NightBlood: The Journey
"Come with me,
I'll take you now.
To a place that you fear.
For no reason why,
Your heart has turned,
Away from me.
And I will make you,
Understand.
Everything will become clear to you,
When you see through,
Another's eyes.
Everything will become clear to you,
Whatever's meant for you,
You will find.
Come with me,
I'll take you there.
To a place where you'll see.
Everything you need,
To become the one,
You need to be.
And all of those things,
That you fear,
Will disappear,
From view,
In time...
Everything will become clear to you,
When you see things through,
Another's eyes.
Everything will become clear to you,
Whatever's meant for you,
You will find."
- Transformation
(from the Brother Bear Soundtrack)
By Phil Collins
Part One: The Past
My given name was Rolan, but for many years now… almost too many to count… I’ve called myself NightBlood. It seemed a fitting name for what I’ve become. This… monstrosity caught between two worlds, and welcome in none of them.
I was twenty-six years old when it changed.
I was also a normal lupe.
But that was about to change.
Maybe it was fate. Something inescapable that made me stumble into that alley that night, lost on my way home. For the longest time, I simply believed it was a mistake, but now I believe otherwise. Destiny led me into the clutches of that vampire gelertess that night, and destiny saw me turned into one like her. The ageless, immortal undead. And I loved it. I hadn’t had a good life before that, admittedly. I’d done a lot of things that I regretted… But all that changed when I was sired.
My Sire’s given name was Katherine, and she hadn’t chosen to change it. She taught me the ways of the vampire. How to move in silence, undetected by the humans and neopets I hunted, until it was too late. Also how to move among them, and seem perfectly normal, my glowing gold eyes and sharp fangs concealed beneath my normal lupine visage.
I had been a vampire for forty years, when I first encountered the werelupes.
Werelupes are mindless killers, and it sickened me to watch them, but I didn’t dare get close enough to interfere with their grisly games. A normal human or neopet, all but three nights of every month, the full moon triggers the change in the lycanthrope’s DNA, and the dormant wolf within the human or neopet comes to the surface. The hands and feet become paws, fingernails and toenails lengthening into vicious claws. The face pushes forward, as the human’s mouth and nose become the lengthened, fang filled snout of the wolf. The ears slide to the top of the head, and become pointed, and the spine lengthens into a short, bushy tail, as the human’s knees reverse direction, which sends it falling to all fours. Throughout all of this, the fur is growing. By the time the change is complete, only the werelupe’s size and uncharacteristically short tail mark it as anything other than a normal lupe.
That is, besides it’s single-mindedness. A wolf, a TRUE wolf, exists to hunt. To raise pups, and have a family. They have a complex social order, and blood ties that are stronger than any other creature I’ve encountered in my travels. A werelupe, on the other hand… That’s another story. They have no interest in each other, or in anything but killing. This, combined with their incredible strength, makes them a creature I hoped to never encounter in a one on one battle. So whenever I saw them, I tended to give them a wide berth.
In vampiric terms, at forty some odd years, I was still relatively young. There’s no real way to measure age when your body doesn’t change. Only the wisdom you gain tells of your true age. I’ve met vampires that appear to be fifteen years old, yet have been around long enough to have witnessed the Inquisition. The oldest vampire I’ve ever met was Katherine’s Sire, who simply called himself Master, as tends to be the habit of any vampire over a thousand years old. Though he was the leader of our Order, I never much cared for him. I’ll admit that. But he taught me some valuable things. Like not to talk back to a superior, or I’d wind up having to regrow my fangs.
Apparently, though, with all our training, it wasn’t enough to stop another change in my life. And this one too, seemed destined.
Now nearly a hundred and fifty years old, I was cocky. I thought I knew everything anyone could tell me, and I’d stopped listening when they tried to add to my knowledge. I suppose I was rather like a teenager, who believes his parents have nothing more to teach him. Yet, in my first night away from Katherine, I made a serious mistake.
Three young girls, walking in the Haunted Woods. Far from civilization and VERY close to the cabin Katherine and I had been using as a hideout. If I’d believed there was a higher power looking out for me, I might have called these little morsels a gift. As it was, I was very hungry, and I made the mistake of listening to my stomach rather than the warning signals my vampire instincts were giving off. If I’d called my gold eyes forward then, I might have been able to see the aura of magic that surrounded those three beauties. But I didn’t, and I made the biggest mistake of my unlife. I attacked, feeding off of one of the girls.
