Chapter 11 (Adam Novus Chronicles - Book 1)

As I said, that was the time of my downward spiral to the bottom of existence. OK, maybe not technically a spiral, more of a terminal velocity dive without a parachute. In any case, there is a very predictable outcome that one can inevitably experience when he finally makes contact with solid ground.

For the next two months, I was pretty much drunk all the time. Doing my very best to forget this wretched life of mine, to self-destruct. I was angry at the entire world and needed a way to release that constant feeling of rage that was churning within me. Naturally, I got into fights with anybody that exhibited any animosity towards me.

If you ever visited seedier establishments in any city in the world, then you know there are plenty of people that are just looking for a brawl. I managed to find them, or they found me. Regardless of the circumstances, those unfortunate individuals were immediate recipients of grave bodily harm. It did not matter if my opponents outnumbered me by a large margin; this body could take a lot, and dish out even more.

The rage inside of me burned white-hot, fueled by the combustive properties of booze that offered a sweet oblivion for a while. A part of me knew that I was acting out, without any self-control, but I couldn't help myself. It was like I was filled with this ocean of violent and uncontrollable emotions that needed a release. Oh, yeah, something was undoubtedly wrong with me, on a much deeper level.

Anyway, a few white supremacists establishments needed full remodeling after one of my visits. I really had it in for them; to beat them into submission, and to shove those swastikas (they were so proudly displaying), up their… you get the picture. After I left them, those venues were trashed and the patrons were prime candidates for the emergency room. I respected their rights to freedom of speech, but I made sure they respected my right to beat the living daylights out of them. They were simply not good people, and had a misfortune that I was now, well… much worse than those posers could ever hope to be—a lot worse.

What I can say for certain is that during that time—I fed a few times (and I don’t mean a hot burrito or a bucket of fried chicken with a cup of sauce on the side), I mean that I killed people.

When you consume insane amounts of alcohol, your brain tends to forget certain things, and I sure forgot a lot. The gray mass between my ears was downright pickled, and I am not saying that as a metaphor, seriously, my blood alcohol content was probably over every measurable chart. If I was still a regular human it would undoubtedly be fatal… but I wasn’t all that human anymore. Still, even in my condition, I remembered the... feedings.

When the reservoir of the life force that sustained my existence was on a low side, I did what was now a necessity. Thank God that I was at least lucid enough to find those that deserved to be put down. Well, deserving by my personal views of what is right and what is wrong; not what society at large deems what the appropriate punishment for their acts should be. One drug dealer and a serial rapist were unlucky enough to cross my path. And I could always ascertain their guilt; my emphatic sense did not leave any room for reasonable doubt.

I remember the faces of my happy meals… I mean the victims. That hunger within me always took over and I plunged the black knife into their hearts. The energy siphon was as good as I remembered it with that vampire in the jungle—every single time; filling me up like an empty car at a gas station.

The consequences were that every transfer burned off the alcohol out of my blood, making me feel sober. So what did I do? I immediately got sloshed again, going at it with even greater vigor. The only good thing I could say is that I didn’t kill anyone that could even remotely be considered innocent.

OK, not all my liquid intake was from the stuff you get by fermentation; from time to time I drank water - just to surprise my liver. I was a mess, and not a hot one. There was no saving grace to my behavior, no way to make it any less damning. Those two months were the lowest point in my life, a constant pity party for little old me.

It lasted until Esmeralda put her foot down.

***

She found me after a particularly wretched night, literally in the gutter, passed out and lost in an alcoholic haze. I vaguely remember her slapping my face, making sure I was still alive. The lady was an old vampire, so after affirming that I was not completely inanimate, she picked me up in a fireman's carry and put me in the back seat of her car, and then drove me back to her home.

Apparently, I had been missing for some time, going from one watering hole to another and God only knows where I slept. My clothes smelled worse than the ones I came out of the jungle with, and those were taken from a dead vampire.

In every sense of the word, I was a wreck. Marcus and she (plus a few other vampires from their clan) were searching for me, usually getting to the places where I had been, long after I left.

It is easy to get lost in this city; New York is a big place with millions upon millions of people closely packed next to each other. Marcus had personally followed my path of ruination, taking care of my unpaid bills, and smoothing ruffled feathers. Keeping an eye on me while keeping his distance, waiting for me to snap out of my self-destructive tailspin. I think he tried talking to me a few times, but I can't be sure. Anyway, I somehow gave everybody the slip, not that I remember.

Esmeralda finally found me close to the last place I was spewed out and banned from, but I was evidently still close enough for her to sense me. At that point, even the homeless people were avoiding me in a big circle; I was way below their social status.

