The First Vampire Part 1

THE FIRST VAMPIRE.

The Samson and Delilah Chronicles.

by Alicia Ryan.

AND IT CAME TO Pa.s.s THAT SAMSON LOVED A WOMAN.

IN THE VALLEY OF SOREK WHOSE NAME WAS DELILAH...

AND WHEN DELILAH SAW THAT HE.

HAD TOLD HER ALL HIS HEART, SHE SENT AND CALLED.

FOR THE LORDS OF THE PHILISTINES...

JUDGES 16:4 & 16:18.

PROLOGUE.

The warm stench of things too long unexposed to fresh air and sunlight greeted Samson when he woke. Ordinarily he would have objected to the cloying, noxious odor, but in his blindness, its familiarity had become a comfort. The same smell had greeted him every day for the last three days a ever since the Philistines had dragged him from Delilah's bed and into this prison cell.

By all rights he should be dead. Without his divine strength, the Philistine soldiers had managed to capture him, but he had not gone quietly. He had let his anguish rule him, las.h.i.+ng out until his blood and breath and strength all left him.

When he regained consciousness, he realized they had put out his eyes.

Memories of the past now were now all he could see. Though bile rose in his throat each time he thought of her, memories of Delilah crowded out all the others.

He'd thought she was the great love of his life, but she had wormed his secret out of him and betrayed him. Hatred, like the prison scent, was now his other boon companion in darkness.

Except for the occasional delivery of a bowl of food he wouldn't have fed his swine, his periods of wakefulness and sleep were virtually indistinguishable. At first, the waking moments were mercifully few, but his body must be healing because he seemed to have awakened at first light.

He started at the thought and peered more intently into the murky darkness.

At first, he could make out nothing, but then the walls of his cell s.h.i.+mmered into focus. Each moment, as the sky outside brightened and a fraction more light seeped through the tiny, barred window near the ceiling, Samson could make out more detail.

It wasn't much to look at, but he could see.

He looked down at the rest of his battered body.

One arm still hung manacled to the wall. The other had been left free because it was so badly broken. He gingerly stretched and flexed the now functioning limb and used his free hand to touch his ribs. Three days ago, Philistine soldiers had broken most of them, but now Samson felt no soreness.

A heavy, armored shuffling alerted him to the arrival of the guards. Thinking quickly, Samson grabbed a handful of dirt and rubbed it over his chest and face and hung his head forward as they entered his cell.

"Time to rise, you blind oaf. You're to be part of the entertainment today."

Two guards unfastened his arm from the wall and clamped his wrists together in front of him. Another snapped a metal collar around his neck. The third inspected the new bindings and, when he was sure Samson was properly trussed, he moved around front and gave a pull on the chain attached to the metal collar. Samson staggered forward and the rest of the little party fell into line.

Outside the sun shone brightly. Samson squinted and looked only at the ground as they made their way into the city.

The sounds of commerce bombarded him, more grating than he remembered. When a colored flag flew into his peripheral vision, he realized it must be a Philistine feast day.

His lead captor took a step up and Samson followed, climbing the steps of a huge stone temple. At the top, two large chains lay pooled at the base of the columns on either side of the staircase. Samson knew they were for him.

The guards unlatched his wrist restraints, stretched his arms out to his sides, and looped the great chains into place. One of the guards stepped behind him and began to lash him with a whip. Still Samson only looked down.

The column to his left kept his head and chest in shadow, but a ray of sun cut across his right leg. It burned far worse than the whip.

When he didn't respond, the guards quickly tired of him, and he was left to hang there as the crowd gathered. Soon people began to fill the square and the temple. People hung over the edge of the roof above him and spit down on to his head and arms.

The angle of the sun changed so less of his leg was caught in its rays, but the part that remained burned with a ferocity Samson could barely stand. He needed to move. He needed to leave this place. He strained against the chains.

The only result was laughter from above and below. He tried to focus, but his mind wouldn't clear. He needed . . . something. He didn't know what. The pain in his leg swelled until he felt as though his blood was boiling. Something threatened to overwhelm him.

He pulled the chains taught, and then pulled again. The middle portion of each column slid toward him. Fevered now, he strained once more at his metal bonds. With a great crash, a cylindrical section of each column pulled free from its place in the support and down to the steps below. As the mighty blocks shattered, the roof above tipped forward, and people began to scream.

The weight of the roof caused the now unstable front columns to collapse completely. The other columns followed, bringing the whole temple thundering down around him. Great stone slabs fell to the hard, dry earth. Dust and screams enshrouded him.

The terrace where he stood shuddered under the weight of the fallen roof and then it too began to crumble. Samson fell to his knees and then forward into a creva.s.se that had opened in the platform where he stood. Stones great and small fell all around him.

