Sifted

Days passed before the iron gate opened again. I hadn't yet learned to be grateful for its solace.

Even the single ember of certainty I clung to was quickly replaced by the sting of the cold iron which wore my wrists raw.

I had learned my fellow inmate's story, but he still refused to tell me his name. I wasn't yet aware they had beaten it out of him.

He, like me, differed in the natural order of selection in terms of how a human was supposed to act. Like me, he didn't need to be fed blood. We were fed, albeit sparingly. Our food came from those we served. Their mercy, if one could ever conceptualize such from a creature of evil.

They pretend he doesn’t exist. But he knows things. Their rites, the unspoken codes, and history. And he shares them with me. Even the history they won't teach us.

It was during another long stretch of hunger that I finally had the courage to ask more of him.

"Why are you helping me?” I tilted my head in his direction, listening for the answer.

“You mistake my provocation as help. I do enjoy that you’re the sort of question that gets under this clan’s skin. Vampires don't like questions." He rearranged himself into a more comfortable position, a foot crossed over his knee.

I sighed, thinking of what might be next.

“They’ll try to feed you to every fledgling-” He broke off, reading my thoughts as he often seemed to do. As much as he mentored, he still held back.

The cell's heavy air stirred as hooded figures reemerged. Whispers among others who had joined us. Those still able to speak identified them as members. Of what order I couldn't yet pronounce.

As usual. They hid their faces behind black veils, emotionless and inscrutable.

They moved in ritual silence, save for the sounds of their feet striking stone in unity.

One broke formation and extended a gloved hand. "Novice." The word fell flat, devoid of any malice or kindness.

I hesitated, looking back at my cellmate, who had the appearance of one who he hadn't moved in hours. He lay curled against the far wall, breathing even more shallowly if possible. "Go," he rasped. "They will not try to kill you. Not yet."

The veiled ones gripped my arms and dragged me upward, none too gently. The incline was steep and upward at a forty-five-degree angle. Round and round we'd go. Up, and up. The stones tore. All two hundred seventy-five of them until we'd reach the top. My feet had smeared blood on every single one of them. To stumble was to be reminded I had not yet reached the deepest level of pain I had ever experienced. Yet.

No longer a person, but a vessel. Part offering, part servant whose existence was to slake the thirst of the fledgling before their minds unravelled from hunger and to satisfy the carnal urges of the upper echelon who fed less frequently. They were the only ones who survived my particular taint.

And they were a select few.

I knew my blood carried something unusual. The High Initiate called it a genetic taint, but for a time, I thought it might be the cancer. Yet the look in her eyes told me it was something to be feared.

I was grateful, in a way. Some would have gladly slit my throat and left me to wolves and wild things if it weren't for the mystery of my blood they tried to uncover.

While others yearned to drain me. To finally snuff out my defiance, wringing it from me one crimson drop at a time. Others craved something more profound. A purity they claimed I exuded, though I had no innocence left to speak of in a human sense.

Perhaps these were the ones who sensed the others hadn't yet been able to breach the deepest parts of my psyche.

But I survived. And while I lived, there was hope.

Hope for escape. Hope for revenge.

We emerged into the novice chamber, an antechamber of bone-white stone and sunless marble lit by pale globes that never shone with actual light. In time, it came to remind me of starlight.

The walls were etched with ever-shifting runes that the vampire's familiars set to keep those who wished to harm them at bay. Binding sigils, memory traps and outright lies.

In the center of that room, yet another altar. This one was stained black from centuries of offerings. Above it, an iron X mounted to the wall, spread like wings. Empty for now. But I had a feeling we'd become familiar with one another.

I stood awaiting instructions, in line with the others. None of us spoke. A tall woman and fellow novice, whose mouth had been sewn shut with threads of gold had been used as an example.

"You are a doll. But-" our instructor said, pacing back and forth. “Here you may rise through our ranks and serve in a greater capacity." Her eyes were the darkest I'd ever seen, yet they glowed with passion when she bored instructions into your soul.

The moment I crossed the threshold; I felt her binding wrap around my mind like cold fingers.

It was in this very room that I was stripped of all I had left. Clothes, dignity, and identity. My tears mixed with blood became the oil with which I was reborn.

I understood now why my cellmate couldn't remember his name and I knew why he had never spoken about this place. How else could you describe hell, without living there?

Then came the searing firebrand. The lowest sigil. The mark of property and prey.

I was never allowed to see the mark, but I would trace it with trembling fingers in the dark of night.

It felt like a seeping blood wound that wouldn't heal. Beneath it though, there was something more. Another symbol, much older.

When I first found it, it pulsed gently beneath my skin, warming to the touch.

A secret brand not placed by any of them. I had seen it before, on my mother's heart locket. I hoped it was a sigil of my inheritance that remained a mystery to me. In time a whisper began, and I began to worry about my sanity. Still, it whispered louder.

It came from within, echoing from a part of me I had yet to touch.