The Law of Beasts Book 1 - Act 1: KHOVAHSH

I must admit that I didn't know much about being a vampire. As a lost, damned creature of the night, I slaughtered and killed spanning decades, hoping it would erase the memories of my past human life. Sadly, that never worked, not that I expected it to. Emotion wasn't a part of my vocabulary, nor did I mourn anything. I didn't wear my heart on my sleeve because I was always naked. The only attire I wore was a coat of blood. I fed on random humans all over the world at my leisure, without regard to who may miss them.

I hunted humans for sport. It was a passion of mine, one of them, at least. I often studied them in the shadows. I loathed civilization with everything in me, more so humanity. Inevitably, I'd found calm, peace, and discipline in loving animals because they were true to nature. I loved them so much that I made a vow to protect them all.

Sigh, how naive and foolish I was.

Before I let you into my world, my life as Alicia Chay, I must warn you that I wasn't a very friendly woman. I wasn't one of those individuals that needed friends or allies. I was a passionate lover of sorts. I hadn't time for impropriety when it came to self-preservation. I hadn't patience in the realm of survival. Even the fittest wasn't safe...

Cuneiform writing was just developed in Sumer, an ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia and Egypt, hence the origin of my recorded history.

In grave detail, I documented my beginning on kish tablets to get a better picture of my reality. I did this relentlessly until Ptahhotep, a city administrator (and vizier to Pharaoh Djedkare in the Fifth Dynasty), developed literary writing.

This account would not have existed otherwise. I didn't do this for attention. I didn't care about mortals and their opinions. What lies beneath the limestone of this kish tablet wasn't chiseled, by my bloody hands, for praise. I didn't want it.

I could remember pieces of my human life, but the images became blurred and fuzzy the more I transitioned into a carnal fiend that thrived in the shadows when the sun rose, and lurked in the wilderness when it was time to hunt. I was mostly private. I had to be.

Even though I was in the beginning phase of my supernatural existence, I did learn, from day one, that it was a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along experience that came with consequences and repercussions I wasn't equipped to deal with. One day, the world would read about me and the system of betrayal that turned my heart cold, but for right now, that wasn't a priority.

My heartbreaking story began in 2 B.C. on the continent of Asia. I was covered with the blood of random humans I drained dry shortly after my painful transition.

I experienced a rebirth, a re-introduction into a cold ball of death called Earth. Seeing life through human eyes was one thing, but seeing it as a vampire was frightening. There was no need for rose-colored glasses when a world that ran parallel to life as I once knew it lurked before my hazel eyes as they turned black.

I refused to turn around and see my once human life with those eyes. Black shaded everything in its indefinite hue, so thoughts of friends, family and my systematic mortal life came to a halt, a standstill.

It ended at that point. If I turned around, if I looked over my shoulder and saw the darkness cast its filter on the memories and experiences of my loved ones, I would turn to salt, not ash.

To my immediate right was a small pond of sorts. A few lilies floated peacefully on the serene waters. Deeply overwhelmed, I fell to my knees. The moist grass cushioned them, but not the emptiness in my heart.

I closed my eyes as I loomed over the water. The images flashed on my closed lids vividly. I had on a wedding dress. I was making love to someone I couldn't make out. His face was cloudy. I was hugging a girl, laughing into a light-blue sky. I was sick in the rain, too weak to crawl inside shelter....

My head snapped backward when I opened my eyes. I stared at my reflection on the water. She stared back into my black eyes with rage. My face was reconstructed and more refined. I was alluring, seductive, elegant, and powerful; with a hint of danger based in the Darkness. My breasts, hips and thighs were fuller, pleasantly plump.

Startled from my appearance, I jumped sixty feet backward, when I thought I only jumped three feet. Skill unlocked.

I jumped so far back I slammed into a huge rocky totem pole with Asian faces carved in the stone, cracking it down the center.

The dawn of my supernatural existence began at that moment, standing under a Waxing Gibbous moon. In front of me was the unknown, fear and opportunity....

The head rush and boost in adrenaline caused me to lose my bearings. Before I knew it, I fainted.