Mildly surprised to be alive, Samson woke to find himself in a tomb of his own making. He'd asked for strength to bring a building down, but he'd a.s.sumed his own death was a.s.sured. He'd wished for death many times since his capture; anything was better than being a blind slave.

As the collapsed building stabilized, a thick layer of dust settled around him. He couldn't see it, but he could feel its gritty texture on his skin, especially near his nostrils where it gathered, making it harder for him to breathe. He forced himself to stay calm, to lie still as the grinding screech of stone against stone continued.

Soon the noise of the collapse lessened, to be replaced by the aggrieved shrieks of the Philistines. Only moments ago they had been enjoying a public feast dayNow those who had been inside the temple were dead, and those who loved them were screaming and scurrying about on top of the fallen slabs looking for hope. But he knew they would find little. Even from beneath feet of fallen marble, he could hear everything. And almost no living sounds came from beneath the ruined temple - just his own ragged breathing. Of the thousands buried with him, all were dead or dying.

He would die soon too, he knew. A great hunk of marble, uprooted from its centuries-old footings, weighed heavily on his chest, making him struggle for every breath. Very soon, he would lie forever with his enemies. Even in his fevered state, the irony was not lost on him. G.o.d and Delilah must both be laughing at him now, he thought.

A flicker of remorse flared within him. They had captured him, blinded him, and tortured him without mercy, but the Philistines were not his true enemy. She was. Delilah. The one who had betrayed him.

Only he wasn't dead, he reminded himself. He was buried, but not dead. A crack sounded from just above him, and he looked up to see the marble slab that formed the roof of his narrow tomb slip several inches, coming to rest even closer to his face. Alarm and adrenaline shot through him. How fitting, he thought, for G.o.d to have restored his sight so the last thing he saw would be the inside of his own tomb. He sighed, knowing he deserved that and more. He'd been dedicated to G.o.d as a small child, but his life had been a sorry example of service.

His thoughts were diverted by a new arrival into his tiny tomb. Down the ragged slabs of marble, tiny rivulets of blood had begun to flow. He watched their progress transfixed, as if his life suddenly depended on them.

His tired brain began to rage, filling him with a need he'd never known, telling him those small, red drops were all that mattered. He tried to crane his head toward them, but the blocks held him pinned, forcing him to lay there, trapped, waiting for what seemed an eternity. When the first drop splashed down onto his upturned face it was still warm, and it ran into his eyes and nose. He tried to reach it with his tongue, not knowing why.

Another drop hovered, and he strained forward, tongue extended, suddenly needing to know the taste of that blood more than he needed air in his burning lungs. The next drop hit his open mouth, and the strange restless need he'd been feeling all day suddenly had form.

Hours pa.s.sed while he lay there, sucking blood from stones. When the sun went down and the despondent rescuers departed, he pushed away the blocks that had covered him and crawled out of the rubble.

CHAPTER 1.

She answered the phone on the second ring without looking up. "Ariana Chambers."

"Hi, it's me," said a voice she knew too well, yet apparently not well enough.

"James," she responded, "Hi."

"I'm sorry to call you at work, but..."

Ariana looked at her watch. It was after 10:00 p.m. "That's okay," she said wistfully. "Is something the matter?" She knew why he was calling.

James hesitated. "You haven't signed the papers."

No more pretending. "I know, James," she said. "I'm sorry. I've been... busy. I promise I'll read them this weekend, and your lawyer will have them by Tuesday."

James sighed. "Thank you, Ariana. I'm sorry it's come to this, but now that it has, I just want to get it over with."

Their life together. Their marriage. Yep, best just to get it over with. She wanted to cry or scream, but did neither.

"I'll let you get back to work, then," James was saying. "Goodnight, Ariana."

"Goodnight. I..." Ariana forced herself not to say I love you. It was a habit she had to break. "I'll sign the papers."

James put the phone back in the cradle. If Ariana said he would have the papers by Tuesday, he knew that's when it would be. His wife was a person of her word. And part of him hated her for it. People trusted Ariana. She was beautiful and brilliant and had a gift for finance, but it took more than smarts to persuade investors to let you manage hundreds of millions of dollars of their money. It took something extraordinary. And that's why he had asked for the divorce-because Ariana wasn't content to be ordinary. Over the last six years, James had come to realize he didn't want an extraordinary life. He just wanted the usual things-a home, a family, maybe a dog.

Realizing he was still staring at the phone, James forced himself to put it down and trudge into the kitchen. Cheap linoleum glared back at him. He pulled open two of the particle board cabinet doors and stared for a moment at the rows of tin cans. Nothing looked likely to calm the slight queasiness that beset him whenever he thought about the huge mistake he could be making.

Two steps brought him back into his tiny entryway, where his neglected running shoes caught his eye. He hadn't been running all week. After exchanging his khakis for a pair of running shorts, he threw on his shoes, and left the apartment. Outside, stale air hit him in the face. There was no breeze in mid-town. The apartment building where he'd lived with Ariana faced the Hudson. It had always had a breeze.

