Fair warning, this is VERY graphic and may be disturbing for some. And it’s a LONG read. At least for Reddit. Picture is just for visual representation. 

In the early 1400s, in the bustling, modern-thinking Aztec city of Texcoco, a woman named Citlalli tended to her garden. It was her small joy in a mirthless life, fraught with yearning. Her husband, Yaotl was a handsome but contemptuous war general. Though he only took one wife, he tethered himself to many women and bore them children, though he suffered Citlalli none. This was a source of resentment for her because she loved children and she’d always seen herself as a mother, and they argued many evenings. But he never relented. “You’re too beautiful to bore children who would suckle at your teet and drain your youth. I’ll give you a child when your ripeness begins to fade, and not before.” He was also a maddening drunk who never spared the rod when he felt disdain, and he oftentimes did.

So Citlalli tended to her garden of tomatoes, vanilla orchards, custard apples, guava, garlic, and spices and she would pray; pray for serenity, pray for a child, pray for a softness of heart in Yaot, pray to keep her own darkness at bay. That night, Yaotl came home, terrible in his drunkenness, and beat her with far more malice than usual, before having his way with her, and passing out. 

As she lay bloodied, and battered, a feverish rage set in. Over the course of days that raw heat never subsided, it solidified into a hard hate. And what her husband did not know were the things she held close to her chest, like her being a subtle practitioner of divination, love magic, and… blood magic. So she killed a quail, decapitated it, and prayed to the Pagan God of Blood and war, Huitzilopochtli, for strength and divinity.   
   
Taking pity on her, Huitzilopochtli answered. He would grant her the strength to do what needed to be done, but he would take from her in return. “Anything”, she said, and she gave herself over completely to the blood magic. 

And so Huitzilopochtli granted her knowledge and cunning, and secret ways of gardening unbeknownst to her before. Over the summer, she grew cloves of garlic and achiote and when the time was right, Huitzilopochtli granted her silver dust, and jimsonweed to mix it with, alongside a vial of his own blood, of which she used half. A fine brew only needed the proper incantation, which she recited. She poured the murky concoction into a glass of Yaotl’s finest red, and presented him smoked crawfish, and duck cooked skin-crisp just as he loved it. Oh how he drank and gorged himself like king amongst kings, and, satiated, he looked at his wife and said, “Of all the whores who have dined me, your cuisine graces me best, I think I will grant you a child after all, my love.” To this, Citlalli smiled, for moments later he began to claw at his throat, and froth from his mouth. He got up, stumbled back, choking on bile and his eyes were filled with fear and blood. What last he saw before his heart exploded in his chest was his wife’s beautiful smile, and a new darkness in her black eyes. A thirst for power not easily quenched.

 After, Huitzilopochtli appeared to her. Their transaction almost complete. She dropped to her knees and exclaimed her devotion to the deity. “What do you want, O God?” “I will take what you want most from you. You will never bear children, for as long as you live, but as long as you live well, you will live long. But be forewarned, further magic in my name is forbidden!” 

 The years sauntered on, but gravity and age did not affect her skin. She had inherited everything from her late husband, and suspected of no wrong-doing. And in her perpetual youth, she attracted many suitors, but all of her trysts and relationship bore no fruit, no love, and no children. Thus, she became known as the Barreness, the Black Widow who had bartered with the devil for immortality.

And as the years lengthened, she distanced herself and grew more reclusive, and retreated from the city, deep into the woods, hardened by bitterness and loneliness, with only the company of her garden, and her eagles. She’d build a massive birdhouse many years and painstakingly built the trust of two eagles, through food and respect and  they in turn built their nest there returned to her every night, eventually, giving birth to three baby eagles. Citlalli favorite was Tláloc, the large golden maned mom who would often perch on her shoulders while she gardened. As such, a morning came when she’d gone into the city to purchase some mecaxochitl, a rare flower used for cocoa, and a calming herb for her birds.

And  as she walked through the busy streets, people scampered away from her, as though she’d carried some black cloud of malevolence about her. She did not care anymore. Long had her heart eroded. She stared back defiantly and it was then she saw a ghost. It was her dead husband, the general, who she had murdered so many years ago! He had finally come back to claim her soul! She gasped, and nearly tripped in a fright. Scattering away from him, hands in front of her face. But wait, no. NO. Cooler heads prevailed. It couldn’t be him. It COULDN’T be! He was food for maggots long since. But then, who was this splitting image? Citlalli slowly gathered herself, cleared her throat and straightened up.

And then, Citlalli saw her; smiling, full of color, and pregnant. Ready to pop by the looks of it. The young man’s wife. And the realization crashed into her like raging tsunami. It was Yaotl’s son. The child of one of his whores from decades past has grown into his own and was having a child himself. She stared at the couple, almost in a daze, her breathing shallow, before she caught herself and dashed into a small alleyway south of them. At this point, her incantations were elite, and she had advanced far beyond the threshold of theoretical magic. Quickly, she chanted a few words, and swallowed the fistful of salt she kept handy, and chewed on some thyme, and reality shifted bit by by around her flesh until she completely donned the skin of another. A slightly older, jovial, earthy woman, with a motherly warmth. 