____________________

I didn't know how long I was unconscious, but I was awakened by a strange man. I slowly opened my eyes as his thick, calloused hands groped my forehead. I sighed with relief when his fingertips trailed the length of my legs down to my toes without offending me. He was very respectful. He handled me with tenderness. I felt kindness radiating from his athletic body wrought with the unapologetic sands of time.

Only one man ever touched me in this manner. I was choked up with emotion thinking about him, my past.

Don't look back.

I really wanted to, but I couldn't. I didn't know why I was putting so much emphasis on snubbing retrospection.

This was a lot harder than I thought. I still didn't know what I was. I knew that what I used to crave I no longer desired, and what I never desired I now craved...

I closed my eyes once more. With a jolt, I saw me in a forest. I ran and I ran in fear of my life. Heat beat at my chest from the bile rising along my parched throat.

I reached the clearing. I dashed along the path, as if death was chasing me. A foreign sound betrayed the quiet of the belly of the forest.

I ran so fast I no longer heard the screams of the dying whores.

Wildly, I looked around, trying to find my way out.

There.

Another bend, another clearing a few feet ahead, nearly hidden by overlapping branches.

I was safe and home free.

Frightened, I ran again, as if death wanted my throat. I was near the Exit...

I could see the Village in the distance...

I saw the huge, gigantic opening and I laughed! I laughed because I learned from the environment I was just exposed to. I seemed smarter. I was wiser.

A flash. My eyes opened from my first orgasm of my own accord, and from my own hands. My first, and I was a virgin. It made me smile. Someone caught me pressed against the root of an ancient tree. I ran away back into the forest.

Once I raced past a dead gator, a snake snatched it up, and threw it in the air. It jumped from the back of its tail, like a missile, Heavenward, and caught it as it fell into its mouth, and swallowed it, or at least I thought he did.

I screamed. Oh my! I shouldn't have stopped. I meant was I dumb, that stupid? Was I that naïve and that blind, despite having open eyes from my body experiencing the joy of masturbation.

I opened my eyes...

The strange man grunted. I was relaxed. I hadn't been this relaxed in an exceedingly long time. It was the type of relaxation that felt like an extended vacation. I could tell by the way his fingers trembled that his heart was in the right place.

Like he was afraid to check my vitals. I was too weak to leave. The concern that colored his lips relaxed me. I wasn't bound or gagged. I was free of chains and restraints, so those were signs that I was safe. There was no clear and present danger.

He was worried about me. We didn't know one another. His upper face was shaded so I couldn't really see what he looked like. There wasn't much light. Flames burned on wooden staffs along the rocky walls. The air was stuffy, but tolerable.

My eyes were half open, half closed. I didn't want to let him know that I was awake, but he did know; he didn't seem to mind. He hadn't had company in ages. He looked like a loner. Hell, I was lonely by choice.

I fell back asleep. The Sandman brought more than just dreams; he taunted me with images from my past.

There I was in Chad, Africa as a little girl with hazel eyes. Instead of believing I was special and worthy of Life and worthy of all the gifts waiting to unfold before my young, veil-covered eyes....the lace was dreadfully snatched away the day I fell in love and gave my body to a man that was a self-proclaimed god and seducer of other women when I grew older.

Of course, I was young and naïve during those god-awful times. I didn't know he slept with other women; women like me.

He picked and chose them in secret and with discretion. The women Like Me were so enchanting they swore they'd remain silent, and they had, discussing only amongst each other how good he was, and how deep he could go, and how many orgasms they could count.

Twenty women, all Like Me! From all over the Mother Land! Held their "congregation" deep in the forest, down by a huge, glimmering lake filled with fish and life and gorgeous flowers spreading for miles and as far as the eyes could see!

A secret garden a few miles outside of my village, in a remote area, we were warned and prohibited from seeking. And no one in the Village had broken those laws, except me, because I loved learning from the Land...

One night I awakened with a start. I saw my friend's mother, Larshaw, creeping from her hut. There wasn't a light source in sight. The moon's glow failed to reach the Village that night. Any other night the glow was strong enough to cast a light that guided us in the remote darkness, since our village was twelve miles from Town and the Upper Market Place.

