Chapter One: Immortal Suicide
Aaron's suicide would have been successful if the man who found him had been human. He was only moments from death and would have been gone long before any kind of help could arrive to save him. No one should have found him in the first place; he was alone in his bedroom, and his parents - who were really no relation to him at all - were gone for the entire weekend. It should have been an entire day before his body was found, and yet, here was this man whom Aaron had never seen before in his life, standing there in Aaron's bedroom and looking down at him. As the man watched quietly, Aaron spasmed in pain from the poisons he'd taken, waiting for the end to come so that he could, if only for an instant, understand death.

He'd told no one what he intended to do. Not even his best friend, Casey, suspected Aaron’s plans. The boy didn’t seem depressed - which he wasn’t - nor did there appear to be anything in his life that would prompt suicide - and there wasn’t. To everyone, especially his friends and family, his death would come as a complete shock, and his parents would wonder whether the son they had taken on had killed himself because of them. Aaron knew they’d blame themselves, and he didn’t want that, but he couldn’t help it; he had to understand death, and to do that he had to experience it.

A psychologist might have said that his obsession was probably prompted by his real parents’ senseless deaths, so similar despite the years between them. Casey might have remembered his friend’s overly analytical mind and how Aaron always had to try things for himself, no matter the consequences, because secondhand experience just wasn’t good enough. The Tlingit Elder Aaron spent so much time listening to might have remembered the boy’s rapt attention and fascinated questions whenever the Elder spoke of which wild plants one should never eat because they were poisonous. The girl in his science class who had a crush on him might have remembered his strange captivation with the somewhat more dangerous of the chemicals they sometimes used in labs. Aaron’s parents would certainly have remembered the strange things they’d found him reading online; descriptions of death by various methods of suicide and supposedly true accounts of near-death experiences in which a person was revived after their heart stopped and talked about what they had experienced, among other, similar things.

Aaron lived with his stepmother and the man she had married after his real father died. He didn’t know what to call the man, so when people asked he usually just said that he lived with his stepparents. Most people just accepted that and didn’t ask any more questions. They didn’t really want to know, they just asked because it was expected of them. There had been another child, from his real father and his stepmother, but the baby had died only a few days after she was born. There had been something wrong with her at birth, some sort of genetic disorder that Aaron hadn’t understood, and she hadn’t been expected to last as long as she did. Now his stepmother was pregnant again, this time by her new husband, and she wanted to make sure that this baby was going to be okay. She and her husband had gone out of town to have the baby checked on to be sure it was healthy. They had left Aaron behind alone because he had begged, claiming fourteen was old enough to be on his own. They would have regretted their decision were it not for the stranger who had somehow gotten into the locked room without making any noise.

Aaron was dying - really dying. He was slipping on the icy edges of his life, and finally he slipped off into death - and was caught in a net made of ropes of silvery light. In his unconscious state, he thought he felt the strands of the net pressing into his back where it prevented him from falling into the symbolic chasm. The solid light felt very strange against him, like being supported by ropes of cold, rubbery cotton, with a strong but resilient core. Intrigued by this strange sensation, Aaron allowed himself to be distracted, and before he knew it he was waking up, and he hadn’t died. Something had stopped him at the last possible moment. Feeling cheated and murderously angry, Aaron opened his eyes.

Aaron’s first impression was of a pair of glittering silver eyes watching him with sharp anger. Then the color of the eyes faded to grey so quickly that Aaron wondered if he’d imagined the silver, even as he became aware of the fact that a strange man knelt straddled over him, with his hands pressed into the carpet on either side of Aaron’s shoulders, effectively holding the boy in an uncomfortably helpless position. The man’s face was only inches away from Aaron’s. For one long, frozen moment, Aaron could only stare up into the man’s grey eyes as the anger he had initially felt quickly became fear.

“Who the hell are you?” Aaron demanded in a tone that was meant to be gruff but came out almost breathy from a combination of his fright and the lingering pain in his stomach. It’s hard to sound tough when you’re pinned beneath someone bigger than you are or when you’re hurting so badly that you want to throw up, and Aaron was both. “What do you want?”

Once, back when Aaron’s mother was still alive, he had gotten to stay up late one night, as a special treat, in order to watch an old movie that was playing on TV. It had originally been black and white, but somewhere along the line color had been added to keep up with the modern generation. He was too young to have remembered most of the movie, but one villain had stuck out in his mind: a nondescript, black-haired character who dressed in dark colors. He had played a very minor role in the story, just a friend of the hero, until the climax, in which he had betrayed the hero in what Aaron was sure - though he remembered no details - had been a particularly dastardly way. The villain’s eyes had been a particularly bright shade of silver, clearly distinguishable from grey, and when the movie was over Aaron’s mother had looked at him sadly and told him that silver-eyed people could never be trusted. They served only their own ends, caring for no one else, and the only thing they could be relied upon to be was self-serving. Also, they often could do things that most people couldn’t and had dark, cruel hearts. Aaron hadn’t understood at the time, but he’d remembered, and this man had silver eyes, even if they were now hiding behind grey. Aaron was sure of what he had seen.

“I am... Thanatos,” the man answered after a long pause. “And what I want is you.” Since he was still so close above Aaron, his words sparked a fresh pang of fear in the boy.

