by Lexi C. Foss
How one could hold the possibility of so much power, and shy away from even wielding more than a little bit of it, he’d never understand. She was weak, and weakness he could never abide. He lifted his hand and rubbed at his heart, then his temples. Still, she’d managed to worm her way into his psyche. The prickling at the edges of his brain, and the burning at the edges of his heart were enough to let him know that he’d begun to get attached to her. The problem with that was if mated vampires were separated for any longer than a few days, they would begin to lose whatever grip they held on their sanity. Once bound, they needed each other to maintain their place in the world.
“I am not bound to that sniveling, weak female!” he snarled. Alastair dropped to his knees in the middle of the clutter that had become his home. “I am not,” he said softly, fiercely. But he knew the truth. He was. And the only cure for that was another hunt, he thought. Alastair smiled. “I shall hunt. I shall feed. I shall keep myself so busy that I shall forget her and all her weaknesses. I shall prevail.” Alastair rose to his feet and stalked out of the dirty, dingy basement.
Once outside, he lifted his head into the air, the winds and rain still pelting him from the hurricane that just wouldn’t leave this city. He didn’t look back at the place he’d sheltered in for the last nine months, he didn’t acknowledge the stinging pain still coursing through his body from refusing to back down from Marceline’s magic, and he refused to think of the weak, worthless female he’d called Mouse — she was a means to an end, nothing more. He was focused on the hunt. The taste of new blood already a needed thing in his psyche. He imagined a place far away from here, a place that was warm and balmy, and then, he was away, soon to be there as he moved through the air as though he was no more than air himself, no trace of him left behind other than a shredded sheet lying in tatters on the floor of an empty basement.
2
A scream ripped the predawn hours as the coven in attendance all awaited the impending birth. Some of the sisters assisted Marceline, Granddame of the LaCelle Coven, as she did everything in her power to save her beloved granddaughter from the curse that had been rained down upon her.
Adrienne had always been a quiet child, an unassuming child, who preferred to commune with the animals, the ill, and those who could not do for themselves, rather than embrace the magics racing through her veins. She’d always shied away from tapping into the magics, that had she cared to open herself to them, would have made her one of the strongest in the LaCelle line. She preferred instead to live a life of what some would call service. After years of prodding, and encouraging, Marceline had given up and allowed Adrienne’s sweet spirit to wander free, helping others as her nature pulled her to. Adrienne never used her magic for anything more than an extra boost of healing energy, or to speak to the wild creatures she encountered. Yet, here she was, fighting for her survival, lying in a bed struggling to give birth to a babe, the nature of whom no one could venture a guess.
The babe’s father was the most virulent of the cursed. He was the most violent, the most merciless. He’d resented Marceline for almost 70 years, and his vengeance had finally taken its toll. He’d inflicted his hatred on Adrienne.
Another scream and panting filled the subdued silence of the ornate mansion on St. Charles Ave. The women gathered outside the bedroom door, holding hands and closing their eyes as they lifted their faces to heaven, calling on healing energies, hoping the peace would surround sweet Adrienne and calm her during her labor.
Marceline grasped Adrienne’s hand, calling her name forcefully. “Adrienne! Adrienne!! Look at me!”
Adrienne, drenched in sweat, her body writhing in pain, panting for every breath she was able to feebly gasp, slowly turned her head toward Marceline. Her eyes glowed red, the tiny tips of fangs pressed into her lips where she’d bitten down so hard, tiny twin trails of blood spilled over her bottom lip and ran down her chin.
Marceline reached out with her other hand, smoothing away the dampened hair still sticking to Adrienne’s forehead. “Focus, my darling. Focus. This morning your child will be born. He will be born to love. We will raise him in love. No matter how he presents, he will always adore his mother. You have given him life. He will know you. He will love you. Breathe deep, try to relax and let nature take its course. You are not alone.”
