Magdalena, ever-willing, held her arm out to me. Those lovely fingers curled, beckoning me closer.
“Please,” she said, voice sweet as a berry so ripe it was ready to burst.
I was furious with you. You had manufactured my consent every step of the way, a mere formality. This had always been your design for the both of us, we were always going to end up here, in this bed.
But I was also delirious with want, and half-convinced that you had been right all along. It was so much easier to believe that you always had my best interests at heart.
I swallowed dryly and crossed the room to the bed, running my hand over the curve of your back as I bent down to kiss her.
Her mouth was warm and willing, and when she made one of those soft sounds against my lips, I shuddered. She tugged me down gently onto the bed, forming the shape of that word again before the buck of your hips snatched her breath away. Please.
“You,” I said, kissing her with more urgency as I allowed you to make short work of my laces. “Are a torment.”
Desire makes idiots of all of us. But you already knew that part, didn’t you?
Magdalena sighed into my kiss and I knew I would kill for her, die for her, do it all over again and then some. I had never wanted a woman like this, not even Hanne, not to the brink of such total desolation. It reminded me of the way I loved you, and that shook me to my core. One body could not hold such fervor, such feeling, I thought. It might rip me in two.
Your lips sought mine while she was still wrapped around you. I ran my hand down the smooth plane of her stomach, then lower still.
“Can I please?” I asked breathlessly.
Magdalena nodded, and then made a delicious little sound when I circled her with my fingers. She writhed and mewled under our expert ministrations, calling out my name and yours in turn.
Then, at the moment of her climax, you sank your teeth into her neck.
She convulsed and cried out, but she held you fast. As though she were welcoming the pain and the change, not rejecting it. I reeled, my mind addled by pleasure and the scent of hot blood wafting towards me. This was happening too fast, I wasn’t ready for this, I wasn’t ready to share my life forever with another one of your wives, I wasn’t…
You kissed me firmly with blood-slick lips, and then I was gone. You guided my head towards the pulsing wound at her throat, and I sucked the sweet red liquor from her skin while she murmured my name, her hands tangled in my hair. I had never known such perfect tenderness, such absolute ecstasy.
It terrified me.
We shared the wine of her in sips, alternating between drinking from her and kissing her, kissing each other. I could scarcely tell the difference between your two mouths in the dark, that’s how close the three of us were.
Magdalena obediently opened her mouth for you when you opened the vein in your wrist, and drank from you with a determined ferocity I didn’t expect to see from someone who was not yet one of us. There was a flash of her steel again, as compelling as it was frightening. She would not be made the world’s victim, that much was obvious.
My blood wasn’t as potent as yours, and I didn’t know if it had matured enough to offer the powers we enjoyed, but I opened a vein for her all the same.
We passed the night drinking from each other and making love, taking full advantage of the heightened sensitivities that flooded Magdalena’s system. None of the servants bothered us, and none of the dinner guests came looking for us.
They were well-trained, after all. And as Magdalena wound her fingers around my wrists and covered my chest in hot kisses, called me sister with that mischievous smile on her face, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being trained, too.
We took our leave the following night, our carriages loaded down with Magdalena’s finery. She left the manor in the care of one of her highest-ranking servants, promising that she would return sooner rather than later. I wonder if she knew that sooner had a way of becoming much, much later when you lived as long as we did. But she was young, optimistic. Maybe she didn’t believe that taking up with you meant the total obliteration of her previous life.
She would learn, in time.
She was vain and petulant and my rival besides, I reminded myself as we headed out into the ocher light of dusk together. I was determined to see her worst qualities and keep her at arm’s length even as we travelled pressed together in the coach. But she was also brilliant, and beautiful, and so sure of who she was and what she wanted out of the world. She held my gloved hand in hers whenever the carriage went over a bump. She fed me little bites of treacle from her traveling bag and she dozed against me with her mess of curls tickling my cheeks. She invented word games to keep us diverted, and woke me every evening with a little kiss in the corner of my mouth.
I fell in love with her quickly, even as my head railed against the stupid machinations of my heart.
There was an uncontrollable fire in her that was hard to look away from, much less resist, and the more time we spent together, the more my admiration for her grew. I knew I was lost when I caught myself lying awake dangerously close to dawn in a tavern room on the French border, watching her face while she slept. Every little flutter of her eyelashes fascinated me, and I catalogued the curve of her face as though I had been commissioned to paint her portrait. Even after you stirred awake and pulled me against you, shushing me back to sleep, all I saw in my dreams was her face.
There wasn’t much hope for me, after that.
Far from stifling my love for you, my feelings for her simply stoked the devotion that enveloped my heart whenever you walked into a room. Seeing the two of you walking arm in arm through city streets, window shopping and laughing, filled me with an irrepressible delight. You called us your little foxes, and you were our north star, guiding us through the night. My heart fluttered in tandem with yours whenever she shared the latest gossip with us by firelight, and we were both thrilled to hear her latest thoughts on political developments across the continents.