“What do you mean?” Aaron whispered, scared to hear the answer. Then he thought of something else, and in a little louder voice, he asked, “How the hell did you get in here, anyway?” He hoped to stall for time - Aaron wasn’t scared of much, but ever since a few years before, when he’d read a particularly vivid crime novel about a man who kidnapped, raped and killed boys between the ages of ten and fifteen, rape had been his secret, deep-dark fear. He’d rather have died than admit it, even before he’d ever thought about committing suicide, but he was scared of strange men. He still liked to watch cop shows and read crime novels - he just had nightmares when they were about rape.

Again, it was several seconds before the man replied. “There is very little that can stop me,” he said. “You will learn this, in time.”

That sounded sinister. Aaron tried to shrink back into the carpet, as if he could fall straight through to the living room below. He wanted to scramble out from under the man, but there wasn’t enough room. In any case, Aaron was sure that the man would have no trouble at all in stopping him. “What do you want me for?” he managed to stammer out, hoping his guess was wrong.

This time the reply came more quickly. “Your death called me to you by its wrongness. What foolish impulse prompted you to take your own life?” There was just a hint of strain, caused by ire, in his voice, and Aaron remembered the angry look in the man’s eyes when they had been silver. “You were almost lost beyond even my reach before I was ready to catch you, and with your death you would have destroyed my first chance in over a hundred years to pass my burden on to another.”

“Wh- what?” Aaron blinked up at the man, too startled, for an instant, to be scared. “Over a hundred years? Burden? But-?” It suddenly occurred to him that the man must be utterly insane. Perhaps if the fantasy was encouraged, Aaron would get out of this without... he didn’t even want to think of it! “What burden are you passing on to me?” He desperately wished the man would move, giving Aaron a chance to get away.

“The burden of the guardian that Thanatos has always held,” the man replied.

“I thought you said that you were Thanatos,” Aaron said.

“I am, and so will you be. Thanatos is not a name, Aaron, it is a position. Thanatos is who I am, but my name is Silas.”

“Silas. Right.” Aaron paused. “Wait - when did I tell you my name?” He stared up into the man’s expressionless grey eyes, a new kind of fear coursing through him.

The man - Silas - smiled slightly, though whether it was derisive or simply amused Aaron couldn’t be sure. “You never told me your name, Aaron. I made it my business to find out the moment I became aware of your... imminent demise."

“What do you mean?”

“When a death occurs out of place, it is always of interest to me.”

“Out of place?” Something about this man terrified Aaron; a very different kind of fear than his phobia about rape, for even though his words were crazy, there was a disturbing ring of truth to them that Aaron couldn’t ignore. “Wh- what does that mean?”

“Each human has a set time at which they will die, in one way or another. It is the only thing in life that is truly constant. There is very little that can cause a death to occur out of turn, so when I felt you dying at a time which was not your own, I investigated this... oddity. What I found was indeed odd - there is no time for your death.”

“So I’m never gonna die?” Despite the insanity of the conversation, Aaron couldn’t help but be interested.

Silas shook his head. “Not necessarily. It means there is no specific time for you to die. Instead, you could die at any time. It would not be wrong, but it would not be right, either. Of course, this allows the potential of living for a very long time; indeed, it indicates a condition somewhat... other than human, and is key in the candidacy for Thanatos.”

“Thanatos... so if that’s a job, what’s it mean? What do you do?” Caught up in the strange conversation, Aaron spoke almost normally, having temporarily forgotten his unfortunate position beneath a man he’d never met before in his life. He’d even mostly lost track of the fact that the conversation was utterly insane.

“Simply put, it means Death. However, it is not at all like the traditional ‘Grim Reaper’ concept of Death. It would be more accurate to compare the position to that of a border guard; that which is dead must remain so, and that which lives must not die before its time, and it is my place to assure that this universal law is not violated.”

“What happens if it is? Violated, I mean. Is it real bad, like the end of the world?” Aaron was intrigued. It would be cool if he could mess things up by dying out of turn - even more so if he could do it by coming back to life when he was supposed to be dead. That would be great!

But Silas was shaking his head again. “No, that is not the case at all. It is hardly catastrophic when there is a violation. Indeed, the dead often walk when they should not, in the form of vampires and similar ilk. The reverse is less common, as there are only a very few creatures of any kind that can cause a being with a set time of death to die out of turn. In either case, there is very little individual consequence; it is when the number of anachronisms becomes too great that problems begin to occur. It is my responsibility to prevent this from occurring, both by compensating for the loss of those who should not be dead and by laying to rest or destroying those who should not be... animated. I, myself, am, in practice, immortal at this time, for I cannot die until the position is passed on.”

“Vampires?”

“Yes.”

“Immortal.”

“Yes.”

There was silence for a long time as Aaron absorbed this new batch of lunacy and tried to come up with a way to persuade the man to move. Finally, unable to think of anything else, he put it bluntly. “That’s good for you, I’m sure, but can you get off me? I want to finish killing myself now.”

“That is something I cannot allow you to do, Aaron,” Silas said. “I will let you up now, but suicide is no longer an option for you.” He sat back on his heels, leaving Aaron space to move away.

Aaron took immediate advantage of his regained freedom, crawling over to his bed and hopping up to sit on the windowsill at the foot of the bed. If worst came to the worst, he could always escape out of it, and maybe even kill himself if he landed right. His room was only on the second floor, but if he landed on his head he might snap his neck. “It’s none of your damn business whether I kill myself or not, but even if you want to stop me, you can’t! Sooner or later I’ll be alone for a few minutes in the kitchen or the bathroom, and I’ll be able to kill myself if I want to. Lots of dangerous things in the kitchen and the bathroom.” He grinned, despite himself, to think of it.

