I say you do not have a name.
Bloodlust brings on a delirium that’s difficult to describe. From the first squirt on the tongue to the last dying jerk of your prey under your hands, the whole experience builds and builds into a screaming fever pitch. Those with little imagination have compared it to carnal climax, but I liken it more to religious ecstasy. I have never felt more truly alive in my waking death than when I am taking the life of another person.
I didn’t start small, with the gentle siphoning of blood from a lover in bed. I launched myself into the midst of my attackers like a fury from myth.
And I didn’t just kill them. I tore them to pieces.
There were five or six men. I hadn’t been able to keep count when they attacked, and I didn’t bother counting them when I descended. They seemed to be one writhing, pulsating mass, a horde of insects best eradicated in a furious stomp of my boot. Before you found me, I wouldn’t have been able to fight off one of them, let alone half a dozen. But your blood made me strong, stronger than any human had a right to be. It evaporated my fear and propelled me forward into their ranks, my mouth twisted into a snarl.
One of them looked over his shoulder and saw me coming, his face half-illuminated by the cooking fire.
He opened his mouth to shout. I wrapped my fingers around his upper and lower sets of teeth and wrenched his jaw apart before he had the chance.
The others fell so easily. I gouged eyes, snapped necks, fractured ribs, tore open the tender flesh of inner arms with my burgeoning teeth. My gums split, mingling my blood with the blood of my assailants, as I fed from them again and again. Only one of them tried to flee, staggering into the dark and right into your arms. You broke his leg with a swift, efficient kick, then sent him hobbling back my way like a parent turning around a wind-up soldier wandering too close to the playroom door.
When it was over, I stood unsteadily amidst the bodies, panting hard. I was satisfied with what I had done, with no treacherous regret creeping in at the edges, but I didn’t feel exactly… satiated. The hunger was still there, quiet but present despite my churning stomach full of blood, and I didn’t feel as clean and vindicated as I had hoped. The horror of being beaten while my family burned to death still existed, seared into my memory though my body no longer bore the marks. The appetite for revenge those men had sown in me was still there, curled up tight and sleeping fitfully.
I gasped for air, a sob bubbling up inside me. I didn’t know why I was crying, but tears bore down on me like an oncoming storm.
“Come,” you said, draping me in your cloak.
“Where are we going?” I asked, already staggering after you. The bodies lying in a desiccated heap around the still-smoldering fire were hideous, but not half as gruesome as what had been done to my entire village, my family.
You shot me a thin smile that made my heart swell.
“Home.”
Your home was half in ruins, covered by the slow creep of ivy and time. It was perched high above the village, in the craggy mountains where few of the common people ever ventured. Crumbling and faded, it looked almost abandoned. But all I saw was splendor. The fine parapets and oak doors and black peering windows. The way the tips of the towers seemed to puncture the grey sky, calling forth thunder and rain.
I began to tremble, looking at that fine house towering over me like it meant to devour me. By that point, the drunkenness of blood and vengeance had worn off. Fear stirred in my stomach.
“It’s yours,” you said, leaning down. You were so tall, and had to bend towards me like a tree in the wind to whisper in my ear. “All within it is yours to command.”
In that moment, my life was not my own any longer. I felt it slipping away from me the way girlhoods must slip from women who are given proper church marriages and cups of communion wine, not bruising kisses and battlefields full of blood.
“I...”
My voice wavered and so did my knees. You must have sensed my weakness. You always did.
You scooped me up into your arms as though I weighed no more than a child and carried me across the threshold. You held me so gently, careful not to grip too hard or leave any bruises. I was more shocked by your tenderness than by your miraculous arrival at the moment of my death. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to the convenience with which you arrived. There are no angels in this world to accompany the dying in their final moments, only pickpockets and carrion birds.
I want to believe you weren’t just playing your part. I want to believe your kindness was not just another note in the well-rehearsed aria of your seduction, trotted out countless times for countless brides. But I have loved you too long to imagine you do anything without an ulterior motive.
The foyer gaped open in front of me like a hungry maw. Cool shadows fell around us as we crossed the threshold, and the tarnished finery of the home took my breath away. Every detail, from the iron candle sconces on the wall to the brightly colored rugs underfoot, boggled my mind. I had known a very simple existence before then, happy but unadorned. The only gold I had ever seen was the gleaming chalice the priest produced from his sack when he travelled from a nearby city to administer communion twice a year. But now it glinted out at me from nooks and shelves, giving the whole room an air of sacredness.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed, tipping my face to follow the line of the rafters until they disappeared into vaulting darkness.
“It’s yours,” you said. No hesitation. Was this the moment we were joined in marriage? Or was it when your blood first spurted into my mouth?
You kissed me coldly and chastely, and then set me down on the floor. Our footsteps reverberated through the house as you lead me towards the stone staircase. You were sure to retrieve a flaming torch from the wall before leading me deeper into the shadows. Already, my ability to see in the dark was better than ever, but I was not as strong as you yet. I still needed the assistance of a little light.
Rooms passed in a blur of grey stone and tapestries. I would come to know them all, in time, but that night I could scarcely tell them apart. The house seemed bottomless, endless. I had never set foot in a building so large, and we seemed to be the only living creatures inside it.