Adrienne seemed to comprehend the words Marceline spoke to her. She took a deep, but shaky breath. Then her eyes moved to wander over the windows in the room, the dawn just beginning to break, a faint hint of deep pink and purple hues outlining the never-ending, relentless rain clouds. “Alastair,” she whispered.
“No! There will be no demon welcomed among us. He will not return. He will not meet your babe. He will not poison what is left of your life.”
A tiny hunger, a need Adrienne couldn’t quite put a name to, began to gnaw at her soul. As the rain thankfully began to slack, a lighter hue of deep pink could be seen on the far horizon mixed between the swirling, circling bands of storm clouds. A sliver of fear at the lightening skies tingled in the back of her mind. But it was nothing compared to the growing hunger deep within, and the knowledge that without Alastair, her mate — her nightmare, she would have to feed herself or die.
A sudden bunching of all her muscles clamped down, stealing her breath, stealing her heartbeat. She squeezed her Grandmama’s hand to the point of stopping circulation. The pressure was immeasurable. The pain surely a foretelling of death following on its heels, and all the while Marceline screamed at her to push. “Push, Adrienne! Push harder!”
Adrienne pushed, trying to expel the pain right out of her body. Finally with a tearing of flesh and final scream of resignation on the air, the babe was brought into the world without a sound of her own. Her eyes wide, her lips pressed tightly together as she looked around the room and at all the women who took her one after the other and looked down into her tiny, heart-shaped face. Each whispered a few words of protection over her before handing her to the next coven-sister, until finally she was handed to Marceline.
Marceline looked down into the infant’s face. Relief showed on her own face as she took a deep breath, swaddling the infant in a soft, warm blanket. She offered the child to Adrienne, who looked at the baby girl, then turned her head away disinterestedly.
“Her eyes are blue, Adrienne. She is not like him,” Marceline said softly, trying to hand the baby to its mother.
Adrienne continued to stare out of the window, looking away from the baby she’d just given life to. Praying for the dawn to come take her away.
Marceline brought the child closer to her chest and followed Adrienne’s line of sight. The dawn would be here soon. “Marguerite, be sure that the windows are completely covered. Not a sliver of sunlight can enter this room.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand,” Marguerite answered, leaving the room to get the things she needed to block out the windows and prevent the sun from possibly burning Adrienne, or worse.
Marceline looked down on the baby once more. She softly brushed her forefinger against the newborn’s cheek. “What shall we call you, little one?” Marceline asked, looking down at the baby that looked back at her, so extremely alert, but had yet to utter a cry. Too alert to be completely human. Yet, there was a familiarity about her. She was very much like Adrienne’s mother, Marceline’s daughter, Callista, who’d been lost many years before.
She too had come into the world wide-eyed and solemn.
“Adrienne, what shall we call your daughter?” Marceline asked.
Adrienne didn’t answer. She was still staring out of the window, praying for the sun to take her before Marguerite even made it back with whatever she planned to blacken the window with.
Marceline walked around her bed to stand directly in her view, turning the baby so that Adrienne would have to see her.
For a moment Adrienne’s eyes fell on the tiny, helpless, beautiful child staring back at her. The tiny hunger inside her gnawed at her gut again, and she closed her eyes just
as a single blood red tear fell from her lashes and ran down her face. What remained of her heart shattered in her chest, and she turned away from the child as she shook her head. She could not be trusted with her own daughter. The evil inside her whispered she’d be an easy target to satisfy the hunger clawing at her insides. She knew her grandmother would care for the child, just as she knew if the child was left with her, she’d drain her of all the blood in her tiny, brand-new body.
Marceline brought the baby into her chest once more, cradling the tiny girl and patting her back as she snuggled into her. “It’s alright, Adrienne. Sometimes these things take time. Rest, my darling. You will feel more like yourself after you’ve rested and had some time to make sense of things.”
