He had meant his human bloodline, but his observation about the Romans seems fitting nevertheless. For an empire to become the Empire, it must demolish another, and so on and so forth. That is the nature of history and that is why it exists—to tell the stories of fallen empires, and the rise of new ones. If one is lucky, history will live on. And if I am lucky, my history will continue to be written.
To be satiated, nothing is more pleasurable. I grieve for the feasts that were once so plentiful, the blood that flowed like wine at a banquet. I mourn the passing of time. But I still hope. I hope for the pulse-pulse of humanity to thrive once again, so that I may indulge this nagging urge I have to suck them dry.
4 December. — I have built flower beds that run along the side and back walls. I feel more confident we shall be safe against the bloodless, as long as the winter stays warm.
Alessandra’s nose led her to a poultry coop last night, and she returned with a crowded cage of hens and one lone rooster. The fowl will be a nice addition to the girl’s diet. She will enjoy fresh eggs and the occasional braised chicken leg. My next project is a small vegetable garden for her. She will continue to feed well, even as I am forced to abstain for a time.
6 December. — The blood of the hen dripped from the machete’s tip, her death a sacrifice for the pregnant girl. Evelina’s cravings for fowl demanded satisfaction, so I decided to appease them with one of the smaller birds. As I stripped the carcass in preparation to cook it on the spit, my mind wandered. The smell of the fowl’s blood did not whet my appetite, but the neck of the bird lying severed on the block brought back a memory that made my mouth water for war.
Several years before the Common Era, I had returned to my human occupation as a warrior. My wont for sustenance was best satisfied by the warm blood I seized on the battlefield. I was a fit soldier and quickly received the honor of escorting my own one hundred into battle. Under the command of the Roman Governor of Syria and on the direct order of Emperor Augustus, I led my men into Sepphoris to quell the Jewish uprising.
My soldiers showed no mercy, snatching women and children, binding their hands and feet like fatted calves and throwing them into carts to be sold into slavery. The Jewish men were slaughtered like cattle, but only after being tortured. Their fingers were cut off, their faces maimed with hot metal rods and their soles skinned before their bodies were strung up on crosses. Their crucified flesh was left to scorch in the desert sun.
While my men worked to slay and hang the treasonous captives, I followed my nose into their hovels, tossing them in search of those still hiding. I was led into one home by the tangiest blood I had smelled yet. She was frightened, I could practically taste the sweat beading on her skin. It was only when I slipped into the hut that I heard her sobs. She was just a child, maybe twelve or thirteen, and was flat on her back on the dirt floor. Her sackcloth was pushed up over her waist and her legs were dropped to one side. She had brought her hands up to her face to cover her eyes against the soldier who stood over her tying his belt and readjusting his sheath. His sword had been removed and lay on the stone sill of the window. Fresh blood dripped from the blade, though I soon realized it was not the girl’s. A severed chicken head had been tossed on the dirty floor at the foot of the sill while the decapitated fowl frisked about headless at the other end of the room.
I tucked into a recess and waited for the soldier to finish and leave, hoping he would not see fit to kill her. He had been ordered to keep all women and children alive but I could see he was not one to obey commands. I had to control my urge to pounce on the girl, her scent slowly getting the better of me. Her eyes were still covered, and for that I was glad since what the soldier attempted to do next was offensive to both man and vampire.
He picked up the severed head of the fowl and kneeled down in front of the girl, where he used his free hand to pry open her legs, pinning one of her knees down with his own. The girl squirmed in the dirt, her sobs amplified by their suppression. The soldier brought forth a growl from deep in the back of his throat, and then spat on the neck of the bird. Gripping it by the beak, he held it in such a way as to betray his intention. He planned on forcing the limp appendage into a place it had no business being. I could not witness such deviance without intervening and felt it only common decency to prevent further abuse of the child. Besides, I did not want him to spoil my appetite.
