Part One: Prince of the Blood - Transformation

By PJ Webb

The Prince of the Blood Chronicles is a series which tells a story that spans more than two hundred years. It is the memoir of the life and untimely mortal death of Hollywood’s most beloved screen star, and how he was brutally cast from a world of privilege into a dark sub-life, where he finds himself transformed into a demon of unspeakable horror.

Unable to tolerate the monster that defined him, he found a way to control his insatiable lust for blood when he uncovered a remarkable secret. He tells how he began a mission of great proportion, unaware that he was being watched and scrutinized for his efforts, and how his great undertaking eventually made him one of the most important and influential beings in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PJ Webb
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9780989605908

PJ Webb

I was born in Maryland, but lived most of my life in exciting New York City. That changed In July of 2011 when together with my husband, Scott, and our two cats, I set out on a cruise aboard our boat "Somewhere in Time". Our original intention had been to make it to Florida, where my husband had a business venture waiting. However, circumstances beyond our control, often called fate, landed us in North Carolina . . . I think we’re all still suffering from culture shock!I started writing my first book approximately three years ago, which is the first in my Prince of the Blood Vampire Chronicles. Since then I have written two more books in the series, and I’ve just finished a fourth book which is not in the vampire genre.I’m a red haired, green eyed, Virgo (folklore claims red hair to be the sign of the witch). I love using my imagination to create fantasy and hopefully unforgettable characters. I was labeled a cake-etarian by my husband. In other words, I don’t eat meat, but I’m not crazy about most vegetables either.My interests include: Boating, music (both listening and writing), good friends, and great movies.

Book preview

~Prince of the Blood~

By P.J. Webb

Copyright 2011 by P.J. Webb

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or shared in any manner without the permission from the author.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~*~~~

This is dedicated to My Sebastian

My Husband Scott Webb

Who, having been faced with extreme loss,

Is in the process of reinventing himself

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

About P.J. Webb

Coming Soon

Connect with the Author

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

I had been working late nights, trying to wrap up production on a film that was well over schedule and budget. That was the case one night, as I passed the security gates of our house and on to the drive. When I got closer, I could see that the large front doors were swung wide open. I knew instantly that something was wrong. I recklessly drove the short distance to the front porch, and was standing in the foyer in seconds. The house was eerie in its silence, like a party after the last guest has gone. I noticed immediately that all of the doors leading out to the pool had also been opened. A cool breeze blew through the house, and moths had gathered themselves inside attracted by the foyer lamps.

CHAPTER 1

I am Sebastian Du Sang, also known as Sebastian Blood. Vampire, I suppose, is the label you would give me though I prefer another title, and I hope in time you’ll agree. I don’t expect you to believe me right now, though. I know you’ve heard it all before, haven’t you? Perhaps after I’ve told you my story, you’ll be less skeptical and more agreeable to see things my way. I’ve wanted to tell the details of my existence for a long time but had given up hope of finding someone to confide in. You see, all of the mortals who have known my darker side haven’t lived long enough to know my pain. That’s why it occurred to me to introduce myself in this manner. I’ve been carrying the weight of the monster many think I am for what seems an eternity, and now there’s no one to comfort me. I know what you're thinking—how dare he be so self-indulgent. It’s simply my nature, and eventually you will understand this.

That being said, I’ll begin. I was born in New Orleans in 1900. My parents were from Paris and settled there because of its large population of French immigrants. My grandfather, on my father’s side, was wealthy, and because my father came from wealth, he managed to establish and own the biggest and most popular saloon in the French Quarter.

I suppose it would be appropriate to explain why my parents left their beloved France. My mother was mulatto and happened to be a servant in my grandfather’s home. She was a great, dark beauty whose looks could charm any man. My father had fallen helplessly in love and couldn't live without her. At the time, society would have found it unacceptable for a man of my father’s noble heritage and wealth to take a common servant as his wife, and so together they fled their homeland to preserve the family honor. My grandfather did agree, however, to finance my father’s future, as long as it wasn’t in Paris.