The moment my fangs came forward and plunged into her neck, I felt that something was wrong. For one thing, she didn’t scream. For another, her two companions didn’t run away. If anything, they seemed amazingly angry, as I let the other woman’s drained body slide to the ground. For the longest time, I stared at the other two girls, my gold eyes now picking up what my ‘human’ eyes hadn’t before. A black aura of magic, hovering around both of them.
They were witches.
And that meant that the one I killed also had to be… Oh no.
I started to run, but one of them raised a hand and I was frozen in place. I snarled and growled, struggling with everything in me and pulling against the magical bonds that held me in place, but I couldn’t move. For the first time since I was sired, I was scared. I didn’t know what they were doing, as they began chanting in Latin, but I knew whatever spell they were casting couldn’t be good for me. And all I could think about, before the powerful spell swirling around me caused me to lose consciousness, was that I wished Katherine had been there.
I woke up slowly, with literally no idea how much time had passed. I only knew that I was hungry again, and that I needed to get back to the cabin before daybreak. The trees would offer me a little cover from the sun’s killing light, but not enough to save me being at least mildly scorched in the process. Staggering to my feet, I headed for the cabin, but I could already tell something wasn’t right. It was like my center of balance was off, and I was constantly having to grab trees to stay on my feet. My legs felt heavy, and my chest heaved as I pulled in breaths that I knew I didn’t need, but that was one living lupe reflex I’d never quite been able to get rid of. It was then that the memories of the last night began to hit.
I remembered the witches, and their odd chanting. Remembered passing out… Then what? They’d obviously done something to me. But I had no clue what it was. And the early morning light was beginning to blind me, so I was in no position to take stock. When I get to the cabin, I thought to myself, I’ll worry about it. Not now.
I made it back to the cabin a short time later, by then wondering why the witches hadn’t simply killed me in retaliation for what I’d done. I knew there was only one reason that they wouldn’t have… And that’s if they deemed what they HAD done to me worse than death. Now, I was feeling scared again. What had they done? And why was I having so much trouble walking straight?
I looked around the pleasantly dark interior of the cabin, my eyes quickly adjusting to the comfortable darkness. Katherine wasn’t there, which meant she’d been out late hunting, and had to hole up somewhere else. That was fine. It would give me time to figure out what the hell was going on with me.
I walked over, carefully, and sat on the bed… and immediately stood up again when a sharp pain shot up through my spine. It was similar to the feeling you get if you accidentally bend a finger backwards. I blinked slowly, and scratched my head, then my eyes widened at what I felt.
My hair was… more shaggy than it had been, and it seemed… both longer and shorter than it should’ve been. On top of that, as I felt around the side of my head, where my ear should’ve been, I couldn’t find it. My first instinct was panic. The witches had removed my ears and made me deaf! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I WAS hearing. Clearer, even, than usual.
And my hands felt wrong. The palms and fingers were just as sensitive as before… but when I touched one hand with the other, it felt… wrong. Almost hard. Like my hands had been covered in some kind of coarse padding. And my nails… My nails were sharper than before, as well as thick and curved. Like claws.
I had been an Anthro Lupe before... Almost more human than Neopet... Rather like my old hero, Jeran... But now... something was horribly wrong.
I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I closed my eyes, slowly reaching up with both hands to feel over my face. I didn’t need a reflection to know what I would find. A lupine snout. That was normal enough... But it was thicker than it had been. My ears hadn’t been removed, they’d simply MOVED, and were now sitting atop my head, slowly swiveling in response to every sound. The pain when I’d sat down before had come because I had been sitting on my own tail.
I was a werelupe.
Panicked, I turned in circles, trying uselessly to catch more of a glimpse of my tail than a fleeting grayish blur out of the corner of my eye. I cried out, but the sound that left my wolf snout was the mournful howl of a truly lost soul. Practically scared to death of my own body, I dropped instinctively to all fours and continued to turn circles. The pads on my hands now made sense, as this is what they were for. I could walk on all fours, or on two legs. And that little realization cut through my panic.
I stopped, in mid-circle, and very slowly sat down, careful of my own tail this time. Werelupess are quadrupeds. I was both quadrupedal and bipedal. That alone seemed to indicate that I wasn’t a werelupe. Also when I realized that it was NOT a full moon that week… And that it was daylight outside. I wasn’t changing back. But if I wasn’t a werelupe, then what was I?
I slowly turned my head to regard Katherine’s ‘library’ of books she’d collected over the years, and stored at this cabin. If I was to find out what I was, this would be where to look. I pushed myself up onto all fours and walked over to the library, then sat down again, unconsciously curling my tail around myself, and pulling out one of the first books on magic I could find. If I could figure out what the witches had done, then maybe I could find out how to reverse it.
