This is my first novel that's made it past ten chapters so please be gentle but at the same time feel free to critique anything and everything. I am currently on chapter thirty two and I have the plot decided and developed for the most part, but I'm open to major changes. One thing I am really trying to avoid is having this be like the Twilight series so please let me know if you catch similarities so i can fix, erm, I mean change them. No offense to Twilight, but I'm not going for quite the same appeal
, though I do like the series. Also, I was inspired by many vampire authors including Stoker, Rice, Pike, and others, so if you notice major similarities to that please let me know as well. My intent is not to copycat but sometimes the ideas work into my subconscious. I will be posting these chapters at their full length, so far as I know, and for this site that is quite long, I suppose, but in real novels my chapters are still on the short side (10-15) pages. If you feel you cannot handle that then I suppose I'll have to do without your advice, though I really would love it.
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Alex sat in the church pew, fingering his cross in the darkness. It was always dark now. He only woke at night, his body switching instantly to a new time table, but he could see as though it were day. The metal singed his skin, stirring his dark blood into frenzy. Seared flesh perfumed the air, but still he wore it. If even the slightest chance remained that he could change- if he could go back, it would be through God's grace.
Alex sighed and his breath stirred billions of tiny dust particles into the air. He looked up at the wooden carving of a crucified Jesus through eyes the color of cold water. Every grain of wood was painfully clear. Jesus suffered, but in the end he found release. Alex was still a son of God, though it seemed that he was forsaken. He had done nothing to deserve this. What could he have done is his short and secluded life?
He moved like a shadow to the stained glass windows, where he ran his fingers along the brilliant colors and spider-web crisscross of metal. Everything he touched seemed to take on new textures. This was smooth and cold. He felt a slight give in the glass, feeling the change in thickness as it dripped down over time.
His senses would only get stronger, he knew. She had informed him of that before he'd managed to get away. Perhaps he should have stayed; he knew nothing of this new life. It would have been easy to remain there, another in her collection. He might have forgotten his old life and former morals, his soul burnt up in the heat of her demon gaze. He could have become a ghost; it wouldn't have been so different from what he was now.
The easiest thing to do would be to end it. He ought to grab a stake and plunge it through his heart. But would that really work? He wasn't sure he could do it if it would only cause him pain. Alex could feel pain, though healed at a horrific rate. In fact, things hurt more now than they had when he was human. The loss of blood hit harder because he could not make more of his own.
Alex inspected his wrist. It was easy to see the black blood flowing through his veins because his skin was frighteningly pale. He was not monstrous to look at, despite this. His features had become even more refined in his new form, beautiful and chiseled like a statue. Only in strong light did he look ghoulish, like the partially dead thing he was. His heartbeat had slowed to about one beat a minute and each beat felt incredibly hard, he could feel it in his fingertips and hear it. Why anyone would want this, even in exchange for all of the things she had promised, was beyond Alex.
The devil must have laughed at him, sitting on his throne of souls. Alex felt icy tears slide down his cheek. He would sell his own soul to be human again, if only he had one. It seemed so unjust to him; he had never signed the devil's book. His father had told him often that he was from hell; he’d been lectured on his own evils every day. Heaven and hell were all he knew, though he was much more familiar with the later.
Picking up a copy of the Bible from his pew, he flipped its pages. He felt an immediate sense of wrongness when he held the holy book and was horrified to think that even the scripture was shunning him. It didn’t hurt him, exactly, though he knew somehow that it wanted to. Was he so hopeless?
"What must I do to end this curse?" he asked the bible, and the pages settled. Alex winced as the sharp paper cut his finger. The scent of what now ran through his veins was not the coppery tang that humans had. This new smell was not unpleasant, it was more akin to something sweet. He was faintly intoxicated by it. Alex restrained himself from licking the stuff away, instead watching it dry on his finger. He was mystified by how he'd even obtained the wound. A book as old as this one should have been soft and worn. His dark blood pooled on the white pages, growing to a far greater size than the cut could have produced. Alex thought the book seemed to drink his blood in and though it was impossible, savor it. It was slowly fading from the page.
