A Night Attack... [Ten Years Ago]
The rustle of cloth and a frantic, hissing voice, the terror in the familiar sound bringing him to wakefulness more then the meaning of the words in the dark.

"Dietre! There is some one in the house! Come, quickly!" Hands who's touch, though rarely felt, he remembered as gentle, now sharp, bruising as they pulled him from his bed. A whiff of sweet perfume, and the boy was now dragged from the warm sanctuary of the covers, stumbling as tried to keep up with the insistent grip around his wrist.

"Moth-?"

"Shh!" His mother moved soundlessly through the pitch of the hall, the smooth silk of her nightgown billowing about her slim frame, the whiteness of it appearing to glow, as though she were a ghost come to spirit him away.

A crash from the floor below, the boy too infected by the fear in his mother to attempt to look back as they now flitted up the narrow stairs that led to the attic. The cold of the floor boards seemed to seep hungrily into his bare feet, making his toes curl. Dust rose in clouds in the wake of their running, the empty eyes of long dead relatives stared out from faded paintings.

Suddenly, before him loomed the dark, hulking shape of a wardrobe, its carved curlicues and gilded fruit now dulled by time. Its doors swung wide like a gaping mouth which his mother shoved him toward as though he were nothing.

"Don't make a sound, not a sound! No matter what." Her pale, beautiful face twisted with fear and anguish, her eyes locking with his, filled with a regret he was too young to understand as she closed the doors and locked him in.

The boy heard the muffled tinkle of the key being thrown into the chaotic jumble of the attic just before the shot gun crack of a door being kicked open, his mother uttering a sharp gasp at the sound.

His heart beat against his ribs like a butterfly's wings in a glass jar as he crouched, finding the glimmer of light through the key hole, peering through, though all he wanted was to curl in the corner.

Two men, dressed to blend into the dark, stalked into view. Men...but not men. The boy's stomach turned with a child's terrible certainty that these were the monsters he always knew existed, but adults always insisted did not. Their cruel faces were the exaggerated masks of demons, warped and wrinkled with inhuman ferocity. Pronounced brows and sharp sunken cheeks...and teeth...teeth like animals. Mouths already smeared with blood.

They moved as one, towards his mother, who had never before looked so frail and helpless.

"Did you think you could run?" A harsh, mocking laugh from one, before the other reached out, snatching his mother's wrist, eliciting from her a cry of fright and disgust. Then the creature lunged forward, tearing at her shoulder with its teeth, her screams now echoing in the poor boy's ears.

He whimpered, clamping trembling hands over his mouth, desperate to remain silent. Don't make a sound! Not a sound!

There was blood, slick inky black in the dim light, flowing, obscene against the purity of the white nightgown.

"Wait!" From the vampire who had not attacked. It moved forward, grabbing at her, shaking her as she sobbed. "There were pictures of a child. You have a son. Where is he?!"

A wave of nausea at these words, the boy swaying, faint with fear.

"He's not here! Oh, he's not here! He's staying with a friend tonight, he's not here!"

A lie. A terrible lie. The boy had no friends. They'll know. They'll know its a lie! But the scent of blood already spilled masked his scent and filled the creatures with a lust that made them believe the lie, so that they would not have to delay such a wondrous feast.

The two descended on the woman he called mother though he barely knew her, but loved her as dearly as anything. Tears ran hot and burning down his cheeks, jaw aching from the grip of his hands keeping in the sobs that no one would hear over the dying cries just outside his hiding place.





She had loved him. Loved him. Those years of believing no one did...

Why did she have to die for him to learn the truth?