[NOTE: cover image is a slightly tweaked version of Natalia Drepina's gorgeous photograph entitled "Morbid Equilibrium", which can be found on DeviantArt. See link to original in my profile. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THE ORIGINAL ARTIST.]

Written on a whim - not exactly sure where this is going; only the muse knows. I suppose I'm just along for the ride like the rest of you. Also, as a word of caution, I am extremely rusty when it comes to writing, so I apologize in advance. This story is going to be a bit on the rough side. Hopefully I'll improve as I exercise this otherwise atrophied muscle. Your support, in the mean time, is greatly appreciated!

Rated M for violence and gore, thus far.

Chapter 1: Conversion

The night sky was clear of clouds and moon, the air frigid. The scene seemed painted in black and white, from the trees of the forest, dark pines and firs with the occasional blackwood, to the towering peaks that seemed to scrape the sky, all blanketed in three months' worth of snow. A figure stood in the snow, barefooted, in what had once been a dress, but was now tattered and torn, with enormous gash marks trailing along the back and front, the fabric stained in blood which had turned dark from prolonged exposure to oxygen.

The flesh beneath the rags was pale and flawless, as if nothing had broken her skin from the violence that appeared in her dress. Her hair was a dark russet color, its curls and spirals resembling the snakes that would have been found on the head of a gorgon. No breath passed her lips, no heart beat against its cage in her chest. Everything about her was lifeless and still – as still as the forest.

Until her eyes opened in one swift sweep at the sound of movement in the wood just north of her. Her eyes glowed an electrified blue, casting an eerie, unnatural light in the darkness. She stood there, motionless, unaware of the cold that should have frozen her flesh. All that consumed her was the silence and the anticipation that came with the waiting of another sound.

Her patience paid off as the sound of a boot crunching in the snow caught her ear – a noise that would have been missed by any man or animal.

But not her.

With the sound of another step, she moved, silent in the night, her feet barely sinking into the snow as she ran, as though she weighed no more than a leaf on the wind. She ran such a great distance in so short a time that the footsteps were starting to sound like thunder in her ears. It was the first thing she had noticed and it distracted her momentarily; that moment of distraction had broken her concentration and suddenly she felt a sharp sting on her face as she flew past a set of low-hanging branches. She halted almost immediately and grasped her cheek out of what felt like habit, but the pain had ceased as quickly as it had occurred. There was no mark on her face, but when she looked at her hand, she could see the blood on her fingers.

Was the blood hers? How had she healed so quickly?

Before she could give even a moment's consideration to the thought, she heard a rapid beating, like drums, in sets of twos, a steady, maddening rhythm that seemed to cast a spell on her like a siren's call. As if she had no will of her own, she was running again, the trees flying past her in a dark blur, like smeared paint on a canvas, as the beating grew louder and louder in her head. It was both beautiful and torturous. She was consumed with a single thought - had to stop it… had to stop the drums.

She stopped suddenly on the edge of a clearing where the beat seemed to be coming from. In the center of the clearing stood a solitary figure, tied to what was left of a dead birch tree. His hands were fastened behind him on the other side of the trunk, as were his feet.

There was something horribly familiar about his face, but that incessant beating that was coming from him seemed to keep her from figuring out why. The more she struggled to think, the more her head ached. She let out a small whine of frustration and the captive stranger suddenly became aware of her presence.

"Who's there?" he called out hesitantly.

She moved cautiously out of the shadows and into the clearing, confused by his expression of recognition as he looked at her.

"Afina! Thank God, you're alive," the stranger called out, his voice choking with emotion. "Quickly, untie me before he gets back."

She stood there, positively motionless, unmoved by his words, only consumed by the beating that appeared to be coming from his chest.

His heart, something in her seemed to say. Yes. The heart – this was familiar.

"Afina!"

She instinctively looked up into his eyes and something else familiar stirred within her. She had a bond with this man. She couldn't explain it, but she felt it, and that name he was calling her – that was her name. Wasn't it?

"Afina, please, we don't have much time."

