“Can’t tell. Of course, really it’s Marty we should be asking,” Kenny said.
“This is a homicide now. Call it in and get everyone out here,” I said. “I’m going to clear the rest of this place.”
“Watch yourself, man.”
“I always do.”
“This is the police!” I called out again. My voice was shaky and I was afraid I didn’t sound as commanding as I should have.
Move, I told myself. I made my way out of the living room. There were old lamps falling apart on tables and crates for bookshelves holding cult items and candles. Lights barely held on to life as they flickered their illumination on an adjoining hallway. I entered the long hallway that snaked off into two other rooms. There were doors on either side, no locks.
I went up to the first door. “This is the police!” I called out. “I’m Detective Tim Anderson. Everything’s going to be alright. Just come out now.”
There was no sound or movement. I threw the door open and entered in a low shooting crouch. The room was empty except for a water-stained mattress in the far corner of the room. There was a candle burnt down to a stub next to the bed on the floor.
I found that the other doorway also had no lock, not even a doorknob, but I broke it down anyway. With a smash of splintering wood, I was inside. In the hazy shadows of the room, it was evident that someone had not been well for a while. Pillows and blankets were disarrayed and soiled on a mattress. On a makeshift bed table there were tissues, a thermometer, a bottle of aspirin, liniment, and dirty cups of used cough syrup. The person must have been very ill and desperately tried to feel better, at least for a period.
Eventually, the person had not been able to make it out of bed, for that was where I found her, dead. She was lying face down, and the full length mirror next to her was shrouded with a sheet, as if she could not bear to look at herself. I wondered if maybe it had something to do with some tacky lore about vampires and their reflections.
I knew better than to rearrange the scene, especially if my visit was to be followed by the Chief Medical Examiner. I called out over the radio to Kenny, informing him that we had another body and moved on to my job of clearing the building.
I cautiously made my way out of the room and back into the hall. I came to an open door that looked like it led to a stairwell. I had my pistol pointed out and threw open the heavy door all the way. It crashed to a halt against the wall. My breathing was slightly faster than I would have liked and I tried to steady myself in the darkness. The stairway was clear; at least it looked that way at first. I descended the wooden steps, my finger light on the trigger of my pistol and my flashlight pointed out. I exploded off the base of the stairs and destroyed a pitiful door of plywood. After landing, I came up into a firing position I learned in the Army. The room was empty.
“Johnson, all clear,” I called out into my radio.
“Ten Four, Anderson,” Kenny said back to me.
When I finally made my way outside again, police were pulling flashlights and bullet-proof vests out of cruisers while several young officers with nervous eyes flashed past me and down the stairs. Tension was reaching critical levels. It pulsed in the air and I was sure I was being watched by someone. I had felt like that a lot lately. Somewhere in the distance a police siren screamed out to be heard; it came closer and closer, the light suddenly glowing in the fog. A large police van pulled to a stop, ready for its cargo. I spun around and felt certain that eyes were on me, but I could see no one watching me. Voices of those who had come to my aid mixed with the sound of clomping footfalls and the noise of police radios echoed around me.
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Chapter 23
105 AD
Fabiana awoke. She could hear the owls. She wasn’t really sure if she was still in the cave. She calculated that only the last a few hours of night were left. Then there was pain. Her hips hurt, her ankles hurt. Her fingers began to scrape across the cold stone floor.
She awoke naked, hanging upside down by a heavy golden chain in a brightly lit chamber of the temple. Breezes everywhere played with the hanging lamps. There were many candles and flickering lights. Lamps on stands and candles on shelves, dozens of small flames lit the room. It was bright as day in that chamber of rebirth. A soft series of incandescent flames burned, sending their tenebrous shadows up a stairwell behind her. There was a marvelous statue of stone lying on its back just in front of her on the floor. It was wondrously painted in red, blue, and yellow hues. Small grooves on the floor told the tale of the repeated times a heavy lid had been slid from its home to conceal the body of rock.
Suddenly her mind broke off. Her head swam. Some brief recollection. She was a child and she was going up into the mountains to play in a field. But unexpectedly the image completely turned around on her. The blood god Osiris, a demon who taught Cognatus his dark ways, appeared before her. The god stared down at her. Eyes seemed to pierce into her. The god was a huge hulking man of bronze skin. He came up to her and she was paralyzed by his presence. He stood over her and, without saying a word, grabbed her in his arms and began to take her blood. She was unable to resist his power over her, but she would not die no matter how much of her blood he helped himself to.
She attempted to banish the vision from her mind but was unable to shift her thoughts until a great rumbling sound filled her ears.
Dozens of footfalls echoed in the hall behind her. She closed her eyes. She sensed the sound again, the radiating noise of intrusion. It was like the sound of her own heart getting louder and louder, closer and closer. Person after person appeared in the archway of the stairwell, each holding a small ceremonial blade. One after another, they walked in and took their places around the room. Cerci, the vampire priest, was the last to enter and a silence fell over the chamber.
They enclosed Fabiana in a circle as she hung by her ankles. After a prolonged silence, a riff of whispers slipped amongst them.