* * * * * * * *
Nearly twelve hours later, my eyes were exhausted, but I finally had stumbled upon the answer. I wasn’t a werewolf… I was a Were Lupe. The differences were rather obvious, once I’d read about them. Werelupes are, as I described before, mindless killers for three nights of the month, which lead normal human or Neopet lives the rest of the time. Some aren’t even aware of what they truly are. Were Lupes, on the other hand… Are rarely born a lupe, yet once the change has been completed… It’s irreversible.
That made my heart sink, but I continued to read on. Whatever this said, I was going to have to live with it for the rest of… however long my life would be now. I needed to know.
Were Lupes, I found out, are incredibly rare. Born only out of the most inexplicable magical circumstances, they could’ve been human originally or just about anything else. There were records of everything from demons, to actual wolves being cursed with this existence. All were punishments, and whatever the creature was before, it retained all traits of. I blinked at that, because it meant that I was STILL a vampire… Which meant that I would live the rest of eternity in this body. A low, pained moan escaped my throat when I realized that I was trapped. But I forced myself to continue to read.
If a Were Lupe was a vampire originally, it remains a vampire. Though it has the added ability to live off of raw, bloody meat, rather than blood alone. Also, both animal and human blood work the same way. That was good, I mused to myself. Since this new body basically threw everything I knew about hunting into disarray. I could no longer stalk a single human in a crowd, for I would never blend into the human society in Neopa again. But animals, wild or domesticated, would be easy prey. I finished reading the rest of the passage and slowly put the book away. Part of me felt as if I was in shock. Like I was watching this from a distance, rather than living it.
Unfortunately, Katherine chose that moment to come home… and it became far too real to me.
She opened the door, muttering something about spending the day in a cave with an irritable bear, and came in. But she froze when she saw me, and her eyes widened. I whimpered quietly, and tried to speak, but no matter what I did, the wolf snout wouldn’t form words. Then it occurred to me. If I was still a vampire, then Katherine was still my Sire. That meant that I should still be able to ‘speak’ along our bond. I focused inward, and my heart nearly leaped with joy when I found the bond still fully active. ::Katherine,:: I mindspoke to her. ::Katherine, it’s me. Rolan.::
She blinked at me again, and whispered, “Rolan? But… how… What…?”
::Were Lupe::, I said quietly, still speaking along our Sire/Childe bond. ::I… bit the wrong person.::
She stared at me for the longest time… then her eyes narrowed, and she gave me a look that I still see in my nightmares. “Abomination,” she hissed. “Get out. Get OUT!”
With that, she picked up a chair and actually THREW it at me. I was in shock… But the Lupe instincts refused to let the flying wood hit me. I lashed out with a hand, and slapped the chair away, my claws breaking it into several pieces in the process. ::Katherine, wait!::, I cried along our bond. ::Don’t do this! You can help me…::
She snarled, her fangs and gold eyes, so like my own that I’d donned only the previous night, gleaming at me. “No. There’s no help, Rolan,” she growled, but I could see the tears glistening in her eyes as she stepped back and held the door open. “It’s a matter of survival, old love,” she whispered as I slowly moved toward her, heading for the door. “With you… I can’t hunt… It’s…. It’s better this way.”
I couldn’t believe it, even as I slowly edged past her and stood on the porch of the cabin. ::But where will I go? What… what will I do?::
She reached one hand tentatively forward, and gently stroked my furry cheek for a moment. “You’ll go. I have faith in you, my Rolan. But this is where we must say goodbye.”
If the body I possessed had been capable of crying, I’m certain I would’ve been in tears as she slowly stepped back and closed the door, putting the heavy wood between us. My tail was dragging the ground, and I dropped to all fours, heading off into the unknown.
* * * * * * *
Part Two: The Present
The following century is still all a blur to me. Somehow, I survived. I learned again how to hunt, and how to use the strong points of the Were Lupe body to my advantage. But it wasn’t easy. I can’t even begin to count all the times I was shot at, or actually SHOT. How many times I was chased from some overly cautious farmer’s land by a pack of unruly attack dogs. And I won’t even bother trying to chronicle all the times I was persecuted as if I were an actual werewolf, both by humans, and by vampires. The fact that it was rarely a full moon when I was caught red-pawed stalking a sheep or something similar never seemed to matter. But somehow, I always managed to get away.
And I learned how to watch, in the process.
