Chapter One

* * * *

Malachi awoke and looked around, instantly aware of everything in his room, as well as a little of what was just beyond his door and the walls.

He had been dreaming again, or more accurately, remembering. He raised one hand to his throat and rubbed it gently, feeling the ghost of the pain his sire had inflicted. For a short moment he closed his eyes, allowing his mind to flick back through time, to see again the first few days of his new, immortal, life.

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, blinking back the unwanted memories. The hunger was again growing deep within his body, but it was not yet urgent. The blood was no longer so much needed; he was old enough now that he could do without for a couple of days. He vaguely understood that eventually he would no longer need the blood at all, that, then, he would be truly immortal in every way. But that was still far in the future.

As it was, he hadn't had any blood for two days and was slightly surprised at how he was faring. The lack of feeding was actually the fault of his current flat mate, Sarah. She had talked him into allowing her boyfriend to live with them, and had then talked him into helping said boyfriend move in. The past two days, then, had been rather busy, driving up and down London, carrying, moving furniture around. It was now over except for the unpacking of boxes, which were all over the flat. He kept tripping over them and was beginning to get annoyed.

Glancing at the window, which was completely covered in a black-out curtain, just in case, he sat up, running a hand through his unruly, shoulder length, chestnut coloured hair. He didn't need the sunlight blocked, really, not since Egypt, but he was ever paranoid and judging by the memory-laden sleep, he had reason to be. The last time his unconscious had assaulted him in such a fashion, Mathew had come to town.

Which had certainly not been a good thing.

"Hey, Kai!"

Ugh. His nickname, all but shouted in the dulcet tones of said flat mate. The nickname was something he had had to endure since the late nineteen fifties. The world had changed, thinking had changed, and he had had to change right along with it and get used to the silly endearment. Apparently modern humans couldn't work their mouths around a name like 'Malachi.' He really did despair of the race sometimes.

There was a loud banging on his door, followed by the sandy haired head of Sarah peeking round it before she came in all the way.

"What?..What..? I'm awake already!" He faked a yawn, "This had better be good, you know I'm night shift."

The girl grinned at him. She gave his room a cursory glance, taking in its usual meticulousness, before dropping a handful of envelopes on his head, "These came. I didn't know you had a lawyer?"

He raised an eyebrow, thinking quickly, "Neither did I. Wonder what it is?" He gave her a disdainful look, she was standing by the side of his bed with an expectant look on her face. He frowned at her and deliberately pulled the duvet a little further up his torso.

"What? This is a big day! You never get mail! I just wanna know what it is!" She grinned at him again, trying out the puppy-eyed look that he had often born witness to and was gradually beginning to find annoying. He knew that one of these days he would have to leave and set up home somewhere knew, again, and slowly cut off contact with this girl and her lover. He did it every few years, sometimes he regretted it, sometimes not, this time he didn't think he would.

He glared at her for a moment longer and she took the hint. She tapped him on the head with a grin, before leaving and closing the door quietly behind her. He sighed. He'd lived with the girl for over two years now, and had known her one more than that, the time to leave was growing closer, she would start noticing his lack of aging before soon, and that always caused problems.

He grabbed the letters and swung his legs out of the bed, remembering a time when the aging thing had scared him, a time when he hadn't known what to do about it. Consciously checking that he was still wearing the ring, he stood and twitched the curtain aside to look down at the sunlit street. Looking briefly upwards, he noted it was about four in the afternoon. Lovely.

He dropped the curtain and made his bed, dropping the envelopes on the neat linen before moving to the wardrobe to dress. Jeans and t-shirt, as usual, with a light jumper for good measure. His pale skin was enough to make people notice him on a normal day, so at this time of year, he made sure to dress right to avoid any untoward attention. Nearly five hundred years of practice, he was getting good at not being seen.

Taking a moment to check his hunger, he picked up the letters and sat at his desk to go through them. Mostly bills, but the surprise letter from his lawyer, the lawyer he had only met once a year ago and could probably only continue to see personally for another year, was of great interest to him.

