The First Evil

The storm paused, inhaling. The way everyone says all wind stops just before a tornado touches down. The warmth and taste of the blood filled me. It was like eating your favorite food wearing your coziest pajamas in your favorite place in the world. I could see how vampires had become creatures of nightmare. If this is what drinking blood feels like, not many people would have the will power to stay reasonable and humane about doing it for long. It felt like I was now in the eye of a flaming hurricane of power. I could feel the blistering heat from the fiery winds swirl around me, waiting.

It hurts because you do not accept it. Accept this. This is what you asked to become, a light blazing against the darkness that approaches. That is not without price. Accept it and live.

I could see the winds pick up speed with every word he spoke and realized that his voice was power incarnate. I wanted to question what kind of being has power in the very vibrations of their spoken words but I would just be stalling. Now was not the time for any questions pertinent to the current situation. I knew the eye of the storm must pass and my decision must be made before then. I can't possibly take that much power into myself and remain unchanged at some fundamental level. I'd gotten just a small fraction of this and I was already losing control of the emotions I had kept a tight leash on for decades.

My instincts just keep urging me to trust in the voice, trust that he is leading me down the path I told him I wanted to take. Maybe I didn't understand exactly what I had asked for but I did ask for it. I won't flinch away from getting it now because it's more than I expected it to be. I had one nostalgic moment for the life I'd been living just yesterday morning.

Wake up, try and fail to eat anything substantial, paint, sleep, and repeat. Not a great life as far as accomplishment goes but not a miserable one either and really, that's all any reasonable person can ask for. That their misery not outweigh their contentment.

That doesn't stop it from being boring and monotonous I'm just not one to discount my blessings and those things are safe if not exciting. I've never been the type of person to go out of my way seeking excitement. More excitement had found me than I've wanted in my long life but none had been the pleasant adventurous kind. I've been alive for more than seventy years and never had an adventure that I wanted to have. I sure know how to pick the right rabbit hole don't I?

I needed to trust in that otherness, that he was guiding me where I wanted to go. I need to trust that I actually know what I want out of this situation and out of life. I realize I've never really trusted in myself before. I had contingency plans for contingency plans because I never knew when I was going to monumentally fuck my life up with some slip. I need to feel prepared so that when the dust clears I'm not standing empty handed in the ruins that were the structure of my life. The voice couldn't have chosen a harder path for me to take. My entire sense of self that I'd scraped, stapled and glued together from the remnants of my tattered torturous adolescence was about being in control. Now I was being asked to give up that control to face my second greatest fear, the unknown. Ignorance had never been bliss in my experience.

The power began to pulse against my awareness, warning me that come-to-grips time is almost over. I need to pony up here. This power had a live-and-accept-it-or-die sort of feel and since I'd already chosen to live I'd better get to it. I focused on the subconscious barrier insulating me from the pulsating heat. It felt as if my consciousness and my physical body occupied two separate spaces and time moved differently in each of them. All but stopped in the alley I was standing in and racing inexorably by wherever my mind is. I could feel the rather alarming sensation of teeth squeezing, but not yet puncturing my torso, my skin was still getting sprinkled with fresh blood. But with my eyes squeezed shut I could see the towering manifestation of the power that I'm expected to accept and acclimate too quickly.

I think that the plan had been to let me get power in small increments. However a giant monster attacking me torched that. So now I need more of a boost than I've gotten if I'm going to do more than just barely survive this confrontation. A side benefit seems to be that the voice and I have progressed from vague feelings to whole paragraphs of conversation in just a few short hours. Yes, I know I'm stalling. Thinking about non-issues when time is running out.

I was standing at the edge of a precipice hoping that when I jumped I would grow wings instead of becoming one with the rocks. Sometimes it's not the falling that's scary but the jumping of your own volition. I could rationalize someone just taking control but giving it up was going to be hard. I focused on the pulse of the storm. I felt my heart beat and tried to breathe so that my heart would match it. The rhythms synced and before I could third and fourth guess myself I let go. I let myself go. I yanked away my shield with both hands and felt that pulsing power move against my skin before filling me up and blowing me away.

I had expected the power to slam into me with all the force of the storming ocean against a single sandbag. But the power wasn't against me, it was me. I'd braced for the pressure of all that towering heat to try and squeeze down into my smallish body. Instead I became the wind, the heat, the velocity of motion that gives birth to power. It was neither peaceful like death nor was it painful like I'd been expecting.

I don't quite have the words to adequately describe what it is that I'm feeling. I don't know that I will ever be able to express it no matter what means I used to do so.

This sense of being in two places and of having two states of being all at once was both grounding and disorienting. I was no longer in a separate place from my body but I still wasn't inside it. I could feel my body but also still be spinning around it. I realized that just accepting the power wasn't enough; I was reminded that I need to be physical to be effective. Yet another crossroads in a night full of too many destiny defining choices.

I concentrated on the framework of bones, the flexing strength muscles, and the rough/soft texture of skin. I explored all my senses. First, tasting the spicy sweet blood still on my tongue. Then feeling the slippery soft fur twined around my fingers. Smelling the sharp canine musk mixing with a smell, something like cloves or incense that ran underneath it. Hearing the cadence of our harsh breaths mixing and our strong hearts beating, all in tune with each other. I saved vision for last, needing my sight to truly ground me in myself. I almost didn't want to open my eyes, though it's not as if I can balance here at this precipice forever.

To be, Or not to be? Well that's probably the easiest question I've answered all night. Actually it may be the only question I've answered all night, it had just never occurred to me in such succinct terms before.

I opened my eyes.