I remember quite vividly growing up. I still recall the moist summer nights and the scents of honeysuckle and jasmine carried in the air. I would go to bed with the windows wide open, listening to jazz music playing two stories beneath me. Most evenings the musicians played there in our courtyard. Sometimes I heard my mother singing, and when she sang the blues, her voice could melt your heart. The music mixed with the laughter and the muted talk of my father’s patrons as they sat beneath colorful umbrellas at the outdoor tables. I drifted off to sleep listening to the rattling dishes, the music, and the laughter, and I have never again felt so at peace.

An odd, little man by the name of Charles used to come into my father’s establishment occasionally to play the piano. He was so elusive that at first I thought him strange. He would just show up and play, never speaking to anyone. Much later I found out he was mute, although he wasn’t deaf. He appeared to be in his early sixties and was slight of build with white hair, and pale, watery blue eyes that looked as if they might tear up at any given moment.

The story told by the locals was that Charles’ father, James, had been a good looking boy from a well-to-do family. Everyone had high expectations for James, but at eighteen he became involved with a thirteen-year-old girl and in no time he had gotten her pregnant. Consequently, James was thrown out of his parents’ home.

James soon married the girl, and found a job doing factory work, and then he and his young wife rented a small house on the outskirts of town. No one knew why he started drinking heavily, but it wasn’t long before it cost him his job. Once that happened, he spent most of his time in a drunken stupor, hell-bent on telling anyone who would listen how he intended to make a lot of money and show everyone. It wasn’t long until people tired of his ranting and began to ignore him.

James and his wife had six children, four boys and two little girls, but he could hardly take care of them all. He never tried to learn a trade. Instead, he turned the property he rented into a chicken farm, selling fresh eggs to the townspeople while his wife tailored to make ends meet. She was self-taught and a fairly decent seamstress, who did all her work by hand.

One horrific night James came home in a drunken rage and shot all of the chickens and both of his dogs. Then, entering the house, he turned the gun on his family. When he was done shooting, his wife and five of their children lay dead. He shot his wife in the back of the head as she desperately tried to escape. A two-year-old girl lay motionless in her crib. His five year old daughter’s body was discovered in an upstairs hallway. Twin boys, age six, were still tucked in their bunk bed mortally wounded, and two other brothers, age eight and ten had been left for dead in an adjacent room. The ten year old didn’t make it; the younger one, Charles, did. One can only imagine the carnage that the poor boy saw. Once he had recovered from his injuries, he was sent to Sacred Heart Orphanage.

Two weeks after the shooting, when Charles’s father was dragged out of the swamp, the reason he gave for what he had done was that he had simply gotten tired of taking care of them all. You have a name for me. So I ask you, what would you call him?

Charles, poor fellow, was never adopted and perhaps it was just as well. There was an old piano in the orphanage that he began playing and, although he never had a lesson, he instinctively knew what to do. He practiced all the time. It was all he ever did, all he cared to do. He showed no interest in any other activities or in making friends with his peers, and he had suddenly stopped talking which made it even more difficult to reach him. The staff eventually gave up. It was easier to leave him alone than to deal with him, and so he was free to play to his heart’s content.

By the time I met Charles, he played like the most accomplished of concert pianists. I was totally enthralled with his talent and longed to play as well as he did. Charles became my dear friend, and when he found out how interested I was to learn, he began to come around more often. He spent hours with me and seemed pleased to have a purpose. He was remarkably patient, and with his help, in time, I actually became quite good. In fact, I played well enough that I was invited to go to New York to study.

My parents, excited by the possibility of a bright future for their only child, were more than willing to pay my way, and one morning shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I found myself sitting on a train waiting for it to leave the station. I watched my parents waving to me when the train began to move, and I listened to the chugging sound of the wheels on the tracks as it started building up speed. The sound was hypnotic, and since I hadn’t slept well the night before I soon found myself drifting in and out of sleep.

