5 – Sleepless Night

I sat on the bed in my room after dinner. The results were mixed.

Good news – I could still eat normal food without adverse effects. My sense of taste was even amplified compared to before, so the simple food slapped together by the sleepy chef was pretty good.

Bad news – it didn’t make me feel satiated. Sure, I still felt ‘full’, but that was just the physical space in my stomach. I was still hungry. It was a paradoxical feeling.

Looks like only blood will satisfy me now… I sighed.

I got a pretty significant amount of blood from the dead ritual sacrifices. I could feel it coursing through my veins.

The first bit had been sweet, but when I worked on my deception to get away with the whole ritual thing, I’d drank from the other bodies as well. It was bland. Like tasteless food you ate just to fill your stomach.

Of course I’d then lost a not insignificant amount of blood on my way to the infirmary, to keep up the illusion of being badly wounded. Still, there should be at least twice the normal amount of blood a human should have in my body somehow. It was a little hard to judge by feeling alone and there was no way I’d empty it all out just to measure.

All that being said, I was starting to grow hungry.

I could only hope it had to do with the blood being from dead bodies and wasn’t the normal rate I’d have to feed. It would be very hard to hide it if I snacked on a person every two days or so. Never mind more frequently.

Well, for now I had a few hours of free time to test my new body. I was still supposed to be resting and healing, but there was no way I could sleep. A mix of the earlier nap and excitement kept me up.

Also, I really needed to know what I could do before I accidentally let something slip in front of other people.

First of all, something I’d already experienced.

I could heal at an incredible pace. My original wounds had been much worse than what Mia got to see when she first found me.

This healing consumed a little blood to operate at full capacity, though it was still faster than normal even without it. In fact, I was actively holding it back so I didn’t have a ‘miraculous’ healing that would invite unwanted questions.

To that end, I had already tested this a little back in the tower.

I was unsure about the exact limits of this power. For example, could severed limbs be regrown? What about reattaching the original ones? How about destroyed organs? I didn’t know.

There was no way I’d try any of those out. For now, until I got evidence to the contrary, I would just operate under the assumption all of those things were impossible. If that turned out to be false, then it would be a welcome surprise.

On to the next thing.

I also already knew I was stronger than before. I’d almost face-planted from using too much force a few times while moving things around in the tower.

Kalin hadn’t been the most athletic guy, so this was a change I’d have to carefully hide.

From my pocket, I took a small copper coin I’d gotten from my desk earlier. I held it between my thumb and index finger and squeezed.

The copper bent, until I was left with what could pass as a weird pasta shape. It didn’t fold in half perfectly. Instead, the top and bottom middle were touching, while the sides were still partially open.

So… very strong then. The coin was soft, but that was still metal. I placed the bent coin back in my pocket. I’d have to find more ways to subtly test this in the near future, but I didn’t want to risk making a lot of noise by moving the furniture.

Now, for an appearance change.

I’d already confirmed earlier that I had both a reflection and a shadow, but the mirror also showed that I didn’t have any obvious fangs.

Which was weird, since I distinctly remembered ripping that body’s throat out in a way my normal teeth would struggle with. The memory made me shudder.

Thinking back to the vague sense of my body at the time, I was sure there was a change. Something like… ah!

I could feel my top canines elongating. By touch inspection, they appeared to at least double in length, also becoming sharper in the process.

They were rather cumbersome to have in my mouth. Also, I almost cut my lip when I wasn’t careful.

Luckily, the process was easy to reverse. If – when – it came to me feeding on a living being, these fangs would be useful to have. For now, I was happy with my normal teeth.

After a little focus, I realized I could transform my fingernails in a similar way. They grew into short, sharp claws. I didn’t really have anything to test them on right now, so I’d return to them later. Just like the fangs, the claws returned to normal easily.

In time, both these transformations could likely become second nature.

For now, something else occupied my awareness.

I just felt someone walk past outside my room. It was a subconscious thing at first, but when I noticed, I became aware of a few unusual sensory inputs.

All my senses were heightened, as I’d already learned. My hearing, smell, taste, even my touch was more sensitive. The eyes were a bit of a special case, I’d deal with them later.

What I experienced now was different. I could clearly hear the person’s heartbeat through the wall, even as their footsteps were almost inaudible. It was so clear I got the illusion of being able to see the heart. The smell of their blood was also unnaturally obvious.

Even so, I could tell they weren’t bleeding, what I smelled was the blood still inside their veins. Spilled blood smelled different. It was just something I knew now.

Frowning slightly, I did my best to place this specific blood’s smell. I faintly remembered it from earlier today, but where?

It wasn’t any of the three people I’d interacted the most with, Mia, William, or Lars. No, this was someone else I’d only interacted with for a little bit.

Ah, I remember now! The maid that helped bring in the washbasin!

Somehow, even though I’d noticed the smell of people’s blood earlier, I had missed the heartbeats. Still, this was an immensely useful ability. Even leaving the ability to detect people – and possibly animals – through walls aside. If I could hear the pace of someone’s heart, I could easily tell if they were relaxed or stressed.

What was the range on this supernatural sense? I closed my eyes and focused only on my hearing.

It took a while, but I became more and more aware of people’s positions in the manor. It seemed unaffected, or at most minimally affected, by walls or other muffling obstructions. The detection became increasingly imprecise at larger ranges though.

My best guess to its maximum distance was about a few dozen meters or so. At that distance even normal speech would be hard to make out, so this was highly impressive.

I could even hear the calm hearts of the various maids and servants sleeping in their separate building. And multiple pairs of guards patrolling the grounds.

Unfortunately it took a lot of concentration to expand my awareness this far.

When I reopened my eyes, I was back to ‘only’ hearing a few rooms away. Now that I’d noticed the heartbeats, they were actually pretty distracting. I blocked them out as best I could for now. Hopefully I would get used to it soon.

Something that would also take a lot of getting used to were my eyes.

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I already knew Kalin was an albino from birth. I wasn’t a geneticist or doctor in my previous life, but I still knew some things about the condition.

The main ‘feature’ or symptom of albinism was a lack of melanin, the pigment responsible for most color in humans. This led to the obvious changes like pale white skin and hair, but also some that might not be immediately intuitive.

Eyes, more specifically the iris, got their color from melanin. As a result of lacking the pigment, Kalin’s eyes were red, due to the blood vessels running through the iris that were normally overshadowed.

Apart from looking unusual compared to common human eye colors, this lack of proper pigmentation had a large downside – the iris was less able to do its job, blocking out light.

Long story short, Kalin was quite photosensitive since birth, bright light causing him pain and easily blinding him.

Unfortunately for me, like the hair and skin color, this was also not cured by the vampire transformation. Instead, I got massively enhanced vision to go along with my other boosted senses.