Marceline walked back around to the opposite side of the bed to make room for Marguerite and the other sisters she’d enlisted to help her blacken the windows. She took a seat at Adrienne’s bedside as she watched the girls working. She looked down at Adrienne again and saw that she’d turned over, to face away from them and toward the window. “Do not forget, Adrienne, blessings are born even out of tragedy and suffering. We may not always know the whys of it, but after the darkest days the sun will shine again.”
The baby, now lying across Marceline’s lap cooed at just that time, and wrapped her tiny fingers around Marceline’s thumb. “Do you like that, little one?” Marceline asked, looking down at the child. “I know!” Marceline said excitedly. “We shall name you Solange. It is the name of a martyred saint, and means solemn, dignified. And some say it means ‘angel of the sun’. You are already strong, not even a whimper as you entered the world. And you shall certainly be our little angel of the sun. Welcome, Solange,” Marceline said softly.
Facing the window, purposely keeping her eyes away from her daughter, Adrienne sent up a little prayer to mother earth, to all the gods and goddesses she’d ever heard of and learned about, to the nymphs in the forests and any other who may hear it, to protect her daughter, her little angel of the sun, because she knew without a doubt that she was not long for this world. She couldn’t be. She was the greatest threat her little Solange had at this point in time, and she couldn’t have anything happen to the innocent little child who didn’t ask for any of this.
Alastair stalked down the path leading from one hut to the next in the hot, sticky, tropical heat. There were only six huts here, used by some of the males of a local tribe during fishing season, while the rest of the tribe remained at their regular village. He made no effort to quiet his steps or disguise his presence. In the weeks since leaving his Mouse while in the throws of childbirth with the witch Marceline and all her pathetic following of females, he’d slowly lost even more of his sanity. It was that way with those of his nature — vampires. If they were foolish enough to bond themselves to another, they had to be certain the one they chose, chose them as well. If they were ever separated, both would slowly lose themselves to insanity, any remembrance of themselves before their turning lost forever, along with any sense of humanity they may have managed to hold onto prior. And the one he’d bonded with, he’d never intended to keep as his own. He’d known he’d slip further into the darkness that eventually swallowed most of his kind — if the slayers didn’t get them first.
But that was okay with him. He welcomed it even. He’d long ago embraced his destiny of hunting those he needed to survive. He’d even taken to hunting just for the thrill of the hunt, not even needing to or wanting to feed from them. His nose wrinkled as he caught the scent of fear. He detested these worthless humans. They were nothing but a smelly, whiny pollution of parasites on the face of the earth. He lifted his lip in disgust as he picked up the steady thumping rhythm of heartbeats.
Alastair paused in his hunt. The many rapid heartbeats surrounding him, pounding at his ears, telling him his prey knew he was there. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he singsonged. He waited a beat before beginning on his way again. “If you don’t come out, I’ll have to come in!” he promised, ending on a slow, evil laughter. “I do so love it when you try to outwit me. If you give in too easily, it’s just simply a bore,” Alastair said aloud to the darkness.
Alastair was pure evil. Even the monkeys and the cicadas in the trees sensed his presence and stopped their calls. He was surrounded by silence as he saw two figures step into his path about twenty feet up ahead. They held torches. One held a machete, the other a sharpened cane. “Well, well, well. Of all the men here, you are the best they have to offer? Shouldn’t take long, then I can be away to your families!” Alastair said excitedly as he launched himself in the air to land just behind them. The men turned striking out at the red-eyed, deathly pale, demon blood-drinker — but it was hopeless. By the time the man had raised his cane in an attempt to bring it down through the vampire’s chest, the vampire had already snatched his head from his shoulders and used the cane to impale the man with the machete.
As their friends fell, another three men advanced out of the shadows of the jungle to attack as one. The sounds of battle, and the scent of death hung heavily in the air. There was never any doubt how this would end. At least not for Alastair.
The sunrise brought shock and disbelief to the sleepy, little fishing community as the few survivors that had run away in the night, flanked by the rest of the village and the wives of those that remained to fight, returned with the local shaman to face whatever evil had attacked them in the night. But that evil was no longer there, he was nowhere to be found. Instead, they found a pile of their dead friends. All who’d thought to attack the evil the previous night had been killed. Most had been drained of their blood and tossed carelessly in a heap.