When I stepped forward from the recess, I told him he was done. The young man froze at the sound of my voice and the severed head dropped to the floor. He slowly got up and retrieved his sword from the window ledge, gliding it into his sheath. He barely looked at me, as he made his way out of the hovel and into the bright sunlight. I, however, would not forget the future prefect of Judaea, and when Emperor Tiberius sent me to keep an eye on Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, I recognized the vicious boy straightaway. He was no longer the svelte Roman soldier with abundant curling tendrils I had encountered decades ago. The prefect had been transformed into a portly man with a drastically receding hairline that time had treated cruelly.
“Have you heard the stories of the rebel?” Pilate asked at my first meeting with him. “The militant’s outlandish prophecies?” He threw a handful of figs at the plump tabby resting on the floor by his feet. He picked up another from the silver dish at his side and threw that one into his mouth, as he spoke. “His threats were intolerable,” he said.
“I have heard the stories,” I said. “A madman claiming divinity, nothing more. The court was right to decide his fate as they did.”
My approval flattered the prefect, though he did not need it. He spent little time deliberating over the judicial decisions he had to make. Killing was his nature. For a man, he did not have much of a conscience. He had endorsed the death sentence issued by the Sanhedrin because he could not stand the heretic and had wanted to take credit for his capture. Neither Pilate nor the Jewish council could have predicted the repercussions of spilling that particular man’s blood.
“Mmmm,” he said. “So Vitellius sent you?” I nodded in agreement. “We shall have some fun then.”
The threat my presence insinuated did not intimidate him. Rome was far from Judaea, and he believed he would remain the sole ruler of Jerusalem.
“The Jews grow restless with my show of power,” he said. “They want me deposed.” He balked at what he called their petulance. He had shaken some feathers on several occasions, toting idols through the streets, displaying relics where they did not belong, and most recently having two enormous limestone busts of Emperor Tiberius placed outside the Hall of Hewn Stones. “Rome has ordered me to remove them,” he said. “I assume that’s why you’re here?” His nasal voice was too coquettish for a man, though it suited his effeminate and aged appearance.
When a waiting-woman arrived with a large jorum of water, Pilate shooed the tabby aside. She greeted me with a drop of her head, exposing the luscious nape of her neck. I heard the pulsing rush of her blood beneath her golden skin, and took a long whiff of the air as she passed.
“The oils are redolent of the pomegranate blossom,” he said. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
He thought I was taken with the scent of perfume in her hair, but he was mistaken. His waiting-woman would surely die that night under the painful pierce of my aching fangs. She curdled the venom beneath my skin—her exquisiteness was potent. “Lovely,” I said.
I held my bite, as she proceeded to lay her jorum at his feet. She kneeled beside the prefect and gently placed one hand atop his foot. “Your hand is cold, woman,” he said. With all coquettishness drained from his voice, he scolded the woman. She shuddered and apologized softly, rubbing her hands together in her lap. She held them there for a moment before attempting again, as Pilate bragged about his reign of terror.
“I have a wonderful plan if you’ll indulge me, brother,” he said. “I’m thinking of teaching those Jews a well deserved lesson.”
I listened to him, though I was wholly concentrated on the delicious waiting-woman at his feet. Perhaps he
could see my desire or maybe he just had a hankering for horror himself, but when he reached into the folds of his toga, he withdrew a dagger. Quite casually, as he explained his scheme, he reached down at his side and stroked the woman’s hair as though caressing the pelt of his tabby. She kept her eyes on the basin, continuing to wash his feet, as his hand ran over the crown of her head. When he ceased speaking, I noticed the subtlest of changes in his expression and a slight grin rose on his lips. As though sensing the shift, the woman tensed, and he grabbed a fistful of her hair. She gasped, as he yanked her head back and leaned over to force his mouth atop hers. Then, pulling away only a little, he brought the dagger across his chest and to the under side of her chin. She did not have time to surrender to her god before he dug the dagger into her neck and slit her throat. As the blood spilled down the front of her robe into the jorum of fragrant water and onto the stone floor, I licked my lips. I would need to find someone else for supper.
