Prologue

Prologue

"Katyla, we must be getting close. John's son, Peruses, did very well with the last treatment." Agros tried to get my hope back up, "I know you are blaming yourself for the illness."

I know nothing but this disease is killing the people in our world, but I don't tell Argos that. I do not respond I just stare at our lab table, staring at formula for the most recent failed cure. Agros looks up to me, I know he must be seeing the worry in my brown eyes, he could also see how mad at myself, there was flecks of gold and red in my eyes, that give me away he says they make me rare and unique, paired with my long, dark brown hair which also had red in it, and my snow white skin and blood red lips, he has always told me I was the most beautiful woman, but I was just as smart, if not smarter then I was beautiful. My husband, Triremes, was lucky. But then again I never loved him he was a marriage of convenience and I got to work with Argos, be his best friend, so I was lucky as well, sometimes I was glad that Argos never saw me as more then a scientist. "Maybe if we try nocturnal animals, like the bat and owl." Argos was saying to me.

I looked up at my partner, Agros, who was staring back with his royal blue eyes, his hair as black as his pupils in his eyes. "It won't hurt to try, Agros, after all, the vampire bat has a numbing agent in its venom."

"Well I guess we should set some traps." Agros stands and goes to the closet in the room, opens and pulls out some cages. "I will get your husband to help; we will have them up by night fall."

"Good, I am going to run some more samples. There must be a reason you and I have not gotten ill." I knew the truth, both Agros and I were infected, but we were not ill. Yet.

We all knew why I was studying the samples, almost everybody in world was infected, but people were getting sick at different rates, and dying. No matter what the people were dying. I know there were other scientists studying the disease, but they know if we did not find it, there was almost no hope for the cure to be found. Agros and I studied together, trying to learn as much about science and life as possible, we have been partners for the last ten years. As I used the microscope and reread the ingredients in the last attempt, Argos walked out with the traps to wait for the bats, and hopefully my husband would be able to get an owl.

As soon as Agros walked out of the room I got up, I received a package the other day from an unknown source claiming the ingredient inside was from a fruit bat, and that had some effect on the illness killing everybody. There were was also a few blood samples from a tribe that appears to be immune to the illness but they won't talk to the outsiders or allow anybody in to get more information about them. I didn't tell Agros this, but I already have the venom from the vampire bat and I have mixed it with some blood from the immune tribe, as well as some of the other ingredients that we have been using. I was going to test this one on myself. I wasn't going to allow another to die because of my stupidity, because I was not good enough to save them. I was their leader, it was my duty, nobody's but mine, and I had to save them. I filled the syringe of the product and injected into the vein in my left arm. At first nothing happened, then I felt a burning, it was running in my veins, it was going to destroy my life. I started running; I left the building and was running through the woods, to an isolated place I knew nobody would find. I collapsed, thirty minutes later I hit the right spot and died. With the last beat of my heart, I said "Marcus..."

I woke up, I had felt my heart stop, and I knew it stopped. I died but here I was awake, with a thirst burning in me. I got up to walk outside, I was in my private house built here, and I just made it before I died. I did not want to be found. I got to the door, wishing I had put a window in the building. I opened the door, and started to burn, I quickly shut the door, and looked at my hand were the light had touched me. It was healing. But it was painful. What had I become? I heard things and smelled things I never could before. And I knew I had no pulse, no heartbeat. I was the living dead. VAMPIRE! I had heard the myths; I did not put faith in them. I put faith in what I could see what I could touch, after all I was a scientist. And now I could see those myths are true. I knew I could give the cure. But it would mean people would become the undead. If the myths are true then I was now pure evil. But I didn't feel any different. I would go to Agros. He would know what to do. I would wait for night fall.

Agros was sitting with the fruit bat, he killed it and now was trying to dissect it but I always did that, with perfection, which could be an art. He was sitting at the table lost in his thoughts when the door open and I walked in, and attacked him. I lost all thoughts of asking when I saw Agros, I could only smell his blood, and I jumped and bit him. I stopped me self and screamed "stay away from me."

But Agros was on the ground, felling the same burn I felt, I knew because I could feel it as well. I looked down at myself and could see where the scalpel entered my chest; my blood had dripped into his body. I killed my best friend. I pulled the scalpel from my chest, and I grabbed him and ran him to the house I stayed at, after I put him on the bed, I ran back to our lab, a twenty minute hike now taking just seconds. I took everything the books the supplies, and then burned the building down. They won't be able to tell that Argos and I were not in there. I just killed us from this life. I went to my house where my husband and child slept. I knew not to breath, but I bent down and kissed my husband good bye, and took my child. I was not going to leave without Marcus. I did not love my husband in the way a wife should, but I wasn't going to condemn him to die either. Carefully as to not wake my son I ran back to the house. Where I would come up with a plan to not live like the monster I was. At the age of seventeen my life ended and my death began.