Wonderland
Introduction

This is the story of the vampire, Katherine Ducote, and her experiences.

You will not find my name among these pages often, if at all. I simply wasn't there for most of it. Katherine's entrance into the remarkable world of Denton, Texas predated my own, and at the time neither of us cared much for the other. She, the rampaging blood drinker and human monster, and myself, the young English witch, spirit medium and egotistical moralist. No, this account of Katherine's indoctrination into the Undead and her life among them is drawn largely from second hand accounts and the rambling computer notes which I recently discovered on her lovely little Apple Powerbook. And, of course, from the rambling narrative of her experiences in New York with her cruel and beautiful childe, Michelle Avoyelles, which she left in the possession of her friend and mentor, Ashley Dochev.

Of her so-called adventures between leaving Denton and meeting Michelle, there is little to be said here because no one knows much about what happened. I know only fragments about her ill-fated "archeological dig" in Peru, or of the time she spent with the werewolf Saul in the Guadalupe Mountains between far west Texas and Mexico. It is only when her story reconnects to mine, tragically for both of us as it turned out, that my knowledge becomes personal. Of her possession by the demon, Pinem'e, who later murdered me (which is a story in itself), and her subsequent return to life I know much more. Much of that tale is recounted elsewhere, at least in fragments.

As I write, Katherine is very much alive and lying prostrate on the cold floor of St. Mark's Catholic Church not far from my quarters here on Fry Street, near the university. She is mad. There is no gentler term that would capture her condition, but her insanity is profound and strikingly human. She begs forgiveness from the God in whom I have recently been forced to believe, and would gladly martyr herself if only this God would command her to. She whispers to the dead, to ghosts which are not there - of Billy, the vampire who forced her into the ranks of the Kindred, and Diego Velasquez, a vampire servant of Pinem'e, both of whom she killed. Their blood she consumed, and with it a piece of their souls.

Like the title figure in American McGee's Alice, Katherine is a broken soul trapped in a world of her own delusions and self-torment. That she is seemingly touched by God in some fashion, gifted by prophecy, makes her condition all the worse. Many would have difficulty feeling pity for her. I admit, I was initially among these. Reading the events of her early life among the vampires, it is easy to despise her. She was a cold-blooded killer, a white-faced creature who fed on the blood of human beings. Like many of us when we are introduced to power, Katherine blundered through her early years in a series of catastrophes, each larger and more horrific than the last. Nothing written or said here is meant to excuse her for these things. These sins of hers.

But the more I come to learn about Katherine's life in those years, the greater my compassion for her.

Let me explain why if I can.

Most vampires - like Andrew Pierce, to whom Katherine was originally apprenticed, terrible mistake though it was - make a compromise with horror to make the unending nights bearable for them. Becoming a Blood Drinker, whether by choice or otherwise, forces you into becoming a nocturnal hunter who preys upon your own species. The word cannibalism comes to mind, as does the parasite, with all of the disgusting imagery and feelings these terms evoke in us. For most vampires, this is a price they're willing to pay for immortality and the magic of the blood, passed down to them by Cain, the so-called first murderer who was cursed by God in ancient times. They dull the horror of their actions, their murders and feeding, and make it a part of their new existence. In essence, they betray their own humanity for the sake of mental peace.

Katherine was wholly incapable of doing that.

She was, as you'll read, a shy, somber woman in life, so unlike the Faerie woman, Ariel Kildare, whose sleeping soul she possessed. She was unaware of the darkness gathering in the world or of the existence of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, magicians and their ilk, who so dominate the business of Denton. Never a more compassionate and gentle woman could you have met than Katherine in her mortal life, before tragedy took its toll. She was also very lonely. Her friends, including the young man, Stephen Truncali, whom she had adored since high school, and her older brother, who became host to another Faerie, the Sidhe knight, Lanthinel, had long ago left her, thinking they could keep her safe by keeping their distance.

Ariel herself was a passionate, sensual woman with a deep love of human beings. A love so great that she committed herself to remain here in the mortal world (for the love of a mortal man no less, the magician, Nicolas, who was in fact an earlier incarnation of Stephen) when most of her kind departed to Arcadia, the legendary realm of the Fae, fleeing the coldness of the modern era. A hopeless romantic, certainly, but an admirable one nonetheless.

Katherine didn't choose to become a vampire. Far from it!

Indeed, Ariel had begun to awaken in her in 2000, and the experience flooded Katherine, who had fallen in love with another young college student, Daniel Vera, with new life and passion. Given a few more minutes or days, Ariel would have exploded into full consciousness and very likely none of this would have happened. As it was, Billy murdered Ariel as surely as he did Katherine when he captured her on the streets of Fort Worth and worked the Dark Trick to make her a vampire, for the sole purpose of tormenting her friends. Billy had no great interest in Katherine. She was, as she has so often been, merely a pawn in other people's games.

Can you imagine what that's like?

Katherine was on the cusp of a new life. She and Daniel were deeply in love and planned on getting married within the next year. Realizing her own talents, she finally knew what she wanted out of life. The truth of her very existence was becoming clear to her! Thousands of years of Ariel's existence were dawning in her mind and memory, sparking an insatiable drive to express herself and immerse herself in life. And then, suddenly, she was ripped away from everyone she knew and loved. Her true nature was taken away from her. Her lover was forbidden to her. Her life was razed to the ground. Then, to add insult to injury, she was forced to rise as a dead thing, a Blood Drinker, and to feed off her fellow human beings to survive.