It seemed that my body was learning new tricks; the more I drank, the higher my Alcohol tolerance had grown. To reach and maintain that state of oblivious drunkenness, I had to drink almost constantly. It took some time to get all that accumulated poison completely out of my system.

She was there when I finally came to my senses, sitting beside my bed, in a rocking chair, reading some old leather-bound book.

“So... You have finally decided to join the land of the living,” she said after seeing my bloodshot, but open eyes.

“What’s the point,” I dejectedly murmured like a spoiled little brat.

Esmeralda looked at me with a scowl on her face. “Adam, I wanted to beat some sense into you for a while now, but my idiot of a husband convinced me that you needed time to adjust to this new life that you have been gifted with. Except, I do not see any adjusting going on—just wanton drunkenness. And by the increasing amounts you have been pouring into yourself, it seems that alcohol is losing its effect on you, so what’s next? Experimenting with hard drugs? If you are so keen on dying, say the word and I can help you with that, much more efficiently,” she angrily replied.

The look in her eyes and her emotions told me that she was half-serious with her offer. One thing became clear to me at that moment—I may be self-destructive but I wasn’t suicidal—not one little bit.

We have not said anything for some time, and the silence was becoming oppressive… at least for me.

“Do you know that I am more than one thousand years old?” Esmeralda finally said, losing that fierce look in her eyes and turning her head to look out of the window.

“It is a long time to be alive. Sometimes I envy regular humans, they are so ephemeral, and have so much more life in them; probably because theirs are so short. On the other hand, I know that they are the most vicious species that ever walked the Earth.” She paused there, and I kept silent, lost for words. What can one reply to such a statement? Even if I believe it to be true.

It took a minute before she started speaking again. “It weighs heavily, you know… time… loss. Before I was turned, I had a normal life, well, normal for that time in history. A husband, a family… all of it gone now, turned into dust. I had a child… a baby girl. She was so beautiful, precious… Soona, that was her name; it was our name for the moon.”

The last sentence was uttered quietly, almost reverently. Without wanting it really, I could sense the deep old pain that resided in her heart. Before I could say some comforting words, which would in all likelihood sound inadequate, Esmeralda continued her story.

“We were a small peaceful tribe, living off the land and raising our children. I was so happy then, everything was as it should be. But those peaceful ways were our downfall when a bigger, stronger tribe attacked us—killed us all. I was raped by many of them and beaten bloody. I guess they assumed I was dead as they left my body for wild animals to feed on—yet, somehow I survived, or at least my body did.”

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Have you any idea how it feels to have everything that you cared for, all the things that ever mattered to you—obliterated? My family's hut was burned down, but I did find them, my husband… my daughter. Her face was still intact as if she was just sleeping, and I held her in my arms... for the last time. She was five years old.”

Esmeralda whispered, while two silent tears slid down her face, leaving shiny trails behind them.

“Then something awoke inside me, this black-consuming rage—it became me. I wanted to burn the entire world, to erase any trace that humanity ever existed. At that moment I rejected all gods. If they allowed such a thing to happen to someone so innocent, they didn’t deserve even a shred of my devotion. The fire in me was the flame of vengeance, of undying retribution. But first, I had obligations and duties to attend to… for the dead. I cleaned myself up; washed the filth and blood that were covering me and did what was necessary.”

Her emotions were overflowing with pain and sorrow, and all I could do was lay there in silence and listen to her.

“For days, I performed the burial rights for my people, making sure their spirits would find peace in the great beyond, in the embrace of our ancestors. I laid my little girl by her father, with his hands around her, the same way I found them in our hut.”

Esmeralda sighed heavily, tiredly. Her words were like hard blows, accompanied by a vortex of raw emotions that was pressing heavily on my soul. In the next instant, all those emotions that were until now almost uncontrolled—changed, became… cold. She opened her eyes and fixed me with her gaze, and continued her story in a much harsher voice.

“Then I went to find the Old Ones, the cursed. We knew about the vampires, they were part of the world, just as any other predators. From a young age, we were told cautionary stories of where they were, places to avoid at all costs. I needed them now, needed their strength, because every other choice was taken away from me.

“The vampire that changed me was very old, ancient. He should have killed me on the spot, I was nothing but a walking source of nourishment to him… those were different times. I guess he saw something in me, that acceptance of death and consuming thirst for revenge. It resonated with him for some reason. He changed me, made me into what I am now—a predator. The pain of change was excruciating, I can still remember it to this day, but I never cried aloud, never screamed. Whenever it became unbearable, I thought about my family… about my little girl.”

She closed her eyes and slowly nodded. Her face became harsh, with unveiled viciousness. A cold shiver ran down my spine; this was a whole new side of Esmeralda, one that I’ve never seen before, or suspected that existed.