It took a couple of reads, but the message eventually registered, and when it did, he felt a rather extreme sense of urgency. Mathew. It had to be.

Damn. He now had either to rush his feed, or endure a couple of hours with the loathsome lawyer, trying not to eat him as the hunger pangs grew. As he hastily put on his shoes, he decided on rushing the feed, he really didn't feel like having to explain away a bloodless corpse.

Definitely wouldn't be a good thing.

A few minutes later he left a shocked looking Sarah and her boyfriend as he rushed through the door, nearly forgetting the coat he needed to keep up the charade that he was human.

* * * *

Pain.

An exquisite, curious sensation at first. A sensation that he had never felt before. A sensation that made him wonder.

Then, as this new sensation hit home, he realised what was happening and tried to get away, tried to stop it. This action just made the pain worse and it reverberated through what must have been arms and legs - things he had never known, for he was a non corporeal entity, he wasn't supposed to have a body!

He could feel it in his head and spreading through his torso, down his limbs, to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He knew what everything was, but he wasn't supposed to have them! He didn't want a body; he wanted to stay as he was!

He fought with all his strength, but he knew that, ultimately, it was futile. The pain spread through his very arteries, as if it were white-hot lightning, burning him from within. It ached in his brain, thumping with a sound that he felt rather than heard, and even the very act of hearing caused him pain.

Feeling, hearing, even tasting what must have been blood in his mouth, all caused him pain and more fear, for he had never known anything even remotely like them. He had never had, and was not supposed to have, a body. In his true form, he witnessed all and interfered only rarely. In his true form, he was made from scattered atoms and collected light molecules.

He was not supposed to feel!

He felt uncomfortable measuring time in such a small unit, but the pain and fear went on for hours, hours that felt like an eternity, and he knew the true meaning of the word. The pain never changed, never relented, as the body was grown around him, from bone to organs, to muscle, to skin. He felt it all, and feared it utterly.

Finally, he became aware and he fell to the ground.

The first few minutes of his life were filled with filling his new lungs with as much oxygen as possible. In great hacking coughs and wheezes, he breathed his first, feeling the ache deep in his chest, the burning in his throat, the dissipating dizziness in his head, the bile rising from what must be his stomach.

When finally his breathing settled and he became used to this new situation, breathing, he lay still, shivering with shock and the cold. He opened his new eyes, squeezing them shut almost instantly as, what little light there was, hurt them terribly. After a moment, he opened them again and saw for the first time.

His first sight was the concrete floor, just inches from his nose. It was dirty and dusty and smelled of damp earth, concrete, and chalk. He took an experimental breath and smelled sweat, burning candles, immortal man.

His body blinked. He was completely unused to seeing in only three dimensions, hearing in such a limited range, smelling at such a tiny degree. Touching was completely alien.

He closed his eyes again and concentrated on the new body, working it out, sorting it through, meticulously working out what each part was for and how it functioned. Eventually, he began to move. Laboriously, for his limbs were trembling and stiff, he worked his way to hands and knees.

For a moment, he stayed as he was, maddeningly fearful of the pressure on his knees and the balls of his hands, fearing that they would break under this unfamiliar weight. When he calmed, he moved further and settled into a kneeling position, his hands hanging limply in his lap, making no move to cover his nakedness.

He took a few deep breaths, eyes on the man sitting a few feet away, back to the wall, cross-legged and impassive, watching him with half lidded eyes. The mans dark skin was gleaming with sweat, as if he had labored over some great task.

Looking straight into those dark eyes, he managed to get his voice to work, "Why me?" His voice surprised him. It was soft, gentle, light, but still masculine and just a little gravelly as these were his first words.

For a moment, the man did not respond, nor even acknowledge the question, then he opened his eyes fully and asked, "Name?"

No. Of course not. He should have expected that the man would show no compassion for what he had done, what he had created. For he knew at who he was looking, he had known of him since the man's first life. This man was known by all his kind, as his teacher had been before him, and he was feared by them all, for what he could do, had just done.

His eyes dropped to the floor in submission as he croaked his answer; "My name is Jazreal, Master."

