Awake, pt. 4

30 years passed and Stephen became legendarily feared. He adopted the name Caligula, after the particularly brutal Roman emperor. Caligula and Lilah terrorized through London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, and countless small villages, always on the move. Caligula had lost count a of the amount of innocents he had slaughtered along time ago, and was beginning to feel bored with the endless routine of never changing, never growing older, hunting and feeding and torturing and killing. He grew stronger with every kill, every live snatched by his own hand made him feel more superior, an eternal mark of the dominant on the weak. And yet, he never felt the sheer satisfaction from the kills that he felt that very first night, murdering Anabelle and Frederich. He was drawn to murder like an addict is to his drug; he spent all his time chasing that first high but never fully achieved it. He came close of course, quite a few times. His massacre of a wedding ceremony in Paris was particularly fruitful; a massive Catholic wedding, he risked massive exposure from this act, and the first thing Lilah taught him was that a Vampire must always avoid an angry mob. Yet, when he looked at the contentment on the beautiful Parisian couple’s faces, he could not resist. He entered quietly; the ceremony was just after dark, his favorite time to hunt. He moved with such grace and speed that he was able to lock every conceivable exit prior to the mass murder.
When the groom and bride both made their vows, he knew the time was perfect. He leapt from the balcony, landing on the podium. People were quite surprised and confused, as Caligula did not break his legs or even acknowledge pain.
“Sorry for interrupting,” Caligula said, “But weddings are such happy times, so happy, that I very much so desire to murder every single person in this room.”
The priest was exasperated, but had no time to acknowledge the situation before Caligula grabbed his neck and snapped it as if it were kindling. Fear and panic broke out into the church, the guests scrambling to the doors like ants from a dissembled hill, helpless to escape, helpless to do anything but wait for the ugly death coming.
The groom made the effort to protect his beloved, but Caligula with almost no effort ripped his arms from their sockets, and the man laid there, blood spurting from his shoulders like geysers, in too much pain to scream. Caligula took great satisfaction in this, and made it a point to suck the bride dry during the groom’s last excruciating minutes. He noted how particularly sweet her blood tasted, virgin blood of the best kind. He had never seen so much fear, and the sense of it made his blood curdle. He did not leave one man, woman, or child alive in that church. He loved murdering in a church; God, should such a being exist, was staring directly at him, scorning him, but Caligula knew that no god, heaven, or hell could touch him, he was immortal. He left the heads of the couple just below the cross; an eternal signifier of one of his finest cruelties.
He punched through the church’s back exit, and ran at full speed back to his lair, to meet Lilah. Lilah was home, feeding on a streetwalker. Caligula, though only a Vampire for some 30 years, couldn’t help but feel he had surpassed his sire. Night after night, year after year, she stuck to the same routine; she’d make herself pretty and draw stupid heinous men in with her sexuality, leaving them dead very fast. Caligula was not impressed by this, it was too easy, and if they have that much power than they surely should elevate their acts of evil beyond that of a mere malicious human. While thinking this, he noticed a fire-lit bottle of grain alcohol into their lair. He had attracted a mob, his massacre of the wedding so clearly not just the result of plain human malice.
“You bloody fool!”, said Lilah, “You’ll have us staked and burned by dawn.”
Caligula was bored with Lilah, she had lost something since his creation. He felt remorseful in a way, she had made him, but not remorseful enough to prevent him from doing it.
“Well, Lilah,” said Caligula, “While you were here eating this filthy bastard I was out laying waste to and drinking from half the women and children in Paris, you are no longer the Vampire you claim to be, and I shall release you from your complacence.”
“What?”, she said, “I made you, you have no power over me.”
At this mere statement, Caligula attatcked her at full force, he needed a weapon, Lilah was stronger than him. Lilah through him into the wall, making him feel pain for the first time in decades.
“This is nonsense Caligula, you are my eternal,” she said.
“I am no one’s anything, I am Caligula, though very young I have surpassed some of the greatest Vampires in the world, and that includes you my love.”
Caligula gathered his composure. Lilah charged at him one more time, so fast Caligula forgot she was there at all. And then, Lilah appeared, but Caligula, through a tremendous act of intensity, caught her at the right angle and grabbed her at the throat, she pleaded with him. After all the pleas and cries for help he had heard in his existence, none sounded as pleasing as Lilah’s, to carry the life of something that powerful in your hands and make it beg is so empowering Caligula felt akin to God, or perhaps beyond a God. With one gesture he ripped Lilah’s dead throat from her 575 year old corpse. The blood seeped on to the floor, and she tried to scream. She was shocked, she thought Caligula loved her, but Caligula only loved death. Caligula grabbed his sword and cut off Lilah’s head, he thought to himself it came off rather quickly considering it was removed from the neck of an immortal. Lilah lay there dead, for the second and final time, and in moments crumbled into dust.
“I have killed my sire, and yet, I don’t care,” Caligula thought, realizing that killing another vampire, let alone one’s maker, was one of the only things looked down upon in vampiric culture, but Caligula felt he needed no laws or rules, he was now free.
By the end of the realization, Caligula’s lair was totally up in flames. He saw there were about 500 men outside waiting to kill him, some were soldiers carrying weapons; guns, arrows, stakes. They knew he wasn’t human, and he was going to prove it to them. He crashed outside of his lair onto the street and emerged before the mob. An arrow flung and Caligula caught it in mid air, avoiding it piercing his heart. Caligula looked up, and knew they would all be dead within minutes. He smiled to himself, and decided he would find a new companion, one whose lust for murder could rival his own.