“As I have said, brother,” Pilate continued with the girl’s wasted blood forming a pool about her. “We shall call them up to the mount to see some … agh, I don’t know … some urn buried beneath the stone or some fabrication of the sort.” He sipped from a cup he had at his side and then tossed another fig into his mouth. He licked his fingers one at a time and then clapped his hands together. His eyes widened as though a brilliant idea were just hatched. “We’ll tell them the holy mountain calls them to see the sacred vessel of their god. Ah! That’s a good one.”
I could not keep my eyes off the waiting-woman’s nectar. Its smell teased me, even as the ichor slowly congealed. I was irritated by the waste.
“Are you with me, brother?” His words had escaped me and so I nodded. “You’ll ride with my soldiers into the village to slaughter the swine.”
I pulled myself away from the wasted treasure congealing on the floor. “If I may,” I said. “Your Excellence.” He giggled and I knew the title pleased him. “Will it not anger the Jews further and perhaps ignite unwanted tension with the High Priests?” I asked.
“Praise Bellona! It will be war!”
And so it was, though Pilate did not reign for long after that. Caligula showed the prefect no mercy, sentencing him without a trial and placing him in prison where he could either take his own life or gamble on exoneration in the other world. I was sent to Pilate’s cell to deliver the verdict, and when I slipped into the room armed with an opal box, he rushed to my side.
“Hear me out, brother, before you speak,” he said. “If my life has come to its end, take my soul. I’ve seen your black heart—your pointed teeth—your lust for blood. I know what gifts you possess.” He whispered in the somber cell, his coquettish voice lost to fear.
I was not surprised he had discovered my secret. I did not hide my passion for blood as carefully as I could have. His ruthless ways brought out the worst in me. “I wonder if you are deserving of such a gift,” I said.
“I assure you I am,” he said. “I’ll rule the world with powers such as yours—to die and be resurrected. What could be more potent?”
“I have yet to die,” I said.
He moved toward me, reaching out his hand. He placed his palm on my chest and let it rest there for a moment. The sinister smile I had so often seen cross his face was now gone. His countenance was stone, shocked by the thumping of my beating heart. “But how … please, brother, share your gift with me,” he said. “Spare my death and make me like you.”
I uncovered the lid of the opal box, where a rather plump scorpion lay docile in its corner. Its tail was relaxed and its stinger limp. Pilate stepped back upon seeing the arachnid, and shooed the box away with his hand. “I can’t die,” he said. “Not like this.”
I placed the lid back on the box and put it down. “Brother,” I said, “death is not unique to you, nor are you to it. Every man who devours life to excess will be ushered into death’s embrace with regret and despair.”
I let my subtler fangs descend and their points drop over my bottom lip. He drew in a shallow breath and held it. I told him to close his eyes and let grace bear him to the other side. He mistook my meaning and turned his face away, dropping his head to expose his neck. I let him go to his death thinking he would be reborn. He did not excite my desire, but blood was blood. When I unleashed my iron fangs and opened my mouth wide, I recalled the tasty girl in Sepphoris. She would finally be avenged of his brutalities, and hers was the only face I saw when I ripped open his skin and stole the life from him.
7 December. — This morning the boy warned me the smell of the cooked meat has drawn the bloodless near. We have not seen any until now, and I fear the plants are not grown enough to have an effect. Eventually Thetis’s flowers will multiply and their toxic seed will spread through the soil to create a natural fortress inside our walls, but for now the powder on the outer walls will have to suffice. The gate is sealed and I do not believe they will attempt to climb the fortifications lined with powder, but the boy stays on the battlement most of the day to stand guard. The parapet along the four sides gives us a full view of our surroundings, and for now we can keep watch.
“There’s a small swarm down near the tree line,” he said. “But that’s it.”