“No,” Silas said. “No, you will not be able to take your own life, for I will make it impossible for you to do so. Now that I have found you, I am not about to let you go so easily.”

“Dude, you’re insane.” Aaron fiddled with the latch on the window, trying to get it open. It was stuck. “You can’t just stop someone from dying. It doesn’t work that way.”

“That is true. In the normal course of things, that would not be possible, even for me, were it time for that person to die. You, however, are a unique case, and as such you are exempt from many - quite nearly all - of the rules. As apprentice to Thanatos, you would retain the pseudo-immortality that I, myself, possess.”

“Apprentice to Thanatos? Pseudo-immortality? Give it to someone as crazy as you, someone who wants it. I don’t want anything to do with it, so don’t bother offering me that shit. Just stay the fuck away from me!” In his frustration with the rusted window latch, as well as his exasperation with the crazy freak who wanted to stop him from dying, Aaron lapsed into language he normally refrained from using around most adults.

Silas rose to his feet in a single, graceful movement and took a step toward Aaron, but stopped there. “I am not going to do that, Aaron. I am sorry that you will have to experience this, but I have been too compassionate to pass this burden on for far too long. Hate me if you wish, but this is something that must be done.”

“Fuck you,” Aaron said automatically, focusing on getting the latch undone. It was starting to loosen.

“Foul language will not alter your situation, Aaron.” As he spoke, the man lifted a thin silver chain from around his neck, holding it in his left hand so that the pendant - which had been hidden beneath his t-shirt before - dangled an inch or two below his closed fist. The pendant was silver to match the chain and looked like a six-pointed star inside of a hexagon, about an inch across.

Sunlight from the window glinting on the silver caught Aaron’s attention, and he abandoned his work on the window latch. Leaning toward Silas, though remaining on the far side of the bed, he tried to get a good look at the small pendant. It was hard to focus on the ornament because it was twirling rapidly, and the silver kept catching the light from the window, flashing and sparkling hundreds of times in blindingly quick succession. The glinting of the light, coupled with the strain of trying to focus on a small, twirling object, gave him a headache almost immediately. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, he moved his eyes from the pendant to Silas’ face. The man was frowning, as if something wasn’t working quite right. “What do you care about my language?” Aaron said. “I don’t care.”

“I will not tolerate the use of profanity.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of shit that’s not okay with you.” Aaron turned yet again to the window latch, trying to keep his attention more or less equally divided between the latch and Silas. “Fuck you six ways to hell.”

Aaron didn’t see the man move, but without warning Silas was suddenly on the bed beside the boy. Even as the springs still creaked from his landing the man had hold of Aaron, turning his face so that they were eye-to-eye. “When I tell you what I will not permit you to do, I expect you to obey me.”

“And when I say I’m not interested, I expect you to leave me alone. You’re not doing that, so why the hell should I listen to you.” Aaron tried to jerk away, but the man was stronger than he looked, and Aaron was held fast. So, looking straight into Silas’ eyes, Aaron used his favorite phrase. “Jesus fucking god!”

“You need to be taught a harsh lesson,” Silas said coldly. “If you are not willing to accept the few rules that I impose upon you, I will be forced to bind you, a process that is not pleasant at all and will leave you with little leeway.”

Aaron closed his eyes. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll behave for now, as long as you go away and leave me alone. Okay?”

“I will leave for the present, Aaron. However, I must ensure that you will not take your own life before I can return. To that end...” He slid his hand up Aaron’s shirt.

“What the hell are you doing?!” the boy yelled, jumping back as far as Silas’ grip would let him.

Something cold pressed against Aaron’s chest above his heart, and Silas, instead of answering, spoke a short phrase in a language Aaron had never heard before. Aaron suddenly felt very cold. He stared into Silas’ eyes, his gaze once again revealing sudden fear instead of anger. The man withdrew his hand, revealing the pendant, which must have been the cold object the boy had felt.

“I had not planned on finding an heir, and am not prepared,” Silas said as he refastened the chain around his neck. “I will leave you, for now. Other business presses me at this time, but even if I do not return within a few days, you may be certain that I have not forgotten you. And remember this, as well.” Silas held the boys gaze, a threat clear in his grey eyes. “It is of no consequence what you choose to do from this point on. I will always be able to find you, and I will know what you have done.” He smiled, not kindly. “You would do best to behave yourself. This means, of course, that you cannot make any more attempts on your own life.”

Aaron nodded the moment Silas released him. “Yeah, got it. Best behavior. No dying. No swearing. No moving to another country in a crazy attempt to hide. Can do.”

“See that you keep to that,” Silas said, getting to his feet. “I will hold you to your word.” He crossed the room without so much as glancing back at Aaron, but turned just before shutting the door behind himself. “I will return in a short time, my apprentice. Be alert.” The door closed with a quiet click, and Silas was gone.

Aaron remained on the bed for several minutes more, trembling with the repressed shock of the experience. All he’d intended to do was kill himself, and now he was being stalked by a crazy guy who thought he was immortal. It was all just a little too much for him to figure out right now. Though it was still afternoon, it was already beginning to get dark, and Aaron was tired and utterly overwhelmed by the whole adventure. It would be for the best if he could get some sleep. Maybe he would be able to think better tomorrow. Too inundated to even be nervous anymore, now that the man was gone, Aaron climbed into bed without even bothering to change into his pajamas, and he was asleep within minutes.