Larshaw and I never really spoke to one another. I was a teenager, and she was an adult. It was forbidden by the Village to engage in chit chatter with an adult that wasn't your parent, brother, sister or Elder.

Elders could speak to whomever. Unfortunately, they were the biggest whores in all the land. I loved my Village, but the politics of it all overwhelmed me.

I could hardly do a thing by myself. When I go to the marketplace, a man of the Village had to escort me. Women were snatched along dirt roads garnished with trees of all kinds, and disapprovingly deflowered along with their self-esteem and environmental teachings.

I heard little murmurs that awakened me. I followed the sound, barefooted. I got myself and my drive, determination, arrogance, and wit together, and boldly went after the gentle sound of what sounded like ecstasy or, or pleasure or whatever it was.

The animals were mating, but the memory of Larshaw running into the mysterious forest contradicted the animal theory, and I treaded lightly, one foot over the other.

I reached another break in the forest. The unraveled, winding path made of leaves and soft mulch relaxed me; a path created from the number of times twenty pairs of feet followed it to wherever it led.

I paused as I came upon a life-sized cliff. I was two hundred feet above the earth. Behind me lay the horror of a darkened forest with no light, creatures crawled, snakes slithering, rats roamed, something scarier than life itself lurked. It danced on my sweaty, dirty skin. I followed the winding path to a large bridge that was made from the trees of the forest.

It took my breath away. My mouth agape, I heard it, another voice.

Proceed, my Curious Child, my Break the Rules Child, Cross the Bridge into Understanding.

And I ran! I ran and I ran! Something was appearing over the horizon as the bridge led me to an open portico made of flowers, the leaves from trees and branches and hanging Spanish moss. I slowed down and covered my mouth. It was gorgeous. Amazing. Resilient! I was caught off guard by the twenty women...

Loving each other.

Touching.

I awakened with a start, pushing away the memories. Before I knew it, I burst into tears, and he held me tight to his body.

"It's okay, young lady. I don't know what you've been through, but you're safe here."

His words didn't register in my brain. They didn't even make it to my ears. I wept. I let go. I snot cried. I cried so hard my body trembled remembering who I used to be. I refused to be what I was forced to be.

I hesitantly moved forward in the darkness because the further I ventured, the darker it became.

I didn't know how to deal with this. How did I live my life when I lost my life? How did I make something of the other side of this life if I didn't even want to let go of who I used to be.

I loved my friends; I loved my family. I would even take the betrayal I went through during my transition over becoming what I transitioned into.

Slowly, we began to kiss.

His lips were eager and cautious. When he pulled away from me, tucking a few long dangling curls behind my ear lobes, he suddenly pushed me down and jumped three hundred feet backward over a pit of gators, landing on a cliff a hundred feet above.

It was then that I understood why his face was shaded.

"Why is your entire face covered in blood?"

"My face is just fine. What are you talking about?"

"My garments have your blood as well. I don't even know if I can wash your purity from my fabrics. And I hate the smell of blood."

"You don't have a nose. How is that possible? You don't have a forehead; you don't even have hair. Who are you to judge? As a matter of fact, you resemble the totem pole that cracked open when my body made impact. Faceless beings carved in stone."

"How do you remember that if you were unconscious?"

"I remember bits and pieces. "

"You set me free with that act, thank you. I've been sealed in this cave for years. Once the seal was cracked, the rush of fresh air inside this place rejuvenated my loins."

I was in a cave, deep within, that was true. I did feel a strong cool breeze. Lanterns gave off a soft, warm glow. I gasped from the simplicity of it all. He smiled when I sat up on a comfortable bed of roses by a pit of gators and snakes.

Before I could stand up, something wild grabbed ahold of me. It happened after the smell of his blood entered my nose. I looked at him with crazed eyes as he smiled inwardly...

I didn't care about him taking me to a safe place. The girl that I used to be would have thanked him for such a beautiful gesture, but I knew that girl no longer. She was lost within my subconscious until she vanished. I was a savage beast that craved blood.

I hissed at the strange man, startling him. I leapt over three enormous pits of gators and rocky breaks. A few gators jumped up in the air with supernatural agility, trying to pull me out of the air, but I dodged them.

