The Last Vampire

By Richard W Hunter, Jr

Vampires are not evil.
Vampires are not creatures of the dark.
Vampires are born not made if you become a vampire you were born that way.
Vampires do not bite people and only drink small quantities of blood monthly.

Aldru de Merana could not believe that people had forgotten everything that is true about vampires after only five hundred years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard W Hunter, Jr
• Release date: Aug 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311769930

Richard W Hunter, Jr

Richard W. Hunter, Jr. has been a great many things in his life – a soldier, a bill collector, a policemen, a security guard, a paralegal, a husband, a father, and a grandfather . All of which lead up to his being a writer. He and his wife live in Alvin, Texas. He is the President of the Thelma Ley Anderson YMCA Writers’ Guild in Alvin, Texas.

Book preview

The Last Vampire

By

Richard W. Hunter, Jr.

Dedicated:

To my wonderful wife without who’s support and encouragement I would never get anything accomplished. You asked if I could write what you like, you tell me if I did.

©July, 2015

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

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

Chapter 1

You know he is a vampire. His name is Aldru Da Merana, as the name says he is Aldru from the village of Merana which was in Northern Italy, or at lest it use to be there. He was a small farmer who raised a few sheep on the side and dabbled in leather repair and plus the simple wood working most people did to while away the long nights. If everything goes smoothly vampires will live a very long time thus picking up many life’s works along the way provided that they are careful to keep their secret. You know the worst thing about being a vampire – you are so very hard to kill that you are almost immortal. Of course that is also the very best thing about being a vampire. When you have all the time in the world at your command, time just does not mean very much to you. As a group they tend to avoid joining armies as they tend to go to places with much danger and the chance of being killed grows from that, vampires do not like that.

Vampires are not immune to all diseases and as the issue has come up due to the stories spread about vampires, yes driving a stake through the hearts will kill them, burning at the stake and beheading will also end their life. But then those would kill anyone, even if you were not a vampire. The application of sunlight, holy water, garlic, or religious symbols none of that bothers them despite the rumors of the Church. Vampires are not evil. They are, however, different than normal humans. ‘Changing’ into any animals or a mist is a fiction of the worst sort. But just as man chased and exterminated the Neanderthal, so too does man try to exterminate vampires. Humans do not share well.

The use of the term vampire came from some lost usage or language. For centuries, among themselves they were called simply people. Once in a long while, somewhere in the world, a child is born to normal parent or vampire parents that has the potential to become a vampire. Not all children of vampires are necessarily going to be vampires. Children that do not fit in with them are left to be adopted by normal humans.

At the trigger moment, which is different for each person, the change occurs and your body goes through a remarkable alteration, with the small assist of a vampire administering a drink of blood. With that simple ceremony you become harder to kill with the change. Any wounds that would disable a normal person, for a vampire these wounds become healed in a few days, with little or no lasting effects nor much scaring either. Whenever possible vampires seek out these people that have reached their trigger and invite them to live in vampire communities. Many do not want to leave their friends and family. That is until the first time someone notices that they have changed, then the friends and family turn on them. If they can get away, they straggle into one of the vampire communities and are taken care of until they are ready to take care of themselves.

The one draw back and possibly the source of the church’s distaste for vampires is, during calm quiet times three or four times a year they must drink some blood. This thirst is something that usually haunts the newly triggered humans and makes them feel that they deserve the punishment the rest are trying to give them. When helped with the change the assisting vampire sees to it that they are taught how to quietly obtain the blood they need and to cover up the need. Human, animal blood it really does not matter but they must have it. Just enough to fill their belly, their need is not enough to drain or kill the donor unless it is a small animal. However, if vampires suffer a major injury they must drink blood more often than the norm, but since most of them are very cautious almost to the point of cowardice this is not a real problem.

Another myth that helps the church justify ridding the world of vampires, they do not ‘turn a person into a vampire’ when they ‘bite them’. You are either born a vampire or not and biting humans is always discouraged – always. Another of the ugly myths regarding Vampires, they do not have retractable fangs that sprout when hunger takes over.

It is sometimes difficult to explain an old lifestyle to the current population, but in the distant past most people did not know what year it was. Calendars changed with kings and church leaders, countries and languages. The days of the week were named by someone and eventually everyone learned what they were. But for many centuries in most of the world no one knew that it was Monday, October 2, 1250 or whatever the date was. It is hard to believe but it is the uncomfortable truth. Historians went back and standardized the dates, the common people did not do that.

