Rebirth (1873)

The coffin Persephone had been placed in began to rattle, softly at first mostly just light scratches could be heard from within but within moments the scratches turned to thuds making it clear the occupant inside was trying to escape. Isabella turned to her Sire with a concerned look in her eye, her memory of her own turning was hazy at best and hearing the futile sounds of her love trying to escape confinement only served to worry her more.

"She has another day to go before we should remove her, she'll fall back into rest shortly and then I'll feed her more blood, tomorrow at sunset we can remove her safely." Alexander's tone offered no negotiation, he had successfully sired two powerful Childer, he would not allow his third to be made weak so that the process can seem "kinder".

"Sire, she's been awake in there for nearly half an hour, all I can feel is panic through the bond, I, should we not at least check on her?" Isabella was unable to hide the worry from her voice, she understood she needed to defer to Alexander in this moment but all she could feel was pure panic along the bond she shared with Persephone, that fear only serving to fray Isabelle's already short nerves in the situation. Her sire approached and took a seat next to her on the floor, with a delicate hand he turned her from the coffin shaking on its plinth to look directly at him.

"Isa, I understand you are nervous, your care for each other is a beautiful thing and something I do hope you continue to cherish over the centuries, however right now your love is not in that box."

"But I can feel her fear, Sire I."

"Isabella, what you are feeling is the instinctual drive of the predator I have created within her, at this moment she is little more than a corpse working on instinct. Instinct to escape, if we allow that we run the risk of her mind being lost and her becoming little more than a beast. Should she escape or damage herself we may lose her altogether. I know you are scared, I'll be honest, I was terrified when I turned Palladius, I had only the word of others to go on and feeling everything he was going through almost drove me mad having to leave him buried. When I experienced it with you, I thought I was better prepared. I wasn't. I worried, you had chosen a new life with us and I had reduced you to little more than some undead horror. To use a crude analogy we can not risk undercooking her." As if responding to his words the coffin grew quieter until quickly falling still, no noise from within. The bond sputtered out and nothing could be felt from within once again.

"Well, right on time, I'll feed her then would you help me clean her? I don't want her to awake covered in blood and filth." Carmilla nodded rising from the floor with her Sire, without hesitation Alexander slid the locks from the coffin sliding the lid from the box, looking inside she saw the crumpled grey body of her love. It was a terrifying sight and one she was quickly and shamefully grateful not to have had to see in motion. Her skin was still sunken and grey, her body curled up and stiff, almost like a dead spider, lying on a nest of shed skin, teeth and nails. Turning away from the coffin, Isabella quickly moved to the stairs leading from their chamber, the urge to leave was near overwhelming, the image of Persephone like that burned into her memory and left her feeling hollow for pushing for this. Almost since they had met she had been pushing Persephone to accept the change and the stubborn woman always resisted and found an excuse for why she needed to keep living just a little longer and now.

"Isa, I'll deal with her, go find Palladius and go feed together, we will be fine and I'll get her ready for her rise tomorrow."

"No I'll he.."

"It's okay, go feed, you do not need to see her like this. She will be safe my Childe." The kind smile of her Sire was enough, she ascended from the chamber to find Palladius and try to distract herself from the growing fear and shame festering within.

---

The mortal's pulse started to wane, pulling away from his neck. Isabella quickly wiped the blood dripping down from her lips. Looking to Palladius who was cleaning the woman he had been feeding from Isabella took the moment to try and collect a new perspective.

"When I turned, what was I like?" Palladius paused from his task looking over a broad shoulder, confusion etched onto his face.

"When you were turned?"

"When I had died, the days before I awoke, what was I like?" His brow only furrowed further, quickly turning back to the woman who was starting to come to, on the sofa.

