1: A Hundred Years of Sleep
Written by Brianna West
(Listen to the audio version read by the author by clicking here)
Dominic
It was a breath. A blink of the eye. The passing of a single night. When the whispered joy of youthful folly reached my heightened hearing, several feet beneath earth, metal, and wood, the sleep I’d fallen into eased away.
How much time had passed, I wondered? But first, to escape the deep grave of death I’d summoned when those bloody dogs betrayed us.
Despite the thoughtless, mindless, wholly inept beasts that they were, somehow they’d overcome us. They came with their beaming beast eyes, their grasping claws, their chomping over-encumbered dog mouths, and they destroyed every single vampire who reported to me. Tore my most faithful guards from limb to limb. Took their heads clean off.
It was a massacre.
I dug my way out of the deep underground, earth crowding under my long fingernails, before finding the trap door to the cellar. It was a little-known estate I owned since the 1800s. Nothing that could be tracked to me, though I doubt anyone truly believed I’d survived.
Very few of us Royals did.
Blasted dogs.
I fixed the suit I fashioned before the attack, time wearing on its fibers and color. Something I’d fix when I got in contact with what remained of the coven. What a mess. But the slumber was necessary to heal the near decapitation one of my very own dogs had managed to execute.
I caught his eyes first, then his claws. He surprised me while I took the secret passage to the cellar. I’d never seen him so fierce, so hungry for my demise. But to my credit, I’d never really bothered to look at the lad. He was, for all intents and purposes, a slave.
He wasn’t the first dog I’d killed, not the first werewolf to fall dead at my feet, but he was the one that made my cold, undead heart react for the first time in over four thousand years. He had been the closest to a confidant any single person got, and one I’d struggled to reconcile with his…condition.
Jonathan was clever and insightful — not at all like his beast brethren. He made me laugh, and I daresay he made my long, unbearably boring existence just a little less unbearable. But he’d betrayed me at the first opportunity that presented itself.
A bloody disappointment.
The estate hadn’t been upkept. Its grounds were decaying and affected by however much time I’d been away. I walked the familiar corridor, recognizing nothing. The beautiful décor was gone to time and neglect.
The sounds of children kept me moving forward and away from nostalgia. Their soft, giggling fun drew me to their sides quickly. I was so hungry. My throat so dry and desperate for the lifeblood flowing through their fragile bodies.
If I were a beast, I would’ve attacked instantly. But I was part of the Dark Brothers Coven. I would no sooner fall onto my sword than descend into primitive actions. I wasn’t a dog.
The small group of three boys hovered close, in one of their hands an odd contraption, and they eagerly discussed how best to approach their next move. I was curious by their antics, and I could utilize whatever I learned here for whatever awaited me out there — in the changed world.
To be continued…
