle could bear it no longer he determined to run as far and as fast as possible away from all of the people. He ran in short spurts, hiding from the sight of any human, and headed for the woods nearby. He would have to go a long way, out of the city, past the fields of workers; but he appeared to move unnoticed. When he could no longer hear any heart beats calling him nor smell any hint of the enticing aroma of blood, he finally stopped and was amazed that he felt no fatigue from his efforts. Carlisle was standing in a clearing near the edge of the forest under a tree that had to be a thousand years old. Only fifteen minutes had passed, the sun was just peeking over the treetops, and he had run at least twenty miles. For the first moment since he awoke he took some time to think.

I cannot do this! I will not become an agent of death! I will not become this monster! This must …END.

Carlisle formulated the plan instantly. He sat next to a tree completely still and calmly waited through the entire day, deliberately watching nothing but the slow crawl of the sun across the sky until darkness fell again so there would be fewer humans around to tempt his senses as he ran. His plan might instantly condemn him to hell, but he did not care. He preferred to go to hell for this rather than for killing one of God's people. He could not believe it was such a simple choice.