Magdalena was connected to a seemingly endless network of informants, rivals, friends, and philosophical sparring partners whose letters found her wherever we stayed. You warned her against too much correspondence with the outside world, against jeopardizing our secret, but you indulged her habits in those early years. It was your honeymoon after all, this grand tour across all the European cities she had always dreamed of visiting. She should be allowed some little indulgences. It was her right as a new bride.
You wouldn’t start hiding her letters and discouraging her from answering her aging cohorts until much later, when her novelty had worn off.
We toured Lyon and Milan, then wintered in Venice at Magdalena’s request. You chafed against Venice, its seething color and swirling masses of people, but I reveled in it. The bustle reminded me so much of my Vienna. Magdalena and I never tired of wandering the piazzas, watching the merchants hustle by. We would walk along the thin edge of the canal arm in arm, me listening as Magdalena gossiped about all the city officials and their wives. She knew their families, their position on politics, and which of them were taking bribes, and she had her own opinions about all of them. I marveled at her mind for diplomacy. If only the Great Council of Venice would bend their ears to a foreigner, and a woman no less, they would have a powerful weapon at their disposal.
You were irritable during the whole first winter we spent in the city, complaining about the noise and the damp and how there was no quiet place for you to carry out your research. I had begun to unravel your fixation on science at that point, your obsession with cataloguing and dissecting the human animal. All vampires find some way to stave off the monotony of an endless life, with hedonism or asceticism or a rotating door of lovers as short-lived as mayflies. You kept your hands and mind busy with your hypotheses, your never-ending research into the condition of human and vampire. Maybe you were determined to be the first person to riddle out what processes transmuted one into the other. Or maybe you just needed a dis
traction. I don’t have to ask from what, my lord. I know the undying life has a certain inevitable weight to it.
“Let’s go out,” Magdalena exclaimed one night as she tossed her arms around your neck. You were hunched over your desk, peering at samples of flora and fauna from halfway across the world. Why they were of interest to you, I still have no idea.
You gave a smile that was more of a grimace.
“I’m busy, little one.”
Magdalena put on one of her spectacular pouts. A well-timed pout from her could probably have brought down the walls of Troy.
“But the opera is tonight! You promised we could go.”
“And you can go. Take your sister and give me some peace. I’m very absorbed at the moment, if you can’t tell, my love.”
Magdalena whined, but I was elated. You were giving us permission to traverse the city alone. Without you ushering us along through the shadows, glowering at passerby, Magdalena and I could make conversation, take our time as we strolled along the rain-slick streets. Venice had been in the grip of Carnival over the past week, the festivities spilling into the streets. The world outside our door was sure to be riotous with sound and color, Venice at her most ferocious and lovely.
“I’ll get my capelet,” I announced, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. I didn’t want you to change your mind at the last minute and decide we needed our usual supervision.
But in the end, the draw of your research won out, and Magdalena and I were permitted to travel by ourselves, so long as we promised to return before the first light of dawn. You were fond of these paternalistic rules, always circumscribing our freedom with little laws.
Magdalena and I put on our finest gowns and strode out into the night in a rustle of silk and ribbons, our feet leaving wet tracks on the cobblestones.
We giggled all the way to the opera house; so happy to breathe the free air with only each other for company. Magdalena laced her gloved fingers through my own as she pulled me down alleyways and over bridges, and my heart pounded a happy drumbeat in my chest. Tonight, the whole expanse of star-riddled sky seemed to be shining especially bright for us. It was her and I alone, for once, with the entire world at our feet. We could have done anything we wanted to. Caught a boat to Morocco, or passed ourselves off as princesses at one of the lord’s carnival parties, or drained a beautiful young thing together in the darkest alleyway where no one could find us. We were drunk on sheer possibility.
We didn’t divert from our plans, however, because Magdalena was a devotee of the theatre, and because I wasn’t quite brave enough yet to do anything that would get us into trouble with you. A little mischief was one thing; outright subordination was quite another. I didn’t want our beautiful evening to be spoiled by your raging temper when we arrived back home.
So even though Magdalena stared hungrily at the masked partygoers in their plumed hats and billowing brocade dresses, I pulled her away from the heart of the revelry and towards our destination.
The opera was one we had never seen before, in the new, more serious style that was starting to replace the sung comedies so popular around the region. Opera was growing in stature and influence, spreading all over Europe, and the composers had begun to experiment to great acclaim. I’ve sat through so many operas with Magdalena I can scarcely remember their names, but I remember this one. It was a rendition of the Biblical story of Judith. Familiar enough to me, who still read the Bible for recreation and meditation despite your scoffing, but relatively new to Magdalena, who had never cared much for sermons.
“They should have let her fight,” Magdalena whispered to me behind her fan. The lovely Judith onstage lamented her position in Israelite society, desiring to fight back the invading horde alongside her brothers. Moved by the plight of her suffering countrymen, she swore vengeance against the Assyrians. “I would have let her fight, if I was in charge.”
I smiled at this. It was hard not to smile at Magdalena when she set her mind on something, declaring her will like a true high-born lady.
“She has her revenge,” I said. “Keep watching.”
