The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector

by T. C. Elofson

  Father, she thought. If she could just get to her father, she would be alright. If only she could get to him.

  Fabiana ran quickly past the house. She was grateful to make her escape from the blood of the woman. Fabiana climbed creaky wooden stairs to where she knew her father would be.

  She had often entered that place as a child, and memories of laughing and playing with her father were almost painted on every room.

  It was a long building, made of the same mud-covered, unfinished logs of any home in the village. With the same mud for mortar, and the same foreseeable seams and cracks riddled with cold, it was like any other home in Hispania. Its ceiling was very high, with some eight beams to share the weight of the roof.

  When she entered her home, she marveled at how different it seemed. She no longer felt the same love and joy for her childhood home that she would have only a week before. It was nothing more than an empty echo of her past, gone and forgotten to her. Would she feel the same way about her father? Would he have missed her these few nights she had been gone?

  She saw her father.

  He lay on his back, stretched out full length on a pile of straw, dressed in his leather with his heavy fur cloak thrown over him as he slept. He snored in an almost drunken sleep and wisps of candles rose from flames around him as a fire burned in a fireplace across from his bed. Her father didn’t stir when she knelt right beside him and looked down at his face. His cheeks, though thinner than she remembered, were still rosy, but there was sadness in him somehow. He seemed miserable as he slept and then she felt it in him, the emotion, the loss of her. He missed his child and wanted her home.

  “I’m here, Father,” she whispered to his ear as she drew closer to him. She had a disturbing sense of his vitality suddenly; she could smell the blood of him and the life of the man she loved, like potential prey stumbling across the path of a hunter. Fabiana put all this away from her mind and stared at him, loving him and thinking only that she was so glad to be with him once more. She had missed him.

  Beyond their bodies, they were simple bulky outlines against the huge blaze of a fire in a stone fireplace, and nothing was ever going to come between them on that moment, between Fabiana and her father who had tried so hard to protect her and couldn’t. The father who had sent enemy after enemy to death in the Roman army but now lay in her arms, asleep.

  “I love you, Father,” she whispered and he blinked, looking up at her in his sleepy state. His lips were bright, like coral, unblemished through the heavy orange glow of the fire.

  “You’ve come home, my girl. Or is this a dream?”

  “It is not. I am home, Father.”

  He gazed up at her, and then she saw his tongue roll out along his lips. It wounded her a bit—the sadness he felt was because of her. She had done this to him. The sight of him stung her deeply and she leaned close to him in an embrace of love and family. She held him tightly and he was surprised by her strength; it almost hurt as she held him.

  “Forget me, Father, as if I was never yours. The gods have sent for me and I must go to them. I’m sorry. But remember this. On account of you, I shall always know the comfort of love. You loved me like no other, and I will take it with me always.”

  She turned to go but he reached out and grasped her arm. She wished he never had. She would have done anything to go back to that moment and change what happened next.

  Fabiana turned around and grasped him firmly with her left arm. She kissed him all over his head in a way only a child would do. She let him feel the coldness of her flesh as she hugged him. She tried to keep her lips sealed, to conceal her sharp vampire teeth hidden behind her soft lips, but she could smell him. His blood flow and the beating of his heart were getting louder and louder in him.

  She took her father’s face in her hands with great strength, almost crushing his bones, and the pain in him was apparent. Making him look at her, she gave him her kisses, and then, with one long embrace, she opened her mouth to the flesh of his neck. With little pressure, her sharp, pointed teeth pricked the salty tenderness of his skin. She could not stop and the blood flowed into her mouth. She pulled him closer and closer. With every moment, his life left his body. Then he was gone, dead in her arms.

  She looked down to him one last time. She bent over and kissed her father on his soft white cheek.

  “Forgive me, Father.”

  “He will not. He cannot. You killed him.”

  The voice startled her.

  “I was wrong. You would kill your own father.”

  She turned around, tears rolling down her face as Cerci stood in the doorway of her childhood home.

