In this excerpt from Her Undying Thirst, our vampire recounts her harrowing transformation…

I awoke in a darkness so complete that it was as though I hadn’t opened my eyes at all, a darkness like a thick, velvety blindfold pressed around my head. I was so disoriented that, if it hadn’t been for the harsh press of wood at my back, I might as well have been hanging in midair, and I reached out with my hands, feeling for something – anything – that might indicate my location. My hands had barely moved from my sides when they encountered a wooden barrier that prevented them from progressing farther. I squirmed, trying to maneuver myself into a different position, but I was confined on all sides, and when I tried to sit up, my nose and forehead immediately struck something cold and hard.

            I screamed.

            The force of my voice shook the coffin (for I now realized that was what it was), and I struggled to quell the panic in my breast. I could hear the wriggling of small creatures in the dirt surrounding me. I knew I was several feet deep in the earth, but I could feel raindrops striking the ground above me and the pressure of footsteps. I could smell coppery blood running through veins. A terrible thirst overwhelmed me, and I raged, thrashing in my prison as my face and teeth distended painfully, my fingernails becoming as long and hooked as talons. I dug my nails into the wood with a newfound, frenzied strength, and it splintered around my fingertips. I thrilled at the power I could feel coursing through me, a power driven by that awful thirst. I heaved against the lid of the coffin, and it pushed upward. With each inch of space, I could leverage my arms better, could press it even higher. Wet mud came pouring in, and I panicked as some of it filled my mouth, but I spat it out, shook my head, and kept pushing until there was a wide enough gap that I could climb up through the mud, struggling through that cold, smothering blackness, the inability to breathe sending frenzied shocks of desperation through my limbs.

            I broke the surface, gasping as I pulled myself from my own grave. For a moment, I lay motionless on the ground, reveling in the feeling of the rain on my face and the cool, fresh air that was flooding into my lungs. And then I opened my eyes and saw two stunned faces looking down at me. I recognized them immediately as servants of our household, but their familiarity meant nothing in the face of my monstrous appetite. In the blink of an eye – before they could even scream – I was upon them, tearing the throat from one while I held the other immobile in my impossibly-strong grip. Wet, hot blood gushed into my mouth, and I pulled it vigorously from the vein, glorying in the taste of it, the indescribable pleasure it sent pulsing through my body. The other servant screamed ineffectually against my hand as I let the dried husk of her friend fall to the ground, and then I was tearing at her throat, too, my thirst seemingly unquenchable as I drank and drank, swelling with strength like a bloated tick. When I was done, I discarded her effortlessly. She fell to the earth with a wet thud, her limbs tangled beneath her torso, her neck bent at an unnatural angle.

            The thirst began to subside, and in its wake, the horrible realization of what I had done –  what I had become – crept in. The rain was coming down hard, plastering my hair against my skin and washing the blood from my chin and neck down into my dress. The stain spread over the fine fabric like watercolor over a blank page. I looked around and realized that I was at the family burial plot, just over a small hill from the house. I wondered briefly what the servants had been doing at my grave; looking around, I noted a couple of baskets filled with flowers nearby. My head was spinning from the blood I had consumed. I could hear and see and smell and feel everything, my awareness stretching around me for what seemed like miles. The thoughts of hundreds of people clamored in my mind, an overwhelming cacophony that I tried unsuccessfully to shut out. Remorse at the violent death of my own servants was welling up inside me, rising from my belly to my gullet and choking me with sorrow. I held my head in my hands and moaned.

            What have I done?

            My feet –unshod, for I had lost my shoes when I crawled from the coffin – seemed to move of their own accord, taking me toward the house. It was dark and quiet, and I did not encounter anyone as I made my way to my mother’s room, my wet feet and dripping hair leaving muddy, pink-tinged puddles where I stepped. I knocked on her door and stood shivering as I waited for her to answer. She opened the door, her face blotchy from crying and her expression annoyed, assuming (I could hear her thoughts loud and clear) that a servant had come to ask her about some menial thing.

            When she saw me, soaked with mud and rain and blood, she stumbled backward and cried out. And then she was clasping me in her arms, sobbing. “I thought it didn’t work! We waited for three days, but nothing happened! Oh, my daughter!” she exclaimed. Her voice trembled with a mixture of relief and sorrow, as if she didn’t know whether to be happy or sad that I had returned. This was, it just so happened, a sentiment I shared.

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