by D C Young
London, England.
1555 A.D.
The terrible five-year reign of Mary Tudor plunged the Watchers back into the middle of the Inquisition once again. Even though the religious turmoil in the country kept the English crusaders concentrated on religious heresy, there was just as much fear of persecution running through the immortal population as there had been during the Spanish witch hunts.
Eager to make examples, Mary’s inquisition rooted out anyone who had or may have opposed the queen’s reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, the Marian Persecutions, as they became known, saw the exile of about eight hundred affluent Protestants and the execution of over two hundred and eighty people; most were burnt at the stake. The burnings proved so unpopular that even Alfonso de Castro, one of King Philip’s own ecclesiastical staff, condemned them and another adviser, Simon Renard, warned him that such cruel enforcement could cause a revolt amongst the people of England.
Julia and the Watchers expertly skirted the flames of upheaval while under Mary’s rule and kept their eyes trained on the political and religious figures that might end up in the queen’s cross-hairs. Many persons of high office and notoriety fell victim to punishment for heresy, but there was none among them which the Watchers felt the world could not do without. Instead, they kept watch that those unfortunate souls were confirmed dead and securely buried before considering the matter fully laid to rest.
With the hubbub settling down, the four vampires made their way back home to Berkshire in the spring of 1558. Before leaving London, Julia paid a silent visit to the queen’s privy chambers at Hampton Court Palace. She stood in the shadows and watched as her ladies-in-waiting and a few chambermaids attended the ailing queen. Julia sniffed the air and wrinkled her ancient nose at the stench. It was a smell that no one else in the room, including the queen, could detect; the reason for her false pregnancy the previous year. There was a cancerous growth in Mary’s womb which was killing her from the inside out. Julia shook her head and stealthily took her leave of the castle; Queen Mary Tudor of England would be dead before Christmas that very year.
Chapter Five
“All things must change to something new, to something strange.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“So what if there’s a group of ancient vampires watching over the world and doing nothing about the cruelty and corruption they see, Max! What use is a Council if they don’t take action?”
“Calm down, Samantha. I know you’re a bit overwhelmed from all of this information, but I need you to be calm if I’m to explain further.”
“Is this really why you asked me to come here? To give me a damn history lesson? I mean, seriously.”
Max ignored the continuous battery of questions and stood abruptly from the table. He went behind the counter and through the door behind into what Samantha had always figured was his office. She watched dumbfounded until he reappeared with a bottle of pink water. He held it out to her.
“Drink this. You’ll feel better after you’ve calmed down a bit.”
“Max, you know I can’t drink whatever that is.”
“Trust me,” he insisted, handing her the bottle of room temperature liquid. “It’s my own special formula… a vampire energy drink of sorts. Its water imbued with a hemoglobin concentrate I simulated.”
Cautiously, Sam lifted the bottle to her lips and took a sip. The liquid seemed to sizzle on her tongue and she felt revived and energized. Just as she did when she’d had blood at Kingsley’s house or even at Detective Hanner’s.
“Wow,” she said, surprise evident in her voice. “That is good. Amazing, in fact, I hope you’ve got a few bottles for me to take home. This stuff’s awesome!”
Max smiled and shook his head slowly.
“Don’t worry; I have more for you, Samantha. I assume you’re feeling better now. Calmer, even?”
“Yeah, sure. I won’t freak out on you again.” She put up three fingers and held her pinky down with her thumb, then added, “Scouts honor.”
“Good,” Max said. “Now down to brass tacks… the reason I asked you here and gave you these books to look at is because I was contacted by the Immortal Council recently. There wasn’t much said that I didn’t already know but still Julia Agrippina managed to throw me a curve-ball.”
“Really. What did she say?”
“She said she needs to meet you, Samantha. The Council is planning to reveal themselves to you.”
“I sense that this should worry me, Max. Why is that?”
“There’s a reason why there are immortals who don’t even know of the Council’s existence. For a long time, the only encounter younger immortals had with a council member was the moment their life ended.”
Samantha Moon froze in her chair and drew in a sharp breath.
“Don’t worry, if they were out to eradicate you, you wouldn’t even see them coming.”
“Oh, and that’s what you choose to say to reassure me, Max?”
“They have an important matter to discuss with you. More important, it seems, than the petty concerns they’ve had with how you conduct yourself as a fledgling vampire and the unnecessary attention you’ve been drawing to yourself and Kingsley Fulcrum.”
“Are you lecturing me? Are they going to give me a lecture about being a good little vampire girl? Because if that’s the case I don’t think I’m interested. Where the hell were they when that beast was ripping out my neck in the park all those years ago?”
“Samantha, relax. I understand your frustration. No one’s going to give you a lecture, you’re not some child being sent to the principal’s office. They just need to show you that your actions are sending ripples across the pond…a very deep pond; one you don’t even realize exists. Although, with everything you’ve been encountering lately, I’m sure you have your suspicions by now. There’s been a lot of blow-back, Samantha and now Julia’s had to step in.”
