Black Veil Brides Vampire

“I’m a what?” Andy was incredulous, reasonably.

“You can’t just tell him that!” Alice scolded Beck’s audacity.

“Why not? If he can’t take the truth, then there’s no point in keeping him around. If he’s just going to be in denial about it, then we should just kill him.” Beck returned coldly.

“What? Hold on...” Andy thought they were crazy before but...were they really serious?

Insane people were dangerous and Andy wasn’t about to be killed again. Hadn’t he been murdered enough?

The thought had him thinking back to his supposed death while Beck and Alice argued over the proper approach of telling someone they were a vampire. At the same time, he took the chance to slowly back away from the fighting duo as to not alert them to the fact that he was going to make a break for it.

Andy remembered that thing’s claws in his neck, he could still feel them slicing into his flesh and strangling the air from his lungs. But upon inspection of the once wounded area, there was no indication anything had happened to him at all. No scar, no stab marks, nothing.

Then, a crucial detail reemerged from his subconscious – that thing had bitten him.

He hadn’t been able to identify that final piercing feeling at the time, it happened too fast. But now that he could look back and thoroughly think about it...

“Where are you going?” Beck’s growled sounded from directly behind him.

Andy stiffened and froze. How the hell had he done that so fast? The older man was literally ten feet away half a second earlier.

Alice was still standing in the same place she had originally been, but her posture had changed. Her head was slightly lowered and her shoulders had straightened as the muscles tightened. Her arms were crossed and her hip was cocked to one side. Her whole disposition screamed anger, but that wasn’t the frightening part.

Her eyes were glowing a fierce red.

Andy barely had time to properly react when Beck grabbed his shoulder with a large clawed hand and swung him around. His eyes too were shining crimson.

“You should count yourself lucky for not turning into a ghoul, but don’t push it, you little punk.” Beck threatened.

Punk?

“You’ll find your luck won’t protect you from me when you piss me off.” His eyes glowed brighter and he bared his fangs for Andy to see.

It was almost an animalistic display of dominance.

Andy was smart enough not to risk his life any further, but he wasn’t a man that was easily controlled and he wouldn’t stand for it.

At the threat of death, he held his tongue, but the seeds of hatred were buried.

“You can’t run from us.” Alice’s voice sent a chill down Andy’s spine, and not just because of how close behind him she was.

Cornered.

Trapped.

Stuck between two creatures that were more than capable of putting him back into the ground.

What now?

“Now, listen carefully,” Alice’s voice ran smoothly down his neck. “It won’t be long now before your body starts craving, and changing completely. As you are, you have enhanced human hearing and healing, its basic. But the longer we leave this, the closer you get to complete change and that’s when your body is going to need proper sustenance to maintain all the new abilities that extend past human capabilities.”

“Consider it a paycheck.” She finished her hastily pulled together explanation. “Your body needs human blood to maintain itself. You won’t die without it right away, but the weakening is...agonizing...”

“Explain the reason why I need to turn into a cannibal.” Andy was tempted to turn around and face her, but Beck’s life threatening glare made him think twice.

“It isn’t cannibalism, you’re not human anymore.” Alice told him, and added, “You’re a vampire, like us.”

“Of course I am,” Andy was willing to humor them if it meant staying alive.

“You’re so skeptical, why don’t you explain what happened to you.” Beck turned the tables.

Andy’s mind drew a blank. How could he explain what happened? He died...then he woke up. He knew it wasn’t all just a dream or some fucked up hallucination, he woke up in a fucking coffin! How does anyone rationally explain that?

This wasn’t rational! This wasn’t possible.

Yet, there he was. He was alive, breathing, heart beating. It went against everything scientific.

This broke every rule in the book.

But there he was. There they were.

“Exactly.” Beck snarled, stepping around him.

Andy just stood there, scrambling for practical answers that weren’t coming to him. Could vampires really exist? It was obvious Beck and Alice weren’t exactly human, nor was the creature that killed him but vampires?

How? Why? Why him?!

I’m one of them...?

A monster like them...

“We must hurry, you don’t have time for this.” Alice grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

That’s when a soft voice called out to them.

“There’s a man digging up Hannah’s grave just north from here.”

Alice stopped and looked to her right. Andy did the same, as if he had any other choice.

There stood, no, floated a young girl of maybe thirteen. Her whole body was shrouded with a white mist that seemed much brighter than it really was because of the ivory dress she wore. She was more than a little transparent and the colors of what might have once been long brown hair and bright green eyes were badly faded. Her skin that once may have been a healthy tan color was blue, or maybe it was just completely translucent and was reflecting a lighter version of the navy sky.

“Thanks, Melody.” Alice nodded to the girl.

“I knew I smelled food.” Beck commented from several feet away.

“Food?” Andy questioned suspiciously.

“Food.” Beck confirmed with a nod.

Then, Andy noticed the girl, Melody, had vanished.

“Where’d she go?” He asked looking around.

“Mel? She probably went back to her brother or something.” Alice shrugged unhelpfully and began pulling Andy in the direction Melody had given them. “Come on, what better than your first kill be someone who deserves it?”

Further into the graveyard, a seventeen-year-old girl with the same transparent glow Melody had was watching as a more solid man in his late thirties was shoveling dirt off of her grave. The name on the headstone read “Hannah Mary Benson” and the girl’s pale hair hinted at blonde locks during life. Her eyes were also quite white in color because they had been blue once, but the insubstantial form of a ghost had drained the colors of her features.