Killing off the familiar litany of his doubts, James focused instead on the flow of the sidewalk beneath his feet. His usual route took him through the southern portion of Central Park, but he looked at his watch as he neared the stone wall along the park's western edge. A wary voice in his head reminded him of the lateness of the hour, but he pa.s.sed through the entryway with a shrug. His route wasn't too far off the main thoroughfares, and lanterns dotted the path at regular intervals. He told himself it was as safe as any other Manhattan street at night.

Inside the park, the green of summer still lingered despite the chill in the air, and fluorescent lamps cast everything in their radius in a strange, bright blue-green. Deeper shadows faded into pure black, and James kept his eyes focused on the path illuminated before him.

Twenty minutes later, he topped the hill that marked the halfway point in his five-mile course. The stone walls to the right and left of the path got taller in this section, cresting over head height just as he began his descent.

When he rounded the bend at the bottom of the hill he s.h.i.+vered, despite his exertion, as a sudden cool breeze stirred behind him. Before he could wonder at it, something hooked around his neck, yanking him backward. He struggled, but before he could get a handhold or land a blow, his attacker jerked him off his feet and vaulted them both over the top of the wall.

CHAPTER 2.

Toria drained a few more drops from the runner she had pinned against a tree, her black-clad body a stain against the man's white flesh. In tight, dark pants and a black corset over a sheer, long sleeved black top, Ash thought she resembled an otherworldly ballerina, cradling her pet.i.te form against her partner.

"I didn't know this was a dinner meeting," he quipped. He was still some distance away, but he knew she could hear him, even from across the expanse of dark gra.s.s separating them.

Toria turned, giving a last, longing look at her victim. Reluctantly, she let him drop to the ground, where he landed with a thud and a weak groan.

"I'll never understand your fascination with joggers," Ash said, taking a step toward his old friend.

She licked the blood from her lips and ran a hand through her thick, dark ringlets. "It's because they never see it coming," she said, sounding almost wistful. "Out here running alone," she gestured at the fake wilderness of Central Park and snickered, "they feel immortal." Licking a trail of blood from the back of her hand, she stole a surrept.i.tious glance at the fading runner.

Ash rolled his dark eyes. "Come on," he said, indicating a spot farther up the hill. "I can't talk to you with your leftovers staring at me."

As they pa.s.sed the heap of flesh at the base of the tree, he couldn't stop the beginning of his usual sermon. "You take too many risks, Toria," he said, s.h.i.+fting his gaze back to her.

A baleful glare was her only response.

"But we've had this discussion many times," he acknowledged, supplying the words for her. Her expression reminded him of just how many.

"And you can be sure I didn't invite you here just to have it again," she snapped, stopping to put a hand on her slim hip in the same haughty stance Ash always thought of when she came to mind.

He studied her as she stood, not an inch over five feet, but defiant as always. When they first met, she had been a concubine of the great Kurdish warrior Saladin. Ash had fought with him as a mercenary when he retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders. With stratagems worthy of Saladin himself, Toria had clawed her way to the top of his harem and eventually into Saladin's confidence.

"Why did you ask me here?" he queried, suddenly not sure he wanted to know the answer. He fingered the cell phone in the pocket of his overcoat, resisting the temptation to dial for his car service. He was ready to get out of the park. The place gave him the creeps.

"Why do you always think I have an ulterior motive?" Toria asked, looking up at him with a deceptively sweet smile. "Can't I just want to see my old friend?"

He frowned. "Toria, in the thousand years I've known you, you've never once done anything without an ulterior motive." He studied her small form, clothed in her usual black attire. Even her fingernails were painted black, he noticed. She had worn bright colors when he first met her, but he thought the black suited her better. "So much ruthlessness in such a small package," he muttered, meeting her gaze. "It's why I turned you, you know. I couldn't bear to see so much power and such dark loveliness crumble into dust."

Toria took a step toward him, her gaze warming, but Ash put out his hand. "Does the Council know you're here?" he asked softly.

She hesitated. "Yes," she said, "but I'm not here to spy on you, if that's what you're thinking."

Ash opened his mouth to deny it, but couldn't give voice to the lie.

"They're really not so bad, Ash," she said. "If you would deign to a.s.sociate with them once in a while, they would get over their fascination with you."

He shook his head. "I think I prefer having them watch me from a distance."

"Unlike humans," she said in a pout, "with whom you freely a.s.sociate every day."

Ash ran a tired hand through his dark hair. He knew his refusal to join the larger vampire society rankled Toria. Still, he couldn't do it. They were an abomination-an abomination that had started with him, every one of them a walking, talking reminder of his own failures and weaknesses.

"Why did you ask me here, Toria?" he repeated.

"There have been some disappearances," she explained, dropping the pouting coquette routine.