In Every Death, I Will Find You

The sky spills orange over the bustling city streets while Dorothea trails the shadows to her favourite bar. She grins a wild, hungry grin as children bare their blood-smeared faces at her, all dressed up for Halloween. She seeks comfort in this night, for this night is where she passes among them, passing as a shadow; an actress; a human.
For a moment, Dorothea steps out from the dark onto the cobbled street. She drinks in the heat of the sun whilst it pours onto her face, before it sizzles upon the tip of her nose. The light blinds her. It’s a strange yet comforting feeling, like that of waking up and opening the curtains on a beautiful summer’s day for the first time in forever. She admires the evening sky; the streaking purple, orange, pink, red clouds that seem to wrap around the world like wispy cotton candy, the sun as it quivers over the city buildings, and the luminescent pinkish moon as it rears its head over the city. They encapsulate her. The orange glow of the setting sun pierces her scarlet eyes until they water. When the tears evaporate from her pale, burning cheeks, she slinks back into the cool shade.

Each Halloween, or All Hallows Eve as it was when she was alive, she watches everyone in their face paint and costumes, dwelling on her life, her death, her undeath. She had once been surrounded by friends on this night, although they never really suited her. She was still alone, despite these strangers naming her a friend, especially when they left her for their budding families — which she never had. They never understood her; she’s always been more of a solitary animal, consuming her time with literature and music. Then, she became a creature of the night, consumed by an unquenchable thirst, a solitary animal feasting on flesh and blood.
On a cold night in 1888, her life was taken by a mysterious Godlike gentleman who had promised her a powerful rebirth. She woke up alone, nubile and pallid, clawing and crawling her own way out of her grave, plunged into another, this time daunting, existence of solitude. When she sought this absent spectre out, which took her many years, she found this Godless beast had left many others like her behind.
Together, these newborn vampires basked in their undeath, devouring together, consuming one another, until decades later, each of her fellow nightwalkers had been plucked from their strange existences by vampire hunters. They were too reckless; too bloodthirsty. They were hunted, one by one, until she was alone again, just as she was in life.
Now, Dorothea does not feast on humans; not after she picked off all her mortal friends, ripping them apart and bathing in, feasting on, what was left of them. She converted to animals only — with the help of a mentor — however, it never quite satiates her hunger. She is always starving so she is always secluded, living an inconspicuous life in comparison to how glorious her life was before, barely surviving, afraid that even in this era she may be hunted next.

Soon, with the sun hovering over the horizon, hidden behind the city buildings, Dorothea reaches Succubus.
Succubus, a well-established alternative bar, is a safe-haven for her and for fellow ‘restrained’ vampires — not that there are many of them; they’re a rare breed. In fact, vampires themselves are a dying breed in this day and age. They tend to keep to themselves, living and hunting in the most secluded, scarcest of places, such as mountain ranges or dense forests. There are a few clans spotted over the world who are either from the Old Ways and unwilling to change, or rebellious to these ‘new ways’ and wish to dominate the human race.
Vampire Fiction has become popular in these new times, making it onerous for them to be these fearless, fear mongering creatures who reign over mortal beings. They must now themselves live in fear, as humans once did.
The owner of Succubus, Felix Sokolov, is a very old vampire — much, much older than Dorothea. His family were cursed to become vampires, except they were incidentally cursed to become horrifically, terrifyingly powerful creatures. Each of his siblings, himself included, have many unique supernatural powers. Those they sire can potentially be reborn with their own weaker abilities too. If their sires turn another, however, those newborns do not bear these gifts.
Generations of vampires, hundreds of them, are, were, from The Sokolov Bloodline. So much so, they’re referred to as The Original Vampires — although they’re not. You see, there’s always been vampires. For as long as death has existed — so has Undeath.
The Sokolovs, these Cursed Vampires, are quite different to those who are ‘Turned.’ Some of the key differences between Felix and Dorothea’s existences are that Felix must travel with dirt from his homeland, similar to old myths, whereas Dorothea and her ‘generations’ do not. The Sokolovs, or any Cursed Vampire, in exceptionally rare cases, can reproduce with humans — if they haven’t consumed their lover, that is — but Turned Vampires cannot, and can only sire vampire spawn after a certain age or maturity. Vampires, Cursed or Turned, have their own life cycles after rebirth, similar to mortals.
The evolution of vampires is fickle, for they do not — usually — reproduce, rather they clone the vampiric DNA through the mixing of mortal and sanguine blood. This can lead to evolutions. Each evolution of vampires come with their own quirks, weaknesses, and immunities that run through bloodlines. It’s rumoured there’s even a clan of evolved vampires who can walk in the sun.
Dorothea gets along with Felix quite well after their paths first crossed some thirty years ago. He was her mysterious, guarded mentor, helping her to stop feeding on humans, as he himself does not either — if he can help it — and he continues to help her, even now.