"Forget this evening, you will find the money I left in your bag, go straight home, never remember our faces." The woman quickly got up and headed to the front door leaving. Isabella took the cue to quickly wipe the blood from the man she had fed from, he was some rancher that had come into the city to try his hand at the poker tables and decided to try his luck elsewhere, his ginger hair splayed out on the the back of the sofa, the pale skin almost reminding Isabella of. Pushing the thought away and quickly tapping the man's cheek, waking him slightly she made eye contact pulling him under. "Forget our faces and names, you stumbled around the city and then went to your hotel after sobering up. Go straight home from here and rest. As the man got up to leave the house stumbling appropriately, she saw Palladius was reclined back into his seat watching her, His arms crossed over his wide chest and shirt unbuttoned slightly exposing the slight tan, the faded reminder of his birth on the Mediterranean and the empire he came from.

"After you were turned you were dead, Isa, there's not much else to it, you awoke after three days and left the coffin, it took about a week and half for you to regain your senses and become you again. Is her turning bothering you?"

"Ever the astute one, of course it's bothering me, I can hear her trying to claw her way free, I can feel her fear. I never realised it was so, so" Taking the moment to interrupt, Palladius crossed the room sitting beside her and quickly took Isabella into his embrace. She quickly collapsed into him resting her head on his shoulder.

"She died, it's not pleasant Isa. When you turned it was a lot of the same, I, I didn't know you at the time, we had met maybe twice? Before you turned and neither were particularly pleasant encounters."

"What a shock then that you have been the same unrepentant bastard with her as well." A laugh rumbled through his chest, shaking Isabella slightly.

"I don't get on with humans, besides you both have the same overbearing ego, it's not a good look on someone so fragile, so, mortal. Regardless I never actually saw you before you were awake, I left that entirely to Alexander. How is she?"

"Horrific, she looks dead, and not like us. I just expected she would just be pale, you know? But she just seems so deflated and dead." She realised Palladius had begun rubbing the small of her back, soothing her, it was appreciated.

"It's only one more day, she will rise tomorrow and when she does she will look how she is meant to look, well minus the eyes.

" The eyes? What the hell is going to happen to her eyes?" The anger at the thought of anything else happening to her was enough to almost send Isabella over the edge.

"Nothing major, her eyes will act and look like ours, changing crimson when she wants to feed, which will be most of the time. It's just, when you turned or the few newborns I've seen..There's nothing behind the eyes? It's hard for me to explain, have you ever seen a vampire who's been desiccated or staked?"

" No none, why?"

"The best way I can explain it is that there is no one home, it's like their eyes are open, they can focus on things, mostly blood or their sire, but there's nothing cognitive there, it's just pure instincts driving them. I'll admit, it's slightly unnerving. But otherwise she will look as she should, her skin will correct itself once she's had some blood. A wash and a feed and she'll look better than ever." Isabella just huffed at the response.

"Great so she's going to look slightly demented but at least she'll be pretty." The sarcasm dripped like venom from her mouth.

"I never said pretty, just better. It wouldn't take much though." Quickly slapping his chest and separating, Isabella made to leave for the library to read about the process more before resting for the eve. Hearing his rumbling laugh as he went to descend into their chamber, Isabella shouted a suitable nickname for her bloodling.

"Prick!"

--

The library had been a miss. Weaving through the vast shelves taking quick stock of the portion of their collection brought to the states and sadly it all seemed to be mortal literature. Mostly first editions from her collection. She did manage to find a few stolen grimoires from before the rose accords, nothing useful to her current predicament. In the end she settled on an old book of Germanic poems, a book stolen from her youth and preserved, a quaint distraction but a distraction nonetheless. It didn't take long to realise the sun was cresting the horizon and returning to their shared underground chamber to rest for the night she found herself finally settling into a sense of excitement, her partner would rise again, and not just her partner but her blooded sibling. The fear that had inhabited her body for nearly two nights now was quickly fading at the realisation, she would have what she had spent these last few years desiring most. Entering the cool stone chamber normally brought comfort to her, the room modelled after their previous resting place in France, only now a fourth plinth with a considerably cheaper but more robust coffin resting atop it. The room was sparse, aside from the equally spaced coffins the room held little else, a few torches adorned the walls in sconces and a small table at the back holding on it a half filled jug containing thick, blackish red blood, from the smell alone, she presumed cows. A few rags and a bucket of water sat next to a torn white dress soiled with dirt and blood. Trying not to think of why Isabella headed straight for her coffin in the back pausing only for a moment to look at the cheap brown one before her. The rest of her family must have already gone to their rest, the sun tugging at her urging the same, but the pull, she could take just one look. Pulling away and quickly entering her coffin Isabella spared herself the pain of seeing her dead lover once more. Rest was fitful that day but cleared her senses eventually leaving her ready for the new night ahead.