I remember that I was thinking about Charles just before I dozed into a pleasant nap. He could have been renowned. So, why had he ended up at my father’s saloon instead? Why did I have the good fortune to have known him? I was bursting with gratitude for the knowledge he shared with me, which had made such a splendid opportunity possible, and I told him so when we said our good-byes. He then whispered two words to me, be blessed. I was so stunned that he had spoken to me that all I could do was smile at him as I turned to board the train. I never saw Charles again, but I never forgot him either. I had no way of knowing at the time how having crossed paths with him would so profoundly affect my future.

When I woke from my nap, I was both starving and excited. I hadn’t been on my own before, and I was filled with anticipation about where I was headed and the adventures I might have. I found my way to the dining car and enjoyed a pleasant dinner along with the bottle of wine I ordered to celebrate. When I finished, I returned to my seat and soon found myself in conversation with the passenger who had taken the seat next to mine. She was quite an exquisite young woman, who also happened to be on her way to New York. Her chaperon sat across the aisle from us engrossed in her knitting, yet never so busy that she didn’t glance over at the two of us from time to time.

The young lady’s name was Leanna, and upon arriving at her destination, she would be handed into her brother’s care. His wife had given birth to their first child and was not at all well, and Leanna was going to help her with the new born. She also had never been to New York. Her brother was a lawyer and had moved there a few years earlier to start his practice.

As we sat talking, I found my eyes wandering helplessly over her beautiful face and as discreetly as possible to the plunge of her neckline and the cleavage it revealed. She wore a lavender silk dress that must have been chosen to match her amazing eyes. Her raven hair was piled in curls on top of her head. How I would have loved to see it falling down, cascading in thick waves over her sweet shoulders. Her face could not have been more perfect, and her lips were full with a hint of lip rouge that enhanced their luscious pout. She was breathtaking, and her voice and laughter were music to my ears. I was so enchanted that I almost missed telling her goodnight as she excused herself to retire to her sleeping car. She would see me in the morning for breakfast if I cared to join her. Of course, I did.

I spent the rest of my trip with Leanna, never tiring of her presence. She was the unknowing subject of my desires. Still, we said our good-byes in haste, each of us excited to be at our destination. I learned how I might contact her once we both settled into our daily routines, and then before we parted, she introduced me to her brother, Richard. He was quite a striking man, as I had expected, and I could clearly see a resemblance between them. After a brief conversation, I quickly kissed Leanna’s cheek and was left with the faint fragrance of magnolias from her perfume as she left me.

Suddenly, I found myself alone. No one was at the station to meet me, and I felt a bit intimidated by my surroundings. I stepped out into the night air, finding it extremely brisk. I wasn’t used to the chill and wasn’t dressed properly for walking. My destination would prove quite a distance to travel, and the sights around me were strange, not oddly strange, but different. There were rows after rows of townhouses and not many public places to slip in from the cold. It was December, and as I walked it began to lightly snow.

From the short conversation I had had with Leanna’s brother, I learned where the boarding house I would be staying was located, and that was where I headed. I arrived late and was fortunate that someone was still there to register and show me to my room.

I had precious little time for myself before my first classes began, and once they did, my high hopes were dashed rather quickly. I realized that I was far from being the concert pianist I imagined myself to be. I found the lessons difficult, and when I wasn’t physically in class, I spent hours practicing. My every waking moment became so involved with trying to master the classical pieces assigned to me, that I barely noticed Christmas had come and gone.

I would have loved to see Leanna. I just never seemed to find the time. I did think of her often in those first hectic months, but that was all. I had finally begun to show improvement in my technique while, at the same time, I was beginning to feel confined and restless. It was then that some of my fellow classmates asked me if I would like to go with them to a play’s opening night. One of their friends had a lead role, and they were going to lend their support. I jumped at the chance, anxious to do anything that would take my mind off my lessons. I had never been to a play and found myself looking forward to the experience.