The page he had stopped on was covered in a dark and beautiful script, which seemed to whisper to Alex's mind. He had a feeling there was something important on the other pages but he dared not turn back. Every letter was foreign and left him with a sharp and bitter taste in his mouth when he looked at it. On the next page was a painting that glowed in the darkness. A man sat, glaring on a seat composed of bodies. Black blood oozed from beneath the structure and blue flames danced around him. Alex felt for a moment like he was there, smelling the thick scent of rot and sorrow. Suddenly, the picture smiled at him, eyes mocking Alex's pain. Despite it's unusual behavior, he couldn't look away. He must have been hallucinating from the stress. A barely discernable sourness filled the air.
"To end this curse you must accept it," the man said in a voice darker than any Alex had ever heard. It was a very strong voice, the kind that commanded obedience. Alex was briefly reminded of his father, Duncan, and he shivered with distaste.
"Pictures can't speak," he reassured himself. It was clear that insanity now flowed within him alongside the evil. It made sense; he'd always thought that she had been a little off when she made him.
A crown of eyeballs sat on the man's head and Alex watched as they blinked at him. Eyes- the windows to the soul. If only he could see the man’s face, he thought he could come back to reality. It was as if the man was deliberately keeping him in the dark, but why?
"Pictures can’t talk and vampires don't exist," the creature laughed. Alex slammed the book shut and threw it away. It hit the wall of the church and closed with a puff of dust. The cloud flashed briefly as the form of the man’s laughing face, with fangs practically dripping from his mouth.
This place was wrong. There had been a great evil here and it lingered oppressively. The tingle of magic moved along his skin like tiny spiders and though he would have liked to run, he felt paralyzed for a moment. It was as though another force was prying wide his being and wrapping its coils around him. Slimy dark fingers encasing his soul.
"No!" Alex shouted. He was freed suddenly and his fingers raced through his wild, dark hair. He knew what he’d just done. The devil's book was signed in blood, and his blood had been spilled. It was not the bible he’d been reading.
It was too late for remorse; already poison spread through his veins. Whatever she’d made him before was far less malignant than what he would soon become. Alex screamed in agony as he tried to keep the presence out, but it ripped through him like tissue paper.
He ran to the altar, tripping over missing floorboards. Collapsing at the base of the table, he crawled back to his knees to utter one last prayer before his soul was blackened beyond repair. There was a difference, he now knew, between one touched by the devil and one filled with him. There was a hand on his soul, like puppet master. Its presence was suffocating, torturous and made him feel as helpless as a rat in a maze. He was losing control of his own limbs.
A chalice of holy water sat on the alter. All water should have evaporated from the church long ago and Alex's first thought was that the water was another trick. There was nothing left to lose, though, and there was everything and anything to gain. Precious seconds ticked by before Alex grabbed the glittering chalice with tormented hands. His skin was contorting, trying to rid itself of this new infection.
The silvery liquid dribbled down his chin in his haste to drink it. It was not truly water, as he’d suspected, but held no trace of impurity as far as Alex could tell. It spread through him in a cool, calming wave. The darkness in his blood revolted as light enveloped it. In time, Alex's body settled into itself, no longer convulsing. The burning in him was soothed and he came back to himself. The two presences seemed to be fighting bitterly, but the result was relieving the pain from him.
In the same way that a flashlight can shine into a dark room and leave shadows, the water chased most of the evil away but some still clung to Alex. Two hands were on his soul, one pure and one evil, struggling for control. He had not been cured, at least not completely. Alex understood that God would not save him completely; he had to find a way to save himself.
The room spun as he stood and he found there was something wrong with his eyes. It felt as though the very shape of his eyeball was changing and his vision sharpened still further. He stumbled to a mirror and recoiled at the sight of his pupils, which had become catlike. Demon, he thought.
"So much more," someone laughed from deep within him. He was terrified to find he could feel the creature's mirth as his own. He was smirking along, as though they shared in the joke. He wanted to kill someone, the bloodlust rising in him with renewed vigor. His fingers dug into the wall, crumbling away the stone as easily as sand. Alex knew what his first stop had to be. He was a hand of God now, or a hand of the devil. He was sure, either way, what he was about to do would please someone.
"Yes, let's go. Kill him now. He would have done the same to you,” the voice urged. He felt a rise of excitement in his chest, tasting copper in his mouth. Something further back was disagreeing. “It’s not important. Leave it,” said a voice like wind chimes, but he pushed it aside and rushed through the night to a setting that was all too familiar.