Well, sometime in the early 1400’s Aldru was caught roaming the countryside alone and it was near dusk. A group of people, mostly the disenfranchised who needed someone to look down on, saw him and one of them decided that he was a vampire. Proof was rarely needed, the accusation often enough, quickly out came the axes, pitchfork, torches and the occasional tree limb were brandished as the available weapons. Aldru ran for his life. While it is true that vampires are hard to kill, the attempts do hurt, so most vampires go out of their way to avoid being hurt.

They chased Aldru into a cave, but fortunately for him, they were afraid to enter into the cave after him for everyone knows that a vampire’s ‘powers were greater in the dark’ so they stayed outside in the dusk. With night falling they ignored that it was now almost as dark outside the cave as inside. Humans are like that, they tend to overlook what does not fit the circumstances and accent what proves they are right.

After some heated debate someone decided that what really needed to be done was to send for a priest and let him decide what was next. When the priest arrived he ordered that the cave be sealed. They rolled rocks down from the top of the hill fitting them in place in front of the entrance. Eventually to save time and effort, they started a small landslide that filled the cave entrance with loose rocks and dirt which they shored up with the occasional tree limb that they had been carrying to beat Aldru, they effectively sealed him inside the cave. The last thing Aldru heard was the priest blessing the mound of dirt that held him in and then he blessed the heroes of the area for confronting and capturing the vicious vampire.

The cave was huge with four main chambers and a dozen small ‘pocket’ openings that could hold a person but not much else. Aldru could hide in any of these poclets, if someone had found a way inside with him. But then if they could get in he could escape. Aldru just found the hope that someone would decide that they needed to eliminate the vampire they knew about thus allowing him to escape, but no one ever did. Aldru held on to hope to sustain him during the long stay in the cave.

Every month while he was trapped in this cave, he did manage to catch several rats, a few snakes, once a large house cat and occasionally a rabbit that slipped into the cave for safety. Yes vampires do see in the dark - at least somewhat better than humans. They don’t have perfect vision but are not hampered by the lack of light as a normal human would be, also time in the dark rendered him use to the light level. Aldru managed to use these small animals to keep himself alive, although his clothing became more than slightly messy and very gamy from the lack of water for cleaning until such time as he could dig himself out of the cave to resume normal hygiene.

In an effort to keep himself busy he had removed most of the loose dirt and small stones from the entryway to the cave. That filled two of the small chambers with the rocks and dirt from the entry. Once it was cleaned it revealed a number of very large, extremely heavy, boulders blocking the way. It looks as if the priest had well and truly trapped Aldru in this cave for all time. Keeping the boulders clear of trickling dirt and leaves occupied him for some time.

Then one day the earth shook, the floor leapt and bucked. Very large chunks of rock fell from the ceiling to shatter on the floor of the cave spreading shards everywhere. rolling into one of the small hidey holes for scant protection when the shaking started. Several of the rock fragments struck him leaving small bloody trails and tearing Aldru’s ragged filthy clothing.

Being struck on the head by a slightly larger piece of rock could accomplish what the priest had hoped to do by sealing him in the cave. But largely by luck he avoided all but the most minor of cuts and scrapes, they would be completely healed within a day.

When he was sure that the shaking was over he got up and dusted off the dirt and began to survey his tomb. As his tour took him near the entry - something was wrong. Different always registers as wrong until you can determine what is changed and if it is for the better or worse. One of the upper boulders had rolled away from the cave entrance and in so doing dislodged the others which allowed them to sway out from the opening. There was suddenly space around the boulders wide enough for Aldru to squeeze past. He could be free of this tomb. He had been in there for so long, he was sure that sunlight would hurt his eyes. Besides he did not know what awaited him. Surely the world had changed. He had no idea who was king, who was pope, was there a war in the area, but first he had to know where is the closest river – he really needed a bath.

Squeezing past the boulders was easy, he had never been a very large person and the long captivity had pared him down even more. The order of the day now was a good bath followed very closely by a large meal – the meal did not have to be all that good, but it must be big. Really big, and cooked. He had not eaten anything cooked in a very, very long time. But really the smell must be dealt with first.

Outside the prison the sky was still pale blue the trees and grass green, the big change was the smell. It was as if something huge had died and been left to rot. That smell and the lack of birds were the most notable things at first sight. Birds had been in flocks of hundreds,