Tales of the Slayer

by Nancy Holder

  “But I cannot let you return to Croatoan and marry that mewling boy,” the image of Ceremonial Fox continued. “If you will agree to marry me—”

  Anger rushed through her. How dare he demand where I give my heart? I am the Slayer! Look at what she had done here, where he had sent her alone and thought she would die. She got to her feet and cried, “Never! I love Seal of the Ocean! I’m the Slayer, Ceremonial Fox, and there is nothing you can do to prevent me from wedding the man I love!”

  His face, never handsome, was hideous in its sneer. “Oh, but there is. You have powers, yes, but so do I. White Doe you are, White Doe you shall become!”

  Pain shot through her. She grit her teeth to prevent a scream from escaping. She would give him no satisfaction. Her legs gave out, and she fell to the sand. Colors bled, until her world consisted of black and white and gray. She flailed, trying to rise, and to her horror saw not human arms and legs but those of a white deer.

  Now she did scream, but the sound that left her throat was the squeal of a deer. Frantically she rose, four legs scrambling for purchase in the shifting sand. Craning her head on its long neck, she looked down and saw that her fears had been confirmed.

  Stretching behind her was the white torso of a deer. She had truly become a white doe.

  The image of Ceremonial Fox was gone, but she did not despair. He would not triumph. Surely, someone would understand when a white doe behaving like a human entered the village of Chacandepeco! They would force Ceremonial Fox to change her back. The tribe needed her protection. It was not so far that she could not swim. Boldly, she strode into the waves on slender, long legs.

  A terrible shriek assaulted her newly sensitive ears. Before White Doe’s eyes, the water took on a monstrous form. Everywhere she turned, she saw blue and white demonic-looking creatures. One of them extended an arm. A wave crashed down on her so violently that she stumbled. She fought, floundering and flailing to keep her head above water, straining for air. The next wave tossed her carelessly onto the beach. Gasping, but determined, White Doe struggled to her four feet, her flanks heaving as she sought air.

  The water spirits. She had forgotten that Ceremonial Fox could control them. She was a prisoner on Roanoke Island, the place where she had been born. The place, barring an unlikely rescue, where she would die.

  The white doe sank to the sandy soil, lifted her large, sea blue eyes to the sky, and began to keen.

  * * *

  By evening that first night, White Doe was missed. Ceremonial Fox watched, satisfied, as the tribe scurried about like ants, organizing search parties and talking among one another about who had seen her last. He especially enjoyed the stricken look on Seal of the Ocean’s pretty, boyish face. He was not so pleased at Takes From Eagle’s raw grief, but Ceremonial Fox knew no softening of the heart.

  Of course, there was no trace of White Doe. After several weeks, even Takes From Eagle resigned himself to the fact that his precious adopted child was no longer among the living. There was a great mourning ceremony, in which the aging priest Many Trees prayed to the mantoac to permit her to walk in paradise, not suffer in Popogusso. That night, in his scrying bowl Ceremonial Fox saw the white doe standing again on the beach, looking longingly to the south, to Croatoan Island.

  The summer was an unforgiving one. No one living could remember such a scorching sun, or such a long stretch of days without even a hint of rain. Many Trees informed them that the mantoac were offended with the Croatoan. More prayers and ceremonies were offered in the temple to the Kiwasowac, the images of the mantoac, but the gods seemed to be unmoved. Uneasily, Ceremonial Fox wondered if they were angry with him for what he had done to White Doe.

  The werowances met and decided that, since water and food were so scarce, hunting would be permitted on Roanoke Island for the first time since the massacre. Deer were plentiful on the island, and the tribe needed nourishment. Ceremonial Fox was loath to obey, but he had no choice. He reluctantly agreed to call off the water spirits for one day only. The tribe could hunt all the deer they could in that time, but they needed to leave by the time the sun began to set.

  The young men began to prepare eagerly for the hunt. Ceremonial Fox stayed behind, doing what he could to magically bind the doe to the island. She struggled, and once she seemed to gaze directly into his eyes as he watched her image in the water. But she did not leap for freedom, as he had feared.