“Hannah!” Melody flickered to the older girl’s side. The thirteen-year-old smiled warmly at her ghostly companion.

Hannah returned it, “Something up?”

“Alice and Beck are back, did you know?” Melody quizzed innocently. Hannah nodded, she was well-aware that the vampiric pair were back in town. She had felt their presence.

“They have a new one now. He just woke up and he’s heading here,” Melody glanced at the man digging furiously and mumbling to himself, “for him.”

“That’s good.” Hannah said, returning her attention to the grave robber. “I thought I was gonna have to get Bambi.”

The girls giggled as the man dug away at Hannah’s grave.

The man in question was named Ricardo and he wasn’t exactly a person you’d deem “sane”. But he wasn’t an evil man, he was just delusional in every sense of the word. Ricardo was digging up his late brother’s grave, his brother of whom was quite rich and had been buried with some of his wealth. Ricardo was struggling to survive day in and day out and he’d always been scorned by his older brother so, in his mind, he was doing something good.

He thought he would take everything of value of his brother’s that he could get his hands on and get his sick mother the help she needed. His brother had certainly never done anything to help her.

The problem in this was that he didn’t see the grave had a female name, no matter how close it was to his brother’s name. And the fact that his mother had long since passed away, died of cancer six years ago.

Poor Ricardo was just a delusional man with semi-good intentions and a few mental issues. Society had turned its back on him when he needed help the most, but that was just what happened with so many of the mentally ill. They were just put back out on the streets with a pat on the shoulder.

Now, he was mistakenly digging up an innocent teenager’s grave with the false impression of it being his brother’s, whose grave was actually in another county.

Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for society, he was about to be cut down.

Alice had managed to drag Andy close enough that they could see normally through the fog the figure of a digging man, but Andy had been fighting her the entire way and had finally escaped her grasp. However, when he tried to turn and run, he knocked smack into Beck who grabbed him and turned him back around with a harsh shove.

Well, that isn’t gonna work... He thought, I need to figure out a way to get passed them without them knowing. Or maybe a distraction...

Then, it hit him.

Andy’s vision began blurring out of focus. His blue eyes flickered between azure and cardinal, dilating pupils beginning to transition into a sharper shape – cat-like.

His head spun nauseatingly, the world around him swirling into a collage of dark colors. Black strands of hair fell over his face as he lost his balance and almost tipped over, but managed to redirect the velocity into the opposite direction where a tree caught his fall. His breathing picked up, turning into ragged pants as his body temperature sky-rocketed.

His body began to tremble with the on-coming change, starting at his hands and quickly spreading to his shoulders before engulfing the rest of him in uncontrollable jitters. Andy’s teeth ached, stringently clenched and his eyes burned despite being tightly shut against the spiraling dizziness.

An animalistic growl ripped its way from deep in his throat. It was the type of feral snarl one might hear before being ravaged by a starving wolf, or a hungry lion.

Hunger...

Lean muscles coiled and drew taut, causing a searing burn in complaint. Slender sinews flexed in jerky movements in his hands, gradually forcing his fingers to splay out like long, pale cages. Shadowy nails lengthened into claws made for tearing, two-in-half inches of sharpened bone that was no longer able to be placed in the same category as fingernails dug stiffly into the supporting tree’s trunk.

Through all the burning pain coursing throughout his body, one thing remained even more prevalent. Something that made him see red. Something that dredged up rabid instincts humans had since buried under layers of reason and coy emotion. Something that clouded his mind and sealed a bloodlust over basic thought.

Something completely animal took over. And the animal was...

Hungry...

Alice and Beck exchanged a quick, calm glance before Alice grabbed a hold of Andy’s still shaking, still lurched over figure and hastily turned him in the direction of the mangy human a few yards away.

His tall, dark form slowly began to straighten, body drawing rigid like a predator ready to pounce. His shoulders rolled once, almost as if the inner animal were making sure it had full control of its new body.

Once that had been established, “Andy” raised his head, lips curling back from canines reaching two-inches from the top, and a second pair of fangs jutting up like shorter inch-long stalagmites from the lower canines. A wild rumble reverberated, climbing in quickly rising nuances from that same deep point in his throat.

Ricardo had been fairly oblivious to most of everything around him, but when a feral growl infiltrated his bubble, his wall of insanity, he stopped all movement.

Glancing up, the delirious man found himself looking straight across to a pair of glowing red orbs slicing through the fog. He stiffened and dropped his shovel, then he froze all over again.

Ricardo was never very fast on the uptake and his reflexes had much to be desired for, but the panic that kicked in when he spotted the eyes (which easily would’ve looked down at him had they been closer) nailed him to the spot. His feet wouldn’t move. His brain was barely even working properly, only sending off distress signals that translated into impenetrable fear.

Then, the eyes were gone.

The growling never seized, though. Rather, it surrounded him, circled him like a pack of wolves closing in on a deer. And in Ricardo’s final moments, he knew what it was like to be hunted, he knew what that paralyzing fear that gripped a corner animal was like. He knew the urge to strike out and flee for his pathetic, wretched life. And he knew the pain of a starving vampire’s fangs tearing into his flesh, scraping bone and desperately lapping up his blood. He knew what it felt like...to be sucked dry of the viscous life fluid we all need to live.

The man fell into dank, spiraling darkness, but a new vampire took root that night.

A new powerhouse destined to face a dying world of hate.