  “I did not mean to kill him.”

  “It works out that way I’m afraid. Fabiana, family tends to be the first blood you crave as an immortal. I took the blood of my sister when I was first made.”

  She walked out into the cold and snow fell onto the chilled mud of the village. It came in flurries around them and touched the tears hanging from her hot face. The blood of her father warmed her and she hated herself for it.

  Fabiana didn’t want this. She had never wanted this.

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  Chapter 24

  6:15 p.m., November 24

  Blue Ridge was dark as Fabiana walked down its streets, and she did not want to enter that house at the end of the block. She could feel his presence miles away. She walked down the brick driveway and stared ahead at the front door illuminated by a porch light.

  Fabiana wrenched the door out of her way, ridiculously irritated, and there he was. Her first love.

  Time had not made her immune to the perfection of his face, and she was sure that she would never forget how he looked at that moment. Her eyes traced over his pale white features, the hard square of his jaw, the softer curve of his full lips twisted to concern. The straight line of his nose. His flesh, smooth as glass. The eyes that once would have captivated her—once would have made Fabiana loose her train of thought just by gazing into them—now had a completely different effect on her. Yes, they were still wide, warm, and the color of the ocean. But she did not see what she once had. No, now she could see the years had weighed heavily on Cerci. There was something different about him now.

  Cerci stood motionless in the darkened far corner of the living room. The look of him, even now, was appealing. His long dark hair seemed to catch the shine of the moonlight just right as he stood silhouetted by the picture window. His broad muscular physique was just as masculine now as it had been when she had first laid her eyes on his naked body so long ago at the temple.

  Cerci’s piercing stare seemed to cut through the darkness of the house. His powerful green eyes looked right into her. Fabiana’s heart began to thump under her breast and his effect on her was obvious. She attempted to hide how much she still loved and cared for him with a cold stare and a stiff jaw, but not very convincingly.

  He always did love how she could look enraged and sexy with one amazing gaze. No matter how much time had passed between them, he always had the desire to be with her again. A hole was left in his heart ever since the day she had taken her leave of him almost five hundred years ago. Cerci was obligated to stay at the temple, sworn into servitude as a High Priest to The Origin of Blood. The day she had fled their sanctuary had left a lasting scar on him, as well as on the temple of vampires that she had turned her back on so long ago.

  “Until this night, this awful night, I thought you would one day return to me,” he started to say. “But I can still smell the blood on you. Vampire blood. You are killing again.”

  He ran his hands back through his curly hair and a small tangle captured his finger for a moment. He could feel the soft, tender scraping of his scalp and he pulled his hand away. The mood between them stung him painfully. He remembered her—the way she smelled and tasted on him. She was too magnificent, this spectacular creature of the night, and the deep outline of history stood before him. He could not do it, he could never destroy her. He turned away for a mom
ent and lost his balance. Why, this was all so unbelievably different. He steadied himself.

  “Do you still love me after all this time, Cerci?”

  “I will always love you.”

  Fabiana’s eyes were filled with a brilliant auburn color and the light of life. He wished to touch her, to kiss her, to make love to her, if only one last time.

  “You have made us far too public. The police are after you and the media is calling you a vampire. Our kind has struggled for years to stay hidden and to convince the humans that the idea of immortals is ridiculous. But thanks to you, they are at our door, coming into our lives,” he said sternly. “Kill the policeman Anderson.”

  “No. I will not take his life. He is a good man.”

  “Good man? Why? Because you love him? He is food, nothing else.” He closed his eyes and took a long, cleansing breath. And Cerci didn’t want it to be true. He didn’t want his love to be thinking about another. “I always loved you. I watched you as you feasted. I observed and admired you as they gave into you, the perfect vampire. You hunted next to me for hundreds of years. But you won’t take this one?” he said as he moved closer to her.

  “You do love him don’t you?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Cerci. How could I love a mere human?”

  And she knew it was a lie. And Cerci knew it was a lie.