An instant wail from the widows of the fishermen went up in the wind to be carried far and wide. And in a hollow hastily dug beneath the floor of the farthest hut from the shore, buried in sand so deep they’d never find him and sunlight could never touch him, a blood-drenched, and now sand-encrusted fiend, who had no clue he’d ever been human, smiled a smile of satisfaction at the pain and heartbreak in the mourning wails the wind carried to him. ‘More to hunt tonight’, his fractured mind whispered.
3
Adrienne sat huddled in the corner of her bedroom, a gaunt, skeletal specter of her former self. It had been three weeks since she’d seen Alastair. Three weeks since she’d given birth to their daughter, and three weeks since she’d fed. She was ravenous, and she was frightening — a threat to all who lived.
She’d attacked one of her coven-sisters, but the sister managed to get away. Now, though, she was locked in her bedroom, with none tending her except her Grandmama, Pauline, and occasionally Marguerite. Her hearing, sharpened from her need to hunt and feed, picked up the soft coos and murmurs of a child, a baby, from time to time. And those coos and murmurs had become her focus. Now she waited, hunched in a corner, for whichever woman entered her rooms next. She was focused. She was starving. She was a predator.
Finally, the sound of a key in the lock signaled her chance. They were coming to offer her the meal they always did. A raw steak, thick and bloody on the plate, and beside it a regular meal. Regular in that it was something humans would eat, prepared and cooked as though it were being served to a proper woman at a proper dinner. Something she had no interest in. And the bloody steak, the steak was an insult to a predator such as herself. She needed the blood of the living, and she needed it now. But she was weak from hunger. So her target had to be as weak as she. She smiled as she heard the soft cooing of the babe carry to her from the floor below. Soon, she thought. Soon I shall be a bit stronger, then I’ll hunt the rest of them, but first… the babe. She grasped the ceramic pitcher in her hand, balancing it in her grip as she stepped just to the side of the door and hoisted it above her head. The woman stepped inside the door, shifting the serving platter to one hand to reach for the light switch with the other, and at the same time, Adrienne brought the pitcher down on her head. The woman screamed, dropped the serving platter crashing to the ground and made a blin
d grab for Adrienne in the darkness. But Adrienne evaded her, sidestepping her and slipping through the door.
Adrienne rushed past the woman and paused only briefly on the landing to get her bearings. She snarled at the colored ribbons of light flickering on the red-carpeted stairs as she gingerly side-stepped them while hurrying to the floor below, the coos of the infant calling to her.
She followed the sounds to a closed door where she paused. Her broken mind trying to send her images, a message of some sort, but she shook her head scattering whatever it tried to tell her away. Adrienne opened the door and slipped inside the darkened room. She looked around, taking in the heavy drapes covering the windows, allowing only a tiny sliver of sunlight into the room at the far end, furthest away from the crib the child now lay in, cooing to her, kicking her tiny feet and waving her hands in the way that babies did.
Slowly Adrienne approached the crib and leaned over, watching the baby lying helplessly there. Adrienne’s head canted to the side ever so slightly, taking in the movements of the child. Taking in the sweet, heady scent of a clean, freshly washed baby. She reached in, lifting the baby into her arms and bringing the child close to her face to inhale the sweet scent. She inhaled deeply, pressing her nose to the child's stomach, then moving up to press her nose to the baby’s chest and neck.
The light switch behind her clicked on and the lights above them on the raised, ornate ceiling flared to life. Adrienne opened her eyes and raised them to the decorative chandelier above her head. She held the baby up with both hands, her thumbs spread across the child’s chest and shoulders, her fingers spread out across the child’s back. She held the baby up so that she could see her face-to-face, as she angled her head side-to-side, looking wondrously at the tiny baby girl.