Well. If you can truly call things like us living.
“Are you alone here?” I asked quietly. My filthy feet were leaving a trail of blood and mud on the carpet, and I wondered who would clean it up. “Where are the servants?”
“Fled or dead,” you said, and offered no further explanation. “We ought to get you cleaned up, shouldn’t we?”
You led me into a small room, and methodically began lighting candles. There was a long, shallow brass tub in the middle of the room, with buckets for ferrying water beside it. Tiny bottles of oil and perfume were scattered about on the rug, the kind of bottles one might find in a queen’s bedroom.
“This is for me?” I said quietly. My voice was shaking. My feet stung from the long walk and every muscle in my body sang with the pain of dying slowly into a new life. With my bloodlust spent, I was unsteady on my own two legs. The whole night started to feel like a blurred, ecstatic dream.
“Of course,” you murmured. “You deserve every bit of it. I’ll draw your water.”
I sat stunned as you filled the bath with steaming buckets of water, alternating boiling and cool until the bath was the perfect temperature. Then you pulled me to my feet and began to deftly unlace my outer dress.
I jolted away with a strangled sound. I had been willing and limp as a doll in your hands up until that point, accepting every touch, every kiss. But fear rose in my throat.
“Don’t,” I cried. “I don’t want… I’ve never been looked at before. Like that.”
Your brow furrowed in concern, or perhaps baffled irritation, but either way you lifted your hands gently from my clothes.
“I will never lift a hand against you, Constanta,” you said quietly. “Never in anger, or in lust.”
I nodded, swallowing hard
.
“Thank you. And thank you for handing those monsters over to me.”
“I would deliver a dozen men a day to feed your appetite if you asked me. I would round up every man, woman, or child who ever said a harsh word to you and trot them out for you on their hands and knees on a short leash.”
“Thank you,” I said, quiet as a prayer.
“Do you want me to leave you?”
“No,” I said, clutching your arm. “Stay. Please. Just. Give me a moment.”
You nodded and bowed shortly at the waist, then politely turned your back as I unlaced my dress and stepped out of it. My clothes were heavy with misery and dried blood, and I kicked them into a corner as they fell off my body piece by piece. I never wanted to see those clothes again.
Then I stepped one trembling bare foot into the tub, sinking into the warm, delicious embrace. Within moments, the clear water had turned blush-pink and then hawthorn berry red, obscuring my nakedness below.
“You can look now,” I said.
You knelt by my side on the ground, bringing one of my wrists up to your lips.
“Still beautiful,” you said.
You bathed me as though I was your own daughter, rinsing the blood from my hair. I soaked in the tincture, perfumed by the agony of my abusers, and let you comb out every snarl.
“Tip your head back.”
I did as you ordered, letting the water run through my hair. I always did as you ordered, in those days.
I had never even seen a bathtub any finer than a rough-hewn wooden trough before. The gleaming brass was cool against my skin as I shut my eyes and drifted, lost to the gentle touch of your hands and the dull throb of pain leaving my body. I felt as though I was floating above myself, watching you trail those long nails through my hair. It was tempting to slip away entirely.
“Come back to me, Constanta,” you said, turning my chin towards you. “Stay here.”
You kissed my mouth with an insistence that was already becoming familiar to me, until I melted under your touch and parted my lips for you. Water streamed from my body in rivulets as I enfolded you in my arms, suddenly emboldened. You ran your hands over my slick skin and made a sound like a man agonized. I knew then I would chase your tiny moments of weakness all the way into hell and back. What is more lovely, after all, than a monster undone with want?
“Let’s get you dry before you catch cold,” you murmured, still chasing my kiss. Your lips traced the curve of my chin, the slope of my throat.
I sat awkwardly in the bath as you retrieved a heavy housecoat and held it up for me, turning your face away behind the cloth. I stood and let you wrap me up, squeeze the water from my hair inch by precious inch. We left the bloodied dress on a heap on the floor. I would never see it again, after that night. I often wondered if you burned it, along with the final vestiges of the name my parents gave me. Either way, you enfolded me in your arms, pressing me to your body like I might disappear if you didn’t hold me tight enough.
“Take me to your room,” I said, clutching your clothes. It was an improper thing to ask, but you had already dissolved so many of the taboos of my previous life in one fell swoop. What indiscretions were left, after the sins we had committed together?
“I’ve prepared your own rooms for you,” you said, mildly. Ever gallant, ever pacing the stage of your own design, saying the right words.
Tears trickled down my cheek at the thought of an instant of night without you close at my side. Quietness seemed to me a creeping sickness, one that would infect my brain with images of the horrors of that night. I didn’t want to see my father’s charred face again, to remember the screaming of the raiders. I just wanted peace.
“I don’t want to be alone. Please.”
You nodded, sweeping open the door for me.
“Whatever my wife wishes is granted to her. Let there be no secrets between us, Constanta. No divisions.”