  “This has to stop. They’re moving against you. The others, they’re gathering and plotting to kill you. But you have proven to be too powerful so The Origin is coming for you. You know our sigil. There is no good without evil. There is no day without night. There is no life without blood. You had a hand in creating the never-ending serpent that The Origin of Blood lives behind. But now you move to bring it all down.”

  She heard his words, yet nothing at that moment seemed as important to her than the tingling in her heart at hurting Cerci once again. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt Cerci. After all, that was why she had left, to save him from being hunted by The Family.

  “If you’re here, that means The Origin is here. You would never leave his side. Cerci, the High Priest, the high protector.

  “So, Cognatus left his temple?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “They’re frightened of the devastation you could bring down onto The Family. Some say that you are doing it to drive everyone here to you—a form of self-destruction. Others say you just want to be the most powerful immortal ever, even beyond the old ones, beyond the first hundred. But Cognatus believes you are going to destroy him,” he stated, as if just laying out a fact. “Now I ask you, what do you hope to gain, really, from these acts?”

  “Don’t you see?” Fabiana said, “All this brought you to me. You are standing before me finally, once again, and he is here. Cognatus is right. I am going to destroy him.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again her mind brought illumination to the house. The ceiling of the house, the soft yellow lights reflected in the warm wooden walls. Around them was a garden of small rocks, perfume, and the sight of flowers barely hanging onto petals and falling loose of stems as Cerci stroked his face with his long fingers.

  “To what end? What could the destruction of our father get you?”

  “Peace,” she said quietly. “Our Family is like a giant oak being fed by a fountain of life. But dry up the water and the tree will wither and die.”

  “You wish to die?”

  “No, I wish to live my life once more. I want to be human. Killing this curse at its source will give me that.”

  “And it will take the immortal gift away from the rest of us,” Cerci said, moving closer to her.

  “You can’t really tell me that after all this time you really want this life forever. I want to love and grow old and die. I’m so very tired of being here,” she said wearily.

  “No. I am content.”

  But he knew it was a lie. He gave a small shake of his head. He was in quiet denial, Fabiana could feel it. He had the solid, glassy look that he always got when he was profoundly upset and didn’t want to say what he really meant. “The Origin of Blood will come for you and I will be unable to stop him.”

  “It makes no difference now.”

  “It does to me, Fabiana. I need you to live.”

  Chapter 25

  7:15 p.m., November 24

  Long, curving tree limbs crowded over the dog’s head. A colorless sky inked the last hour of night as Zakk made his way down the small dirt path of a hill by Golden Gardens. Death was close by. He could smell it. His head held down, his wet nose covered in specks of dirt and dust, he struggled to follow the scent that blanketed the darkened hill side.

  It was dawn before he reached it. In the quiet of the morning, running through the high, thick vegetation was like wading in deep water for the canine. The stench of the dead was hidden between weeds and high blades of grass. Zakk was searching frantically for the scent coming from inside the concealed entryway into the underground house. He ran his nose over the undergrowth until a thorn unkindly stuck him and protruded from his snout. He fired out several barks that echoed high overhead. Then behind a decrepit dying tree trunk, a wild dog appeared with fur soaked black by mud, eyes red as blood, and vampire fangs pushing its lip up. It was a hellhound, a guard dog of the undead.

  A series of aggressive barks assaulted Zakk like a machine gun as the hound charged at him. He caught a glimpse of the enraged animal racing up to him as he ducked down and ran as fast as he could, away from the onslaught of clomping paws. Still the beast charged, throwing itself closer and closer to his hind legs as they desperately tried to keep him in front of the hound. The teeth of the monstrous dog snapped back and forth, searching for a target.

  Then the beast stopped hunting and paused. The woods around him were still. Zakk was gone.

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  Chapter 26

  8:15 p.m., November 24

  Marty Colleens enlarged another photograph in the forensic photography lab. This one was taken at the crime scene at Pike Place.