Chapter Two: counterdiscipline.net/antagonist
Aaron slept late the next morning, and by the time he finally dragged himself out of bed - around noon - he wasn’t sure if the madman had been real or just part of a nightmarish delusion brought on by the poisons he had taken. Was it a fevered dream, or a disturbing reality? Aaron couldn’t tell, and, at the moment, he didn’t much care. It was too early, in his eyes, and foremost in his mind was his empty stomach. Dragging himself out of bed, Aaron slid to the floor for a minute, giving himself a short time to wake up the rest of the way. Mornings were never a good time for him. After he had finally gotten to his feet, he stumbled out of his bedroom and down the stairs, still only half-awake.

In the kitchen, he found a box of Rice Chex and a half-gallon jug of milk, so he fished out a bowl and a spoon and made cold cereal. Anything more complicated would be too much for him until he was awake enough to make some coffee. Despite being only fourteen, he was addicted to the stuff, and had to have it to be completely awake, though much of that was his natural tendency towards being nocturnal. He liked to stay up late and then sleep in until the afternoon, a habit his stepparents had tried many times to get him out of. It was nice not to have them nagging at him to get out of bed this morning.

Still in a state of vague, tired cheerfulness, Aaron dumped his bowl and spoon in the sink when his was finished, remembered to put the milk in the fridge, and then made a nice big mug full of coffee. Drink in hand, he settled contentedly onto the big, puffy couch in the living room and turned on the TV. Slowly sipping his coffee, he turned the channel to Cartoon Network and watched an episode of Dexter’s Lab. Half an hour later, a mostly-awake Aaron put the mug in the sink with the other dishes and went back into the living room to call his best friend.

Casey answered after the first ring with an attempt at a seductive “Hello.” Aaron would have punched him if he weren’t on the other end of the phone line.

“Hey, lover,” he joked. “Did I call at a bad time?”

“Aaron!” Casey laughed. “Aw, you know you want this, come on!”

“What I want, you don’t got, Case. Seriously, though, you want me off the phone? Expecting an... important call?”

“Yeah,” Casey said. “But she was supposed to call twenty minutes ago, so she can wait. Besides, I’ve got call waiting. What’s up?”

“The strangest thing happened yesterday.”

“Get high again?”

“No. I... ate something that disagreed with me.”

“And you called me to tell me this why?”

“It wasn’t that. Some weird guy showed up in my house. I don’t know how he got in ‘cuz it was locked, but he came into my bedroom and threatened me. Said he was immortal. Said I could be immortal, and he was gonna make me.”

“You sure you weren’t tripping?”

“I wasn’t, but he might have been. He was crazy, anyway. He had this funny little necklace thing, and he kept on waving it around like he thought it was magic. It was crazy.”

“What happened?”

“He left. Said he’d be back though.”

“You know, if I had a stalker I’d rather she was a pretty girl. Your taste in stalkers sucks.”

“Hey, I didn’t choose him. He just kind of showed up.”

“Sucks for you, Aaron.”

“No kidding.” Aaron let it rest and changed the subject. “Got any special plans for that girl, lover?”

Casey laughed. “Do I ever! Parents are hardcore Christians, the both of them. Shock the hell out of ‘em, if they got any hell in there in the first place.”

“Take it she’s a rebel and not a prude.”

“You wouldn’t believe.” Casey’s big grin was almost audible over the phone line. “Listen, someone’s trying to call, and it might be her. Later?”

“Later.” Aaron hung up, shaking his head with a riant smile. Each of Casey’s last three girlfriends had been radically different from the girls before and after her, and Aaron had no reason to think that this girl would last any longer than the rest - about two weeks or so. Even though he was only fifteen, Casey was already developing quite a reputation.

With nothing else to do, Aaron turned on the computer. While he was waiting for it to start up he made himself another mug of coffee, then he returned to the machine and connected to the internet. He made his usual rounds, checking his email and the handful of message boards of which he was an active part. There was nothing new anywhere, so he ran a Google search for websites on the first thing that popped into his head: vampires. Normally he wouldn’t have looked up that sort of thing, but the madman had mentioned them yesterday. Immortality, as well. On a whim, he typed both words into the search engine.

As he scrolled through the results, no one page caught his eye, so he clicked on the tenth little ‘o’ in ‘Google’, then clicked on the twentieth without bothering to scroll through the results. Now the little ‘o’ number twenty-seven was on the screen, and he could click it. If he was going to be researching imaginary creatures for no particular reason, he might as well be systematic about it, and twenty-seven was his favorite number.

About halfway down the page, one of the links seemed to jump out at him. ‘antagonist’, the title read, with a lower-case ‘a’. The summary consisted of a pair of disconnected snippets: “...contrary to what is shown in the popular media, vampires do not all possess the same traits. . .cannot starve to death, though they may become too weak to move, and due to their undead status they are, in effect, immortal unless killed...”

This one would do. Aaron clicked on the link, and the new page loaded. It was very professional looking, with a sidebar to contain all the links. The main body of the page consisted of a short paragraph of explanation beneath a series of three pictures: first a pencil sketch of a man with long hair, sharp eyes and fangs; second, a photograph of a normal-looking girl, about fifteen years old; and last, another pencil drawing, this one of a man in the process of turning into a wolf - a werewolf. Above the pictures was the word ‘antagonist’ in large font with all lower-case letters, and below that a short sentence in italics. What the books and movies get wrong.