  Nonetheless, so remarkable a creature did not go unnoticed. When the braves returned, they were full of stories of a marvelous white doe, which seemed to vanish before their eyes. The words made Takes From Eagle grow somber, as he thought of his own lost child. Ceremonial Fox listened, his face impassive but his heart racing, praying no one would make the connection.

  “A white doe is sighted on the Forbidden Island, when our own White Doe has gone,” said Many Trees in his raspy voice. “All in the midst of a terrible drought. It is ill. It could be that if we offer this white doe to the mantoac, they will restore both the lost child and the withheld water.”

  “I will slay the white doe!” cried Complacent One.

  “No, I will!” declared Seal of the Ocean, his voice ringing with conviction.

  “Let there be a hunt on the island,” ordered the chief. “The brave who kills the white doe shall receive much honor, and the pelt to wear.”

  Loud whoops filled the village at the news. Honor to be won, a beautiful pelt to be fashioned into unique clothing, White Doe to be returned, and the rain to fall. Why not rejoice? Only Ceremonial Fox retreated quietly to his house, there to contemplate his next move.

  * * *

  Seal of the Ocean felt alive for the first time since White Doe had disappeared. He still felt she lived. Maybe she had been taken by the Roanoac, though the warrior that could best her would have to be a fearsome man indeed. He held on to hope even after her own adopted father had resigned himself to her death.

  The thought that slaying this uncanny white deer might bring his own beloved White Doe back gave him renewed energy. He carefully took with him a special arrow, one given to his father by the white man’s Queen Elizabeth, a powerful werowance. It had been a parting gift to One Who Flies Out. It was a beautiful thing, with a silver arrowhead instead of stone. The queen had told his father it had magical powers and would never miss its mark, so it seemed the right arrow with which to hunt the white doe.

  The day passed quickly with no sign of the strange animal. Finally, at twilight, just as he was about to give up and meet the other braves back at the canoes, he saw something gleam in the near darkness. He turned.

  There it stood, a ghost in the fading light, white as the snow. Were its eyes really blue-green, or was that a trick of the twilight? It did not move but regarded him steadily.

  Seal of the Ocean took a deep breath, nocked his magical silver arrow, and said a prayer.

  * * *

  Miles away, Ceremonial Fox stared into the image his scrying bowl showed him. He did not want another to have White Doe, but he had never truly wished her death. Even in the heat of his pain, when he sent her to Roanoke, he had hoped she would live. And yet Seal of the Ocean had managed to find her, despite the charms Ceremonial Fox had employed to keep her hidden from human eyes. Or was it simply that among White Doe’s gifts was the ability to resist, at least a little, Ceremonial Fox’s magic?

  He saw their eyes meet, saw the doe stand rock still. Slowly, Seal of the Ocean nocked his bow with his silver arrow.

  Tears filling his eyes, Ceremonial Fox felt his hardness break. Quickly, before it was too late, he spoke the words to reverse the spell. Better to see White Doe in another’s arms than lying dead on the sands of Roanoke.

  * * *

  Seal of the Ocean let the arrow fly.

  At that instant, the form of the white doe shimmered. Before his horrified gaze, it shifted into a familiar and beloved shape. Smiling joyfully, White Doe, human and alive, lifted her arms—and stared down at the arrow protruding from between her breas
ts. Her face froze, and she crumpled to the earth.

  Shrieking, Seal of the Ocean rushed forward and cradled the naked girl in his arms. Blood spurted from the arrow, buried almost to its fletching in her chest. One pale hand lifted, touched the shaft, then fluttered down again. Blood dripped from her mouth as she lifted her eyes to him. Her lips moved.

  “No, don’t speak,” Seal of the Ocean whispered. Lifting his head, he cried, “We need help!”

  The bloody white hand touched his own strong, brown one. White Doe smiled gently.

  “Too late,” she whispered. “Listen . . . I must speak. . . .”

  Tears pouring down his face, Seal of the Ocean leaned down, straining to catch her words.

  “I was . . . the Slayer. I let anger and hurt and pride . . . betray me, and now I pay the price. Do not mourn. I die loved. . . .”