“Why are they stepping in? Why now, Max?”
“Something very disturbing has happened; something that affects us all and could effectively mean the end of your kind.”
“What are you saying?”
“A young member of the Council, Alexei Romanov has been kidnapped. Julia thinks someone you’ve recently been in contact with has been experimenting with immortality…” Max paused and looked down at his clasped hands resting on the table in front of him. “They think he’s been running tests.”
“What kind of tests? Come on, Max, spit it out for crying out loud!”
“Julia thinks he’s been experimenting on vampires, Samantha; dissecting them, draining their blood, analyzing it…the whole nine yards. He’s trying to synthesize immortality. It doesn’t seem like he’s had any major success so far but he’s never had a specimen like the one he has now.”
“Alexei?”
“Yes, Samantha. We’ve got to get him back.”
Chapter Six
“I stand before the masters who witnessed the transformation of the body of a man into the body in spirit, who were witness to resurrection when the corpse walked out shining. When he came forth from death, a shining thing; his face white with heat.”
—The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Berkshire, England.
1606 A.D.
“Wallace, I’m telling you it’s the perfect plan. There’s bound to be as much nothingness in America as you were ever used to in medieval Scotland. It’s the very definition of wide open spaces.”
“The Church of England these days is looking too much like Isabella and Ferdinand’s Roman Catholic Church,” Petronilla added. “Once a Protestant was a Protestant, but now, anyone who seems to be against the Anglican church is deemed a heretic…or worse, a witch. Even the Spaniards were smarter than placing too much credit on witchcraft and witch hunts. They stuck to the religious principles. These Anglicans will see English people burn for having a different opinion than their own.”
“Exactly,” Julia pressed. “Europ
e is done for us, friends. Too many centuries of upheaval and turmoil. I can’t promise constant peace and safety in America, but at least we stand a chance of carving out our own peace in the vast wilderness of that new continent.”
“When do they leave? “ Adelin asked.
“The Virginia Company of London sends the first ship out next month. There’s not many places available for passengers, and none at all for women, but there’s an abundance of consignment for a variety of cargo.”
“Coffins?” Petronilla asked, skeptically.
“Really, Pet? That would be ridiculous,” Adelin responded. “Why in God’s name would the colonialists take the dead with them?
“How then?” she pressed. “It’s not as if it’s likely this ship will be piloted by a vampire like the last few we’ve been on.”
“Crates,” Julia said, matter-of-factly. “Crates filled with soil.”
“Well, well,” Wallace said, smiling broadly. Then he turned to Petronilla and added, “That’ll do, wont it, Lassie?”
A few weeks later, Wallace oversaw the arrival of three local carpenters who were to build and fill three large wooden crates in the basement of the house at Sutton Courtenay. He provided them with the strongest lumber, iron nails and bands to construct them expertly. The workers built the shipping crates as if they were fine cabinetry, even painting the insides of the boxes with thick, black pitch; rendering them impervious to light.
William Wallace acted as foreman over the three because the work had to be done during the daylight hours if they were to avoid unnecessary scrutiny. Being a werewolf, he assimilated into the normal daily operations of society more smoothly and with more success than his nocturnal, vampire counterparts. He was a personable man when he wanted to be and enjoyed being involved in any activity that involved more brawn than brain. He was at home with the wood workers and spent every moment talking with them and helping them with the work where he could. When the crates were finished, he spent one day filling them with soil from below the manor house and then another filling in the hole with flagstones from the river.
Within three months of Julia’s approval of the plan, Wallace had completed the task and in December they were ready to board one of the Virginia Company of London’s three ships which formed the expedition fleet. With the three crates on-board and safely stowed in the cargo hold, William settled into the vessel’s spacious, aft cabin. He’d hired his own men to bring the luggage on-board and patiently ignored the strange looks he’d gotten from the crew in the process. He’d agreed to the task after succumbing to Julia’s reasoning that they could hardly expect decent clothing in the wildness that was America.
The next morning the ships set sail and moved swiftly away from Blackwell. It didn’t take long before they were out of sight of the shore and William Wallace took one last look at England.
Their trip was unusually long; a total of one hundred and forty four days, by Wallace’s count. He was convinced that the ship’s captain had gone off course at some point or may have taken a very northern approach to Virginia in an attempt to avoid Spanish ships known to frequent a mass of small islands to the South called Las Antillas Occidentales.
His vampire counterparts would have been quickly detected once they felt the need to feed while on-board the ship, therefore, Wallace was the perfect guardian for their sleeping forms inside the darkened crates. Unlike his more youthful werewolf brothers, William Wallace, being over five hundred years old, no longer transformed into his lycan form at the call of the moon. Indeed his transformations were much easier when it was at its fullest and brightest, but Wallace had already developed the ability to shift his form at will… or not. Which is exactly what he did, he maintained the persona of an extremely wealthy merchant with interests in settling a tobacco plantation in Virginia.