I didn't know what he did to me when I was out of it. What if he performed a ritual over me, or put a spell on me, or did something sexually indecent to me? Men thought differently when women were unconscious.

The smell of his blood was enticing, like a sweet treat. When I landed in front of him, I cut him across the neck and began to drink. I saw his life in quick spurts.

I saw him approach me when I was unconscious. He picked me up gently and walked along the stream. If he was locked inside the cave, how did he get out?

Then I remembered the crack in the stone totem pole. He waved his hands and the divided stones opened and closed back magically when he entered with one pair of footprints in the sand.

I saw all the other humans he has done this for. He treated them all with respect. I looked at him differently knowing that he could be trusted. And then an image entered my head through the taste of his blood as it continued to deliciously fall down my throat, of him circling my nipples with confidence in his touch, of him tracing his fingertips down to the pubic hair of my vulva.

That's when everything changed. Why out of all the people he helped I was the one he did this to. I knew that smile couldn't be trusted. Anybody that didn't have eyes with a beautiful smile you needed to run away from like hell.

Don't be a fool like me, laying on a bed of roses looking up at a man that did unforgettable things to me when I was in a deep sleep.

He was never sealed in the Cave

He could come out at will. There were hundreds of women before me and hundreds of men. He clothed every one of them with fresh linen, but I remained naked.

And that was the deception. Why did he keep me in a naked state but put linen and clothing on everyone else that he's helped. Bigger red flag was why he lied to me altogether.

I saw his family. He had a son that was born a few years before this moment. After his son's birth he was attacked by a sea of vultures that was drawn to the dying baby. That was how he found out his son was dying.

When the buzzards started circling above, his son was alive.

I continued to drink. I didn't realize that all the gators and snakes rushed into his body at once and turned him into something that threw me forty feet back.

He ran at me with the speed of light and chopped my hair off with one swoop, missing my scalp and the middle section of my brain by a few inches.

I was prepared to fight....

In an instant my nappy hair grew back down past my buttocks. We went through a series of punches, but neither one connected between the two of us because we were both skilled fighters. I didn't know what his style was or who trained him, but he was extremely powerful.

He threw a bunch of jabs and uppercuts, but I deflected each one. He vanished and appeared above me, trying to drop down on top of my head, but missed. His feet crashed into the ground. I was relieved that it wasn't my skull.

A bit famished, I matched his skill. Just because I was a woman didn't mean that I would not fight someone who was masculine. I was just as skilled as he was. It took him by surprise that I was strong.

The narcissist really thought it was going to be that easy to take advantage of me. Yes, I was foolish for thinking he had my best interest at heart. I knew not to be that ignorant and naïve moving forward.

Another thing occurred to me. There was glass everywhere. Different class types. As if he was a maker of glass. I didn't think anything of it at first because I was a guest, but the more I thought about it the more I'd come to realize that he wasn't nursing me back to health.

He wasn't making sure that I was okay. He wasn't making sure I was safe and secure. I was on a bed of roses as an experiment. He was going to deflower me on top of roses as if I was an exhibition.

He wanted to have me as a keepsake. Was he going to knock me unconscious and hang me on the walls of the cave? Was he trying to contain my beauty for the rest of my life, giving him something to look at for the rest of his?

I wasn't going to stay long enough to find out. Once I started drinking his blood, I saw him groping me and violating me in his own little subtle sweet way. I had to get out of there and get out of there fast.

He slammed me on the ground, splitting the ground open in seventy different directions.

I didn't have time for this. I didn't know what he was or who he was or why he brought me here. I flew away so fast when I finally did look back my eyes were no longer black. I landed in Africa and forgot about the ordeal altogether.

My heart began to beat backward, sending my blood flow counterclockwise. Still, a path of destruction I refused to look at ever again beckoned me to look back.

To look back would mean I had to remember that an hour before I landed in Asia, I was human; a young dark-skinned girl that had just turned eighteen.

I had a happy life, yet watching two of my loved ones betraying me with passion and conviction made my sudden transition easier for me to embrace when a vampiric presence attacked me while they made love under the moonlight.