* * * *

"God damned lawyers!"

Malachi slammed the door shut behind him, cursing lawyers and Mathew in every tongue he knew, of which a few, like Russian, were rather good for swearing in.

The meeting had been a bad one, starting with a comment on how young and healthy he was looking and climaxing in the point in which he found himself wanting to kill the man just to shut him up. Even though he had already fed. It would probably have been worth it, just to hear of Mathew's response.

He stood on the doorstep for a moment, glaring at the short, stone stairway to the main street, wondering what to do next. He ran a hand over his head, smoothing back his hair, accidentally popping the tie he used to keep it back and out of his face. He swore vehemently and then again as it disappeared into the street.

He nearly growled as the breeze caught his hair, whipping it into his face. That was the one thing that he hated the most about being a vampire, his body was permanently stuck in the state in which it had been when he had been changed. If he cut his hair, it grew back within minutes, if he tried body piercing and took the stud out, for just a moment, it healed almost instantly. He even had to renew his tattoo every couple of years, for the damn thing started fading as his body pushed out the ink.

He was stuck looking like a twenty-one year old, longhaired, be-ear-ringed rebel for the rest of his existence. Of course, it hadn't been so bad back in the seventeenth, eighteenth or even nineteenth centuries. He had fit in alright most of the twentieth, what with the hippie movement and the seventies and eighties fashion disasters. It was just now, in the early naughties, that it really annoyed him. Long hair really stood out in this new, modern world.

For a moment he clenched his fists, fighting the annoyance, then he released a breath and brushed a few of the loose strands behind his ears. He decided on another feed before going home to sit down and think things through. Eating Sarah and her beau in a fit of annoyance would definitely be a bad idea.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and swiftly made his way down into the street.

His lawyer was situated in one of the older streets, one of those elegant Georgian places that always made him frown with remembered grievances. He had once lived in such a street in the mid seventeen hundreds. August seventeen forty-two was particularly poignant in his mind. Of his four hundred and ninety-three years, the hundred and seventy he spent in suffering paled against that single month. It still tormented him now, even though he had exacted revenge. He was still faced with the repercussions every day.

He frowned slightly at the thought and headed off in search of the nearest suitable prey.

Malachi was rather particular in his feeding habits, something that had developed and been refined over the years. He would not drink from anyone who had been drinking or taken drugs of any kind. No smokers or anyone over the age of thirty, he tried to avoid anyone ill, though that was a lot harder in this modern age with its modern illnesses.

He preferred, above all else, young men between the age of eighteen and twenty five, though he would drink from a woman of the same age if he had to. It helped somewhat that he no longer had to drink every day, and that he hadn't had to drain a person completely for the past two hundred years, a pint or so seemed to satisfy and even then, he no longer took it all from the one person. Which also helped to keep down the risk of police turning up on his doorstep, as had happened once in the Victorian era.

It didn't take him long, as it was late evening by this time and people were alternately heading home or heading to work as part of the nightlife, rushing from one place to another, catching no ones eye so as not to be late by seeing someone they knew or needed help. In the melee of stressed bodies, Malachi opened his mind and searched for someone who was right. This was a part of the hunt that he did not truly enjoy, his mind was open and searching, so anyone who banged against him, or merely brushed past him, became a conduit and he received images from their minds.

Occasionally he caught memories or desires from truly repugnant people - once, he accidentally touched the mind of a killer and relived, for a split second, every single act that man had committed. He had left an anonymous note with the police a few days later, when he had finally managed to get his mind clear of the images. The killer had been caught and was now serving life.

For now though, the bodies brushing his seemed as innocent as the usual mortal, so he calmed and widened the search, finding the kind of mind that he wanted. Smiling to himself, he moved in the direction of his chosen prey and placed a suggestion in his mind to go toward a more secluded area.

Malachi found the young man sitting, listening to a personal CD player, on a bench in a quiet little park. He moved up and sat on the same bench, taking a book from his pocket. This was the part that he loved, striking up a kind of rapour, almost a friendship, with the prey before feeding. He hadn't been able to do this earlier; he had had to settle for a quick meal on a young woman on the way to the lawyers. Therefore, he was going to savor this hunt.