Dorothea stands under the red ambience of the neon Succubus sign, patiently waiting to enter. She’s overwhelmed by the sweet but metallic smell, then by the thumping of the blood pumping through the veins of Jack the Ripper waiting in front of her. Her stomach growls. Her jaw tightens and she swallows harshly, her stomach grumbling louder and louder. The man then disappears into the dark red entrance, and for a moment, she feels relief. When it’s her turn to enter, she scrambles to the centre of the bar, where Felix is cleaning glasses. 

“Happy Halloween,” he bares his long fangs at her, jesting at the obviousness of his Undeath that passes unnoticed tonight. She sneers at him, sliding onto a bar stool.
“Bloody Mary. And make it extra bloody, will you?” She slams a fiver down on the counter as her Victorian East London accent bleeds through the altered, posher one she’s taught herself to speak with. She stares, hungry, at the looming, slender man with black and white slicked-back hair and soft eyes. One glows lavender, the other crimson, with a thick scar trailing from his left forehead to cheek. 
“Coming right up,” he glances to the left and right at his fellow — human — bartenders, slipping a key out from the ring around his belt hook. With a swift flick, a blood bag appears from the locked cabinet below, into his hand, and he squeezes it into a tall glass.
Felix’s associate owns a slaughterhouse where he syphons off blood to Felix, who supplies the non-human-eating vampires in the area with the alternative; pigs or cows blood.
As his fist closes, emptying the bag, blood oozes onto his fingers. While throwing the bag into the bin with the other hand, he licks the blood from his fingers and swallows as his eyes flicker with starvation. He then pops a cocktail umbrella and a straw into the glass with a sly grin, before sliding it over the counter to Dorothea. “Bad night?” 
“Just a hungry one,” she sighs, supping the blood. She lets out a moan of relief. “God, that’s good. I could’ve devoured Jack the Ripper over there.” She gestures to the man at the very end of the bar, making Felix chuckle. “How’s things?”
“Same old,” he shrugs, resting his long, pale, clawed hands on the edge of the countertop. “Ben,” he refers to his half-blood son, “is in his teenage rebellion phase. I’m just hoping he doesn’t start decapitating anyone.” Felix raises an accusatory eyebrow at Dorothea, who clicks her tongue in dismay.
She frowns, “I did that once. I was more of a…” she sighs, “tear them apart until it was a right ol’ bloody mess that I could…bask in and consume with every ounce of my being…” her stomach rumbles again. “God!” cries Dorothea. She aggressively slurps her drink.
“Hot,” Felix raises his eyebrows sharply, but shrugs a shoulder. “Speaking of,” he places his elbows on the bar, cupping his face, looking fake-dreamily at a dark-haired man dressed as a vampire, fake blood trickling down his narrow chin, white shirt, and cravat, sitting a few seats away from Dorothea. “He’d make a gorgeous vampire.”
“I thought we said no more siring?” tuts Dorothea, but she turns to look at the man who appears to be looking right back at her, clutching his drink — a Bloody Mary — in total awe.
He’s studying her — her long chocolate hair that’s kept up in an ornate Edwardian hairstyle, her Edwardian mourning wear, her captivating scarlet eyes, her pinched nose, the way her lips part and sit. He’s drinking her in. If she could blush, she would.
Felix replies, “I don’t mean me. I’ve…sired,” he waves his hand and his eyebrows flicker, “enough men and women to last, well, hundreds of lifetimes,” he sighs. “You need someone. It’s why you’re so—”
“If you say cranky—”
“—cranky,” he lets out a sickly sweet laugh. “He’s infatuated with you. Talk to him.”
“I’ll eat him.”
“He might let you. Go on, consume him, Thea.”
With another frown, she gives in, “I’ll talk to him. I will not eat or sire him.” 
“Mind you, if you do eat him, I’ll have to bar you,” Felix taps the sign behind the bar that almost seems like a gimmick. It reads: Human Free Since ‘33. No Human Consumption Allowed.
“Oh, but siring is okay?”
He stares at the man with longing, ravenous eyes. “I’d want him to be mine forever.”
“You need to get laid,” chortles Dorothea. She turns back to the man and delivers him a cute smile, making him blush rose pink. In a fumble, he attempts to drink straight from the glass, only to be pricked by the cocktail umbrella. He recoils, embarrassed. Dorothea giggles, but sighs, relenting, and she approaches him.