When I am up there, I mostly watch the west, where the sea crashes up onto the base of our cliff. Though we are several hundred feet up, I am wary of a water attack. If the bloodless rise up out of the sea, they will certainly scale the rock, adrenalized by the water. Rain worries me too; if a storm comes, we will have to hope the powder holds.
The other matter is the girl’s health. She looks peaked, despite the protein I feed her, and she may be anemic. “The baby is using her up,” Alessandra told me. “Draining the mother of her nourishment.”
I am jealous of the unborn, for I must starve in the meantime. It has been a week since I last fed. I feel the pain of withdrawal, but am busy enough not to notice it every waking moment. Shortly after we arrived, Alessandra and I discovered that the only source for drinking water is a mountain spring running through the forest several miles from our walls. I fetch water almost every day, and before I left for the spring today, I saw the girl.
Her new home is a small two room squat with open windows and stone walls decorated with grass roots and cracks. The floor is a mix of cobblestone and dirt, and the thatched roof has been newly piled. The boy and I repaired its holes before Alessandra swept out the floors and dressed the interior with several pieces of furniture recovered from the villa. Evelina has two stools, a small table, a raised mattress and several tapestries. She has other trifles, such as dishes and a washbasin, but the decor is more than lacking.
When I entered, she lay on the mattress with her swollen feet propped up, frowning at me with her changed face, distended and pale. Her smell is the same, though I cannot tell whether that is a boon or bane. It still tortures me, if less than the cessation of our communion. The bond we formed overpowers me at times, and I find it difficult to be near her. I would not have gone in to see her if she had not asked for me.
“Sit with me,” she said.
“Is everything all right?” She shook her head and I sat beside her, placing my hand on top of hers. I thought of Byron. Had I somehow turned into him? Had he become me? I missed my beloved still, and would perpetually.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
I patted her hand with mine. “Ridiculous,” I said gently. “You are the one about to give birth.”
“But you’re not feeding,” she said, knowing my reasons. “You look sickly.”
“I am a vampire, darling. I am supposed to look like death.” My attempt to make her smile failed.
“Alessandra feeds,” she said. “But she’s not strong enough to keep us safe.”
I would not tell the girl I agreed with her, though I did. Abstaining from her blood made me weaker.
“I’m frightened,” she said. “I’m having bad dreams.”
“What dreams?”
“They’re comin
g.”
“Who?”
I knew very well who. Her fears of being taken by the bloodless will never go away, and she has every reason to be afraid. They are even more relentless in their desire for her than I am. She knows her baby’s smell will lure all kinds of predators to our door—bloodless and vampire. I have my own doubts about the war that lies ahead.
“Tell me about the dreams,” I said.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “They come from the ground—up through the stones, flinging them away as they crawl out of the earth,” she said. “And sometimes they swing from the trees, over the walls, squashing the flower beds beneath their bare feet—and they’re huge … these men … these monsters. They have skeleton faces and their hands are twice the size of yours—and they use them like big scoops to rip up the ground around us. And they steal … they snatch the baby from my arms before suffocating me with their horrid tongues, and—they—they—catch me up in their teeth and they bite me all over—my arms, my neck, my stomach. And their teeth … their teeth are like … are sharp like—like—yours.”
She was agitated and I placed my hand on the crown of her head to calm her. I told her it was only a dream, impossible fears that would never become a reality. I promised to bring her a sack of Dilo seeds to keep by her bed just in case. “It will keep you safe if I am not here,” I said. “Both you and her.”
“Her?”
I had known for some time Evelina was carrying a girl. The flavor of the child’s blood betrayed her sex; I tasted it in her mother’s. “You are having a girl,” I said.
“But how—oh!” She took my hand and asked me to help her sit up. She was lighter than one would expect looking at her girth.
“Her scent is … like yours,” I said.
“But you’ll resist her, right?”
“Of course.” I could only hope.
Later. — I have just returned with the water, and something I had not expected to find.
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 16