Afina could suddenly feel the cold, a darkness she couldn't explain surrounding this clearing, growing ever nearer, closing in on her and this stranger that she felt this unexplainable connection toward. Her gut told her they didn't have much time and so she moved quickly toward him and began to work at the knots in the rope.

"I was so worried he had gotten to you," the stranger started to say, struggling against his constraints. "I should have listened to you. We should never have come here. We should have stayed in the city and away from these cursed mountains."

Within moments, she had freed him and the moment he had his hands again, he was in front of her in two brisk steps. He took her face in both of his hands and kissed her soundly. If the action didn't take her by surprise, his sense of earnestness and familiarity certainly did and she pushed him away roughly, and with more force than she had intended, for he was soon on his back in the snow.

"Afina, what's wrong?"

The look of concern on his face troubled her, and so did the sound of what she assumed was her name on his lips. The drumming of his heart grew loud again in her head – that maddening sound. So persistent, so full of fear.

And then it hit her.

She inhaled deeply and the stench of something metallic drowned her senses. She braced herself for the revulsion, but her bodily reaction surprised her. She felt suddenly intoxicated by it. It was strong, overwhelming even – and it was coming from him, the familiar stranger she had just freed. She suddenly noticed the blood that stained his shirt – a deep gash in his side. She had missed it because of the coat he wore, but because of his fall, it was open to the air and the smell of his blood hung, potent like garlic. She could smell nothing else.

Afina had the sudden urge to lick the blood from him. A part of her brain immediately protested, but something animal in her struggled to smash the rebellion as the pounding in her head grew louder.

She fell to her knees as her new heightened senses overwhelmed her and she clutched her head in agony, crying out. It was all a rush in her head, figures, visions, memories – all in jump cut, scattered, and in the wrong order.

The stranger's name was Henric, and he was her husband. He had been a regular visitor in her father's household for years. Henric was a Lord of significant wealth, just like her father, only he had no desire for the pomp and circumstance that came with his title, and she loved him for it.

His kiss from earlier suddenly pulsated on her lips as visions of every kiss they had shared suddenly raced through her mind, every touch, every look. She adored him, and he her.

Suddenly they were in these mountains. Something was after them. She couldn't remember what or who, however. Something seemed to be blocking that. She couldn't even remember why they were in Transylvania in the first place, what they had seen. All she knew was that they had been in danger and she had been caught.

The pounding in her head grew more insistent, the pain more acute with every memory she struggled to unearth. It was maddening, the pain, the noise – the drums. Those god-awful drums!

She let out an unearthly roar into the night sky as the pain seemed to resonate through her entire body, through every vein and pore. Something inside of her told her that he was the cause of her pain. There was only one way to end it… only one way.

Tears streamed down Afina's face as she looked into Henric's eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"I forgive you," he replied.

The moment the words were uttered, all emotion drained from her face as her features contorted into that of a monster. Sharp fangs grew from her gums as her eyes drained of color and became solid black.

Afina leapt forward and had pinned Henric to the ground with a single movement, grabbing hold of his arms intuitively as she straddled his waist and dug her teeth into his neck. He let out a scream of agony as she tore the flesh away and the hot blood poured out. That metallic smell overwhelmed her, drowning her senses, and she reveled in the carnage, devouring every ounce of blood greedily, like a fiend; a starved, ravenous wolf. The more she drank, the quieter the pounding in her head became, and that seemed to encourage her further.

With a sense of urgency, she tore open his shirt in one clean swipe and smashed a fist into his chest, frenzied, desperate to make the drums in her head stop. The moment she grabbed hold of his heart and pulled, the drums finally stopped and her teeth sank into the organ, the blood dribbling down her face and neck, all over her hands and arms.

It didn't take long for the madness to cease and when it did, the realization of what she had done hit her mercilessly. She looked down at Henric's bloodied corpse in absolute horror. Her hands shook uncontrollably as struggled to back away from the blood and the carnage.

"What have I done? Good God, what have I done?" she repeated over and over again as she clung to the birch that he had been tied to. The guilt was overwhelming to the point that she could feel the blood she had consumed starting to make its way back up, as though her body were rejecting it on moral grounds.