--

Waking with a jolt, Isabella cleared her coffin lid exiting into the chamber without hesitation, seeing both Alexander and Palladius already awake and talking she quickly made to join them.

"How long until she rises then? It will be tonight?" The question interrupted whatever previous conversation the two were having, Alexander looking only sympathetic to her impatience, Palladius bored.

" Soon Childe, it would be best if we had a mortal on hand for her, one that if drained would not be missed, if you can procure such a thing?" Isabella saw the request for what it was, a distraction, but a welcome one yet again.

"Palladius, fancy joining me? You've always been far better at finding the miscreants."

"Your woman in that box begs to differ, now on your way." The barb was quick and sharp as usual, levelling a glare at the larger man, Isabella left to her room to bathe and change, ready to go find some outlaw or some homeless rake to slake her lover's new thirst.

The search had not taken long, both a positive and negative, the man following her was some gunslinger, claiming he was the fastest in a duel and wanted across the western states. From what little she'd seen of the slow ambling man, she doubted he'd clear leather against her Persephone when she was mortal, and now. Now he would serve as her first true meal, maybe a deputy would have been more fitting for her? Shame Alexander wanted forgettable, Isabella could have made a show of it for her love, get the Sheriff and maybe half the bloody faux aristocracy of New Orleans. Regardless, the man had quickly followed her home after a bat of her eyelashes, and frankly very little supernatural manipulation, the man was just very pliable. It took a lot of self restraint to not break the mans hands that kept insisting on roaming but she wanted not to spoil the meal. In the end taking one hand in hers she quickly led him inside the newly built mansion, the style outside matched its neighbouring properties in the outskirts of New Orleans, the spaces reserved mostly for the business upper class and the political crooks in charge. But inside the layout was a beautiful mix of some of their European holdings, the library modelled from the Athens home, the sitting room from York, the chamber from France. The chamber she was descending with the increasingly nervous, pathetic man. His heartbeat began to race, the sight of the two men or the four coffins being what finally clues him on to the danger he has willingly walked into.

"Now missy I ai.." Turning on him and seeing him reach for his gun she quickly pulled him under her spell.

"Drop the gun, sit on the floor with your back to the wall, do not move. Do not talk. Make no attempt to escape." The command settled and the man's hand fell from his holster as his back slid down the wall behind him, eyes glassy awaiting his next command. Turning back to the coffins, disappointment settled low as she realised the lid remained on one of them. Alexander spoke first.

"Feel your bond before you panic, she's growing aware, I predict within the hour she will be with us." Nothing further needing to be said she slid down the wall opposite the man, fear seeping from his pores and she waited, hoping for movement soon.

As usual Alexander had been correct, the three vampires had remained silent waiting for her rise and within about forty minutes she had. The awareness that filtered down the bond brought Isabella back to her senses and she shot to her feet seeing Alexander approach the coffin. Removing the multiple latches scattered along its lid he pulled the lid back revealing, Isabella couldn't believe the sight before her. Sitting up slowly and stiffly from her confines Persephone rose, Crimson flared eyes and hair standing bright and loud against the near translucent skin of her face, the white nightdress she had last been placed in only further served to make her features stand out even more. Overall she was the same, yet so much more, sharper, more regal, and more alive, in death. Alexander raised a hand to her face, resting his palm on her cheek and she instinctively turned into it, her eyes closing taking in the scent of her maker. Alexander was quick to embrace his newest Childe who seemed to collapse into the attention, Isabella knew the feeling rolling through her new sibling, safety. Palladius, who for all his bluster did look relieved at Persephone's rising, he nodded to the man on the floor, Isabella quickly raised him and walked him towards the coffin the new vampire still sat within. As the man's heart rate quickened and his breathing grew erratic, Persephone's eyes shot back upon, searching the room and landing briefly on Isabella before moving to the man and her body growing visibly tense. In the brief moment of eye contact they made Isabella saw no recognition in them, as Palladius had said, nothing existed behind those fiery eyes except the newly made predator within. Alexander was quick to hold her arm and issue his first command to his newborn.

