I have been chasing the flames since the night I died. I was the middle child of three. My father had served in the Russian, and then later, Soviet Army. We were never any sort of family of comfort or influence, working class, so nothing much changed from one regime to another. But the military was my father’s life, it gave him an opportunity of upwards mobility, to make something of himself. My mother was a frail woman, and what memories I do have of her, although there are not many of them, are sad. She was always on the outside of life, looking in. But my father’s job provided us with what we needed to survive, and the military helped care for us after my mother passed away.
We moved around quite a bit, as his positions frequently changed as he found himself behind a desk after the war, and my two brothers and I were groomed for military service. There was never any sort of restraint when it came to our horseplay as children, just because I was a girl was no reason for them to go light on me. I grew up fast, I grew up tall, and my steady hands and my exceptional vision and mastery of firearms got the attention of my father’s superiors.
The war with Hitler, with Germany was expected. At least in my household. My older brother was already in the military by then, myself and my brother just too young to enlist. Until one night my father came home with comrades from the war office, and they informed me of a specialized program which I was a good fit for. It was 1940, and I was not yet eighteen years old. I entered the service, and trained as a bomber pilot.
588th Night Bomber Regiment, they called it. We were trained to fly in wood-and-canvas Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, a 1928 design intended for use as training aircraft and for crop dusting. Crop dusters. Because of women’s superior night vision, we got our own regiment, but because we were women, we were in completely obsolete, slow planes. So, we had to get creative. Although the planes poked about, we were able to make daring use of their exceptional maneuverability; they had the advantage of having a maximum speed that was lower than the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, and as a result, German pilots found us difficult to shoot down.
We flew precisions missions. We flew distraction, annoyance missions. Whenever there was an option to go up, I volunteered, there was no place I felt free-er than in the cock pit of my shitty little crop duster. I made a name for myself quickly, and was eager to serve, and die for Mother Russia.
My opportunity to die a hero came in December of 1943. We were to bomb supply trains moving weapons and ammunition to the Nazi front. It was freezing that night, and we took heavy fire from German bombers. My copilot, my bomber was killed in a spray of fire, and my gas tank was punctured.
Refusing to give in, I kept the course, intent on dropping one final load of bombs myself before returning to the rendezvous point. I hadn’t realized my plane was running on fumes till after the bombs were released; my fuel gauge had frozen. I had two options. I could land the plane in enemy territory, and be taken into one of the Nazi prisoner of war camps. Death, in my mind with that option, would be slow and certain. They would break me down, make show of it. I didn’t want to die that way.
So I chose the only other option available to me. Turning my plane back around, I targeted a storage facility on the outskirts of the compound. I flew at full speed into the building, and was ejected upon impact, my body riddled with shrapnel from the crash. The building was burning down around me and I was resolved to die a hero as I felt two firm hands on me, dragging me out of debris, away from the crash. I remember fighting. I wasn’t entirely lucid, all I could see was the fire, all I could feel was it’s seductive warmth, but I heard screaming, and then the grey and black wool uniform of an SS officer, the crimson red of blood soaking my uniform. There was a threat of a knife, somehow I managed to get my hands on it and plunged it into the gut of the Nazi before the world went dark. My purpose fulfilled. I had served and died a hero for the Soviet Union. My papa would be so proud.
I awoke, strapped to a bed, in the most severe pain I had ever felt in my entire life. It wasn’t from wounds, for my body had none. The Nazi was there, he was talking, talking, I didn’t understand a word of German other than communicating my name and serial number, and my unit. But this pain, it was death, and when it subsided, there was the thirst, this desire, and the only thing that abated it was blood. He fed it to me, I didn’t understand what was happening and I resisted. I fought until the restraints tore into my flesh, until all I saw was his eyes and a command in horrible Russian to sleep.
When I awoke again I was cleaned, but still restrained. I realized I was a prisoner, but this was different. This was not the work camp, the POW camps I had expected. The man, the Nazi, he was a monster. He was my maker. Smaller, less intimidating than most would think of a monster, we fought for weeks as I tried to process what was happening to me. Our language barrier kept matters tense, but slowly I began to understand German, he worked with me to understand him. He had help with some translations from who I’ll never know, but after several weeks he was able to explain to me what had happened. What I was now. I had been badly injured. I would have died, but even on death’s door I fought him. My spirit attracted him to me and he turned me that night to save my life. I was this thing, this soulless creature not quite alive, but not quite dead. I was a monster.