She was suddenly aware of the sound of the footsteps she had heard earlier, the ones that had called her here in the first place, and she turned her head quickly to find a dark figure of a man standing over her.

He was dressed in black from head to toe, regal in appearance, with eyes that seemed to see right through her into her very soul. His presence brought her a confusing mix of comfort and terror.

"Help me," she choked, struggling to keep her wanton feast down. "Please."

The man looked away from her for a moment and then over at the corpse of her dead husband with a hint of both wonder and amusement, as though he were impressed. His eyes then moved back to her.

"You don't know who I am?" he asked, almost carefully.

She shook her head, and released the trunk of the tree, reaching for the edge of his cloak with a blood soaked hand.

"Please," she pleaded. "What's happening to me?"

"You're in transition," he explained with mild disinterest, moving away from her. "Your consumption of this man's blood is completing the cycle. You're becoming a vampire."

"What?" she gasped, as though the air she didn't really need had been stolen from her.

"Yes. Your body is naturally rejecting it. You have to make a choice, Afina. Either you die or you live."

"How do I know I'm not already dead?"

"You're still moving, aren't you?"

"This isn't living."

"You're right, but it can be. You have to want it bad enough. You must fight to live."

"I don't want to die," she cried. "Please…"

He knelt down beside Henric's corpse and motioned to his neck that was still oozing with blood.

"Then you need to finish what you started."

More tears streamed down Afina's face.

"I can't…"

"Then you die," he said matter-of-factly and stood as though to leave.

Afina could feel herself getting sicker, weaker with each passing moment. She knew she didn't have much time, but she wasn't ready to die. Not like this. She managed to crawl toward Henric's body, the smell of his blood sending a slightly euphoric sensation through her veins and she surrendered to it, leaning her head forward towards his neck to drink.

The more she consumed, the less ill she felt, and the guilt from before seemed to numb itself with every passing moment. She noticed the stranger on the other side of Henric's body, kneeling in the snow, and she watched as he reached toward her, gently caressing her hair as she finished, as if to encourage her.

"There, there," he said softly. "That's it."

Instinct seemed to tell her when she was done, and when the task was complete, she fell back into the snow, relishing in the cold that enveloped her entire body and a sense of exhaustion overcame her.

"There she is," he said with a sense of pride. "My bellator." He bent down and gathered her into his arms, lifting her with ease and taking her deep into the night.

Reviews and constructive criticism would, naturally, be appreciated. Responses may determine whether or not this gets continued. They feed the muse and his ego - which has been rather starved as of late, or so I've been told.

Notes for the Reader:

Item 1: bellator means "warrior" in Latin (at least according to Google translate and Yahoo! answers it does. I'm no scholar of dead languages, unfortunately). Technically, the female equivalent is bellatrix, but I didn't want every one thinking of Harry Potter whenever that word was used. In addition, I've never really liked how some words feel the need to be "feminized" - as if there needs to be some distinguishing factor between, for example, a female vampire or "vampiress" and a regular male "vampire." The gender distinction is unnecessary, so I decided to go with the masculine version. So for all intents and purposes, we're just going to go with bellator. I apologize to all Latin-speakers and purists out there that I may offend. I hope you can forgive me.

Item 2: the story's title - la douleur exquise - is French for "the exquisite pain", or, more specifically, "the heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable." Don't ask - it just felt appropriate. I've changed the title of this story 6 times already. Hopefully this one sticks.

Item 3: Musical Influences section [below] - this is a section I want to include in as many chapters as I can, as music plays a large part in how/what I write. The following songs were what I was listening to when the idea for this story came to me/when I was writing.

Musical Influences
[1] Cesare Borgia by Jesper Kyd, "Assassin's Creed Brotherhood" OST
[2] Welcome to Widow Woods by Two Steps From Hell, "Halloween"
[3] Catharsis by Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, "Dusk and Void Became Alive"
[4] Dracula - The Beginning by Wojciech Kilar, "Bram Stoker's Dracula" OST