They sighted the coast of America in late April and made their way into a vast bay. A few leagues up a river channel, they made landfall at a place named Cape Henry. Within a few days of disembarking the ships and setting up a makeshift camp at the river’s edge, the expedition was attacked by natives. While the passengers and crew of the Virginia scrambled to get their belongings back on-board the ships, William Wallace, William Adelin, Petronilla de Aquitaine and Julia Agrippina retreated to the tree line and watched silently as the ships made their way north and further upriver where, a month later, they founded Jamestown Island.
They fed voraciously the night the expedition fled. First, on the dying men from the native attack and then on the natives they’d caught in the forest as they retreated from the battle. When their strength was restored and their appetites sated, the foursome began walking south. They all agreed that they should get as far away from the English explorers as possible. To avoid unnecessary encounters with the natives, they moved at a supernatural speed at night and rested in dark caves or quickly dug burrows during the day. They followed along the eastern edge of the great mountain range later to be known as the Appalachians. They arrived at a great river valley where the mountain range ended, rolling smoothly to the plains below in a series of beautiful hills. It was in that valley that Julia first caught the scent of the ‘Others’.
“There are immortals to the east,” she’d said suddenly as they bathed in the cold river water.
“You have caught a scent?” Wallace asked. Instinctively, he raised his head and sniffed the crisp night air. “I smell it too, Julia. It’s a small coven as far as I can tell. A settled one, they’ve been living in the area for a long time.”
“I was hoping your keen sense of smell would provide some confirmation, Wallace. What else can you tell?”
“There are three of them. An ancient vampire, a male as old as you are, Julia, if not older, a female who is fairly young and there is a wolf among them too. He is older than I am by many centuries but not as old as his vampire counterpart.”
“Are they hostile? Do they know we are close by? What are we going to do now, Julia?” Petronilla asked in a panicked voice. Adelin immediately went to her side and took her in his arms, stroking her blonde hair to comfort her.
“We must find them and join them,” Julia said, simply. Then added, “It would be rude of us if we didn’t. The ancient one surely has known of our arrival in the territory ever since we fed after the battle and I was re-energized. I felt his presence as well but I was unsure what it was until I entered the valley.”
A week or so after setting out from Cape Henry, the group was making their way down a wide beautiful river towards the coast. The scent of the three immortals became stronger and stronger until it was unmistakable. Julia led the group down into the low river delta country and across a land bridge to a small island. There was only one house on the island but it was a large log cabin. Smoke was rising from double stone chimneys. When they entered the yard, there were three immortal beings standing on the front porch of the house waiting for them.
“Bienvenue,” the woman said in a regal voice.
“Marie?”
“William Wallace? Oh, William is that you?”
“It has been many years, de Guise, but I see that time has been good to you. As have your new companions.”
The woman laughed mirthfully, and then replied, “I always seem to end up in the company of lycanthropes. Your kind are just always so… so manly, perhaps.”
“Old friends, I assume,” Julia said softly to William Wallace, “Who are the ancients?”
“This is Bjorn Ironside Ragnarsson and I am Marcus Antonius,” the tall, dark-haired man to Marie de Guise’s right replied.
“How in God’s name did you get here?” Petronilla said, asking the question that was on the minds of her three companions.
“We came here with the Spanish in 1565, to Saint Augustine. It was difficult to remain undetected within such a small settlement and one tires of eating alligators after a while.” Marie chuckled as she made the comment, and then continued. “We made our way north, things got wilder and we found native settlements from wh
ich we could feed. When we arrived in the river basin here, Bjorn found deer and other wildlife in abundance to entertain himself, so we decided to stay.”
“Seven immortals in the New World,” Adelin mused, “Perhaps we will make a good go of it now.”
“Come inside and share our hearth,” the large, blond Viking finally said.
“Gladly,” Petronilla said, answering for them all.
Chapter Seven
“Maybe Jesus was the first vampire. Man, he rose from the dead too, and he told people, ‘Hey y’all, drink my blood, it’ll give you special powers.’”
—Jason, True Blood
Sam had still been sitting in the darkened living room of her house, watching Judge Judy rip into a young lady who had stiffed her landlord and broken the windshield of his car, when the sound of the doorbell startled her. She looked up at the digital display on the cable box and saw that it was one forty-five.
By the door, she reached for a pair of Oakley wrap-around sunglasses and then smiled broadly to herself, she retracted her hand and reached for the doorknob. Taking a deep breath, she turned it and the door swung open.
The early afternoon light was bright and poured rebelliously, maliciously, into the hallway from outside. Little did it know that where once it would have already hurtled her into fits of pain, there was no longer any effect. Still, she squinted against the brightness and shielded her eyes with her hands. On the step, she could just make out the image of a tall man in a black suit standing on the other side of her screen door.