“This webpage,” began the summary paragraph, “was designed in an attempt to help those of you out there who know about the supernatural world to come to a better understanding of it, and for those of you who don’t believe to have at least this much exposure. This information is by no means complete; we are constantly updating what we have here, and if you have something to add, feel free to email me. I can be reached at volk_luni@counterdiscipline.net. Be aware that both spam and irrelevant emails will be detected and deleted immediately. Click on the links in the sidebar to access the available information about any specific creature listed. Email me if there is a creature not listed that you have accurate information regarding and wish to see posted here.” The author of the page signed her - or himself, though Aaron got the definite feeling that it was a woman - name as ‘Synesthesia’.

The page was done in a sort of mint chocolate chip theme, with the background a nice, pastel, minty green with black text, and the headings a soft, chocolately brown with lettering to match the page background. The links were the same chocolate color as the background of the headings. All in all, it was quite visually appealing, and somehow it didn’t seem to Aaron as the sort of color scheme and design a man would choose to use. Turning to the sidebar, he scrolled down, looking at the categories. There were the popular choices, namely vampires and werewolves, but there were also some obscure creatures under other categories that he had never even heard of before. There was a listing for ‘Seraphim’ under ‘Demons’, for example, and under ‘Immortal’, there was a listing for ‘Naga’.

Maybe he’d have a look at some of this later - it actually looked kind of interesting, for a fantasy website. Very professional, even if it described creatures that did not exist, and never had. Aaron was interested in technical explanations of any kind, about pretty much everything. If the information describing each creature lived up to the professionalism of the main page, this could prove to be a good place to spend a couple of hours reading. He scrolled back up to the top and clicked on the ‘Vampires’ link.

The first thing on the page was a larger version of the first picture on the opening page - the one of the man with the long hair and the sharp eyes. More detail was visible here, from the utter disdain on his face to the faint wisps of hair that floated around his face, pulled free from the loose ponytail he wore. It was a very well-drawn and lifelike image, almost seeming to come off the page. You could even see his fangs, peeking out just a little from his knowing smirk, and the eyes were drawn in the style that made them seem to follow Aaron wherever he moved. It was beautiful, in an eerie sort of way. Aaron approved. Maybe he’d show it to Casey later, or even print it out, when he was done reading. He scrolled down.

“Vampires are popular in literature among many young adults, a fact made most obvious by the popularity of Anne Rice’s vampire novels,” the webpage informed him. “However, though the vampires in each separate author’s ideas are shown with the same pervasive traits, the vampires portrayed in these, and other, novels, as well as those shown in movies or on TV, are inconsistent with one another. This is because, contrary to what is shown in popular media, vampires do not all possess the same traits. One vampire may perish in sunlight and be burned by a cross but have no problem with running water, while the next may be able to withstand the cross and walk in sunlight - as in Dracula, becoming similar to a normal human - and yet balk at the slightest trickle of a river. No rule regarding vampires seems to be constant save for their undead state, and the thirst for blood that they all share.

The only other trait that seems to be universal is that they cannot starve to death, though they may become too weak to move, and due to their undead status they are, in effect, immortal unless killed. It could be argued that vampires, being dead, even if up and walking around, should not be considered immortal. The definition of the word is ‘the state of being able to live until one is killed’, and vampires do not, technically, live. Even so, their condition is similar to that of immortality, so much so that, for simplicity’s sake, it is easiest to simply consider these creatures to possess that condition.

As complete as possible of a list of the traits vampires possess, in various combinations, is as follows: death in sunlight, or the condition of reverting to a nearly human state during the daylight hours; an aversion to garlic, silver, various religious symbols and heat in excessive amounts; an inability to pass or cross over running water without assistance; the need to sleep in its native earth; the almost universal trait of speed, strength and overall senses - among other things - much more powerful than those of a human; possessing of no reflection in a mirror or image in a photograph; inability to enter a human’s dwelling place uninvited; the ability to transform itself into a bat or a wolf, or sometimes fog; power, to a certain extent, over a human’s weaker mind; unnatural intuition; the rare powers of telepathy, or the even more uncommon ability of telekinesis; an anti-coagulant agent in the saliva. Vampires are difficult to kill - destroy, if you prefer - but one can be killed by a combination of the following, preferably all, if possible: cedarwood stake through the heart; head cut off, preferably with the mouth stuffed full of garlic; thorough cremation - the ashes should be scattered, in running water if possible; exposure to the sunlight, though this is applicable only to some.

There are, of course, vampires that seem to break all of the rules. Utterly unpredictable creatures, these few seem to possess none - or perhaps just a few of the minor annoyances - of the vampire’s possible weaknesses, and yet all of the strengths, in spades. Fortunately, such monsters are few and far between, with perhaps five or less known of in the entire world. This is a comfort, considering the high danger level associated with such creatures. One such vampire, the most famous in the supernatural community and well-known for his whimsical nature and clever, insidious manipulations, is a creature known as Dæmeon. He is over five thousand years of age, and seems to possess none of a vampire’s weaknesses save the lack of a reflection in a mirror or image in a camera and the inability to enter a home without an invitation by someone inside. The drawing at the top of this page is a pencil sketch of Dæmeon, done by a talented artist called Kerry Madrid.”

