Amanda said it would be difficult. She was wrong. The modern world isn't like the one she was born into in 1740. In the 21st century the people living next door usually can't describe their neighbours, let alone tell you their names.
No. I wasn't rich. Not in the beginning, but that wasn't a problem. Amanda took care of our sleeping arrangements and she was rich. Incalculably rich.
She owns a twin-jet Gulfstream GV, a Hummer, and a Bugatti Centenaire Villa d'Este Limited Edition in black and silver...and a castle. You can read about it on the internet. She had it built around the Frankenstein Tower, located in Hills and Dales Park on Patterson Road in Dayton, Ohio. She has people that still give tours of the tower for twenty bucks a pop.
The rest of the castle is off limits and she has the guards to enforce the rules, though she has standing orders that college kids breaking into the tower are to be left alone.
Well, okay. At first it was hard.
The guy she brought me for my first meal was a rapist. He had three coeds under his belt, so to speak when she caught him. I could feel the blood pulsing through his body even before she marched him into my cell.
Yes. New vampires have to be restrained or they, well...I tore his throat out with my new hollow canines, wasting all that precious blood.
"A neonate must replace all of the blood they have lost to death," she explained as I sucked ravenously at his ruined throat. He wasn't a large man, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds, but he was in good shape - a weekend warrior. It didn't matter. He was enthralled when I jumped him and bleeding out before he knew what hit him.
"You must learn to use your fangs properly," Amanda instructed as I sucked at his torn throat, "and take care not to take the blood after the heart stops. It goes bad so quickly."
"Your fangs are hollow, my lovely," she continued. "When you can control yourself, you will be able to feel the blood through them. You must learn to pierce the artery without pushing through to the meat on the other side. It requires a degree of delicacy that most neonates are incapable of exercising, but never fear. All it takes is practice."
She was right.
After I'd replaced the blood I'd lost to death, which took seven full adults since I couldn't use the blood after the heart stopped pumping, I was able to restrain my blood thirst.
Ye gods, in the beginning I was ravenous! I hadn't felt that way since...I would say before I could remember, but with my new status as one of the living dead came a near perfect memory. Amanda called it eidetic memory. A layman like myself would call it a photographic memory, though Amanda was more correct. I could remember everything. Every sight, sound, touch, smell and taste from every moment of my life as if it happened only a moment ago.
Better yet, all of my senses were preternaturally sharp too. I could smell fear and terror and desire. I could read a newspaper by touch. I could taste everything my victims had for dinner up to three days before. I could hear conversations across a crowded club while counting the pores on my victim's face.
The second was a marathon runner who finished third in the last 200k 'Running to Infinity' held in Columbus. He was even smaller, barely a hundred and fifty pounds, but with the constitution of a horse.
The third was a woman. She was a little thing with the reflexes of a cat. She worked as a magician for hire when she wasn't breaking into high end mansions in Oakwood.
She was the first one I was able to restrain myself with...that is, to enjoy the pulse of her heart in my mouth.
As I fed Amanda explained that rape isn't so much about sex as it is about power and control. She explained that in the beginning I would gain the traits of my victims, so she was choosing them for me oh so carefully. Endurance, she said is the primary characteristic of a hero.
Intelligence was not an issue, since I now process information faster than a computer, but the ability to keep on keeping on would allow me to stay ahead of the mundane world with their pitchforks and torches.
The girl would help me with my dexterity issues. Apparently preternatural speed (movement) does not come with preternatural agility. Even as a neonate I could do a hundred meter sprint in seven and a half seconds, but stopping and, worse, turning was still governed by my mortal reaction time. So Amanda arranged for me to borrow the young cat burglar's reflexes.
With number four she taught me to capture the soul, as she called it, using my first victim's need for control. As preternatural creatures, we can access a mortal's subconscious directly through the windows of their soul, the eyes. In theory we shouldn't be able to make them do anything they wouldn't do during normal waking consciousness, but in practice you can talk the subconscious into just about anything.
Telepathy helps with that too.
Amanda says that we can only read into the upper layers of the subconscious, but let's face it...how deep is the average human mind? All the animal instincts and desires are there, floating just below the surface. Dying may have temporarily turned me into an animal, but it really doesn't take such drastic measures to strip away the veneer of civilization from a mortal. A little push is all it takes. Flight and fight are waiting patiently just beneath the surface. A sudden noise or a bright flash and the combat reactions surface with all the subtlety of a breeching whale.
Fortunately sex runs a close third behind fight or flight, depending upon the nature of the victim. An Alpha's fight response can be turned to desire. A Beta's flight response can be turned to willing submission.
Sunlight isn't the problem the legends make it out to be either. We just decay faster in direct sunlight. Feeding regularly and fully can mitigate those effects almost completely. Amanda is more than 200 years old and she can pass for human without makeup or glamor.
Neither Amanda nor I have experienced any problems with holy items or priests. Churches make me mad, not nervous. Eternal life through the blood of the lamb...who knew that humans were the sheep?