I didn’t take the news well. Once we could communicate enough where I understood the bad…no sun, fire would destroy, I needed to feed on the blood of the living to survive, I wanted nothing more than my death. I should have died a hero and this man, he had robbed me of that. And my mind kept returning to the flames as they enveloped the warehouse that night. The roaring of our bombs as they would hit their targets, the fire was all I could see. I wanted it. I wanted to be part of it, one with it. I tried to end my life, my sire’s life so often in those first few months I was locked in a windowless cellar. A feral prisoner, barely more than a child, a caged monster.
The only thing that soothed my soul was the music he would play just before the dawn. I would press my ear to the cold wood of the door as I listened to the melodies my Nazi maker would play. After some time he realized that this soothed me, and began to trust me, bringing me out from my comfortable cage to sit with him in the hours before the dawn. We would talk in broken German, he would play, we would play chess and he would read to me.
I had to learn to trust him. I had to learn to care for him, love him. I had no other option once I came to the realization that death was not in the cards for me. Not at this time. If I wanted to survive, I had to change. And I did. He watched me closely, explaining that his blood was maddening, wanting to see how he had broken me. He taught me a little of the ways of what I was now, our laws, so many rules.
We took to a comfortable sort of domesticity as the Reich started crumbling around us. I could tell the toll the war was weighing on him, even though I secretly rejoiced at Germanys failed advance into Soviet territory, my maker was a manic little man often plagued by irate depression. Anger. He shouted when he came home. He shouted and I was glad, not that he was upset, I truly cared about him. But the war was ending. Everyone could see it.
It was to be my first time out in society. I spoke German well enough, a few phrases were even strong enough for me to mask my Russian accent. There was this party, this picnic at Himmler’s summer home. We showed up late, as apparently several others did, as there were many of our kind who functioned within the leadership of the Reich. He had meetings, and I was supposed to mingle. I was a pretty waifish thing, but had no desire at all to mingle with these Nazi’s, with their women who giggled and played croquet and liked to pretend that their world wasn’t crumbling down around them. I wandered the estate, being ignored after I had made it painfully clear I was not one for social situations, and in the basement I found a stock pile of weapons. Dynamite. Arms. A bunker set up in case of emergency. A rare opportunity seemed to present itself. A chance to take out several heads of the Nazi party, to burn a chalet full of monsters, and finally return to the flames I so longed for.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had a candle lit and a hand full of dynamite. While they all socialized and drank in the parlor, I ran along the expanse of the out door patio, lighting up the sticks of dynamite and setting them inside the door ways. Time seemed to stand still as I threw the last stick and took a step back to watch the firework display I had set. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The building exploded in a firey inferno of wood and glass, it lit up the night sky in a display like I had never seen before. And finally that itch, that need that desire in my brain was calm. The suicidal need to return to the flames was calmed, and it was then I realized, as my sire staggered from the burning building, screaming at me about what I had done, and dragging me from the scene, that this was what I was meant to do. This was my opus. The fires were the marks I was supposed to leave scorched on this Earth.
There was screaming, he was screaming at me again and I went back to my basement cell as my fate was decided. But the vision, the warmth of that fire pulled me through. Until he yanked me from the basement, bags packed for me, and told me to run. A blood hunt had been called, I was to die. He would do what he could for me, but he was a company man. A faithful servant of the Camarilla. I fought with him, despite everything that I had been through I had grown to love him. I wanted him to run with me, come with me. He was losing this war, we could go north, and we could live happily there. I would protect him.
He put me on a train late at night, heading into Berlin. Alone. I transferred to the East with my fake papers he had provided me with, eventually finding my way to Istanbul. I lived on the streets, did what I had to in order to survive. I found a group of orphans, younger than I was, abandoned by their sires as I had been as the war ended, and together we plotted to get away to America. I traveled with them for a time, but their natures were less rebellious than my own. They longed to be part of something bigger, and when it became clear that their destinies lay in the cult of the Sabbat, we parted ways.
I heard from them every now and then over the years. Once orphaned soldiers were now leaders in the Sabbat, with influence to throw the vagrant Night Witch a bone. An opportunity to set fire to Ivory towers all over the country. My own little bit of revenge against those my own sire chose over me, and an opportunity to make a little bit of cash to keep me alive.
I never expected to see him again. I never expected him to hold the revered title Prince in a city I was called in to, asked to create havoc. I never expected that under the anger, the hatred I had felt for him that there would still lay passion. Love. Desire. Fire. I am the fire.
