Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) Read Free

bared her neck to me. ‘Ah seen ya in ma dreams, ah ‘ave. An ah knows wha’chu can do. Please help a dying lady with her last request. Ah’m a beggin’ ya.’ She threw herself into the dirt at my feet and cried.
    “I didn’t deny her claim. What would be the point? ‘I took an oath not to harm the innocent.’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for your suffering, but to take your life would put me on a path I am not willing to travel. You must understand the consequences taking your life will have.’
    “‘Harm? It’s not harming me to end ma suffering.’ The word suffering came out suffrin.
    “She didn’t have the strength to pull herself out of the dirt. She just laid there crying and waiting to die. I sighed and lifted her into my arms. She weighed nothing. She felt like sticks wrapped in rags. I carried her back into her house and laid her on the bed. She looked up at me with tears glistening in her eyes. She knew the suffering would soon be over and she was at peace with that. Her smile reflected her happiness. I drained her and in her blood I tasted her relief; there was no misery for me in the flavor of her blood. I knew I had done a good thing. I decapitated her with a knife from the kitchen and left her wrapped in a sheet on the front porch. The corpse collectors would carry her remains to the mass gravesite just outside of town.
    “As I stepped away from her house, and once again headed down the road, more people stepped out of their homes and watched me walk by. In their faces I could see they knew what I had done for the old woman and they wanted the same release for themselves. I did not deny them their request. It took me a month to clean out the town of the sick. When I left, I walked to the next town. I sought out the seriously ill and offered my services. I had a very steady food source for the next decade.
    “When the plague ended I had to seek out a new source of food. With the population so seriously depleted, thieves and cutthroats were rampant. I merely had to present myself as a vulnerable wanderer and my new victims came to me. From that point on, my food source has never wavered; only my hunting styles have changed over the years. At first I would simply wander the streets looking for crimes taking place. But as methods of policing these criminals became more sophisticated, my hunting methods needed to be…revamped.
    “But there were always other ways around an obstacle. I would read wanted posters and hunt the criminals the police could not seem to catch. Where there was one criminal, you could usually find two or three more. I thought that I would run out of food and have to resort to feeding off the innocent again as I bled one criminal after another. Of course that is not the case. It amazed me the violence and hate man could show toward one another.
    “It was about five hundred years ago the first time loneliness hit me. The vampire inevitably feels isolated as they roam the centuries alone. I wanted companionship, craved it as hungrily as I craved blood. One night while feeding I noticed a man who had noticed me.
    “For several nights I allowed this man to watch me feed. It is in the vampire’s best interest to be invisible, but I felt no ill will from this man; only a desire to know who and what I was. He was clearly afraid, but still he watched. He kept his distance and did not approach me, but he was ever in my presence. I decided the only way to resolve this dilemma was to approach him.
    “One night I used my vampire speed and pinned him to the wall he crouched behind to watch me feed. I moved his head to the side and placed my fangs delicately close to his neck. I could feel the excitement coursing through him. ‘You know what I am.’ I whispered into his ear. He shuttered in my grasp, but he did not struggle.
    “‘Yes,’ he said.
    “‘Are you afraid?’ I asked.
    “‘No,’ he said, and I saw the lie in his eyes. Although he was clearly afraid, he was not afraid of me.