How could the artistic, compassionate young Katherine possibly accept or reconcile the necessities of vampire existence?

How quickly we forget this tragedy when we think of what came later. But Katherine never forgot. It consumed her utterly until hardly a shred of her former psyche remained. Never forget this grief when you read how Katherine fed off the blood of those young men in night clubs and bars along Fry Street, or when she brutally killed those two young thugs in Cement City, or when she refused and failed every opportunity to help herself! Despite her Faerie soul, Katherine was among the most human of human beings and becoming a vampire destroyed her. Her reactions are perfectly understandable. Denial first. Then numbness. Then rage. Then an ever-deepening, self-destructive despair.

Is it any wonder she tried to commit suicide by dawn's light outside of Steph's house?

Yet Katherine was a survivor above all else, and she couldn't do it herself. Instead, she pleaded to die at the hands of anyone and everyone she met, turning friends away left and right with her grotesque self-loathing. Perhaps it would have been better if Andrew killed her for the attack on Stephen. Maybe someone should have put her out of her misery. Though she tried to punish the world for what it did to her, most of Katherine's cold brutality was merely an invitation for someone to strike her down and end her pain. But her friends loved her too much to give up on her so easily, especially Stephen, who had already watched Andrew's humanity flicker and die before his eyes. Ironically, it was this love which eventually drove her away, when she could find neither solace nor death among her friends.

I'll say it again - Katherine couldn't, wouldn't, compromise her humanity and her inhumanity, her craving for blood and the dead body in which she was imprisoned, and it ripped her apart. Steph's gentle compassion only served to remind her of what she'd lost. Karl's insistence that she retain hope and self control sounded understandably naïve in her ears. Andrew's talk of building a meaning and purpose to her new existence meant only that she give in to the inhuman monster she was becoming. Only by devolving into an animal, an undead hunter with feline features and bestial instincts, and abandoning herself did she find any peace whatsoever, and even that was fleeting.

Who can blame her for falling to darkness so quickly?

Ironically, it was her love of Michelle which precipitated Katherine's renewed search for humanity, and even that cost her dearly in the end. The shock of losing everything all over again must've been unbearable, yet she tried desperately to endure it. When she left Denton for the second time, after finding Ashley Undone by her own struggle against the darkness, I can only imagine how Katherine felt. A lost soul surrounded on all sides by temptation, by blood, by reminders of her broken past. And in this vulnerable state Pinem'e came upon her, desiring her immortal body and inhuman strength. The demon systematically shattered what was left of Katherine's soul and used her longings against her.

It's easy to look at what Katherine did and say she was a failure. That she didn't try harder to reign in her fury or her hunger. That she killed for the sheer pleasure of killing. That she drove away every friend she had. And yes, Katherine was a catastrophic failure in many ways. She was a bloodthirsty, vicious monster. Most of us probably can't forgive her for these things, even if we understand why they happened. But Katherine doesn't expect forgiveness, nor does she ask for it. Even now, having been returned to life, her guilt is all consuming. She looks around her and finds she has nothing. Her old life is ashes. All she wants anymore is to give herself over to God for martyrdom and judgment, to be damned or forgiven as God sees fit. She accepts no other authority.

It's easy to forget how much Katherine was manipulated. First by Billy, who used her as a weapon against her friends in Denton, and whom she later killed in revenge, devouring his blood and soul in Death Valley. Then by the bloodthirsty spectre, Julien, who skinrode Katherine and drove her to ever higher levels of depravity. Several of her murders, especially those in Cement City and including the two thugs mentioned earlier, were caused by that demented little shade. Then by Diego and Pinem'e, for whom she was also an unwitting pawn, a weapon used against me and my friends. During her brief time as a vampire, Katherine had a gift for attracting this sort of trouble on a regular basis.

It is also easy to forget her little victories.

When Katherine followed her fiancé, Daniel, home and sat outside his door, she fully meant to make him a vampire as well, to hold onto him the only way she knew how. She couldn't bring herself to do it. And, horrible mistake though it was, when she confronted him later and revealed her undead nature to him, she only wanted him to know the truth, to ease the sense of betrayal and fear Daniel felt over her disappearance. She fought bravely alongside her friends on several occasions. She destroyed the vampire who made her, swiftly and with terrible justice. She struggled constantly to make peace with herself. She sought to learn more about Ariel, despite the fact that she could never claim her true Faerie nature as a vampire. She questioned. She sought to make a new life for herself with the White Rabbit Roadhouse. She felt genuine love for Michelle and did everything in her power to preserve her childe's human heart. And on and on and on.

She tried to do the impossible.

And now, always a woman of extremes, she continues trying.

As I said earlier, nothing written here is meant to excuse her for anything she has done, though it may sometimes celebrate her fleeting humanity and successes. Even in her current mental state, Katherine would never allow me to do so.

No, this is only an effort at understanding.

Katherine lives with me now, under my care, like a psychiatric patient. Ironic, isn't it, considering she once thought of devoting herself to being a child psychologist. Perhaps by looking at all of this again through her eyes I will have some sense of what happened to her. Of what it did to her fragile soul. Maybe then I will know what it is she sees and hears and dreams while lying before the crucifix and altar, talking to God and the ghosts of those she devoured. Like everyone else who knows Katherine, I find myself loving her despite her massive accumulation of flaws. She has this power over people. A magic in her bright green eyes and crazy smile. Perhaps it is Ariel. Perhaps not.

Either way, I want to save her.

Who can blame me?

Kelly Brooke
Denton, Texas, United States
December 12, 2007