Without a Sound

I drove out to the city, dreading what I knew I had to do. I absolutely hated killing people. Before I had found Charlotte, I had gone months without drinking blood just because I couldn’t stand killing. In the end, though, I had to do it. It made me feel a little bit better that I was doing it to help Charlotte.

I couldn’t believe how much of a hypocrite I was. I was hypocritical about a lot of things, actually, but this was a good example. I remembered telling Charlotte it wasn’t her fault she drank blood and that she should accept what she is. I laughed. What a stupid thing to say when – after seventeen years – I still couldn’t accept it. I had my reasons, though.

I walked around the city for a little bit, looking for someone. That was another thing: I never killed someone at random. I tried to justify myself by killing criminals.

While I was walking down the sidewalk, I saw something out of the corner of my eyes. Down a dark alley – how cliché? – there was a man who was all alone. He had a knife, and I sensed the blood on it. He was a killer, and the blood was still warm.

A killer for a killer – wasn’t that a fair enough trade? I thought so. I wondered who he had killed. A random person or someone he knew? I shivered. Had he killed someone in his family?

Oh, that reminds me of my second rule: I never kill a woman. I had only killed one in my entire life. Some might say it’s sexist, but they don’t know me. It was bad enough for me to kill a man, but a woman? Never.

The man in the alley carelessly had his back facing me. Most murderers killed as a one time thing. They were usually either only planning on killing one person or were so careless that they got caught. Either that or they were killed by me or one of the other vampires in the area like Gerard or Celia. I wasn’t the only vampire around who didn’t enjoy killing, although I might have been the only one who had my own rules on whom I could kill.

It didn’t take much stealth to sneak up on the man. It was funny how murderers never worried about being murdered themselves. He didn’t even have enough time to scream before I expertly whipped his knife out of his hands and slit his throat. I did, however, see the fear that clouded his eyes and knew it would haunt me for years to come.

I already had the thermos ready at his throat to catch the blood that spilled. I only missed a few drops this time. I was getting better.

When it was full, I put my mouth to his neck and drank. Maybe I hated that more than the killing. I wasn’t sure. What I did know was that the blood tasted wonderful and disgusting at the same time. At least it wouldn’t be inside me for that long. Charlotte would take it all away soon.

Like Charlotte often did, I couldn’t help but gag when I was finished. That made me feel even more like a hypocrite.

Some might ask why I didn’t drink some of a person’s blood and then let them live. The answer was very simple: Once I drank some of their blood, I could either finish them off or leave them to become a vampire. The second choice was much worse than killing. Not only would the new vampire kill people, but he would also be condemned to this life. I couldn’t do that to anyone.

When I was finished, I looked down at the man’s body sorrowfully. Maybe he deserved this. But what about the people who loved him? Did he have a mother and father who would wake up the next day to find that their son was dead? I felt tears in my eyes.

Did he have a wife who loved him and wouldn’t know how to live without him? Did he have children who would be old enough to miss him or so young that they’d grow up without even knowing their father? Maybe he had a daughter. This was why I hated killing. It’s cruel and heartless. I suppose it suited me perfectly, then.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the corpse, leaving him there. I wondered, as usual, if the dead could see and hear us. Sometimes I wished they could. Other times I hoped desperately that they couldn’t.

When I got back to my house, the sun had completely set. I wondered if Charlotte was already awake. When I walked into the room I had left her in, she was sitting up in the bed with her back against the headboard. She looked terrified of me. Well, maybe it was more the blood than me.

I felt bad for her and asked, “Have you been awake for very long?”

She shook her head and eyed the thermos meaningfully. She had felt the blood and woken up. I gave it to her quickly so that she wouldn’t have to wait. She was always so thirsty that it made my chest ache. Wound she ever get enough?

I sat next to her while I waited for her to finish. In a sad way, this was my favorite part. I waited patiently. When she was almost done, I put my left arm gingerly around her shoulders and offered her my right wrist.

The pain was unbearable when she bit, yet I bore it. The stinging spread from my wrist to my whole body, filling my heart with darkness. But it was so much better than the emptiness.

I closed my eyes and tried to etch every feeling deep in my mind so that I wouldn’t forget it. I needed to remember what this felt like for the rest of my immortal life.

This was what it felt like to be killed by a vampire. I needed to know this; I deserved to know it. I even deserved to feel this a hundred times over for what I had done.

But Charlotte didn’t understand this, and I couldn’t tell her. So I just wiped the tears from her eyes and told her not to feel bad. I held her close to my side. It always seemed to make her feel better.

And I really couldn’t stand to see her cry. When she did, she looked so hopeless and alone. “I know how you feel right now,” I told her softly. “You’re not alone. I’m here, and I understand you.”

She looked at me with her big, sad eyes. They were so grey that they were almost black, but they were not plain. They had their own natural beauty to them.

I smoothed out her hair absentmindedly. The shampoo had definitely helped it a lot. It even shimmered a little bit. But other than her eyes and hair, she was still disturbingly skinny. I couldn’t imagine how hungry she must be; how thirsty she must be not to feel the hunger.

I helped her off the bed. “You should eat more food,” I said. “I’ll help you get strong, Charlotte,” I promised.

She perked up at the sound of her name, which really was beautiful and unique. She followed closely behind me to the hall. I carried her down the stairs again, not trusting her weak muscles to get her down safely by herself. More than anything, I didn’t want her to get hurt.

And that fact really, really confused me.