When I’d been only a vampire, it had been important for me to focus on humans as nothing more than food. Prey, to my predator. And they were, because I never allowed myself to see the people behind the food. It has driven some vampires mad, that has. Getting too close to the prey, to the point that you stop seeing them as food. Some vampires are ‘born’ with a defect, which allows them to keep a fringe level of the morality and conscience that they possessed as a human or neopet. These ‘half-souls’ as they’re called, tend to be killed by their own Sires before they’re old enough to really prove a problem. Katherine, however, had always harbored a soft spot for me, and my own ‘half-soul’ condition was overlooked. She taught me how to work around it, even, until I became just as vicious and bloodthirsty as she was.
But now, on my own, and forced to watch humans from a distance, I could feel that my condition was flaring up again.
They really are intriguing creatures, when all is said and done. They have a way of approaching a problem and not giving up until they have the answer. In my years, I’ve watched them go from superstitious farmers, to beings that dominate all they survey. I’ve watched them go from the first thirty yard powered flight, to landing a man on the moon in less than sixty years. I’ve watched them build incredible cities, with buildings that reach the sky. And I’ve watched them slowly become unaware of the other beings in this world. Those that would do them harm, and good. Vampires, werelupes, demons… We’ve been banished to the realm of fairytales and campfire stories. In a way, it’s made life for normal vampires easier. The humans aren’t on guard anymore.
Sure, there are still Slayers, but one girl in every generation can’t possibly begin to put a dent in a population of creatures that reproduce as easily as they eat. There’s no gestation period in vampires. No conception, or waiting, or hatching an egg as there is with most other species, mystical or not, in Neopia. Vampires have even come to be seen as a disease of sorts, even in the demon community. They’re looked upon as worthless half-breeds, without any useful merit except perhaps as foot soldiers. Just above the zombie in demon culture, is where the vampire has seemed content to stay. It’s a shame, seeing as we once were feared even by demons stronger than us, just because we’re so hard to kill. But in modern times, that’s all changed.
Katherine and I had shared rooms in the best hotels, of a sort, that had existed. We owned property, and we had plenty of money resting in our Order’s treasure vault. Most vampiric murders are eventually ruled robbery/homicide for just that reason… The person drained very often loses all personal possessions, save the clothes on their back. And sometimes, they aren’t even given THAT, if the vampire likes something.
But over the years, I’d been developing a certain respect. Not for the vampires, though. Or even for the werelupes, or numerous other demons. No. I respected the humans. I even looked up to them, and read anything I could get my paws on about the latest technical and scientific advances. And, I’d taken on another trait that I know Katherine wouldn’t have liked one bit. I’d begun rescuing humans from my former brothers of the fang.
Vampires were easy to track for my wolf nose. And I’d started doing it out of pure curiosity, years earlier. Over the decades, it began as a game. I’d try to spook the vampire, and let the human get away, then follow the vampire and see if it managed to secure itself another meal before daybreak. Then, slowly, but surely, it escalated to stalking the vampire, and bringing IT down before sunrise. I was stronger, and bigger than most vampires, my age and Were Lupe body superior to them in almost every way. Then, it moved to another level, and I was taking down any vampire I came across, whether it was hunting or not. Just on principal.
I started to carry stakes, but time began to demand that I carry more than I could easily conceal in my paws, and still be able to walk. So I fashioned a backpack of sorts, home made, of black leather that could unroll quickly if I shrugged my shoulders just right, and drop a stake into one or both of my waiting paws. The backpack evolved again, later, when I came into possession of a fine crossbow. Great for taking down vampires without ever being seen by the humans they were stalking. It was about this time that I began calling myself NightBlood.
Constant scrounging around city dumps, and clothing store dumpsters eventually yielded me some of my greatest prizes. A black trench coat, which, with a few additions, allowed me to move upright and even go into certain darkened, but populated areas without being suspicious. A large, Indiana Jones type hat was another treasure, with which I could conceal my snout and ears. With this disguise, and the ability to mindspeak to more than just other demons that I cultivated over the years, gave me the ability to move about mostly unnoticed in human society. And to get closer to the vampires and other creatures I hunted.
Little did I expect, when I came to Neopia Central one fateful night, that I would meet another creature with which I had so much in common. And I certainly never expected the relationship to be that of master and Petpet. To tell the truth, my Doglefox is far more than petpet. Carrying a curse of his own... One of massive intelligence that rivals neopets themselves, Baskerville has become my family. My best and only friend, and my connection to the outside world.
And so, this is how I live. Hunting down those in which I share so much, with my constant Doglefox companion at my side. How many years will I go on living like this? In answer to that, I fear I must pose another question.
How long is forever?
-NightBlood
