~~ WANING MOON ~~

CHAPTER 1
~~1661~~

35

Dawn was breaking, and in the pale light he noticed

something. The blaze under his skin had already spread to
his left hand, the same side as his bite. Shaking with pain
he compared his two hands: the left was now several shades
lighter than the right; it was almost ghostly white.
“Dear God,” he gasped, then the pain hit with a fury
unparalleled, and Carlisle doubled over.I must get off
the
street before anyone sees me!He began to crawl,
fighting
against the pain as it spread down his torso. His heart was
racing and the faster it went the faster the fire spread. He
wanted to get to a safe place before his legs stopped
working; his left arm was already much weaker than the
right. He crawled down the nearest alley, and fell upon a
cellar door. He pulled open the door and stumbled down
into the dark room. There were piles and piles of supplies
everywhere he looked.
I need a hiding place, just a small place to lie down
and recuperate.Though he could feel his body succumb
to
some type of poison, he had convinced himself that he was
going to be fine, that he just needed to heal, like he always had
after he was beaten. He would be fine.
The pain caused him to fall forward onto a pile of
potatoes in the far back corner of the cellar. Half of the pile
was rotten; they clearly had not been touched in months,
36
and they probably would not be until someone decided to
dig the pile out of the cellar with a shovel. Carlisle began
to dig mostly with his right arm, and, once he had a small
hole started, he forced his left arm to help shove potatoes
aside. After he had shifted enough to just wedge himself in
behind the pile, he put his coat back on, settled himself, and
began building the potatoes up around him, half burying
himself in the process. He was hidden from view, and,
despite the stench, he was dry and warm, though he could
feel he was getting colder every minute.
Gasping for breath due to the conflagration in his
chest and his physical efforts, Carlisle laid his head back,
but then his right arm was ablaze. It was a slow torture,
taking hours and hours. Once the scorching agony reached
his fingers, he looked down again, and this time he actually
watched as his fingers slowly faded from pink stained with
blood to a ghostly white color.
Carlisle’s eyes filled with tears which began to spill
down his cheeks. But he did not have long to mourn what
he knew was happening to him, because the inferno was
now burning upward into his head, and Carlisle had to stuff
a potato in his mouth to muffle his screams.
 CHAPTER 2
~~1666~~
Carlisle opened his eyes. For a moment he was
paralyzed and his eyes swept the room. The dawn of the
third day had broken. The sun had not risen and the sky
was barely purple, but compared to the pitch black of the
cellar a dim light was visible through the cracks in the
cellar doors. Carlisle was missing a short period of
memory because he had last been aware of his fading
breath, and it had been completely dark outside. Had he…?
Suddenly, he sat straight up as an explosion of
every smell, sound, and color around him overwhelmed his
senses. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears.
But just as quickly his mind filtered the noise, so when he
opened his eyes again he noted that he could perceive every
moving creature’s sound in the house, could identify every
smell within a six-block radius, and saw with perfect acuity
even in near total darkness every object in the room.
38
For a moment, Carlisle was exhilarated and easily
pulled himself out of the pile of rotten potatoes, but when
he was free he smelled and then looked down and saw the
 dry blood that covered his shirt. He was overcome with the
desire to suck his own blood out of the fabric. And then a
deep, ravenous thirst suddenly stabbed at his insides but he
did not desire the shelves of wine, or sacks of turnips or
pickled meat in the cellar. His instincts took over, and he
sniffed out the closest available human blood – a small
female, just at the top of the stairs to the cellar beyond a
flimsy wooden door, which he knew he could pulverize
quite easily.
A CHILD!? I am desiring the blood of a CHILD?!
I am plotting to kill a child!!Carlisle backed up toward to
cellar doors, struggling to push down the monstrous
craving that was rumbling deep inside him. Several times
he started toward the stairs leading up to the playing child
who was so close, such an easy meal… Finally, he
managed to open the cellar doors and forced himself to
leave the cellar. He looked up at the purple morning sky,
which was starting to turn slightly pink in the east as the
sun crept higher, and he closed his coat over his bloody
shirt so he would not attract attention, but that reminded
him of…
He put his hand up to his neck, where the vampire
had bitten him. The bite on his neck was healed over to a
soft scar. Then he realized that it was more than a bite
mark, one soft raised line lead to another, and another. The
vampire had torn apart his neck in the attack. Suddenly he
was seized with rage, and he slammed the cellar doors with
such force that they splintered. The door handle had come
of in his hand and when he looked at it he realized his
stone-hard fingers had squeezed the thick metal as if it were
clay. He was shocked by his strength, and he ran down the
 alley for fear of being caught but realized that in a blink of
an eye he was two miles from where he had been. Carlisle
gasped and looked around him. There were not very many
people around yet, and those that were out apparently had
not seen him moving too fast for their eyes to perceive.
Fear gripped him, anger pulsed through him, thirst called
him in all directions toward the humans nearby who were
completely unaware of the newborn vampire that was
cowering between two buildings in London, covering his
head trying to block out all of the heartbeats pounding in
his ears.
When Carlisle could bear it no longer he determined
to run as far and as fast as possible away from all of the
people. He ran in short spurts, hiding from the sight of any
40
human, and headed for the woods nearby. He would have
to go a long way, out of the city, past the fields of workers;
he appeared to move unnoticed as he sped beyond human
sight or comprehension. When he could no longer hear any
human breath or heart beats or smell human blood, he
finally stopped and was amazed that he felt no fatigue from
his efforts. Carlisle was standing in a clearing near the
edge of the forest under a tree that had to be a thousand
years old. Only fifteen minutes had passed, the sun was
just peeking over the treetops, and he had run at least