“It took me a year to get my revenge, a year of bloodthirsty slaughter. As newly turned vampires—the Sun is our enemy; it burns so scorchingly hot, our skin blisters in a few minutes under its unrelenting rays. That is why I hunted at night—every single night.

“By the time my thirst for vengeance was sated, not one man of the tribe that killed my child, and my people, remained alive. No matter how they tried to protect themselves, I always got my fill for the night. Even at the end, when they were running away, trying to move from their lands—I followed them and hunted them down… one—by—one.”

The torrent of cold emotions that radiated from Esmeralda was almost too much to bear. I may be new to this empathic sense, but never have I felt something similar. She was simply remembering events that happened long ago, but mere echoes of that single-minded hunter she once was, were enough to make one's blood run cold. I still didn't dare to interrupt her story.

“There was no mercy in the way they died; the pain was their only companion. I left the women, children, feeble and old, but in those times, without someone to protect them… maybe that was a crueler fate.”

She took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly; her facial expression returned to the one I was familiar with. The caring and kind Esmeralda, not that terrifying creature from somewhere deep inside of her.

“Then it was over—I was done, nothing to do anymore. The purpose around which I wrapped my very existence was gone. So I sat one night before my daughter's grave, waiting for the sun to come, to end it all. I would have waited out the end if I had not had a vision… it was Soona, just as I remembered her, smiling. She never said a word, but her hand touched my face, and I knew what she wanted. It was not my time to join her, that time would come in the distant future and until then, my purpose was to help others. To atone for the hundreds of lives I took, for the misery I left in pursuit of my vengeance. And I did, for the last thousand years, I tried to help as many people as I could. First by myself and then, when Marcus came into my life, with him, by using the wealth we accumulated. Even now, there are countless charities we support, safe houses, shelters, and orphanages. I try to do everything in my power not to disappoint the spirit of my daughter.”

She got quiet and continued to look out that window as if she was looking through time. Those first tears were followed by many more, unwiped. Then she turned to me with that same piercing gaze.

“Your old life is gone, Adam, and you will never get it back. You could have easily died in that jungle, never to see another sunrise, and that is why I called this new life of yours a gift. I am telling you this because you saved the life of a man who made me feel alive again, who means more to me than anything else in this world. You must decide, what do you want from this life, what is your purpose? It will not come by itself, you need to make a conscious decision. If you don’t—why bother living? Don’t kill yourself slowly with alcohol—end it now—torturing yourself serves no one.”

Esmeralda rose from the chair, turned around, and exited the room.

I couldn’t say a word to her in reply, my throat had acquired a lump in the middle that made speech impossible.

She was right, and on some level, I knew it all along. I was just too busy trying to make myself forget what happened to me, that it all got pushed in the back. Oh, woe is me… what an a-hole.

Her telling me that story was like a slap in the face; worse, a slap would come and go, but this will remain with me forever, this feeling of shame for letting Esmeralda and Marcus down. They were nothing but good to me, and I spat in their faces. While she was talking, I knew by her emotions that she was scratching old wounds, ripping them open, and letting them bleed again… and she did it for me. Her tears were not the only ones in that room. Compared with what she has been through, all my troubles were insignificant, and my behavior was a temper tantrum of a petulant child.

Drowning my problems with booze was easy (as any person that ever went down that path knows all too well). Facing your demons and hitting them square in the face is way much harder.

She was right when she said that I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. I was alive, somewhat sane, and in a changed body that made my old one feel as a beat-up truck.

OK, there were a few serious disadvantages that I'll have to deal with. Killing people on a monthly basis and joining the abstinence club were big downers, but I guess there are worse fates out there.

The hardest question was what should my purpose in life be, what do I want? Countless people all over the world will never answer that question for themselves, satisfied to live their lives day-by-day. What is their purpose? Converting oxygen into carbon dioxide? I could not be satisfied with that, or continue as I did lately.

Then it hit me, what I did from the very start, the reason I joined the army, and stayed there. A part of me did that to protect people—the innocents. Unfortunately, after all the things I experienced through the years, that had become a smaller part of my core drive; not enough to call myself a good person. The bigger part, by a large margin, was the one who wanted to punish, to exact justice—as I perceived it. To bring the wrath on the heads of the wicked as they never dreamed and to crush them utterly.

Something inside of me changed; triggered by Esmeralda’s story and by my internal need to have a meaning in life, to matter. The new part of me, the one forged on that crystal altar sent a wave of approval, almost happiness.

I needed to create a new life for myself, and it would seem that violence would play a major role in it.