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Kier
An earthquake brought me to San Francisco to check the condition of my family's properties after fires ravaged the city. That earthquake ultimately led to my imprisonment after I was accused of a murder I didn’t commit, abducted from my hotel room, and trapped in an underground cell in the hills along the northern coast far from civilization.
Another earthquake ultimately freed me from that prison more than a century later.
One hundred and ten years of captivity, deprivation and despair. The only thing that kept me alive during those long years of darkness?
A strong will to live and an intense desire for revenge.
I had been touring the city of San Francisco, checking out the building where our investment company had been located. It had been razed to the ground in the fires and nothing was salvageable. Our employees had fled the city or been killed in the aftermath.
We would have to start from scratch.
I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work, rebuilding the San Francisco office. I could have sent one of my staff to oversee the work, but I loved that part of business. I was a builder, someone who liked to start with an idea and see it take shape before my eyes. It was the only thing that kept me sane, and gave my existence meaning, with an eternity before me.
After the fires finally died down, once night had fallen, we scouted out locations for the rebuild. We checked out three potential sites and when finished, I went back to our family friend’s mansion outside the city for the rest of the night, to discuss our options and what our next moves were. We had to rebuild, we had to find new staff. We had to run our business out of a temporary office.
I spent that evening discussing all of this with my benefactor, not suspecting for a moment that I was being set up for a fall. Yes, there had been several beautiful young female mortals in attendance, acting as donors for the family and for me. I had partaken of some of their blood, but I had retired early that morning, alone, to go over my papers, write letters to my family about what I had seen.
Mid-way through the long day, I was interrupted from reading the local papers by the sound of knocking at my chamber doors.
"Enter," I said, folding up the newspaper, expecting that it would be a servant come to provide me with a light meal. Instead, several soldiers barged into the room, their weapons drawn. At the head was the local magister for our kind, wearing the black robes and a thick gold chain around his neck marking his office.
"Kier McDermott, I hereby charge you with the murder of a mortal outside of the terms of our laws and regulations. You will be taken from this place and imprisoned pending a trial by your peers."
"What?" I stood, shocked at the magister's words. I glanced around the soldiers, looking for my benefactor, but he was not in attendance. "Where's Mr. Henderson? He's my solicitor. I have a right to speak to him first."
"Due to the fire, we're taking you north to an area unaffected by the destruction. We can't follow the usual protocols due to the damage. You must understand."
"I don't understand," I replied, angered that I would not be afforded the basic rights my kind were given when charged with a crime. "Surely we can wait here until Mr. Henderson can attend…"
"We must take you now," he said, shaking his head. He nodded to one of the guards, who came to me and grabbed my hands, pinning them behind my back before I could respond. The guard attached silver manacles, which burned my skin, causing a great deal of pain and sapping me of my ability to resist.
When I protested further, one of the other guards struck me on the side of my head with his weapon, and I fell into darkness.
During my imprisonment, I held out hope that one day I'd escape or be freed, so I could hunt down those who gave false testimony against me, depriving me of even the most basic of a defense. No solicitor was there to advise me, no investigator gathered the evidence that could prove me innocent, no impartial judge sat at the bench to weigh the matter and come to a just decision.
I was summarily charged and found guilty, forced into the dank underground cell in which I remained for over one-hundred and ten years…
There had been other earthquakes over the decades, rumbling the ground beneath my cell, but none had been strong enough to destroy the walls or bring down the ceiling. The one that freed me almost killed me, the roof caving in as the ground beneath me swayed and buckled, the ancient wooden beams that supported the underground cavern collapsing on top of me.
Only my adamantine nature kept me alive.
Even in my desiccated state after all that time without blood, I managed to drag myself into the shade, saving myself from burning to death when the sun broke through the clouds.
I waited all day like that, jammed under fallen timber and dirt until just after dusk when a mortal came by who happened upon me quite by accident while exploring the cliffs. He had been checking for a place to stop and watch the coming storm, finding the cave in and calling down to where I lay.
“Is someone in there?” he called out, shining a torch of some design into the pit. I gazed out at him and saw that he looked to be in his seventies, his hair and beard grey. He wore a pair of overalls and a cap, and looked every inch a workman.
“Yes,” I said, barely able to speak. “I’m trapped.”
“I’d call 9-1-1 but I don’t have a cell phone. Let me see what I can do.”
The man climbed down into the rubble and over to where I lay, several timbers covering me. When he saw me, the poor man almost jumped out of his skin. I would look like a corpse, of course, my skin white and leathery. He leaned down to me, and took my hand and it was his willingness to touch me despite how hideous I was that saved him — and me.
I had little energy remaining, but I had enough to calm him and compel him to let me feed off his wrist. Dutifully, he held out his arm and I bit down, drinking deeply, his blood reviving me immediately.
I almost lost control and drank him dry, but stopped myself in time. I felt bad about it, but he’d recover. He lost strength and had to lie down on the bare ground next to my hiding place.
Revived, my skin no longer like that of a white raisin, I was able to climb up the almost-vertical wall of rocks and lumber, until I reached freedom.