Dorothea adjusts her dress and leans against the bar beside him. He rubs his bleeding cheek, still blushing.
“Here,” she delicately strokes a finger over the man’s cheek, wiping away the droplet of blood.
“I’m Hemlock,” he introduces himself, nervous, running his hand through his wavy hair. He blinks at Dorothea with his long eyelashes, then stares at her with his piercing blue eyes. “I was… You’re… Wow.” 
“Dorothea.”
“Hemlock. Oh, I’ve already said that. I just, wow, you’re so beautiful. Heavenly,” he stammers, his palms clammy as his grip tightens on the glass. Dorothea can smell the salt of his sweat and her expression softens — as a hope to stop intimidating him. “Oh, I’m sure everyone tells you that.”
“No, actually,” she slides onto the stool, “I haven’t heard that in a very long time. And I’m not sure anyone has called me heavenly before. Thank you.”
“Well, you should hear it more often!”
“Will you tell me more often?” she flirts, twirling the straw around her drink with a claw. He blushes again as she takes a sip with a playful smile.
He notices her glass is now empty. “What are you drinking? Oh, wait, let me guess,” he nearly giggles, “blood?”
“Well, of course, honey! We are vampires after all,” she jests.

Hemlock and Dorothea talk deep into the night, giving in to their growing obsessions with one another. Soon, she realises she’s no longer hungry; she’s consumed by something else entirely.
They spend every night for weeks together, talking, always staring deep into each other’s eyes, intricately tracing their fingers over every part of each other, utterly infatuated. She’s obsessed with the beautiful life swimming in his blue eyes. Around him, for the first time in forever, she doesn’t feel her impulses. She feels…human. She swears she can even feel her dead heart skip a beat whenever he says her name. She is well and truly sickly in love with this mortal.

“I think you should tell him,” Felix refers to her vampirism another night at Succubus. “He’s going to start thinking it’s really strange that you’re never out during the day…”
“But…but, what if it goes wrong? I think I’m in love with him, Felix,” dreamily sighs Dorothea. “He’ll think I’m a monster. Or that I’m insane. I’m not sure what would be worse.”
“Well, I can always…” Felix wiggles his fingers, “hypnotise him. Regardless, he loves you too much. I can feel it. It’s sickening.” 

It’s been a few months now, and Hemlock has begun to wonder why he only ever sees Dorothea at night. So, with the promise that Felix will hypnotise him to forget her if it goes awry, she confronts Hemlock with her burden that she will watch him grow old while never ageing herself, and she will live to see the day he releases his final breath, and she doesn’t know if she can bear that because she loves him too much.
Hemlock falls silent. “This is a lot to take in, I will be honest. But, I…I’ve had my suspicions. Just know that I am so in love with you,” he holds both of her pale, cold hands in his. “From the moment I met your eyes, I’ve loved you. I am devout to you. I want to be with you forever, even if your forever is longer than mine.”
“But…I’m a monster…”
“Dorothea, I…I wish to marry you,” he speaks, firm. “I wish to be yours, for as much time as we have. I am consumed by you, my love. I will spend every second of my life by your side, if that’s what you wish too.”

The next Halloween, at the dead of night, under the glow of the midnight moon, Dorothea and Hemlock get married by an ordained friend — as to avoid the church, of course — with Felix as witness. They live in each other’s arms for the next ten years, never growing bored of each other, still as devoured by their love for one another as they were the day they met.

One fateful night, however, Dorothea’s hunger grasps her for the first time in forty years. At their most vulnerable, wrapped in silk sheets, pallid cool skin on burning flesh, her fangs protrude as she places gentle kisses on his neck. Everything is slow motion to her, uncontrollable, and she can’t discern if it’s real or another nightmare as her long, crimson-stained fangs sink into his neck and she tears the flesh from his throat. She consumes him, her claws clasping at his soft flesh, and she sinks into him. The warmth and inviting metallic tang of his blood enthrals her and she drinks, so thirsty she could die. Her hunger for the first time is quenched as she lets out a horrified whisper. 
She roars, tearing herself away from him. She stares down at his gushing blood, disgusted. She then cradles him, thick blood coating her statuesque body and the sheets around them. “I…”
“It’s quite alright,” raspy, Hemlock speaks, watching her with glossy eyes. Blood oozes out from his torn flesh. “I still love you, my dear.”
“No. No! You shouldn’t. I’m a monster.”
“My love,” he fumbles to find her hand, then holds it tight against his bleeding chest. “I will be with you forever.”
“This shouldn’t’ve happened. I’m so sorry, my love. What have I done?” She rips her hands away from his and claws her face as she sobs. The blood from her cheeks drip onto his and she cries out, mortified, wiping his cheeks tentatively, reminiscent of the way she had the night they met. 
“My darling, I forgive you,” Hemlock cups her face as he grows as pale as she. Weak, but insistent on saying these final words that rattle in her chest, he breathes, “please, find me again. I will seek you in every life, in every death. I exist only for you. I will find you again, my love, I promise.”
Dorothea’s scarlet eyes swell with tears as Hemlock’s blue eyes dim, the essence of his beautiful life dissipating as she holds him, skin to skin, in her frozen arms. She absorbs his heat for the last time, cradling and rocking his lifeless body, their bare bodies intertwined, tangled in silk sheets. Dorothea growls with hunger, the thought of consuming his flesh and blood again as it pools around them washing over her. 