  Her soft whisper trailed off, and her head lolled back on his arm. When the other braves reached Seal of the Ocean, they found him crying over the body of White Doe. Gently, they took him away, returning a moment later for the body.

  It had vanished.

  Miles away, Ceremonial Fox screamed in anguish, aghast at the tragedy to which his desire had led.

  * * *

  An ocean away, John White, ill and feverish, stirred in his sleep. Something had awakened him from such a sweet dream, a dream in which he embraced his daughter and his daughter’s daughter, a beautiful girl with long, clean limbs and her mother’s golden hair. . . .

  “Your pardon, sir,” said his servant. “I told Sir Walter’s messenger you were sick, but he insisted I give this to you.” Carrying a small candle, the servant stepped into the room and handed a note to White.

  White waved it away. “Read it.” At the servant’s hesitation, he said, “I don’t care what the messenger said, I am far too sick to read it on my own.”

  “Very good, sir.” The servant set the candle down beside the bed, broke the seal, and frowned. “I don’t understand it, sir. Only five words: ‘There is another Chosen One.’ ”

  White gasped. Deep sorrow flooded him, and he turned away so that the servant would not see the hot tears escaping his eyes. “I understand. Leave me.”

  And alone with ghosts and nightmares, John White mourned the death of the grandchild he had never seen.

  “Virginia,” he whispered hoarsely. “I am so sorry.”

  * * *

  They say that the spirit of Virginia Dare still haunts Roanoke Island. At just the right hour on just the right night, you can catch a glimpse of a ghostly white deer, a luminous, transparent figure. Some say she gazes with unspeakable sorrow eastward toward England. But others say her heart lies to the south, to the island once known as Croatoan. And it is there the shade of Virginia Dare turns; to the people she loved and protected with her life, to where she was more than the Slayer—she was beloved White Doe.

  die Blutgrafin

  Yvonne Navarro

  HUNGARY, 1609

  “What evil is it they do, my vigyázni?”

  Standing beside Kurt Rendor in the frigid darkness, fifteen-year-old Ildikó Géllert saw him start when she said vigyázni—guard. It was the closest the newly called Slayer could come to the word Watcher in their native Hungarian, and also her first true acknowledgment of his post in her life. She knew he would take it as a huge step for their relationship, a hint that the fierce and headstrong Ildikó might finally accept Rendor’s experience, if not his authority.

  Rendor hunched inside his woolen cape, and Ildikó knew he was feeling the bite of the wind in every joint of his seventy-year old body. While she and her Watcher hid in the tree shadows at the forest’s edge, the moonlight was still strong enough to break through the wintery cloud cover and the swirling snow; more often than not, there was plenty of light with which to see the figures in the clearing a hundred feet away. They bent and straightened, bent and straightened, fighting with something on the frozen ground.

  “They bury the evidence,” Rendor said finally. He kept his voice low, knowing the treacherous wind could switch directions at any moment and carry his words to the ears of those they spied upon.

  Ildikó strained to see in the darkness. “They murder?” she whispered.

  When she would have started forward, Rendor stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Wait,” he instructed. “You will do a greater good if you hear me out and plan your moves with care.”

  She paused and said nothing for a few moments as the figures, dressed in much sturdier clothes than she and Rendor, finished their task then hurried down a path at the other end of the small clearing. While the Carpathian Mountains rose cold and majestic behind them, Ildikó knew the path across the clearing would ultimately wind back through the foothills to Castle Csejthe. “Whose bodies did they hide?” she asked quietly. “Those who have fallen prey to vampires?”

  Rendor shook his head, then steered her into the forest and back toward the village. Wolves howled somewhere on the mountainside, their cries multiplying and echoing mournfully. “Not to vampires,” he told her as they picked their way through the snow. “Serving girls—the latest victims of die Blutgrafin.”

  The Bloody Countess?

  Ildikó looked at him sharply. “Countess Bathory did this?”