She followed the couple around at a distance for hours, bristling with malcontent. Her husband was vile, repugnant, wretched welp of a man who took and took from the world and gave nothing back, and even now in his defeat he haunted her? That his WhoreSon should have a child while she herself was infertile? Where is the Godliness in that? How was that curr’s lineage allowed to pester on? Pestilence! NO. She followed them from a distance, for hours until they’d made it home. A quaint farm on the outskirts of the city, just before the forest’s treeline. She made a mental note and went home. 

That night, deep in the woods, Citlalli’s thoughts took her to forbidden places as she cut up garlic, cihuapatli, Heimia salicifolia, and brewed them in her own piss. She poured silver dust into the boiling cauldron and let it bubble. Citlalli needed the black night sky of a new moon, and when it occurred 3 days later, she went into her birdhouse and gently coaxed Tláloc (the mother eagle) out, kissing her golden plume much to the bird’s chagrin. Tláloc gave Citlalli a playful peck and was about to jump on her shoulders squawking when Citlalli slit her throat. The hot spray of blood was the magic. There needed to be an arterial geyser or its power would remain latent. And so there was, and Citlalli closed her mind off from the guilt and tossed the corpse after she gathered the blood. If she thought of Tláloc as a tool and not an animal and a friend, she wouldn’t get those pangs in her heart. She poured the blood into the cauldron and chanted for an hour in the pitch black of her home. By morning the liquid had coagulated into a thick paste. It needed to sit for 5 days without any oxygen touching it so she used corn husks and large banana and agave leaves to cover it and then binded it with volcanic ash clay. At the moment of the breaking dawn on the 5th day, she poured the remainder of Huitzilopochtli’s blood into the now completely hard lump. It caught fire immediately and went out just as fast, revealing a vibrant red, delicious smelling wine. She poured the “wine” into a festive bottle and off she went.

Now what happened after was lost through the annals of history and different accounts tell varying events but the most prevailing one is that the witch took the form of a neighbor and brought the bottle of wine to the expecting couple as a gift. The husband, Tenoch, enjoyed a drink from time to time and trusted the face of the neighbor she wore so he indulged her, and drank candidly. 

They laughed, told jokes, and with a final congratulation, and the witch departed. Three months later, a healthy baby girl was born. They named her Atzi, after the misty rain. Then one night, on the first new moon of Atzi’s birth. There was screaming. The harrowing wails of pure torment and horror. Screaming so full of despair it did not sound human. For Tenoch had awakened in the middle of the night, and he EATEN his newborn baby.  His wife, Yaretzi had awoken to an eerie crunching  \*splitch splotch\* sound to see him leaning over something, grunting and heaving, and when she approached she saw him chewing on her baby’s small intestines like a ravenous wolf. She screamed and pushed him off but by then Atzi was barely torso. 

She screamed and shrieked but Tenoch kept clawing his way past her, trying to get to Atzi and in Yaretzi’s anguish, she grabbed a wooden chair, broke off its leg and with all of her might, plunged it into her husband’s beating heart. He died on the spot. 

But years prior, Huitzilopochtli had warned Citlalli that any further magic in His name would have consequences and the “wine” she used to drive Tenoch into a feeding frenzy was infused with the God’s blood. And the murder of a baby was a covenant most evil. And a wicked magic took shape about Tenoch’s death. And so in the forbidden blood of Huitzilopochtli he rose again from death to Unlife, to live unloved as he is undead. And because the blood of Huitzilopochtli curses him, he is bound to it, and all blood, for which sustains him. And so should the strength and speed and blood magic of Huitzilopochtli embolden him. But that of the magic which binds him such as garlic and silver, serve as weaknesses but not unto death for he is undead. And because he cannot bear to look at himself, no earthly reflection can hold his image in water nor glass. 

And Huitzilopochtli in his spite, begat another woe. As is ordained, for as long as an undead lives, every five years, under the pitch black sky of a new moon, the Nosferatu MUST consume a newborn baby, bones and all. It is a compulsion that cannot be denied and if it is, the Nosferatu’s skin is cursed to undying fire for the remainder of his undying life. And because the blood of Huitzilopochtli threads the vampire’s veins, anyone who consumes it and then dies is cursed to roam as his sire does.

And so Tenoch, the first vampire, rose and in his perpetual hunger drained the blood from his wife’s veins.

Seeking revenge, he fled into the forest, having an innate knowing of what the witch did to him. He moved in fog and shadows and not of flesh. Legends say he tore her apart, ripping limb from body, slashing flesh from bone with supernatural claws as he basked in her fear as she looked into face of the man she broke. The man who shared the face of one who once broke her. And In her final breath she cursed him once more; that he should be held banished from the sun, and know only night. That his skin might be burned to ash only to rise again at night, cursed still.

This is the longest thing I’ve ever posted on Reddit. It’s a LONG read. I’m writing a vampire anthology. A series of babies keep showing up missing and a detective is trying to get to the bottom of it. This isn’t that. This is a major prequel about the creation of the very first vampire. It ties in.