Aaron took a break from reading to get himself another cup of coffee. He was a firm believer in the fact that you can never have too much coffee, and no matter the large amounts of caffeine in his system. Maybe this would explain why he was so short, because he measured in at five foot - even. It was a sore point with him, but he was only fourteen. He had plenty of time left to grow. Yet another mugfull of coffee safely in hand, Aaron returned to his computer to finish reading the information on vampires. It was actually somewhat interesting, despite the fact that none of it was true. Someone had obviously done a lot of planning to be so thorough with their fantasy explanations.

“There are three ways in which a human becomes a vampire, all of which require that the human first be bitten by one of the creatures. The bite itself will not turn a human into a vampire, even if the human should die only moments later. In order for the transformation to occur, one of these three conditions must be met:

One: After being bitten, the human swallows even a small amount of the vampire’s blood. Eventually, the vampire blood will dilute out of the human’s system, but if the human dies before this occurs, he or she will become a vampire. In addition, the bite can occur long before the blood is administered, and the human will still change; a taste of vampire blood at any time after being bitten will cause the human to become a vampire upon death, unless the blood filters out.

Two: Sheer force of the vampire’s will. A powerful vampire can change a human without giving any of its blood, but this requires a certain amount of concentration and effort of will, and it is easier for the creature simply to give its blood to the human instead.

Three: The human dies of some other cause while the vampire drinks his blood. For example, a bullet wound received moments before causes the human to die while the vampire is still at his or her throat. This is a very rare occurrence, however, and easily prevented if the vampire kills the human by its bite, or simply finishes moments before the human dies.

Vampires are incapable of reproduction in the normal matter, so a half-vampire, or dhamphir, is harder to produce then by a simple liaison between a vampire and a human, as this would not produce offspring. It is believed that this condition is brought about when a vampire bites a woman who is with child and gives her some of its blood. Thus, the child forms in her womb with the blood helping to shape its growth, and the child is born a dhamphir. This produces various degrees of vampirism in the grown child, depending on the stage of pregnancy that the woman had reached when she tasted the vampire’s blood. The degree of vampirism in the resulting child is inversely proportional to the woman’s state of pregnancy at the time of the incident; the closer to conception, the more vampiric the child, for the blood is in the system longer and has more time to work. Conversely, if the pregnancy is farther along and the child is nearer to birth, the vampire blood may hardly affect it at all. Unfortunately for the child, the vampire nature, being dead, will, save in a few exceptional cases, deteriorate the life of the child’s human nature, until the child either dies or becomes a true vampire. If the latter is the case, the child will be a weak vampire, especially considering the young age at which these unfortunate children usually die.

Some vampires may seem to have endearing personalities - even to be kind. There are as wide a variety of different personalities among these creatures as there is among humans. However, no matter how it feels, the vampire must take life from others, in the form of blood, in order to survive. Every vampire is dangerous, and you must not let yourself be fooled. It is also true that vampires are dead, and thus destroying one is merely ending an undead existence that should never have been begun in the first place. To the end of getting rid of these dangerous creatures, there are bounty hunters in general, but these kill only the ones for which others are willing to pay. Traditional vampire hunters, on the other hand, may dedicate their lives to the sole task of ridding the world of these creatures. One famous ex-hunter is a man known as Father Christopher Michaels, who is currently retired and attempting to train a new generation of vampire hunters. Other well-known hunters who are still in the business include the impulsive Jade Meron, as well as Ebony Chris, who possesses an... interesting sense of humor.

The names of upstart vampire hunters spread like wildfire through the vampire community, though most are soon forgotten, either passed off as harmless or killed. These two, however, have remained in the spotlight for much longer than usual. Ebony seems to be untouchable - it is rumored that he has never so much as been injured in a fight with a vampire, and he is famous for his methods of torture. Jade, on the other hand, is often underestimated due to his vague nature, and he is efficient at what he does. This may seem to be an irrelevant tangent, but vampire hunters are the humans who know these creatures best, and they are important to mention, at least in passing.

This concludes my available information regarding vampires. Please email me at volk_luni@counterdiscipline.net if you know of anything that I have left out.”

Evidently, that was all there was. Aaron bookmarked the page and then scrolled back up to look at the picture one last time before he logged off. It was very well-drawn - already he was quite fond of it, and he had only seen it for the first time a few minutes ago. It was eerie, however - something about the face, though he couldn’t quite place the detail, made the picture bear a disturbingly similar resemblance to Aaron himself. Maybe that was why he found it so fascinating to look at. Shaking his head, he closed the window and proceeded to shut down the computer. For now, there was nothing else of interest to him on the machine.

Thinking about what he had read, Aaron went to put his coffee mug in the sink. Naturally, the version of vampires portrayed on that webpage was that of the author, and so whatever the lunatic from last night thought of vampires, it would be different. Still, the descriptions had been thorough, listing most of the characteristics of vampires that could be mixed and matched. Perhaps it would be helpful later, and perhaps not, but at least now Aaron knew a little more. Humming idly to himself, he filled the sink with water and dishsoap and washed the few dishes that he had used that morning. He didn’t see the sense in letting dirty dishes build up. Fleetingly, he wondered if he should maybe be more upset about the previous day’s intrusion, but at the moment he simply wasn’t, and that was fine. Less to worry about.