Then I regretted that easier transition and wanted my life back, especially after encountering that faceless ghoul.

I went on a killing spree, led by emotion, crushed by the lack of loyalty from those I loved the most in the world.

I drained humans and fled. I jumped in the air, bloody and naked, flying through a sea of thick branches that parted for my exit.

I roared like a savage beast set free after a century of restraint. The force of my voice caused every leaf to fall from a hundred thousand trees in an instant.

I still didn't look back.

The first two hundred years of my life as a vampire were filled with deceit, chaos, and control.

As I tried to find my place in a mysterious world, I was a homeless murderer. Always on the hunt for blood without a coach or a teacher. There was no trainer for situations like mine. You were just put into it and expected to swim out of thirty feet deep water in absolute darkness, when you couldn't float or swim.

I needed a home. I was well traveled and saw a lot of edifices that captivated me. So, I built and ran an entity called THÈ HÔU₷E ÖF THÈ HÔUND₷, located in Africa. It took thirty thousand slaves to construct the massive edifice to my standards. I simply hypnotized them and gave grave instructions. Within a few years, my palace was built beyond my wildest dreams.

It became a gritty place full of murder, games, and blood. I was in control, a small-time Queen in search of herself...

My consciousness was a series of blanks, and I was filled with anger. Angry for what I was, with memories of my human life hidden in subliminal codes.

I was thrust into dread and misery, forced to survive in the monstrous jungle of the unknown, the life of the condemned and the damned. Like my conception and my birth, I had no say in the matter. Even though it was my life, my death didn't make a difference.

Being alone was good for the soul, but what good was a soul when you were dead. Being alone and lonely for the first century of my supernatural life was dread and misery. It drove me to the brink of insanity.

I was a lone traveler that nearly lost her mind, with no one to confide in or talk to. As a result of seeking companionship, I raided a family of brothers with skin as dark as the midnight sky while they slept nakedly in an open field surrounded by trees and brush. I turned them into my fledgling against their will with the same vigor I was turned many moons ago.

Ki'Wah, Tresyon, Qu'stah, Zyath, Crusha and Dominyshus were their names.

Over a fleeting period of time, we became a small family of savage-ridden vampires that terrorized civilians around the globe, on top of the fighting between the men for my devotion and affection, yet they were as thick as loyal thieves. They were known as the Slaughtergus. They became urban legends overnight.

I didn't care about life, beauty, or emotion. The only thing I loved, the only source of life I craved, was blood. It became an addiction.

We visited Europe, Greece, and every island in between for food. We called that family time. When we arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, we stumbled upon a secret cult while scouring across a sandy desert in our quest for blood.

While we feasted on royal members of the secret cult, a funnel of thunderous smoke appeared in the room of high columns and pillars. With supernatural speed, nine enormous mountain lions burst from the smoke and attacked us.

With manes of sulfuric fire, poisonous metal spikes extended from their electrified body armor. We were no match for them.

We managed to escape, but one of the lions bit my right ankle before we jumped in the air and flew east. I sought a safer way to hunt and entertain myself without acting on impulse alone.

Impulsive attacks came with consequences. Part of me felt guilty about changing my vampiric family into savages against their will, but it was too late for regrets.

With that in mind I was unnaturally hungry. I wanted blood. I needed it so much that my stomach burned without it.

I hadn't seen my fledgling in a few weeks. I was sure they could manage without me. I wasn't their parents or babysitter, plus they were adults.

I watched my prey like night and day.

A tall, burly man with a complexion darker than my own searched for a place to rest. He seemed lost in the wilderness. I was hungry. As his feet scampered across the wet grass, he tripped over a wrought log. A small cut was on his upper arm. I lost it.

I ran at him and tore through his flesh like I hadn't eaten in a decade. After I fled, I wound up behind a hidden castle in Europe. I was surrounded by towering trees and brush shortly after I transitioned from human to freak of nature.

I could taste the end of summer and the birth of autumn in the breeze as a huge glowing moon beamed down on my exhausted naked body. I was covered in blood.

I was wrought with temporary amnesia as I floated along a beautiful rose garden leading to the entrance of an infrastructure built by slaves.