Guardian Demon (boyxboy)

Prologue

How long do you have to live before you’re allowed to give up? When are you allowed to say, “Enough is enough?” How long must you suffer in silence before you’re allowed to end it without someone judging you? Who has the right to tell you that you must carry on? Who has the right to decide whether you should live or die?

I’ve lived for tens of thousands of years. I don’t think that anybody could blame me for wanting to just stop. I’d seen wonders, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, I was there when they built the pyramids, the beginning of the age of technology, but what was the point of seeing it all if I had no one to share it with. Thirty thousand years is a long time to be alone.

I used to have others, vampires, demons and angels that had been there with me. But so many had left, either to other dimensions or to the safety of their minds. Sleeping. Waiting, for the world to change and go on without them so that they could just be at peace for once. How they left is not of importance, only the fact that they left. Leaving me alone, only my memories for comfort. And a cold comfort they were.

My name is Andre Shadow. That is what I have become, a shadow. Few know my name, and those that do speak of me in a whisper. I have become a myth, tales of the things I have done pass between others behind raised hands. A legend they call me; younglings scoff at the mention of my name, to them I am nothing but a story. But one only mentioned in the shadows, behind hands, in hushed tones. I have become a story in the shadows so that is what I will call myself, to remind me of who I am, what I am. So that I don’t forget that while now I am the oldest. I was not always.

I remember a time when I was the youngest. Vampires do not have children often so I was the only one in the village. Everyone doted on me and the coven leader often played games with me when my parents were busy. Children were protected and loved. There was little ill blood between the different races. We lived among humans who knew of us and did not care. Seen through the eyes of a child, everything was perfect.

At least that’s what I had thought. In truth the valley that I lived in was one of the few that were safe from the carnage. Humans had decided that vampires and demons were evil. None other than me remember the true reason behind it. The truth was that it was because of a spurned lover. A farmer’s wife found herself pregnant with a vampires' child. She knew that it was, because her stomach grew too quickly for it to be human. A human woman’s pregnancy lasts nine months. A vampire’s only lasts two.

The woman begged the vampire father to kill her husband and marry her, it would look suspicious but it was far better than everyone knowing that she had been unfaithful. The vampire refused, saying that he would not continue the affair now that he knew she was married (the woman had conveniently forgotten to mention that fact earlier).

The farmers’ wife found herself clueless on what to do. So when she was asked why she was carrying a vampire child when her husband was human, she lied, claiming that the vampire had forced her and revealed that this was something that they did regularly. Many other women stepped up to support her tale, all of them had vampire children and they had all gone willingly to the bed of a vampire. However gossip traveled faster than the truth. The story spread, at first as a joke, something to be laughed at, then as generations passed humans began to think of it as the fact instead of fiction. Forgetting that it was a story to be laughed over.

Humans became suspicious of everyone different, paranormal or not. Soon riots began and the massacres started. And while my village was safe from this mayhem, I myself was not. I was small for a child in those times but when I was grown that changed. I was suddenly the tallest instead of the shortest, although I am now considered below average at 5’6”. Despite my tall height among the villagers, I had always had one of the slimmest builds. I was no warrior. But that was what I needed to be. So that is what I became. I never gained any muscle definition, another thing that is rare among vampires. However I did not need to look strong, I just had to be strong. I became the best fighter in the village, back then I was known as Tyrino. An ancient word for loyalty and honor. But that was not how I fought.

I was recruited to hunt down humans that had killed paranormals in cold blood. I played the perfect bait. Nobody ever thought I was a threat so they weren’t expecting me to fight back; they realized their mistake only after I had spilled their blood and left them to die.

While my life’s story is fascinating, it is a tale for another time. You did not come here for this story, but rather for the one that I will tell in you in the coming pages. You have come for the tale of what happened now, not thousands of years in the past. You came for the tale of how I met Ashley, the person that could bring me back from the brink. The one that I learned to love. Ashley, my guardian demon.