With a few subtle changes of body language, he managed to catch the youth's attention, though he didn't actually look up, instead training his eyes on the book, re-reading his favourite chapter for the hundredth time. He ran a hand through his hair, quite purposefully smoothing it back behind his ear, exposing his face to view.

Malachi knew very well that he was handsome, in an unconventional, striking sense. His features were angular, his chin slightly long, cheek bones high and once described as 'exquisite', his nose was long and thin, with a kink near the bridge that he often found himself running his thumb over in contemplation. He did this now, aware, the whole time, of the youth's eyes on him.

After a moment, the youth pulled off the earphones and cleared his throat.

Malachi looked up, smiling slightly with his eyebrows raised questioningly; he glanced at the offered hand before gripping it firmly.

"I'm Robert," the youth introduced himself, "You live around here?"

* * * *

Jazreal was shown to a long, low, dark room lined with beds along the right hand wall. He stood just within the doorway and turned to face the human who had called him. The man blinked up at him, then turned and left, closing the door as he did so.

Shivering with cold and the lingering shock of being suddenly corporeal, Jazreal turned back to the room. He folded his arms over his chest; tucking his fingers under his arms, trying to catch what little warmth he could, and looked at the beds. All but one of them was occupied, the empty one sitting in the far corner of the room.

Still shivering slightly, and painfully aware that he was naked, Jazreal made his way to the bed, feeling the eyes of his brethren on him the whole time, steadily watching his every movement. There were thirteen of them in all, seven female, six male. They covered the whole spectrum of the human race, black, red and yellow; he was the sole white amongst them all.

They continued to watch him as he reached the bed and sat down upon it. After a few minutes of silence, one of the males stood and picked up a bundle of what looked like clothing wrapped in brown paper. Jazreal, eyes wide, watched the male walk toward him. "These are your clothes," he was told and the package was thrown on his bed, "He expects you to be wearing them when he returns."

Jazreal picked up the package, quickly un-wrapping it, eyes still on the male standing before him. "Thank you?" he said quietly. The male, a tall American Indian with long, sleek, black hair, wearing what appeared to be a robe, nodded stoically. They were all wearing white robes, now he looked, and hanging on a hook beside each bed was a white suit, complete with tie and silver cufflinks, smart white shoes placed on the floor directly underneath. Taking a quick look, he saw there was a suit hanging next to his own bed.

In the parcel was the robe the others were wearing and two sets of underwear, also white. If he hadn't known exactly who the man was, and what he was doing here, he would have laughed at the inappropriateness of the non-colour. As it was, he stepped into the pants and slipped the robe over his head, noticing as he did so, two, large, purposefully sewn in holes on the back.

The others were watching him, still. He hugged himself and once again sat down, frowning slightly. He was beginning to feel something akin to the pain he had experienced earlier. It wasn't the same thing, after hours of feeling such exquisite torture; he had learned to distinguish. The feeling was tight, uncomfortable and coalescing in his back.

He choked, coughing suddenly as the pain grew exponentially, dropping him from the bed and to his knees. He clawed ineffectually at the floor as his whole body was wracked with pain. This was completely different from what he experienced previously - that had been the pain of birth - this was a pain like no other, it felt like he was going to explode from within.

He screamed as the skin and muscle on his back stretched, tore, ripped. His forehead hit the ground as his body convulsed, screaming of its own accord, throwing him forward.

He opened his eyes less than a minute later. The pain was almost gone, nothing more than a memory fading from his body. There were feathers. Feathers everywhere.

He pushed himself up and onto his knees, almost falling because of the new, ungainly weight on his back. Tentatively, he turned his head to see what had happened. Wings. Pale, creamy coloured wings, with hints of silver, had sprouted from his back, the muscles tightening and growing around them. He patted his chest. Yes, the muscles had re-arranged themselves there as well.

He closed his eyes, dropping his face into his palm. What had that man done to him?