Anageropoulos(5)

Paul could still remember the days ,or better the nights, of his training.
Nansy was not a good teacher.
Many centuries spent away from the mortal world had made her cold and cruel.
After all she was training a warrior not a poet.
Love, kindness and other feelings had no place among the vampires.
She had told him that vampires could feel things but not the way humans did.
He had a different opinion but he was not going to share it with her.

Each night she would train him in all kinds of things.
How to stalk his victims or his enemies while remaining unnoticed.
How to hunt avoiding trouble.
How to sense if someone was near him. The woman seemed to be able to sense any creature even if it was blocks away from her.
How to use his  powers to augment his strength, his speed or his endurance.
How to move faster, faster than the speed a human eye could see.
She trained him to use weapons.
Her favorite weapons were swords but Paul wasn't a good student in that type of combat.
After many nights, when Paul would end the training sessions heavily wounded, she decided to train him in guns.
He proved to be much better at that.
His aim was flawless and soon he was able to shoot accurately even a running target.
She taught him how to use explosives efficiently and how to disable security systems.
She even taught him how to disguise himself in order to pass unnoticed when he would find himself in crowded places.

The funny thing with vampires is that while they can't die easily, they still feel pain and Paul would feel pain every night.
Nansy believed that a fighter should be able to hide his pain, conquer his weakness and be able to overcome any enemy.
And the only way to pass that to Paul was to make him suffer until he could feel no pain or at least until he wouldn't show it.
After that he learned how to heal himself, fast enough, so that even the slightest injury wouldn't be a problem during a fight.

She spoke only when necessary and although Paul was an still "infant" in vampiric terms she treated him as a full grown warrior.
He had so many questions but she had very few answers to give.
After all she never felt like having a student and if it wasn't for her mentor she would have never created one.
Sure Nansy was an expert in hunting and in the art of assassination but she was never good as far as kindred lore and socializing were concerned .
She didn't care to be.
Through the years, the other vampires had learned to avoid her and not to mess with her and she liked it that way.
But she knew she had to teach Paul that side of immortality as well.
You see even immortals had to follow a set of rules and they had a weird and complex system that governed their lives.
All vampires were the same. Almost all of them believed they had descended from the same ancestor but there existed different casts, each of them with their own unique powers or attributes.
These casts, vampires called them clans, had different views on immortality and a different attitude towards each other.
How many were there?
Even Nansy didn't know and she never bothered to find out.
As for him, according to her, Nansy and her line were descendants of an ancient clan of assassins.
Their sole aim was to become the best assassins in the vampiric world, conquer the other clans and rule the Earth.
At least that was what she believed.
And that's why their unique power embodied the disciplines of stealth and assassination.
And Paul had the potential to master that unique power.
Those clans were ruled by councils, which consisted of sub-councils, which in turn consisted of smaller councils spread around the world but basically in every town there was one vampire to rule his citizens and he answered only to God and his superiors.
''THE BIG BAD DRACULA OF EVERY CITY'' was the term used by Nansy to describe the title of the city's Prince to Paul.
In some cases this Prince was elected by the council of the town but most of the time he was the strongest and the eldest vampire of that town and he would claim his position through force or political alliances.
You see, vampires spun political webs that extended all over the world and after so many centuries of existence those webs had become a maze even for their creators.
One night, two months after his "rebirth" Nansy announced to him that his training was over.
Sure he had many things left to learn but that would come with time and practice.
He had only one final lesson to learn.
How to survive out there, on his own, among other vampires.
Being creatures that fed on human life, vampires had to find a way to ensure that humans would never find out about them and that their population would always remain small enough that food could always be found.
And for that they had a simple rule.
''THE PRINCE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAD THE RIGHT TO CREATE OR DESTROY A LIFE IN EVERY TOWN''.
Well he could always give someone, who had pleased him, the favor of creating a new vampire but that was a rare gift and Princes around the wold used it wisely.
Of course Nansy didn't have that favor so Paul had to go out there alone and survive, else if the Prince found out about him both Paul and Nansy would have to be punished, which in most cases meant death.

So there he was, alone, sitting in his dark living room afraid even to answer his phone or the door.
"Survive as long as you can, that is your final lesson and your first test young one." she had told him.
Well he was going to survive. He had no intention of dying now that he had tasted immortality.
And immortality was good. It had a passionate red color, which he liked very much!