Thicker Than Blood

• Prologue •

{ Asrael's POV } • 1/7/1693
Hurt, pain, sadness. I could see it in her eyes, the Beautiful blue-green eyes that I loved so much. I watched in terror and desperation as tears begin to roll down her cheeks as she began to realize that this was the end. I could not bear to watch, I could not stand seeing the tears falling from the ocean blue eyes that I had looked into as I said the three most famous words of all time. And here, the woman I loved was dying in front of me, and I could do naught to stop it. If I have been able to, I would have sprung forward and snatched my love from the mall of the beasts that stood poised to consume her, but these beasts were tenacious and crafty. They had frozen me to the spot where I stood my arms reaching out as if to grab the hand of my beloved. Twas a cruel thing for her, to be where she was, and see me reaching for her. Neither of us able to be together in our last moments.

Twas my fault to begin with. My love and I had sinned against God and had consummated our love for each other without the proper nuptials, and had conceived. We made every effort to hide our shame from our families and from our town, but it was to no avail. We were ousted when her pregnancy began to show and it sent our village of Salem into a frenzy. The local priest had condemned us to Eternal Hellfire for what we had done, and Exile that's to the shack at the edge of town reserved for Sinners and those deemed to be witches as they awaited their trial for witchcraft. Mere nine months my love begin to have labor pains. But even though we both gave it our best efforts, our baby was stillborn.

In our grief, we sought the help of the witches. We were turned away, as the punishment for necromancy, even amongst the witches it was death. Desperate, I returned in the dead of night, and stole a book from the coven. A grimoire, a book containing the secrets of a witches bloodline, and inside I found what I needed. I have read it, tooth of the tree squirrel, bone dust and blood from the caster all went into the circle the grimoire instructed us to make. As we cried out the chant, our baby came back to us but there was nothing there. It stared at us with eyes that bore no light of life behind them. As we sat , our tears staining the ground as we wept. Drawn to our hiding place by the magic we had imbued, they came. They took our child from us and I attempted to put up a fight. Twas to no avail. I was thrown back against the tree, and I could feel my skull split at the impact. My love was bound, and as I stood to renew my efforts, I was frozen in place, my arms reaching for my love.

I watched as she rotated in the air, her eyes fixed on mine every time her body turned to face me. She was muttering something, but I could not hear her over the chanting of the witches that stood in a circle around us, their bodies illuminated by a ring of fire behind them. Their Shadows danced as the one in the center, the one holding the empty husk of our child raised her arms, and I watched in despair as the child's body turn to Ash. There was then a loud snap and a scream of pain from my beloved, and I vomited in my mouth as I saw the bone in her thigh split and pierce her from within, shards of her bone sticking out like pine needles , spurts of bone dust flying into the air that the witch collected. I swallowed the bile in my mouth and shouted at the witches. "Stop this, please!" My heart was racing and sweat and tears poured down my face." Take me instead! Hurt me! I'm the one that deserves this, not her!"

The witches ignored me, as though my presence was unnoticed. My love screamed more as I heard more and more bones break at the witches command, and I could only watch in horror as all my dreams vanished before me. I would never have a family with her, I would never be able to grow old with her, my chance of having a life with her was being broken to pieces before my unbelieving eyes. I wish desperately to take it back, I prayed to God to stop this, but he did not answer. And as the crescendo of the chant reached its zenith, I screamed as I watched my loves body twist around a final time, and I met her eyes for the last time, watching as the light faded from them. My precious Genevieve, dead.

I was released, and fell to the ground sobbing. It was gone, everything I'd hoped for, dreamed of, and loved. Gone forever. " do not think we have forgotten you." The witch who had stood in the center was approaching me. " you who stole from us, made machinations to revive dead against all warnings, and brought into this world an Abomination." All I could do was stare at the ground in despair.

"What more can you do to me, kill me for all that I care, naught else matters anymore." I spat with contempt. I could feel my heart filling with anger, rage, and a desire to kill those who had taken Genevieve from me.

"We have other plans for you." The witches lifted me, their power holding me up, pinning my arms behind my back with invisible forces beyond my comprehension. "A life for a life, and a curse for a curse." The one in front of me lifted my chin and forced me to look into her eyes. "So here is your punishment and your curse. Your precious lover will be reborn into this world. But no matter how hard you try, each and every time you find her, you will be doomed to lose her all over again."

The witches in the circle began to chant again pacing in a circle around me. "You will be cursed to walk this Earth forever, but never in the Sun, and you will live off the blood of those you once called friends." I gritted my teeth together as the witch drew a long jagged knife. "You will become a creature of the dark." I grunted in pain as the knife was plunged into my chest. "You will be a phantom of the night." The knife was drawn down my chest, opening a long gash in me, my tunic soaked with my own blood. I screamed in agony. "You will be neither living nor dead." The witch poured the ashes of my twice dead child and the bone dust from my love into her open palm, closing her fingers around them. "You will forever be caught in limbo between heaven and hell, unable to enter either." The witch shoved her fist into my chest and I choked as I felt her fingers open and close around my heart. Rubbing the ashes and bone into my flesh. I began to feel cold as my heart slowed, the witch was turning me into something monstrous. Something inhuman, and I could feel the change as I tried to cry out in pain that was slowly leaving my body. "Until we deem you worthy of mortality, you will obey this curse, and find your love as she is born into this world time and time again, each time with no knowledge of you. You will never age, and you will not die unless we let you." I felt the change complete. My eyes burned, my mouth stung as I felt my tongue meet the pointed end of fangs, and I felt the overpowering desire to feed, to rip, maim, kill, and to not stop until I had my fill.

I glared up at the witches and growled at them. "What have you done to me?!" I demanded, my tongue feeling like a rock in my mouth as it maneuvered around the fangs.

"We have made you immortal, foolish boy. We have moulded you into a creature that will feed and sleep and feed again, narrow minded and focused on its basic instincts, something you must overcome if you truly want your beloved back." I was released, and one by one the witches began to leave, until only the one who was speaking to me was left. She walked away, and paused several lengths away from me and spoke her last words to me before departing. "And as for what you are, we will call you, a Vampire"