“You, Fabiana, have been chosen by our god, Cognatus, The Origin,” said the vampire priest. They all wore a kind of pleasure across their faces as they clutched onto their blades.
“You are what our god has asked for, for so long. He brought you to us. You have been cleaned and prepared to receive the blessed blood, the old blood, the first blood. To receive the old blood is our highest honor. It is the most powerful blood of our Family. It will link you to us forever.”
“I don’t want this,” she cried to them.
“Don’t fear. There is nothing you can do to change this. You have been chosen by Cognatus, our Father.”
A tear welled up in her eye and streamed down her face, landing on the face of the stone statue below her. Suddenly the stone cover of the floor was pulled to the side and she screamed out as she laid her eyes on the first vampire. The half-demon, half-human lay on his back in a stone bed filled with flowers. His skin was tinted red and smooth as glass. His hair was still as black as it ever was. He stared up at her, his long, piercing fangs protruding from under his grey lips, hands as big as mitts and arms as hard as rocks.
“Give your blood to me and I will devour it,” said The Origin.
Then all the vampires lunged forward and pierced Fabiana with their blades. With quick, small stabs into her legs, arms, and back, they forced her to bleed freely. She screamed out in pain as blades penetrated her body and blood flowed down her naked flesh, leaving streams of crimson.
Her head was swimming and she was weakening. Her blood trickled from all parts of her body into the mouth of The Origin. She thought of her lonely father and that she would never again see him. What would he think when he awoke only to find the empty bed of his beloved daughter?
“You demon!” she barely got out as she weakened, still hanging by the golden chain.
Her blood was raining down upon the mouth of The Origin below her. His mouth filled and swallowed her blood over and over again. Then the vampire priest Cerci got down onto his hands and knees, sunk his teeth into the thigh of The Origin for a long m
oment, and filled his mouth with the valuable blood of their Father.
She could feel the roar of excited voices. The screams of the vampires as the moment grew closer to its climax. The orgiastic howls grew even more piercing and beseeching.
She hung still and tried to deliver her mind from the utter horror and panic that she was enduring at that moment. If there was to be no escape for her then she determined to remain calm through the ordeal.
Cerci held his lips close to hers, his mouth full of blood.
“If you fail to drink the old blood, you will die at this moment,” he said into her mind.
“Drink, drink, drink,” they chanted over and over again. The words swam in her head as she slowly bled to death.
Cerci had his head bowed to hers and his eyes were closed. All of a sudden, it seemed the others held the same posture and attitude of reverence. The room fell silent. Fabiana’s body was trembling as she was nearing death. She could feel the warmth of the dozens of burning flames around her, but she was getting cold. Then, she distinctly heard words in her head.
“Drink from me and find love and protection like you have never known in your life.”
Cerci placed his hand on the back of her head, as if to keep her attention on him. She swooned as he touched her hair and their lips met at last. Blood spilled onto her tongue and down her throat as they kissed passionately. Her arms bled but she wrapped them around his shoulders as the sacred blood was passed to her.
And there, before her unconsciousness, the utter despair of the death of her mortal life and the father that she would never see again came to her mind for the last time.
With the nectar of life flowing into her, there came another world that she was not prepared to enter—the world of the immortals. The ringing laughter of vampires filled the room more than the burning tips of fire that bounced on the candles and lamps inside the chamber. Then she was unconscious, the blood working its way through her body.
“Sleep now, Fabiana. And when you awaken, you will be a vampire and the world will belong to you.”
With her eyes still closed, she heard voices of the village, voices from fishermen at the docks. She heard men talking as they passed on the road far away from her bed in the temple. When she listened to them, she could actually hear the words that they spoke as clearly as if they were whispering into her own ears. She heard music being played somewhere far from her.
Fabiana opened her eyes and she felt a clarity that she had never felt before. She looked around the small stone room where she slept. Flowers of wondrous beauty sat in piles all around her. Red, yellow, blue, and orange petals decorated the stone floor of the room as lamps burned small flickering flames in every corner. Fading shadows danced around her, fighting back the light.
She could see the small antennae of a little beetle that hid in a crack in the wall on the far side of the room and every grain of sand that sat in small piles around her on the ground. She was taken aback by the changes that had come over her; she was uncertain about what had happened to her last night. Was it a dream or was this the dream still? Was she yet to wake up in her bed at home next to her father?
Fabiana walked barefoot and naked into the next room, through the hall and up the stairwell to the opening of the cave. The sky was a dusty grey as the sliver of a moon hid behind a cloud. She stood motionless in the darkened tree line.
“Every moment, my dear, that you will ever know, from this time on, will be savored.”
She spun around to see the tall, slender figure of Cerci emerging from the darkness of the night.
When Fabiana looked into Cerci’s eyes, it was as if they didn’t stand alone on the edge of the woods. They stood alone on the edge of reality and waves of silence and peace washed over them. She truly loved him but wasn’t yet aware of what that meant for her.
“I never knew what life was until I tasted it on your lips,” she said to him.