"Rise."

Persephone stood up from the Coffin and stepped out with far more grace than she was capable of in life, and not once did her eyes leave the man that she had brought home, well more specifically his neck. Isabella remembered this, the overwhelming throbbing of the veins, the incessant beats of their hearts and with this man especially the fear. All creating this overwhelming heady cocktial before you have any idea how to block it out, all senses heightened beyond anything ever experienced in life and all focused on the lifeblood that would serve your newest meal. Persephone paused only to look at the hand still latched onto her arm. Alexander's voice came stern, yet guiding.

"You may feed, but approach slowly, you will only strike when I say." Isabella was unable to pick anything from her expression but she turned back to the man growing closer, pausing with her face nearly directly in front of his neck looking to the pulse, clearly mesmerised, but not biting. Alexander moved closer, coming to stop behind Persephone watching over her shoulder. Looking to Isabella he instructed.

"Tilt his head to the side so she has access." Isabella acted without hesitation, and as she did, Alexander took hold of both of her arms clearly ready to restrain her should things grow out of hand.

"First see the vein beating under the flesh, your fangs should rest behind the vein curving around it, should you pierce it directly, the human will bleed out in moments. Line up your fangs but do not bite." Isabella had yet to notice, the obvious protrusion in Persephone's mouth, it would most likely take her regaining her senses to learn how to return her fangs to their sheath, but as her mouth partered to rest on the mouths neck Isabella got her first view of them and the sight almost made her undead heart beat. Her fangs were sharp, curved, and easily the smallest in the family and she could not wait to spend the next one hundred years making sure she knew it until they grew in fully. Persephone waited, poised to bite, Alexander taking a quick glance and pleased with her position, gave a single word command.

"Feed." And feed she did, her fangs sunk in behind the vein as directed and as soon as blood welled up and into her mouth something clearly snapped. Persephone's fangs pulled down towards his collar bone tearing clean through his artery and causing blood to pump out in waves drenching her dress and his clothes. Alexander released her arms with a sigh as Palladius laughed, leaving the room to get cleaning supplies. Persephone tumbled to the floor, taking the dying man with her and hunched over, continuing to maul at his neck drinking as much of the warm blood as she could. Isabella took the moment to lean down to try and get a better view of her first feeding but Persephone quickly reared her head baring her blood soaked fangs and snarled at Isabella in an attempt to intimidate her away from her meal before returning to the rapidly cooling blood still slowly leaking from the dead man's throat. Perturbed at the reaction Isabella took her leave with a huff, ready to go claim a meal of her own. As she ascended from the chamber she heard her Sire mumble curses in Greek and a small laugh escaping him.

--

It had been one week since Persephone had risen, seven days, seven nights. In that time all she had done was feed, although only from a glass since her last accident, and sleep. Currently sitting in the reading room Isabella was watching her rest. Tonight had been like any other so far, no recognition, no behaviour outside of her baser instincts. Now she simply lay asleep, boneless across the lap of their Sire. Watching Alexander tend to her had only reinforced everything she already knew of the man, her Sire. Beyond whatever bonds they shared, beyond their instincts that Persephone had become a perfect example of, Isabella could feel nothing but love for him.

"What's got your attention?" She hadn't even noticed him looking up from his book watching her back.

"Nothing just, waiting on her. Should I get more blood for her when she awakes?"

"No she's had enough, besides I don't want to bloat on her that vile stuff. Once she awakens fully she won't be drinking animal blood again." The thought was a relief; the idea of her Persephone living off barnyard animals was enough to send a shiver down her spine.