I cannot remember the details of your room that first night, only the gentle contours of complete darkness, of heavy damask and carved wood beckoning me in deeper. At the time I thought it felt like a womb, nurturing and soft-edged. Now I only remember it as the tomb where we slept through our living death.
You produced a nightdress of fine, soft linen for me and welcomed me into your bed. I pressed my body against yours, the house totally silent except for the sound of my breathing and the slow, steady pulse of your heartbeat. Too slow, like your body was only playing at a process it had long ago stopped needing. I couldn’t get close enough to you to make the numbness creeping over my skin go away. I needed to be touched, to be held in a way that made me feel real. I feared I would slip away into horrible memories of my family being burned alive. Or even more frightening, into sheer, blank nothingness.
“Kiss me,” I said suddenly, my voice ripping a hole in the silence.
“Constanta,” you murmured indulgently, turning your face towards mine. Your lips traced a light line over my cheekbones, my chin. “Constanta, Constanta.”
It almost put me in a trance, to hear you call me that. My skin burned unnaturally hot as I kissed you, over and over again until I was shaking. I don’t know if I trembled for fear or want, or because my body was still breaking itself into pieces and being remade. The change takes days, weeks even, to take full effect. We mature over hundreds of years, moving every night a little further away from our humanity.
I was young, then. I would have let you do anything to make the burning stop.
“Take me,” I whispered, my tingling lips brushing against your own. “I want you to.”
“You’re still weak,” you warned, your hand already sliding up my thigh to rest on my hip. Your mouth moved lower, pressing bruising kisses into the crook of my neck. “You need sleep.”
“I need you,” I said, tears springing to my eyes. I wanted to scrape out some little joy from the harsh, ugly world, to find sweetness despite all the blood and screaming.
“Put out the light,” I said, steeling my voice. I wanted this, I reminded myself. It was all that would make me feel strong and whole again.
You did as I asked, plunging the room into total darkness, and then your mouth was on mine with a ferocity that almost frightened me. I sensed pure, exquisite violence behind your kiss, a desire to rend and devour that reminded me more of a wolf than a man. Your hunger for me was always more apparent under the cover of darkness, when you didn’t have to arrange your face into any semblance of civility. I was always your little mouse, kept in a gilded cage until it was time for the cat to play. You never hurt me, but you delighted in my racing heartbeat, my frightened gasps.
Your fingers found the laces on my dress and deftly unfastened them. I trembled, pressed skin to skin to you as you moved your mouth over my collarbones and breasts with increasing insistence. You were not my first, but this was something entirely different than a giggling, fumbling encounter behind a barn with my childhood sweetheart. This felt cosmic, like a piece of me was being excised so it could take up residence in you.
“Open your mouth,” you said.
You nipped your index finger with the sharp edge of your tooth, then circled it around my lips to coax my obedience.
Blood smeared my lips in a slippery kiss until I opened my mouth for you. I let you slide your fingers inside my mouth and I circled them with my tongue, sucking you clean.
“No teeth,” you ordered, and pressed your heat into the deepest part of me.
Do you remember how I trembled, valiantly battling with my new instincts? My mouth watered and my gums ached, but I obeyed you. Was it a test? Like holding a piece of meat in front of a dog and commanding it to sit, just to push the limits of its obedience?
I drank from you drop by agonizing drop as you slid all the way inside me, obliterating any memory of a life before you.
I slept for days after that first night, waking only to sup on thimbles of your blood. I tossed and turned, desperate for water, for my mother, for the long dream of my life to be over
. The change was agonizing and slow, a calcifying of entrails and reordering of muscles. My skin turned from delicate flesh to smooth, unmarked stone, and my hair and nails grew a quarter inch every day. Only my heart remained the same, faithfully pumping hot blood through veins that burned with my every tiny movement.
You tended to me with the faithfulness of a nun attending the dying, daubing my forehead with a cool washcloth, washing me and dressing me, and trimming my hair every night by candlelight. I eventually adjusted to our sleep schedule, waking in the evening and falling back into a tormented slumber as soon as the sun threatened to rise. And you were always there, steadfast and wise, shushing me wordlessly as you kissed me.
When I was well enough, we made love, my fingers digging into your flesh with the mating drive of a creature that knew it was dying. When I wasn’t, you read to me or plaited my hair. I didn’t know where you went when you weren’t with me, but you were almost always there.
My savoir. My teacher. My guiding light in the dark.
I think, my lord, that this is when you loved me best. When I was freshly made, and still as malleable as wet clay in your hands.
I wish I had a better sense of time, or any sense at all. I wish I could insert dates and chart the rise and fall of our lifetimes exactly. But I was caught in the slipstream, washed out into the vast sea of you. You were the air I breathed and the blood in my nursing cup; I knew nothing except the strength of your arms and the scent of your hair and the lines of your long white fingers. I lost myself so entirely in charting the contours of my love for you that there wasn’t any room for tracking time. There wasn’t any room to examine the past or the future, there was only the eternal now.
Eventually, I emerged. Whole and new, and somebody else entirely. The village girl I had been was well and truly dead. She had died a dozen little deaths in that marriage bed, and I was your Constanta, your dark and unbreakable jewel.
A Dowry of Blood Page 2