“The only power that love has over us is inside ourselves, my dear. Our blood is forever and so can we be,” he said. “No matter how long we live, we have our memories intact and time itself will not take them from us. Suffering may distort the backward glances, but even in times of pain, some memories will lose nothing of their beauty and wonder, but remain as they always were to us—like a faithful bedtime story, refusing to change.”
“It’s beautiful, this land. I really never realized it before.”
“And it belongs to us now. Remember this moment always. The first glimpse through your vampire eyes is like your first step as a child.”
She looked up to him and asked, “What does this all mean, Cerci?”
“Unlike some old woman down in your village, you, child, will never be that now. You will never grow old and you will never die. We are the predators of life, whose all-seeing eyes were meant only for us. We are the immortals.”
“We can’t die?” she asked uncertainly.
“We most certainly can die, my child,” he said. “The light of the day is the most effective way. You must hide from the light. Cutting our heads from our bodies will end our journey, as will too much blood loss. If a vampire takes your blood, not only will he take your power, he will take your life.”
She pulled close to him and placed her hand on his chest. He was warm to her touch. He had fed recently. For a few precious moments, they remained locked together in a tight embrace of love and he covered her hair with soft kisses, her scent crucifying him with memories of her youth.
Fabiana tried to imagine what burning would feel like. First, the rising apprehension giving way to terror as the glow in the east grew more intense. Then the golden rim of the sun’s disc would appear shimmering over the horizon and it would be as if all the cells in her body had suddenly ruptured in pain. Within seconds, the lethal radiation would cook her body, boiling the blood in her veins and blackening her flesh to charred amber. Flakes of fallen, burnt, brittle, carbonized flesh would drift away like the cinders of a hot fire being carried away on a morning breeze. She thought that she could scream as her body disintegrated to nothing more than ash. But most likely not.
Fabiana was not like some newborn vampires. Some welcomed it. For the ones unwilling to embrace their new life, their destruction was by the sun. They felt their lives were already over—the world that they had known now gone and lost to them. The future that lay ahead of them was unthinkable, unendurable.
But not Fabiana. No, she was one of the fledglings that gladly accepted her new birth. And a new birth was precisely what it was. Blood born was what they called it.
“Can I drink any blood? Even vampire blood?”
“You see,” Cerci said, “We are Family. You wouldn’t kill your father, would you? All immortals came from the same blood line. We are connected and we are Family. Killing vampires is an act that means death. Don’t ever take the life of your own kind.”
“I understand, Cerci.”
“This is our sigil,” he said, as he handed her an iron necklace with a serpent shaped like a figure eight. “There is no good without evil. There is no day without night. There is no life without blood. You are one of our sisters now.”
That evening, Fabiana went down the muddy, frost-covered street, through the sludge, towards the home nearest the water where she thought her father might be on that night.
The twilight sounds of the forest filled Fabiana’s ears and seemed to press on her from all around as she scrambled down the rocky slope of the cave and set off through the trees. Fresh snow crunched bright and sharp under her feet. She could feel every microscopic ice particle through the soles of her foot wrappings—every rotted leaf, every dried, brittle branch.
She trudged on, her eyes always looking forward, her jaw tight and her fists clenched white at her side. She refused to surrender to the onslaught of emotion that screamed though her head. Then, after a mile or so, she came to a stop. Fabiana sensed something. She turned and her eyes slipped from one side of the trees to the other. This was a new experien
ce for her.
From the darkness of the forest, glowing amber eyes were watching her. A snow owl sat still on a tree limb thirty feet away. It was silent and frozen into a statue of itself. In an instant, Fabiana had closed the gap between her and the owl. Before the white, feathered bird could react to her movement, the owl’s neck was broken in Fabiana’s powerful grip. She had moved with amazing speed and accuracy and killed the bird without even thinking. She had merely reacted.
Fabiana left the darkness of the tree line for that of her village. She began to feel increasingly self-conscious as she made her way up the narrow and muddy, winding path. The feeling suddenly struck her that she did not belong here any more than a bear would have. Her steps faltered. She felt herself gripped by an overwhelming desire to turn and flee, to disappear back into the safety of the trees before anyone recognized her.
It was in that moment of panic and indecision that Fabiana heard the sound from one of the nearby houses. The scrape of a latch, the metal-on-metal grating noise of hinges. She turned to the foul smell of a chamber pot being emptied into one of the large collection barrels that lined the streets. The woman that had appeared in the doorway was in her fifties, with shoulder-length black hair showing strands of white and grey. A shawl was draped over her naked body.
Much like in the city of Rome, the most important commodity in Fabiana’s village was urine. Urine was collected from the public and used in the tanning industry. It could also be used for washing clothes and even whitening teeth.
Fabiana realized suddenly that she knew the woman and hid herself before she could be recognized. Instantly, a desperate battle was racing inside Fabiana.
No. It was too repellent. It was loathsome. Sickening. And yet it wasn’t. She could smell the blood. Taste it. Feel it flowing down her throat, warm and thick and filled with what Fabiana wanted badly. The desire, deeper and more feverishly intense than anything she’d ever felt in her life, threatened to blow away all resistance.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector Page 11
