Chapter 37 - The Charnel Pit part 3

The first thing a vampire is aware of, when he or she awakens from the torpor of transformation, is the blood hunger. As soon as my eyes opened, that terrible, gnawing thirst pressed itself to the forefront of my consciousness. It was like a vast void in the center of my soul, a gawping mouth clamoring to be fed. Anyone who has been addicted to a drug will understand the craving. It is relentless, demanding, maddening.

I awakened with a groan, thinking only of the gnawing inside of me. Ignorant of the transformation that had been wrought upon my body, I was not certain what the hunger was for, only that it brought to my mind imaginings of soft warm flesh in my mouth, and that flesh parting between my teeth with an expression of salty juices. If not for the pain, I would have thought it a sensual need, as it was very similar to the desire a man feels when he is overcome with lust, only it was a desire to be filled rather than to penetrate, and centered upon my abdomen. My stomach was twisting itself into knots, coiling and flexing violently, like an enraged serpent. My thoughts were all jumbled as if someone had sawed off the top of my head and poured in a colony of ants. Every vein in my body seemed to be filled with molten lava.

My body felt different. As I lay there staring up at the glowing disc of the cave entrance, I tried to push away the cravings and take an accounting of my physical being. There was something fundamentally different in the sensations of my form. My own flesh felt foreign to me, as if I had awakened in another man's body, one whose dimensions were very similar to my own but not quite right. I touched my cheek. The skin there felt icy cold and smooth. Then I held my hand in front of my eyes and jolted at its whiteness and the strange, crystalline texture of it. Moonlight glimmered on my skin as if it were powdered with diamond dust.

I held up my other arm then, bracing myself for pain, but my broken arm was whole again. It had healed while I was unconscious. I flexed my wrist and curled my fingers, expecting at the very least a twinge of discomfort, but there was nothing. I felt only the sensations of the movements—the contractions of the muscles, the joints turning as they should.

In fact, nothing really hurt but the hunger. I felt whole. I felt… strong.

I rose to my feet, standing on the stiff and twisted corpses of the Fat Hands. Being an ancestor worshipper, it seemed terribly disrespectful to trod upon the bodies of the dead, but what else could I do? Grimacing with revulsion, I held out my arms to balance myself on the shifting mass and surveyed the rest of my body.

My abduction through the treetops had ripped my clothes to tatters. As my father was wont to say, I had wiped my ass on better rags than these. I tore them off. Tossing the strips of leather aside, I stood naked in the echoing cavern.

The rest of my injuries had healed as well. Gone were the lumps and cuts and bruises that had disfigured my lower legs. The furrows the speartooth had carved across my hip were healed over. But for a slight roughness along the edges, they were barely noticeable. My battered ribs were unblemished. The bloody gouge across my belly, where a pointy stick had scraped me, had vanished completely. Even the scabs were gone, as if my body had absorbed the crusted blood.

In fact, the flesh of my entire body was uniformly white, the same icy whiteness as my hands, as if it had been scrubbed so thoroughly even the color had come off. My feet, my legs, my cock and balls and belly… they still seemed to be my own, only they looked as if they had been carved of moonstone. The texture was very smooth except for my palms and fingertips, which were slightly raspy, like fine sand.

My hair was the only part of me that still seemed normal.

I suppose, being composed of dead cells, the organism that transforms us into blood drinkers has no effect on hair. Or fingernails. My fingernails still look now the same as they did 30,000 years ago.

My hair was still soft and fine and dark. I ran my fingers through it and it felt as familiar to me as ever. My beard, too. And on my body, my chest and belly, my male organ and thighs and lower legs, it was as thick and curly and soft as ever, although the dark color of it contrasted sharply with all the white skin.

I bit my lower lip, pondering my transformation, and felt my eyeteeth slice through the flesh. The pain was immediate and sharp, and I cupped my hand over my mouth reflexively. I felt my fangs with my fingertips and explored their new length and shape, numb with horror. I couldn't see them, but I could feel how sharp and long they had become.

"No!" I cried.

It dawned on me then that I had become a demon! There was no word for vampire in those days, but we knew the word for monster, and that was what I had become. A monster. The villain that had tossed me in that pit, the beast who had killed all those Neanderthals, had cursed me!

I remembered the black bile it had regurgitated into my mouth, how it had forced me to swallow its horrible vomitus. I remembered the way the black fluid had surged down my throat, almost as if it had a will of its own, the way it had coiled in my belly, then spread out through my body in icy tendrils.

By some terrible magic, I had been transformed!

I wanted to flee. I was in a terrible panic. I looked toward the opening of the pit but it seemed much too far away to be an option to me. Of course, I could easily have scaled the wall-- or even leapt the full distance with only a little effort-- but I was ignorant of my powers in those first few immortal moments.

And I was so hungry!

The hunger redoubled, bending me over with a groan. I stumbled back and sat against the wall of the pit, clutching my belly.

I thought of my wives and children. I thought of my companion Brulde, who had surely been killed by the Foul One's horrendous blow. My longing for them was a pain as terrible as the cravings tormenting me so relentlessly. I began to weep.

"Nyala! Eyya!" I sobbed. "Please! I love you! I don't understand what's happened to me! I don't want to be in this awful place!"

I wiped the tears from my cheeks and saw them glittering on my fingertips, viscous and black. These were not a man's tears. These black smears were the tears of a devil-spirit! With a groan of despair, I flicked the tears from my fingertips. The sight of the black fluid was poison to my soul.

I huddled there against the wall in an agony of need and self-mourning. I had lost my family, my friends, my very humanity.

That's when my maker dropped soundlessly into the pit.

He landed in a crouch, grinning at me with moon-pool eyes.