Dorothea flees, guilt-ridden and grief-stricken, revolted by what she’s done. Having killed the love of her life, death, and undeath, she spends the next twenty years running. Running from what she’s done, running from the memory of Hemlock, the memory of a love that consumed her so, unable to forgive herself, and searching for a cure for this sanguine curse.

Twenty years ago, Hemlock laid bare, neatly wrapped in now-blood-red sheets, bloodless. Dorothea mourned him for hours, until dawn, when she fled.
The next day, Felix found him. He could smell the familiar sweet rot of undeath on him. Unsure whether it was Dorothea’s scent, or the hopeful scent of Hemlock’s own undeath, he buried him and waited beside his grave for three nights, slowly losing hope, considering that maybe he was too late. But then, under the blue light of the next full moon, a claw emerged from the mound of dirt. Felix took his hand and Hemlock was reborn, pallid, bare, his eyes pale under the beaming luminescent moonlight. The scarce drops of her blood had saved him from his death, saving him yet again, as she had saved him from his life ten years before.

Hemlock, along with the aid of Felix, spent the next twenty years hunting Dorothea, desperate to find his true love. He traced every single clue, every sighting, as he had once traced every crease of her face. He searched the ends of the Earth for Dorothea. It drove him crazy, but he never once gave up hope. Finding her was the whole purpose of his rebirth.

The sun hovers over the horizon, hidden by the city buildings, as Hemlock waits in line at Succubus at the turn of the new century. He can smell the overwhelming blood of the people around him and he licks his long fangs, hungry. His lavender eyes dart over the sea of people in the smoking courtyard, hoping to see his love again — as he does with every crowd. He’s always searching, dying to catch even a glimpse of her in stranger’s faces.
His stomach goals as he reaches the front of the queue, and he’s lit up by the red neon Succubus sign. As soon as he’s let in, he scrambles to the bar, where Felix is still cleaning glasses.
“Happy Halloween,” Felix speaks to Hemlock with a bored, monotone voice, placing a pre-made ‘Extra Bloody’ Bloody Mary on the counter, then dismisses the cash offer. “No luck today?”
“Luck? I don’t need luck to find my darling love,” Hemlock gives Felix a firm shake of his head. “I will find her, Felix. I don’t care how long it takes. We will be together again.”
“You’re going to lose your mind. You know what happens to crazy vampires?”
“No. I don’t. Please, humour me,” he rolls his eyes, bored too. Felix and Hemlock don’t — well, they don’t not get along. They did at first, when Dorothea was still around, but they remind each other of her, and in their own ways they both loved her in a way they’d never loved anyone.
“They start killing humans. Then, I kill them, Hemlock.”
“Oh, how very courageous of you, Felix! How many humans have you killed again?”
“Enough,” he glares at Hemlock, who cowers for a split second. “God. I hope you find Dorothea before I kill you for fun.”
“In your dreams.”
“You know, there was a time I wanted you for myself. Can’t imagine why.”
Hemlock turns his nose up in the air, “shut up.” His brow furrows.
“No, you see—”
“No, shut up,” Hemlock grabs Felix’s wrist, his head snapping to a woman across the room, sitting alone in a booth with a Bloody Mary. She’s wearing mourning wear with a lace veil covering her face.
Felix's expression softens, saddened, but nothing Felix could’ve said would’ve stopped him — Hemlock’s gone before he even begins to speak. “It’s not her…” 

Hemlock slides into the booth, clutching his drink in anticipation, as nervous as he was thirty years ago.
“I want to drink alone,” her sweet, soothing tone radiates through Hemlock’s body, rattling in his chest. Instinctively, almost involuntarily, he raises a hand towards her veil, feeling as though his dead heart pounds for the first time in twenty years.
“Not even with your love?” He delicately lifts the veil, his lavender eyes meeting her sorrowful brown eyes. He studies Dorothea, who has aged a decade since they first met in this bar thirty years ago. He studies every new crease, every new blemish, every angle of her face, unequivocally and utterly consumed, devoured, by his love for her. He drinks her in, like he did when he first laid eyes on her.
She stares at him, her heart fluttering and pounding so loud it makes Hemlock’s ears ring. For the first time in centuries, she’s human. Her now second biggest regret, as she watches her love bask in his undeath. The undeath that she created.
“In every life, in every death, I will find you. That was a promise.”