twenty miles. For the first moment since he awoke he took
some time to think.
I cannot do this! I will not become an agent of
death! I will not become this monster! This must …END.
Carlisle formulated the plan instantly. He sat next to
a tree completely still and calmly waited through the entire
 day, deliberately watching nothing but the slow crawl of
the sun across the sky until darkness fell again so there
would be fewer humans around to tempt his senses as he
ran. His plan might instantly condemn him to hell, but he
did not care. He preferred to go to hell for this rather than
for killing one of God’s people. He could not believe it
was such a simple choice.
41
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~
Carlisle sat by the shore on a boulder as large as a
house at the top of a cliff face that was hundreds of feet
from the rocky shore where white waves crashed. The
bright sunlight reflected off his diamond hard skin and the
sounds and smells of the sea and wind rolled over him like
the surf far below but he ignored everything. He wasn’t
sure why he was there. He had been sitting on the boulder
for four days without moving. He had no motivation to
move, so he simply didn’t. He thought rather apathetically
that he could try again to kill himself by jumping of the
cliff into the sea, but he knew that there was no hope of
success. He had jumped from the spire of Saint Paul’s
Cathedral. He had stood in the flames of a glass factory.
He had leapt from the London Bridge and sat at the bottom
of the Thames. He had tried every weapon he could find.
He had even stolen some holy water and drunk it. And he
had finally come to the conclusion that while his body was
whole and strong, there was nothing that could destroy its
power. Carlisle began to wonder if all of the legends
around how to kill a vampire existed because any vampire
who had been successfully killed was weakened.
 A voice of hope in the back of his mind proposed
supplemented by his church salary and the parishioners’
tithes. Carlisle’s tuition at boarding school was always
paid on time, so he had every meal he needed. He had seen
desperate hunger before in both men’s and animals’ eyes.
He had also seen starvation. It was the most visceral
depiction of living death that he had ever seen, in his
opinion even more graphic than a drawing and quartering
which was over quickly. Oddly, however, though Carlisle
felt he was reaching his end, his body was not wasting like
those he had seen in the slums of London; he was simply
weaker. It was as if his body had been frozen in time to an
impermeable, unchanging, indestructible force.Not so
indestructible, he promised himself. This will end.
He felt the ground vibrating underneath him. He
bolted up straight, and his nostrils flared before he could
regain control of himself. He sighed with relief. He knew
that it was not a human party. He had successfully evaded
humans for more than four months. There was no way he
would tempt himself now. He felt the comforting weakness
return to his temporarily energized muscles, until he caught
the scent. It was not human, but it called to him. Carlisle
rolled over onto his side and sniffed again. He did not
really know what he was doing until he was crawling out of
his cave and pulling himself up from the forest floor. The
45
vibration was palpable now through his feet, and he
could
see them through the trees.
Carlisle was running; where the energy came from
he did not know, but just ahead of him was what he craved,
what he desired. He reached out with his hand…
 When he finally looked up at the sky his vision was
much clearer than it had been. All of his senses were
heightened again. The velvety dark of the night sky above
was sparkling like the sea. He could see colors in every
shining star. The grass of the meadow around him was
turning brown, and it whispered as it blew in the chilly fall
breeze. He closed his eyes and felt the air wrap around his
cold skin, and then he felt something more viscous than
water dripping from his chin. Carlisle looked down and
saw on his hands the unmistakable crimson stains of blood,
as if he hadbathed in it.
His breathing quickened as he backed away from
the body next to him, the image of its unmoving form
seared into his eyes like a hot iron. His first kill. Carlisle
began to hyperventilate, and he crawled backward away
from it though he was unable to look away. And then he
bumped into another body. As he jumped up from the
forest floor, away from his second kill, he turned his head
and saw in his field of vision four more.
46
His mind suddenly took hold of his heart and said,
Look at them, you fool.
Carlisle closed his eyes and shook his head.
I said, LOOK AT THEM.His inner voice
demanded.
Carlisle opened his eyes and first looked at his
hands. They were still drenched in blood. Then he looked
back at his first kill. It was a deer. He turned to the second
– another deer. He walked past all of the rest of them; there
were nine altogether.
Carlisle stood still as a statue, staring at the last one.
Its large black eyes were still and empty. He could see
where his own teeth had ripped out its throat. Then Carlisle
realized that he wasn’t hungry anymore.
Carlisle turned and ran toward the craggy peak in
the distance, his legs moving faster than they had in months
as the new blood filled his open veins, and he tracked the
herd he had attacked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~
~~1669~~
Carlisle walked through a small farmer’s market on
a cold and cloudy afternoon in a clearing by the
crossroads
47
five miles from the center of London. He still did not trust
himself to walk into the city, but when he was well fed he
felt capable of walking in this smaller community of
humans.
The market was actually just a collection of lean-tos
set up along the crossroads. There were barely thirty
humans around, and as long as Carlisle gave them a wide
berth he was able to stay in control. However, every trip
took a significant effort and caused him physical pain.
Every time he took a breath around humans, Carlisle felt as
if he was breathing in burning ash; a burning he knew
would only be quenched by satisfying his thirst for blood.
When he listened in on the conversations as he
passed by, it seemed they barely took notice of the
mysterious figure who always had a hood over his head and
only came to the market when there was cloud cover. None
suspected a vampire in their midst – especially not one who
did not feed on humans. He returned to his cart and began
to pack up his wares. He had made several significant sales
that day, plenty of money for the supplies he required.
It had all started about seven months after