Magdalena reached out in the darkness of our opera box and clutched my hand when Judith welcomed the leader of the Assyrians, Holofernes, into her home. She sang sweetly to him as he reclined on her lap, secure of his safety in the arms of a woman. Then, once Holofernes had fallen into a drunken sleep, she called for her maid to bring her a sword.
Magdalena took a sharp breath, her throat fluttering. I leaned in closer to her, wanting to savor every bit of her pleasure. Through her eyes, I was able to experience the story for the first time all over again. My heart leapt in my throat as Judith sang out her triumphant aria and swung her sword. It came down on Holofernes’ neck with a great gush of stage blood so satisfying my mouth watered. Magdalena gave a little jolt in her seat and clapped her hands together briskly, and I laughed and pressed my cheek to hers. Her joy went through me like lightning, catching fire in my chest.
“Who is that woman with her?” she whispered, as the two women held down Holofernes’ writhing body and completed the decapitation.
“Her maid, I believe.”
“Maybe they were like us,” she said, voice velvety and soft in the darkness. We were still pressed together, her lips near my ear, her eyes fixed on the stage.
“And what are we, Magdalena?” I asked. The question was out of my mouth before I had a chance to weigh it. We had been together for years, the three of us, but there was still no name for the affection between Magdalena and I. It seemed incomplete, somehow, to call her lover or friend.
She turned her face towards mine, nudging my nose with her own.
“Don’t tell me you think we’re rivals, dear Constanta. Haven’t you realized by now that there’s enough of him for the each of us?”
“I’m not thinking about him,” I said, and to my surprise, I was being honest. My head was always full of you: when we were together you overshadowed every conversation, and when we were apart I made myself sick with missing you. But now Magdalena had my undivided attention. “I’m talking about us, you and I. Let’s be honest with each other, for once.”
Somberness was not one of Magdalena’s strong suits, and it was my constant disposition, which resulted in a rift between us. She was content to glide in and out of my bed, teasing me mercilessly one day and then sliding her arms around my neck and calling me beloved the next, and she never saw the contradiction in her actions. I, however, took love much more seriously. Love was no girlhood game. It was an iron yoke, forged in fire and heavy to wear. I suppose I wanted to know once and for all if Magdalena really loved me, even if it was just in her way.
Magdalena looked at me for a long moment, and then deliberately began removing the glove of her free hand. She did it with her teeth, so she wouldn’t have to let go of me. Once the grey silk was settled into her lap, she brought her wrist to my mouth. Secure in the dark anonymity of the opera box, I kissed the pulse beating languorously underneath her fragrant skin.
“You are half my heart, Constanta,” she said, with as much seriousness in her eyes as when she wrote her long letters of political advice. “We have our spats, but that will always be true.”
Magdalena brought her thumb to her mouth and bit down, sharply enough to draw a bubble of blood to the surface. She held her hand out to me. Not up to my mouth, as though she were inviting me to taste her, but in front of my chest, as though she were a merchant inviting me to shake hands on an agreement. I understood her right away.
I wrapped my lips around my own thumb and made an identical wound. Magdalena latticed her fingers through mine, our thumbs hovering over each other.
“Let’s be sisters,” she said. “Really and truly. The kind of bond that no one can separate, no matter how they try. Even if we’re on opposite ends of the Earth, you’ll have a bit of my blood in your veins and I’ll have a bit of yours.”
We pressed our thumbs together and Magdalena kissed me hard, her mouth bruis
ing mine as our blood mingled. Warmth spread through my entire body. I felt like I was being transformed from human to vampire all over again; made new in the wake of a powerful love.
“I want to celebrate Carnival with you,” I breathed, breaking our kiss.
“Tonight?” Magdalena said. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, delighted by my unexpected whim.
“Tonight. I want to see the city with you, and I want to remember our first Carnival with you by my side.”
“But what about—?”
“Never mind him. I’ll handle everything when we get back. We’ll just say we got turned around and delayed. If we slip out now we can enjoy the city for hours before we have to go home.”
“You’re serious,” she said, a smile bursting across her face.
“I’m serious. Besides, you’ve seen the best part of the opera now anyway.”
We gathered up our things and swept out into the night, following the glow of torches and singing of revelers to one of the large squares. We stopped at a vendor to pick up two of the eerie volto masks that were so popular with women at the time before picking up our skirts and speeding off after the rest of the partygoers like young girls. In our winter capes, we were indistinguishable from any other person in the crowd.
We gasped at the fire eaters and the acrobats, gawked at the ladies of Venice in their elaborate costumes, and let out delighted yelps when men in gruesome masks jumped out at us. I had never seen so much beauty together in one place. My memory of that evening is one happy blur, with the memory of Magdalena’s hand in my own clear as crystal. When we finally tore ourselves away from the party and began to race home, dumping our masks and veils into the arms of two young girls who had been watching the festivities from afar with longing eyes, we were as tired as dancing princesses from a storybook.
You were as absorbed in your research when we returned home as you were when we left, oblivious to the secret pleasure we had indulged in away from your watchful eye. With a few perfunctory kisses and kind words, you disappeared back into your world of calculations and hypotheses, leaving Magdalena and I to slip away to bed.
A Dowry of Blood Page 7