With the dishes safely put away, Aaron wandered back into the living room, giving the clock a quick glance on his way out. It was a little after three o’clock. For lack of anything better to do, he went back to the couch to watch some more TV. Spending a Saturday alone usually ended in an explosion or some other disaster as a result of one of his ill-fated ‘scientific experiments’, but today he just didn’t feel like mixing random household chemicals together. He really wasn’t in the mood for doing much of anything at all. Maybe this was the way his subconscious dealt with the unpleasant memories from yesterday, but Aaron already felt like going back to sleep for another couple of hours. After a while, he got up and pulled all the shades so it would be at least a little bit dark, then he turned off the TV and stretched out on the couch for a quick nap.

Unfortunately for Aaron, just as he was getting properly asleep, someone shook him awake. Growling incoherent curses, Aaron pushed whoever was shaking him away and propped himself up on his elbows, blinking groggily. “What the hell?” he said. It seemed darker than it had been before, moreso than the shades could possibly account for. “Back already, Silas?” Closer inspection, however, revealed that the person kneeling by the couch was not Silas.

“Casey,” Aaron growled. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Casey grinned. “Thought I’d bring Annika by to meet you, but if you want to be left alone for that Silas guy...”

“You ass. That’s the name of the loony I was talking about.”

“You didn’t sound so angry about it,” Casey joked.

“Shut up.” Aaron rolled back over. “I was sleeping.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon! ‘Sides, Annie wanted to meet the guy with the immortal stalker with the magic necklace.”

“Why do you pass these stories on?” But Aaron sat up, looking around. He didn’t see anyone but Casey. “Where is she?”

“Outside,” Casey replied. “You should go let her in. I’m gonna make a sandwich.” He got up and headed for the kitchen.

“Already you’re so good to her,” Aaron said, shaking his head. “Fine.” He finger-combed his hair quickly, then stood up and went to the front door, adjusting his rumpled clothing as he went in an attempt to look at least somewhat presentable. Satisfied that he was as good as he was going to get at this point, he opened the door.

A girl waited patiently on the front step. Soft, black hair - with the dark brown roots starting to show - tumbled in loose curls to her shoulders, framing a pretty, heart-shaped face, an angelic appearance that was somewhat marred by the lip piercing, the ring through her left eyebrow and the heavy black makeup. The black clothes she wore served to make her white skin seem even whiter; a denim miniskirt that looked like it had been made from an old pair of jeans and a black scoop neck shirt with bell sleeves that were black lace from a little below the elbows on down. Her feet sported a pair of flip-flops, inappropriate for the cold weather, and she was decked out in chair jewelry, as well as a pair of upside down cross earrings. As Aaron looked her over, she did the same to him, then their eyes met and they both grinned. Despite the radical differences in appearance and outfit choice, they sensed that they had a lot in common. Instant friendship.

“Come on in,” Aaron said. “I’m Aaron Hunter. Casey’s in the kitchen making a sandwich.”

“I’m Annika LaLanne.” They made eye contact again, and both of them laughed, though hers was more of a giggle.

“The kitchen’s just off the living room over here,” he told her, standing back so that she could come inside. “You can turn the TV back on if you want but there isn’t much to watch right now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I don’t watch TV.”

“Well, I’ll just go drag Casey out of the kitchen, then.”

Casey’s bright, lively voice answered Aaron’s question as the blonde emerged from the kitchen carrying a sliced-turkey sandwich in one hand. “No need.” Casey definitely didn’t match his new girlfriend. For one thing, his skin was tanned - a rarity in an Alaskan winter, especially for someone who never went tanning. A green and white Oakland Athletics baseball cap with its fancy old-fashioned “A” and the small “’s” was firmly settled backwards over his perpetually mussed white-blonde hair and he wore a black Juneau-Douglas High School swim team pullover over a pair of cutoff blue jean shorts and a scuffed pair of running shoes. Very sportsy, as opposed to her more gothic look.

“You two look so cute together,” Aaron joked.

Casey made a face at him. “Don’t make fun.”

“Fine.” Aaron turned back to Annika. “Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. I really just wanted to find out about that immortal stalker Casey told me you had.”

“Oh. Well, he just kind of showed up in my room and said that he was going to make sure I wouldn’t die, because I could be immortal. And then he left, but he said he’d be back.”

“Did he ever say what his name was?”

“He told me he was Silas once, but he didn’t use that name much. Mostly he said he was Thanatos.”

“Oh.” Annika looked at him thoughtfully.

“Why, do you know him?”

“No. I just wanted to stop by and hear about it, and get to meet you. I’d like to stay longer, but I have to be somewhere in twenty minutes. Sorry for being so abrupt.”

“No problem. I wouldn’t want you to be late.” Aaron smiled.

“Thanks.” Annika got up. “Sorry about waking you up for such a short visit, Aaron. Come on, Casey.”

Casey mumbled something around a mouthful of sandwich, and the two of them walked over to the door.

“’Bye,” Aaron called after them.

Casey just flipped a little wave back over his shoulder and jumped down over the two stairs that led up to the landing outside the door, but Annika turned to give him a quick smile and a “’Bye” before she shut the door behind her.

Aaron sat back down on the couch with a sigh. Casey was just one of those people who lived way too fast for anyone else to keep up with them. It hadn’t even been five minutes since he had arrived and already he was long gone. It didn’t really bother Aaron too much - he was used to it - but just watching Casey was exhausting, and a little overwhelming. Aaron shook his head. Sooner or later, Casey was going to have to learn to slow down. Of course, this time it had been partly Annika’s fault, but it was beginning to seem that she and Casey had something in common after all - they both seemed to live faster than most people.

