Chapter 38 - The Charnel Pit part 4

If hate could set the heart ablaze, my heart would have been immolated by the pure loathing I felt at the sight of the beast. I launched myself at my maker with an inarticulate cry. My speed startled him. In truth, I was a little stunned by the speed at which I threw myself at him as well. I flew across the cave at him, but he had been a vampire much longer than I. He grabbed my outstretched arms and redirected my flight with one simple pirouette, releasing my wrists and letting my momentum fling me across the chamber. I collided with the wall on the other side of the pit hard enough to shatter the stalagmites suspended there. They crumbled atop me as I slid to the floor, too dazed to move out of the way.

Before I could push them off and regain my feet, my maker was upon me.

"You're a feisty one," he laughed. It was obvious by his good humor that he took great relish in physical combat, especially when he believed that he had the upper hand. He flung the broken rocks aside and began to beat me with his fists, landing one terrible blow after another and taking no care where they alighted. "You will submit to me, young one! You will submit or I will tear you to pieces!"

He was strong. I dodged one of his blows and his fist collided with a chunk of rock instead of my head. The stone exploded into gravel, the shrapnel peppering the side of my face. The impact fissured the flesh of his fist as well, and he howled in outrage, clutching his injured hand. "You worm!" he snarled, and then he slapped me hard enough to flatten me to the ground.

I tried to defend myself. Were I not freshly minted, starved for blood and still in the midst of the transformation, I'm sure I could have killed him with a single blow, but I was not yet fully made and ignorant of my new abilities. I was an infant beset by a brute.

His fists landed on me again and again, striking me with terrible might. The force of the blows cracked open my strange white flesh. My blood, as black now as my maker's blood, sprayed the walls in abstract patterns. The injuries healed as quickly as he made them, but they still hurt, and I crawled away from him on my elbows, grunting and crying out as he continued to assault me.

"Submit!" he roared. "Submit and I will stop hurting you!"

"Never!" I shouted.

He pummeled me with his fists. Like the biblical Cain, he snatched up a hunk of rock and smashed it into my head. He pummeled my neck and shoulders and back, each a fatal blow had I been a mortal man. He was frenzied, determined to break my spirit. I finally collapsed and lost consciousness. Even then he continued to beat me. I don't know how long he assaulted me after I went limp, but I was terribly injured when I finally awakened. Even with my regenerative powers, it was hours before I was able to move from the spot where I had fallen. He had all but pulped me in his paroxysm of rage.

He was gone when I finally awakened. A coy dawn was peeping through the entrance of the charnel pit. Its timorous glow illuminated a body that was hideously disfigured and drenched in the stinking black fluid that was now my life's blood.

I rolled over with a groan, cursing the fates that I still lived. Looking to my hand, I saw the Living Blood repairing my injuries, the broken fingers slowly realigning themselves, the weeping fissures in my skin knitting closed. Was I not so starved for blood the process would have gone much more quickly, but I did not know that. I was an ignorant fledgling. I only knew that I was cold and in pain and still maddeningly hungry-- for what I did not know.

I tried to rise but my back was broken.

Please, ancestors! I prayed. Deliver me from this torment!

But deliverance did not come that morning.

Only my maker.