A Scottish Vampire Tale (Part 3) The Anger Of Hunger.

The Anger Of Hunger

August 1914

The angry blood veil seemed to never end. Thundering heart beats filled my head and made my throat burn. A never ending sore throat that seemed to never be smooth by the piteous of blood they allowed me. I would bash against the oak of my door screaming in agony, nothing else registered across my mind apart from blood at that stage. But the phase ended and some control of my mind began to return. It was small thing at first, like when I could see passed the bag of blood, and see the hand that delivered it. She was so patient with me; I took such small steps to return to a stable state. Never did she give up or plead for her father to take some of the burden when I failed to progress.

By the end of October I could control myself enough that she could sit in the room with me and share breakfast. There were times my glaze would drift and images of ripping at her throat to get more blood would cross my mind. She would just calmly bring my focus back to her face with a smile and engage me in conversation to keep my mind occupied on anything but what my nature craved. I won’t lie it’s hard to suppress my nature, my caving for the blood, but with practice I gained control over it.
Looking back now I cringe at how I acted on my first introduction to a human, to Victoria. As she walked down the corridor to my room her heart beat was torture, in my head.
Darcy just squeezed my hand and handed me a coin as she whispered “Concentrate on moving the coin between your fingers. Every beat of heart move the coin to the next finger, it seems silly but I promise it will help.”
As Victoria entered the room, I tried to move the coin smoothly across my knuckles, tried to concentrate on the polished edge of the big coin. In my human form I never held such a coin, only the well off would have. I tried to think of what we would have spent such a coin on, but the thought just tugged at my guilt, knowing now how my sister and mother would be struggling.

As she neared me the sound of her heart beat distracted me and the coin caught on the side of my finger and clattered to the wooden floor. It spun for a few seconds and slowly settled upon the floor board, Victoria leant down to pick it up. A number of factor lead to what happened next but it only took a split second for it to go bad. As she bent down the scent of her triggered the beast within me, the last thing I saw before it all went black was the image of her neck and the ripple of her jugular vein calling to me. I was no longer in control, blackness surrounded me, yet my hearing still remained.

I heard her gasp and then Darcy scream. "No Ben." Then I heard the whoosh of the air pass my ear and the thud of me hitting the wall, the crack as my humerus took the full impact. Still in the numb blackness I could hear their conversation.

"I am so sorry Vicky, I don't know what went wrong. I was sure he was ready."
"Don't worry Darcy, I am fine, just a scratch." There was a pause and scraping of chairs and swish of fabric and then she continued. "Is he ok, you hit him really hard Darcy?"

I heard footfall coming towards me as Darcy crossed the room to check on me. "He out cold, a broken arm it seems, he will be fine." I heard her move back to the Victoria's side. "We give it another week and then try again." I could hear the disappointment in her voice, the sadness.
"We will keep trying, Darcy. You know me and Richard are here to support you both through this." Her voice was kind and comforting. I imagined she had probably got her arm round Darcy.
Darcy reply was muttered through tears. "When it's just him and I, he is just like my Ben. Intelligent, kind and loving, but the minute I introduce blood, well he just goes..."
"Shhh, I am sure he just needs a bit more time."
I heard Darcy sniff, pushing away her despair and clinging onto Vicky's words of hope. "We will continue to try, I am sure it will come good soon."

We did try a week later and I lasted a little longer before the craving for blood knocked me out. With each try I lasted a little longer, taking me well into the new year before I was able to keep the blood beast at bay long enough to join in normal life in the castle. But each day remained a struggle for me and the slightest thing could upset the balance and my control would slip.
I got to the point that I could feel the darkness approaching and warn Darcy that I was nearing my threshold. She would make our excuses, and whisk me away like a dirty little secret. Never letting on to Octavian and the other full purebloods of the household that I was still struggling. She would say that I just needed more time, and we just need to keep working at it. She never said it, but I knew she feared if the other knew, that they would judge me and find me unstable and sentence me to death. So we continued to work on it and we hide the truth, that I had a problem. We hung onto the memory of who I was before the turning and believed that in time the blackness would fade and my human nature would win over.

Photo from a holiday in Scotland.

https://steemit.com/fiction/@kathieletalis/a-scottish-vampire-tale-part-1
https://steemit.com/fiction/@kathieletalis/a-scottish-vampire-tale-part-2