Eternal Sun Read online

them to be false. How was I to learn to survive in this new life if the one who gave it to me had abandoned me?

  "Is service to three beautiful women really so awful, young one?" the brunette asked.

  "No," I said. "How long must I serve you?"

  "I think eternity will be long enough," the blonde woman said, laughing. "What is your name, young one?"

  "Mathias," I said, bowing.

  "He has pretty manners," the brunette said. "He'll make an excellent butler in our house, Sophie."

  "I agree," the red-haired woman, Sophie, said. "The other girls will like him, too." She looked at me, holding out her hand. "I am Sophie and this is Allison and Gladys. We run a house in the next town where you will help us control the customers and see to it that our girls are well-fed."

  And so I went with Sophie, Allison and Gladys. The house of ill-repute I had heard of in my human life opened its doors every evening at sunset and closed at sundown. The women who serviced the men who came to this house were all vampires and many of the men who visited the house never returned to their homes and families. I watched these women sell their bodies and consume their customers for nearly ten years before I could no longer stand the immorality of it all. I was tired of turning away their advances and cleaning up after their meals. I knew I needed to escape or I would lose what little humanity I still held within my eternal body.

  One night as the sun slipped below the horizon, I slipped out into the night. As soon as my absence was discovered, Sophie sent Allison and Gladys into the night to bring me back. I hid from these women, delving deep within the sewers where I knew they would not follow. They soon gave up their search and returned to their house. There was money to be made, after all, and men to steal life from. What was I but a boy who had grudgingly served them for a blink of an eye in immortal terms. They never sought for me again and I never crossed paths with them for the rest of my eternity. I wondered, sometimes, if they were caught in the war between the children of man and the covens, but I did not seek their names among the rolls of the lost.

  For many days I crouched in the deepest caverns of the sewers beneath the city while the sun ruled the sky. Only when the moon ruled the sky could I feel safe enough to leave my hiding place and slip into the world to hunt. I would catch my prey in the alleys as I had been caught. They came to me with open arms, drawn by my face and calm demeanor. They would smile as my teeth slipped into their flesh and sigh as I drained their life to sustain my own. I remembered each face, each scent, each flavor of the blood I took and I mourned each life taken so that I might live.

  It was as I hunted that I realized what I missed the most from my mortal life. Of course, Kathryn was foremost in my mind when I considered what my new existence had cost me, but after the woman who would have been my wife, it was the light of the sun I missed most. Darkness can be seductive, but even the most practiced whore cannot hold a man's attention forever. I longed to feel the sun upon my face. I craved its heat, its warmth, its comfort, but the vampires who had held me as their slave had warned me that if I allowed myself to be touched by the sun, it would consume me in flames. Wretched creature that I was, I preferred the barest existence I had to the finality of true death. I mourned the sun and I craved company in my solitary existence. After a time, I even missed the whores whom I had served. At least at their house, there had been others with whom I could converse and contact with others that held more meaning than satisfying my craving for blood.

  One day, as I cringed against the sewer walls, avoiding the thin line of sunlight passing through a chink in the cobblestones above me, a deep, cultured voice spoke to me from the darkness.

  "Why are you cowering in the dark like a beast, my son?" As he stepped into the dim light where I could see his features, I saw that the voice belonged to a tall, thin man with blonde hair so light it was nearly white and piercing blue eyes. He stood looking at me, unconcerned by the sunlight which lay upon his skin. I threw up my hands, expecting flames to erupt from the vampire's skin, for I knew that this man was the same type of cursed creature I was.

  When the other vampire did not burst into flames I began to doubt what I had been told. Could I truly stand within the sun's light once again? I wanted to reach out and let the light caress my hand, but fear is a harsh mistress. "How do you do that?" I asked, still cringing from the sunlight yet craving to feel it upon my own skin.

  Following my gaze, the vampire looked at his arm where the light lay on his pale skin. "The sun has no power over us, my son, if you take the proper precautions. Did your maker not tell you this?"

  "My maker left me to die in the alley where he attacked me," I said. My voice echoed in the cavern and I was assaulted by the bitterness in the sound.

  "Then I will help you return to the light if you will allow me to. I am Alfred Tallmadge," the vampire said, holding out his hand to me.

  I took his hand, still clinging to the wall. "Mathias Auer."

  Alfred sat with me in the dark sewer until the sun went down. He told me of his life both before and after he was changed by a woman vampire in Europe who sought to make an army of vampire men to serve and protect her. His story of service to the woman who gave him immortality reminded me of the women to whom I had been bound for a decade. A bond formed between us then. Were we not both men imprisoned by women and our own immortality? When darkness held sway over the world, Alfred led me out of the sewer. "The secret to living in the sun is simple, my son," Alfred said. "So long as your heels rest in the soil of your homeland, you are immune to the effects of the sun on your flesh." He looked at me, surely seeing the shock I felt at learning the simplicity of the solution to the one craving I had had since awakening to eternity that I had been unable to fulfill. "Where is the place you call home, Mathias?"

  "I am from the next town south," I said, feeling hopeful for the first time in many years.

  "Then that is where we must go while the sun rests this night, Mathias," Alfred said. "We will take soil from your home and then we will travel among the living and see the world if you like."

  "I would like that very much, Alfred," I said, feeling like a young child about to embark on a vast new adventure.

  Alfred went with me to Highland Home where I found that my family and Kathryn's had laid her to rest in the family cemetery plot behind our home. It seemed fitting to me that soil from her grave would be the catalyst to return me to the light I craved with every part of my soul. She had been my sun in life and would now be my eternal sun.

  "Take the soil with you, Mathias," Alfred said after I had filled my shoes with dirt from Kathryn's grave. "You will have to replenish the soil upon which you walk from time to time, so take enough now to allow you to live among the living and in the light for some time." He handed me a small satchel and I filled it with soil from the garden which surrounded my Kathryn's grave.

  When the sun rose that morning, Alfred stood beside me on the beach where I had played as a child and where I had proposed to my beloved Kathryn. I watched the sun lift itself out of the ocean and I felt a part of my soul heal as the warmth touched my skin. The sound of the waves as they crashed against the beach was music such as I had not heard in my life. The touch of the sun upon my skin was a caress no lover could ever surpass. I felt as close to whole as I believed possible for a creature such as me.

  "Thank you, Alfred," I said. "Thank you for taking me out of the darkness and showing me the light again."

  "If you wish, my son," Alfred said. "I will stay with you. There is more I can teach you about our eternal lives."

  "Why do you want to stay with me?" I asked.

  "I have lived for a very long time, Mathias. I have been alone for so very long and I crave the company of one who understands me and the life I must live."

  And so I stayed with Alfred who taught me how to live as though I were human, how to feed without killing, and how to face eternity without wishing for true death.

  Get All The Books In The Series:

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sp; Mourning Sun

  Captured Sun

  Seven Days

  Banished Sun

  Nine Lives