  “These are the rumors, yes.” The wind had risen, driving the snow in vicious circles in the air and slapping it against their faces, making them both huddle deeper into their garments. “She—” His murmured sentence ended suddenly, the words choking off in surprise as something leaped on him from the heavy darkness of the surrounding trees.

  Rendor went down. Wolf! Ildikó thought and surged forward, intending to grab the hide of the snarling form. Then her hands gripped flesh—cold flesh—and she realized it was a vampire. Desperate and cold, starving enough to try an attack even when outnumbered. Oftentimes the wintry mountainside would do her work for her, the vicious weather numbing a vampire until the creature could barely function and found itself too far from shelter come dawn. This one had clearly felt that the last of its strength was better pitted against two foes than the frigid hand of nature.

  She hauled the beast backward then realized Rendor had come with it—the dreadful thing had managed to clamp its teeth into one of her Watcher’s shoulders. Even as the creature grunted with short-lived satisfaction, she could hear the elderly man fighting not to cry out, knew he was afraid the noise would draw more unwanted attention in the night. He pounded on the vampire’s head to no avail, the snow making his blows slide harmlessly aside.

  But Ildikó’s strike would not be so easily ignored. She let go of the bloodsucker’s wrist and buried her left hand in its matted hair instead; her right slid under its chin and she hooked her thumb and middle finger on each side of its jaw, digging in viciously until its jaw was forced open and the hold on Rendor released. The thing’s mouth gaped, but its hiss of anger died abruptly as Ildikó pushed it backward and off balance—right onto the jutting limb of a dead tree.

  Ildikó ignored the dust as it died and rushed to her fallen Watcher. “Are you all right? How badly are you hurt?” she asked urgently.

  “I’ll survive.” Rendor was gasping with pain as she helped him upright. “We must get home quickly and cover the blood smell lest it draw another attack. I fear I would not be able to fight such an encounter.”

  “Of course.” She ducked under his arm and used her shoulder to carry a good part of his weight. “Lean on me.”

  He did so, and they had taken only a few short steps when the question she was already dreading came. “Ildikó, did you not sense the night beast before it attacked? Not at all?”

  The Slayer was silent for a moment, but the truth had to be admitted. “No.”

  Rendor said nothing more about it, but Ildikó knew it weighed heavily on his mind. She had trained and tried to learn the ways of a Slayer, and in most things she felt she didn’t do badly. This, however, was her biggest shortfall—her inability to perceive a creature of the dark when i
t was near—and it was something for which her Watcher could provide neither mentoring nor training. This lack of intuitive skill had occasionally hindered her in the past, but tonight it had nearly cost the life of her Watcher. Ildikó swallowed, feeling ashamed and small, as though she had let down the one person she most hoped not only to protect, but impress.

  She decided to turn the subject back to the countess, the castle, and the burial they had seen—anything to take their minds off this nearly fatal failure.

  “The countess,” she said. “You said she takes young serving girls?”

  “Yes.” Rendor’s breathing was labored. “I will tell you more when we get inside, after we have cleaned my wound, supped, and rested a bit.”

  Like it or not, Ildikó was left to her own thoughts, as it took them another twenty minutes to get through the trees and make it to where they lived, in Rendor’s small house at the outermost edge of the village. Set apart from the others, Rendor had once been a successful farmer; now grown old, he had sold off all but the small piece of land upon which his home was built. He was a man who loved solitude, and it had pained him to see the space that ensured that dwindle; still, while the surrounding earth had been turned and tilled by its new owners, his privacy was not yet threatened. No one saw him and the young Ildikó take refuge inside against the brutal, late Hungarian night.

  After Rendor washed and wrapped the puncture marks in his shoulder, he then set to preparing a simple meal, something hot to chase away the cold. He set water to boil in the iron pot above the fireplace, scooped out a bit to make tea, then added a handful of root vegetables, herbs, and a chunk of dried mutton. While he worked at that, Ildikó braved the outside wind to fetch more fuel for the fire, then she spread their outerwear to dry.

  “Tell me of the countess,” she said when the meager soup was ready and ladled into trenchers in front of them. Its pleasant aroma mingled with the stronger scent from the still-steaming tea. “And of these rumors.”