Return of the Phoenix - 01 by Heath Stallcup

have been misinformed on quite a bit concerning we vampires,” he started. Jack simply hiked a skeptical eyebrow. “I can tell by that look that you aren’t sure of what I’m about to tell you, and while I can’t very well prove everything I’m about to disclose to you, I can assure you that it is all the truth.”
    Jack swallowed the bite he had been chewing and asked, “And why am I supposed to care?”
    “Ah. Therein lies the true question, doesn’t it?” Rufus sat forward and pulled the chair slightly closer to the bed allowing the candle light to highlight his face more. “You see, it is my sincere hope that once you are fully healed and are capable of leaving here, that you will return to your people and explain what it is really going on out here.”
    Jack stopped eating for a moment and allowed himself the slim hope that he not only would survive being a prisoner of the monsters, but that he would actually be allowed to leave. “You mean to tell me that I’m not a prisoner here?”
    Rufus sat back with a look of shock, and Jack honestly couldn’t tell if it was feigned or real. “Good heavens, man! Why would we have saved your life and risked our own only to keep you a prisoner here? To what end? I’ve told you that we’re vegetarians. We don’t feed on humans. We certainly don’t imprison them. What’s next? You expect me to torture you as well? Perhaps place you on the rack as they did in the medieval days?”
    “Well forgive the shit out of me for thinking that a bloo dsucker might want to actually suck my blood…” Jack replied, instantly regretting it.
    Rufus laughed; a deep, hearty laugh that actually brought a careful smile to Jack’s own mouth. “My dear boy, you have a lot to learn. A very lot,” he said, still chuckling, as if there was an inside joke that Jack was unaware of. “Firstly, we are vegetar ians. We may be old, but we still remember what it was like to be human. And we cherish life. All life. But human life above all else.” Rufus paused to allow his statement to hit home with Jack. “We have taken a solemn oath to take no human lives in order to sustain our own.” Jack raised his brow again on that one, obviously not believing him.
    Rufus stood up and slowly began pacing the room as he b egan his tale, “Many, many years ago, I was very close to death. I was born with weak lungs and had many problems as a child. My parents moved me from Britannia to France and from France to many other areas, all in the hopes of either finding a cure or an environ that was more suitable for my breathing. When I was but twenty-three years and approaching my twenty-fourth birthday, I had a series of attacks that left me bedridden. I really wasn’t sure where we were at this time. You see, I had been very ill the previous year and my parents had moved us again. My father owned a large estate in Britain and my mother was a Duchess, so money wasn’t a problem for them. As a last ditch effort, they tried a Romanian doctor, who, I believe, infected me with vampirism.
    “I was never actually bitten by a vampire, nor was I drained, or seduced, or…well, whatever it is that you are taught. No, I was actually purposely injected by a so-called physician selling my parents on the hope of life.” Rufus paused in his pacing and turned to face Jack, his head bowed, and Jack saw the pain in his eyes. “The first nights were horrible. The nightmares, the pain, the thirst…more than I could bear. By the time it had taken hold fully, I was stronger and completely out of my mind with hu nger. I tore through my restraints and murdered my parents,” he stated softly.
    Rufus sat back down and cleared his throat. “For many years afterward, I ran from what and who I was. Eventually, I learned to control many things. My hunger, though, always tore at me. Then I encountered a much older vampire who took my under his wing, so to speak. He taught me that we didn’t need to hunt humans for food,