From the Inside Out...

Georgia cowered away from Martin as he approached her, his eyes boring into her with cold calculation. She felt herself dragged upwards and she fought against him with all the strength remaining in her slight frame. However it was no use, his encircling arms held her fast. As he embraced her, she felt him bend her head to the right, baring her the left side of her neck.

A sudden and searing pain wracked Georgia's body, spreading from her neck outwards. She tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat. She felt something warm and wet spill down her shoulder and soak her shirt, still not realizing her exact fate. Blessedly the pain subsided quickly and was replaced with every nerve in her body being gently electrified. As he continued to drink, her grip on reality began to fade, first to a pleasant confusion, then a pall of grey before her eyes. As unconsciousness took her, a distant memory arose of an old television fading out to a single white dot. Such was the last memory of her life.

Georgia next remembered herself drowning on warm liquid gushing down her throat, but she had no need to breathe. She suddenly catapulted into a strange, painful awareness of everything and nothing simultaneously. Blinded but feeling everything: rage, betrayal, violation, fear, confusion and an intense burning starvation that she felt would eat her from the inside out.

Attempting to rise from the couch, she felt her left wrist bound to the wall and began to pull against it despite the searing pain. Within moments Georgia felt herself freed and lunged forward towards a scent that was familiar and yet associated in her deepest psyche with loneliness, loss, and pain. She felt herself collide with that scent and yet felt herself redirected like a pool ball. Stumbling and falling onto another scent with even worse associations. She scratched and fought and bit at the thing until her teeth found their mark and the blood of her first kill begin to course down her throat.

Georgia gorged herself until she felt the consuming hunger subside. Finally sated and unable to retrieve another drop from her prey, she fell back on the couch. She had no need to breathe, but did so out of habit, noting the strangeness as her eyes cleared for the first time in unlife. She looked over at the remains of Josh, lifeless, pale under the smears of blood, and badly mauled. Distantly, disjointedly she knew she should feel something, remorse or regret or sadness... perhaps... but in reality she felt nothing but a sense of triumph and relief, but no emotions were actually tangible to her. They were suddenly something surgically removed that she was observing through a store window or in a museum. Strangely, she was quite comfortable as this realization set in.

Looking up at Martin slowly, she asked simply, "What have you done to me?"

He looked at her in a level fashion, "I have made you more than you were."

Shaking her head, Georgia demanded, "What does that mean? What have you DONE to me?"

Martin seemed confused by the question, "I have made you perfect... immortal, given you a gift that humans have sought for centuries. You will never age, never die."

Thinking for a moment, she reframed the question to hopefully evoke a clearer answer, "What am I?"

Something akin to comprehension crossed his expression, "Now I understand what you are asking. I have made you a creature of the night, the perfect predator, if you will. Though we look human, we are most decidedly not. We stalk and feed off of what we once were, we are the Kindred."

"You mean you have made me a vampire?" shrieked Georgia, echoes of shock reverberating through her memory. "I am not even human anymore? How could you do this to me?"

Again confused by her reaction, Martin tried to explain, "It is a gift Georgia, do you not realize this? You will always be at the height of your mental abilities, which I know you prize beyond all else."

Even though her emotions were now detached, she still felt an echo of compunction, "But I will now be feeding off of humans. How can I bring myself to do that?"

"You already have," said Martin smiling and inclining his head towards Josh's corpse.

Reflections of horror filled Georgia's mind as she realized what she had done. Mentally backing away, she babbled, "But he raped me... he deserved it... I wasn't in my right mind... I didn't know what I was doing..." After a few moments though, she recalled the pleasure she had taken in feeding off of the boy and further protestations died before reaching her lips. However pure pleasure blended with a memory of horror provided the backdrop for the beginning of her Requiem.