Resurrection

            Mordecai’s eyes snapped open and lolled towards Dinah, who was carefully stitching the skin of his neck back onto the twitching horror that was his body. A smile creased his lips and he gasped, “I forgot. You are quite the Florence Nightingale, aren’t you?”

            Dinah locked eyes with him and cinched the stitch she was working on with a jerk that tore the flesh, “You are lucky I found you before you had to expend more energy to stay alive. You were pretty much gone.”

            “Then you should have been quicker.” Mordecai was cut off by Dinah grabbing his head by the hair and jerking upwards so hard that the stitched shifted.

            “Listen and understand,” Dinah’s mouth was almost on Mordecai’s ear as she hissed, “You will not fail our master. You will never fail him! I brought you back to continue your service to him, which you will repay by working his will. If you stray again, it will be my nails that pull out your guts.” she dropped his head and it smacked into the table hard.

            He grunted and looked up at Dinah, “In this state, I can barely move.”

            She stood with her back to him, and her voice at once held notes of both disgust and elation, “And that is why you will accept a sacrament from me.”

            Mordecai’s whole body went rigid, and he shuddered in anticipation, “I am not worthy.”

            “No, you are not.” She lifted her wrist to her mouth and bit down hard, shuddering with delight as one of the veins snapped between her teeth.

            Mordecai’s eyes rolled back slightly as the stench of blood, and his lips parted in a blissful grin. He tried to roll towards Dinah, but the woman had already slid into place beside him, her hands cradling him against her open wound like a mother nursing an infant. The recently beheaded vampire’s tongue snaked out of his mouth and he closed his lips around Dinah’s flesh with a long moan. His body shuddered as the blood flowed down his throat and sent heat coursing through him like an electric current.

            Dinah gently whispered, “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee.” she ran a hand over his cheek, her long nails cutting trenches into the flesh, “The blood is the life.”

            Mordecai broke away, his face stained and glistening, “Amen!”

****

            The formula was not quite right. This was abundantly clear to Timeaus when he opened his eyes and found himself naked on the concrete with human blood caking on his skin. Despite the countless teams that Timeaus had financially backed to develop a synthetic plasma, no one had even come close to creating something that fulfilled the crushing, ravenous urges that drove him and all of his kind to madness.

            Timeaus had been drinking lab-produced blood substitutes for years in an attempt to limit the number of humans that were killed in his territory. Dead humans meant questions, and questions were dangerous. However, the synthetic hemoglobin had an unfortunate side effect: Timeaus was slowly loosing his mind.

            He stood up slowly, his skin sticking together underneath the wash of dried blood that covered him. There was the torn, mutilated remains of an adult human all around him, but there was not enough left to determine age or gender. He had not stopped at tearing out the throat and drinking straight from the vein: he had reveled in the kill like a wild animal, ravening with delight inside the splattered entrails of his victim until he had simply passed out.

            He found his clothes a few feet away, torn and blood splattered as usual. He fished through the pockets and, by a sheer stroke of luck, found that his cell phone was still in the pocket. Timeaus gingerly pressed the speed dial and within a few seconds, Achan picked up.

            “I did it again,” He grunted almost before he heard an answer on the other end.

            “I figured. That doesn’t matter now, we have bigger issues.” Achan’s voice was cracked and hard, as if he was struggling to hold back some great emotion. That was never a good sign, “Where are you? I’ll send a car.”

            Timeaus looked around, and suddenly his spine stiffened. He was standing in the middle of a large concrete ring that reeked of humans. There were low risers carved into the ground, much like an illegal dog fighting ring, and although it was currently open, there was a giant chain link fence and reinforced gate that left little doubt in his mind about the intention behind the whole operation.

            “Oh hell,” Timeaus hissed into the phone, “We have a huge problem.”