48

some books. His clothes had been reduced to rags, with the
exposure he endured over the first few months and his
failed suicide attempts. It felt strange to have such
luxurious fabrics on his cold dead skin, but the sensation
was far more intense than he had ever realized as a mortal.
Clothing had been about utility, not comfort, in his former
life.
The books he found were all written by Greek
philosophers. He had spent a little time translating the
classics in boarding school in his Greek class, but reading
them again from an entirely different perspective
immediately intrigued him. He read them over and over,
even after he had memorized each page.
The weapons he put to immediate use for hunting,
but not for himself. He used his superior sight and reflexes
to kill foxes, deer, and wolves, and he sold the meat and
pelts. He had found a way to make a good living, with
minimal human contact.
Carlisle was in a hurry to leave the market because he did
not like stay among the humans any longer than he had to. But a
man on a horse arrived at the crossroads and stopped behind
him.
“Good evening, sir. I can see you are leaving, but I
must trouble you for one of your warm pelts, I’m afraid I
49
may be ill before I reach my destination.”
 Carlisle could smell his general good health, and he
guessed that he must be past his prime, but younger than
his father, probably in his forties. Carlisle could hear his
wealth with the rubbing of fine fabrics. But as he turned to
look at the man the first thing that caught his eye was the
tied stacks of books hanging from his saddlebag.
The man followed Carlisle’s gaze and smiled.
“You have an eye for reading, sir?”
Carlisle nodded. “I had an aptitude for science and
religion in school. My studies were forgotten for years,
until recently.”
The man had not really expected such a response,
and now looked more closely at Carlisle. Carlisle instantly
shrank from the man’s gaze and began to untie some of the
furs he had just put away.
The man frowned. “You are a learned man, I can
see it. But something dreadful has happened. Where is
your family? Your home?”
Carlisle’s instincts were reawakening; this human
was taking too much of an interest in him, and it was
enticing his senses. “I have none, sir.”
The man leaned a little closer, and Carlisle had to
stop breathing to prevent the scent of blood from
50
overwhelming him. “Are you a Catholic?” the man said
quietly and sympathetically.
Carlisle did not answer. The man took this as
something of a confirmation. “My mother’s sister married
into a Catholic family. They were killed and their lands
taken. I will presume for the moment that is what has
happened to you, sir, for I can see you do not wish to
discuss it.” He walked over to his horse, and Carlisle took
the opportunity to relax his face a little. The man returned
with three books. “I hope you will accept this as payment
for that fine wolf’s skin.” He indicated the deep black fur
on the top of Carlisle’s collection.
Carlisle was taken aback by the generosity and
shook his head. “You must know I cannot accept more
than one book in payment, sir.”
The man smiled. “Your honesty has proven my
instinct about you, sir. My name is Thomas Hawthorne. I
am a professor of physic, and I am to teach at Trinity
College in Cambridge.” He smiled broadly when he saw
that Carlisle recognized the college and suddenly
appreciated to whom he was speaking.
“I had considered applying, but at the time, it
seemed God had other plans for me.” Carlisle frowned as
he spoke.
51
Hawthorne was intrigued. “And what was your
intended field of study?” he asked eagerly.
Carlisle shrugged. “I… don’t remember.”
Carlisle’s brows knit as he searched his memory, but the
desire was long gone from his human mind, and now had
completely faded as his entire existence had become
focused on surviving.
Hawthorne watched the young man struggling
internally and he felt a great swell of sympathy for him. He
held out all three books to Carlisle and waited until Carlisle
took them. Carlisle handed Hawthorne the wolf skin,
which Hawthorne threw over his shoulders.
“I can see you are still young, and you have likely
had a hard start to your life or lost a legacy that was due to
you. But your thirst for knowledge is a rare thing. If you
ever find you have sufficient curiosity, I will make certain
we find you the means to study.” Hawthorne bowed
slightly to Carlisle.
Carlisle bowed back, and watched with wonder as
Hawthorne rode away. Carlisle looked down at the books:
Galen, Hippocrates, and Fuchs. Carlisle opened Galen: On
the Natural Faculties.