No longer in the mood for sleeping, Aaron let that train of thought drop and went upstairs to due some homework. He had a book report due on Monday, along with some other, lesser homework for his other classes; might as well get it done now instead of at the last minute. As he sat down at the desk in his room, he thought of something that he passed off as irrelevant: Annika had been outside - down the hall and behind a closed door - during Aaron’s rude awakening. She couldn’t have heard, and no one had mentioned it to her, so how had she known?

Chapter Three: Apprentice to Thanatos
The next few days passed by quickly for Aaron. His stepparents came home on Sunday and took him out to eat as a reward for behaving himself all weekend. They’d also brought him some cheap presents from Seattle; a t-shirt, some science fiction manga. Nothing too exciting. It turned out that there was nothing to indicate that the baby wasn’t going to be perfectly healthy, which may have had something to do with Cynthia and James Lawrence’s generosity and all-around good mood. Aaron was happy for them, though he wasn’t sure that he really wanted a sibling. He knew how much his stepmother wanted to have a child of her own.

On Monday, it was back to the regular, comfortable routine of school; going to classes if he felt like it or skipping with his friends if he didn’t. Everything was so perfectly normal that he found it difficult even to think about Friday’s strange experience, not that he was eager to. It was best to forget about it; by now the lunatic was probably long gone, and the man probably wouldn’t show now that Aaron’s family was around, in any case.

On Thursday, Aaron left during lunch, cutting sixth period, and went for a walk in the cold, crossing the bridge to wander around on Douglas Island. A two-mile walk south from the foot of the bridge brought him to Sandy Beach - the only beach in Juneau that was actually sandy, due mostly to the refuse from mining that had been done there. It was his favorite place to go when he felt like being by himself.

It was very cold outside; according to the little thermometer keychain that hung on Aaron’s jacket zipper, it was barely above freezing. He had the beach all to himself on this mid-November afternoon, so the only noises he heard as he walked along the beach were beach sounds - wind and waves - and the occasional rushing of distant traffic. Every so often he would stop and use a stick he’d picked up to scratch his name or a small design in the wet sand near the water.

When he reached the cave-in, an small, baylike inlet where a mine had collapsed many years ago and that now formed a pleasant pool, Aaron turned to look back the way he had come. His trail of footprints leading off into the distance along the ocean reminded him of a poem he’d seen on a bookmark once, about a man who was walked on the beach with God. The man had looked back at the end of his journey and seen two sets of footprints everywhere except the hardest times in his life. He had asked God why he had been abandoned when he most needed help, and God had told him that, when the man saw one set of footprints, it didn’t mean that God had abandoned him. Those were the places God had carried him. Aaron had bought the bookmark, liking the poem, and he still used it in whatever book he happened to be reading at a given time.

Aaron wasn’t ready to go home yet, though, so he turned back to the cave-in and climbed around the outside of the inlet, scrambling over the rocks on the steep hill. On the other side, he could continue to walk on the beach, though it began to get more rocky than sandy. He needed the walk, though; he wanted to think things through about the baby. It wouldn’t be coming for about half a year yet, but he wanted to figure out how he felt about it. After all, he’d been an only child for almost fifteen years now, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of a baby in the house. He knew, from the stories some of his friends told him about their younger siblings, what trouble a baby could be, and it would take up all the attention.

Of course, Aaron was old enough to take care of himself most of the time. Maybe it would have been harder if he had been younger, but he was fourteen. He didn’t need as much attention as the baby would, and he could get by. He got along well with his stepparents and didn’t want to jeopardize that. They would probably like the new baby better than they liked him, even if the distinction was unconscious, simply because the child would be their own, while Aaron was no relation to them at all, not really. He knocked at small rocks with his stick, sending them bouncing down the beach into the water.

A new kid in the house might mean more freedoms for Aaron himself, but he didn’t really need any more freedom than he already had. He’d never actually wanted a brother or sister, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice to have one. It was just something he’d never wished for, not something he’d wished against. It probably wouldn’t be too bad. The kid would get older and Aaron could show him or her the ropes, maybe help protect the kid from gradeschool bullies. It might be fun to be an older brother. Of course, the difference in ages might be a problem. By the time the baby was as old as Aaron was now, Aaron would be almost thirty. Kids didn’t spend much time hanging around old people, or at least none of the kids Aaron knew did. Old people weren’t any fun, and Aaron wouldn’t lie to himself. When he was old like his parents, he probably wouldn’t be much fun either. That was the way things worked.

So he wouldn’t be as close to his little brother ( he had already started thinking of the child as a boy, though his stepparents hadn’t opted to find out for sure ) as he might have hoped, but he could still get to know the little guy. Even if he would be out of high school before the kid hit elementary. Maybe the kid would look up to him as a kind of favorite uncle. That wouldn’t be too bad. Aaron was sort of fond of little kids. Of course, he hadn’t really spent that much time around them, and he knew that if you lived with one, it wasn’t much fun at times. Also, there was always the chance that the kid would be a brat.

Aaron accidently hit a rock so that it bounced off another and went straight up in the air, so he caught it and threw it into the water. Babies cried a lot, he knew. It probably wouldn’t be much fun at all for the first couple of months, or even longer. And the possibilities for brattiness would only increase as the kid got older. Aaron knew some high-schoolers who had never grown out of being bratty, and they were really a pain to be around. Aaron would have to help the kid learn to behave himself. At the very least, he could teach the kid some tricks he could use to make it seem like he was behaving himself, whether or not he really was. Aaron was good at that.