  The charred victim looked like a hideous burnt piece of meat. Several areas of his tissue had been seared, burned off of his body, mostly around the midsection. That seemed to be where the fire had been the hottest. The neck and shoulder area was remarkably untouched.

  She leaned back in her fake leather chair and as it squeaked she thought about this new evidence. Whoever had set this man on fire did it only to confuse and astound the police. She was unsettled. She felt that something beyond the obvious had happened and was still happening and she had been repeatedly upset by the cases making their way across her desk lately. She needed a vacation.

  “Hello, Marty,” Jack said cheerfully as he walked into her office. “How are we today?”

  “Not too bad,” she said, totally unconvincingly.

  “You sound as if you’re fighting a bug, Marty.”

  “Just tired, Jack. Did you just get into town?”

  “Last night. I haven’t even gotten a hotel room yet. Jumped right into the case the moment I got off the plane at Sea-Tac.” He looked down at her with a smile on his face. “Do you have anything on our latest victim?”

  “Too soon to tell, but I have to be honest here, Jack. There is not much tissue left for me to work with. Here is what I do have,” she said, picking up a file folder and opening it.

  “The sternal rib end indicates the victim was between twenty-five and thirty years of age. Length of the femur suggests he was between 5′8′′ and 5′10′′. Bone density and skull indicators also suggest that the victim was male. Time of death was approximately twenty-four hours ago. Lividity or livor mortis suggests he died at the scene. Deep puncture wounds to the neck pierced the jugular. He bled to death.”

  “Wait, he didn’t burn to death?”

  “It’s not what killed him. There’s carbon in the trachea, meaning he was breathing at the time he was set on fire. There were massive breaks to the skeleton too. We are still looking to see which break
s were caused by heat and which were caused by trauma. But there is something else you might find interesting. I got the report back from Dr. Glass about one of the victims from the mall… Well, it seems the female victim was a Salem witch.”

  “What? A real Salem witch? That’s cool!” Jack said.

  “Simmer down now, G-man. The strontium isotope results verify Massachusetts,” Dr. Colleens said.

  “Can I see it? Can I see the body?” Jack asked, suddenly energized.

  “What’s the big deal all of a sudden?”

  “Before I joined the FBI, my first published work concerned the collected social pathology behind the Salem witch trials. I’m a leading expert,” Jack proudly stated.

  “Oh, that’s a completely acceptable area of study, especially for a psychologist.” Marty rolled her eyes sarcastically.

  “Thank you…” Jack sighed, ignoring her distaste for his background. “Now what about the other victims?” he asked.

  “I really could use a bone expert to look over the case for me, but we don’t have one in Washington State. There is one in D.C… Can you call in a favor?”

  Jack always enjoyed how straightforward Marty was with him. There were no secrets, nothing was held back. If they both weren’t happily married he could have seen himself pursuing a woman like her.

  “I might have someone you could talk to. I’ll set it up, hopefully by lunch time, alright?”

  “Alright, Jack. Thank you.”

  Fake leather creaked as Jack took his seat just next to Marty, making himself as comfortable as he could in his FBI suit. He sat back in one of the many cracked and worn leather chairs, oblivious to its tattered crevices and rips. Jack put his feet up on the leg of the table and she noticed that his shoes were still wet from the rain. They were near to one another, near enough, Jack with his shoulder close to her. Marty hid her discomfort with a smile.

  The light shone bright in his face now. With a boy’s enthusiasm, he leaned forward in the chair, his massive hands on his knees. He gave her a playful smile then slumped back into the leather. He went out of his way to show how relaxed he felt around Marty, flopped back in the chair, top button of his shirt undone. She could feel his closeness to her and she was more than a little sure he was trying to look down her lab coat as she leaned forward at her desk. Marty had a suspicion the cologne Jack was wearing was more for her benefit than his wife’s. She always felt there was a professional line at work that Jack always had just one toe over when he would fly in from D.C. and see her. She never told her husband about Jack.