Chapter 24: The Draining — Part 1
"Take off your shirt."
Marcus complied without hesitation, revealing a body that had been strong once and was now diminished. The cancer had consumed muscle mass, left visible ridges of bone beneath skin that had lost its color. He'd been a soldier. Now he was dying. Soon he'd be neither.
"Lie back."
The table I'd prepared was padded, covered in clean linens—the clinical arrangement of a medical procedure rather than a supernatural transformation. Marcus settled onto it with the practiced ease of someone who'd spent too many hours in hospital beds.
"The process has three stages," I said, reciting information I'd compiled from the original Sam's fragmented memories and system documentation. "First, the draining—I feed until your heart nearly stops. Second, the feeding—you drink my blood, as much as your body can absorb. Third, the burial—you sleep while the transformation completes. Three nights later, you rise."
"And if something goes wrong?"
"Then you die. Permanently." I positioned myself beside him, aware of my own body—the stillness of something that had stopped being human long ago. "This is your last chance to change your mind."
"Asked and answered." Marcus tilted his head, exposing his throat—the trust of prey offering itself to predator. "Get on with it. Before I have time to think about what I'm doing."
The hunger surged the moment his neck came into view.
I'd been managing my blood reserve carefully for weeks—feeding regularly, maintaining levels that allowed clear thinking and controlled impulses. But the anticipation of this moment had been building, and now that it had arrived, the vampire part of me responded with fierce intensity.
Control. This isn't just feeding. This is creation.
My fangs extended—the sensation still unfamiliar after months of existence, the pressure of enamel reshaping to accommodate the transformation. I leaned forward, positioning my mouth against the junction of Marcus's neck and shoulder where the carotid pulse was strongest.
"This will hurt."
"I've been shot. How bad can—"
I bit down.
The taste exploded across my senses—rich, complex, carrying information my conscious mind couldn't fully process. I could taste the cancer, the bitter wrongness of cells consuming themselves. I could taste the medication residue, the chemical signatures of weeks of treatment. And beneath that, something vital and fierce—the blood of a man who'd refused to accept his own death.
Marcus gasped. His hands gripped my arms with surprising strength, the instinctive response of a body recognizing what was happening to it. But he didn't fight. Didn't pull away. The discipline of his training held even as his blood flowed into my mouth.
Slow. Measured. Don't take too much too fast.
The hunger demanded more—always more—but I forced myself to drink in measured pulls, tracking Marcus's vital signs through senses I was still learning to trust. His heartbeat slowed from its elevated pace. His grip on my arms weakened as strength drained with the blood. His breathing became shallow, irregular, the pattern of a body beginning to fail.
The system interface pulsed at the edge of my awareness, offering metrics I'd never seen before:
TURNING PROCESS: STAGE 1 (DRAINING)
Subject Vitals:
Heart Rate: 78 → 62 → 51 → 44Blood Volume: 100% → 72% → 58% → 47%Consciousness: Fading
I pulled back at 41 heartbeats per minute, fangs retracting, my face covered in blood I'd have to clean before the next stage. Marcus's eyes were open but unfocused, the thousand-yard stare of someone approaching the threshold between life and death.
"Still with me?"
His lips moved. No sound emerged.
"I need you to stay conscious. Just a little longer."
The effort it took him to focus was visible—the deliberate gathering of will against failing biology. His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper.
"Told you... I'm a good soldier... I follow orders."
Then his eyes closed, and whatever consciousness remained retreated into the space between living and dying.
I checked his pulse—present, but barely. Forty beats per minute. Maybe thirty-five. The window for stage two was narrowing with every heartbeat that might be his last.
Now. It has to be now.
I bit my own wrist, the action more deliberate than feeding. Blood welled from the wound—darker than a human's, carrying whatever transformation made vampires what we were. The smell was different, carrying an undertone of power that living blood didn't possess.
Marcus's lips were cold when I pressed my wrist against them. Unresponsive. The blood touched his tongue and for a terrible moment, nothing happened.
Come on. Take it. Live.
His throat moved. A swallow—weak, involuntary, the reflex of a body responding to stimulus despite its dying state. Then another. His hands twitched, rising toward my arm without conscious direction, seeking the source of what his body now craved.
The bond formed in that instant.
I felt it like a thread connecting us—tenuous, fragile, new. Through it, I could sense Marcus's failing body, his fading consciousness, the desperate hunger of something that had tasted immortality and wanted more.
The system confirmed what I was feeling:
TURNING PROCESS: STAGE 2 (FEEDING)
Blood Transfer: ACTIVE Bond Formation: 12% → 28% → 45% Subject Response: INCREASING Transformation Viability: 67%
The viability percentage worried me. Sixty-seven percent wasn't certainty—it was two-thirds odds, a gamble I'd committed to without fully understanding the stakes. But Marcus was drinking now, his swallows becoming stronger, his hands gripping my arm with increasing force.
"That's it. Take what you need."
His eyes opened—not the unfocused gaze of before, but something sharper. Hungrier. The first hint of what he was becoming.
"More," he whispered against my wrist. "I need more."
I gave him more. My blood reserve dropped as his rose—the exchange that defined every maker-progeny bond, the sharing of essence that would tie us together for however long we both existed.
When I finally pulled away, Marcus was breathing steadily. His heartbeat had stabilized—slow, but rhythmic. The immediate crisis had passed.
"Stage two complete." I said it aloud, partly for him, partly for myself. "You're going to sleep now. When you wake up, you'll be something else."
His eyes were drifting closed, the exhaustion of transformation overwhelming whatever consciousness remained. But his lips moved one more time, forming words I barely heard.
"Thank you... for choosing me."
Then he was gone—not dead, not alive, suspended in the space between that every vampire occupied during their turning. The next three nights would determine if he emerged from that space or stayed there forever.
Elena was waiting at the top of the stairs when I emerged. She took one look at my blood-covered face and knew.
"It's done?"
"Stages one and two. Tomorrow we bury him. Three nights after that, he rises." I paused, feeling the new bond pulse at the edge of my awareness—Marcus's sleeping consciousness, fragile but present. "Or he doesn't."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then I learn from my mistakes."
Elena's expression softened slightly—the closest she came to sympathy.
"You look like hell. Get cleaned up. I'll watch the basement."
I climbed the stairs to the rooms above, carrying the weight of what I'd done. My first progeny. My first real test as a maker. In three nights, I'd know if I'd created something worthwhile—or if I'd just killed a man who'd trusted me with his existence.
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