My friends and I met after classes and paid for a taxi to take us across town to the theater. It was quite a splendid sight to see the patrons beginning to arrive dressed in their finest clothes, women in gowns and outer wraps of fur and the men in their tuxedos. Back then, people took dressing for an evening out more seriously than they do today. I might have felt out of place except that I was much too excited to care. The custom of formal attire continued for decades but, in my opinion, was never done so well as in the styles of the ‘20s. We were on the heels of the era, and I was looking forward to the future with great expectation. In fact, I was anticipating that it would be my most favorite time to be alive, but then I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

The play we saw that night was William Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Malahti Bruhn, the young woman we were there to see, was fantastic as Titania, queen of the fairies. I couldn’t imagine another woman as beautiful as Leanna until I saw her. They were complete opposites. Malahti had red hair the color of a new penny, and her flawless skin had almost a translucent quality. She was slim and sleek, and when she moved it was with the grace of a dancer. Her personality bubbled around anyone near her.

I was introduced to Miss Bruhn after the show when my friends and I joined her and most of the cast at a local pub they frequented. I could tell at once she was drawn to me. I soon learned she could never keep her feelings to herself. When she arrived, she sat down next to me brushing my cheek with a whimsical kiss, and then she asked me what I had thought of the play and her performance specifically.

I was overwhelmed, I told her.

Good. Imagine my disappointment if you hadn’t been. We artists have to stick together. No one else understands us. She laughed.

You have such an interesting name. What does it mean? I asked her.

Why do you want to know?

"It’s quite unusual. Don’t you think?

Yes, quite, she said mimicking me. I suppose how I came by it might be of some curiosity to one who’s never heard it before.

It would to me, I assured her.

Well, my parents were from England, as am I.

You don’t sound like you’re from England.

I hope not. I worked very hard not to have an accent at all. That’s most important, if one expects to be any good at acting.

Which you certainly are.

Thank you, she smiled. Anyway, when my mother was pregnant with me, my father used to put his hand on her belly. He was so sure that I was going to be a girl that he would say with his thick cockney accent, ‘how’s my little lady’? Sadly, he died before I was born, and my mother, having to name me herself, decided to be sentimental and call me Malahti. So, it means my lady.

What happened to your father, if you don’t mind me asking?

No, I don’t mind. He worked on the docks and was killed when a wooden crate that was being lowered from a ship snapped its lines and fell on top of him.

What a terrible death. I’m so sorry.

Those who saw it happen told my mother it was fast, and he didn’t suffer. I suppose it was harder for her than for him.

Yes, I guess it was, hard for her and hard for you, as well.

That’s all behind me now.

Is your mother here in the States with you?

No. She’s gone also.

I’m so . . . well; I mean . . . I hope you don’t think I’m prying. It’s just that I suddenly have this need to know everything about you.

No, you don’t. That would eventually get very boring. Besides, it’s all right. Really, it is, she smiled. My mother got pneumonia when I was fourteen, and by the time she realized it, it was too late. I stayed with my aunt until I was sixteen, and then she sent me here, to New York, to try my luck at acting. That was two years ago.

You’ve done remarkably well in a short amount of time.

Yes, I’ve been fortunate.

Hey, one of her friends interrupted, are you going to let Sebastian monopolize you for the entire evening?

Of course not, silly. She laughed.

It was amazing how a room filled up with her presence, or a stage, an afternoon, an evening.

Any free time I had was suddenly for Malahti. When I wasn’t with her, she was constantly on my mind. I was also becoming more and more bored with my lessons, and the lack of interest was beginning to show. Had I anything else in mind to do, I would have.

I saw Leanna from time to time, at her urging, but I had come to realize we really didn’t have much in common. My other friends were musicians and actors, and they were so much more interesting. Leanna led a rather ordinary life and seemed satisfied.

During my last visit with her I told her about Malahti and that I felt we were becoming serious. I was excited to tell her my news, mistakenly thinking she would be happy for me. I had no idea of the reaction I would get. She was hurt and insulted that I had wasted her time. I was shocked by her attitude since I considered our relationship one of friendship, and I had never, to my knowledge, given her reason to think