Legend of Stygian Downs (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 2)

by Kara Skye Smith

  “Stop saying ‘half’,” Theopolis tells her, “it’s just an excuse. No one cares, half or full - you’re a vampire. Nothing about your mother - if you weren’t a vampire, you wouldn’t be. We can do this. Let’s jump.” They both look down into the mist. Theopolis picks up a bolt that has come loose near his boot. He tosses it off the bridge’s edge; and, they both watch it tumble into the mist. They look at each other.

  “I’ll hold your hand the whole way through,” Theopolis says.

  “I don’t think we’re ready yet,” Jessica tells him.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says.

  “Let’s just go to the party,” Jessica suggests tugging on his sleeve. He is still looking down form the edge. He steps away.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says again, and then he perks up, “okay, let’s go to the party.”

  Chapter Three

  A gray bungalow sits at the end of the trail Theopolis has led Jessica along, lit up and swarming with people inside and out on the lawn. The girl who had rudely bumped into Jessica earlier that night stands in the doorway.

  “Can we get through, here,” Jessica asks.

  “Are you always getting in people’s way?” the girls asks her. Theopolis peers around Jessica’s head, she smiles at him instantly.

  “O, hey!” she says to him and steps to the side, unblocking the doorway.

  She wiggles past Jessica directly facing Theopolis, “What are you doing here?”

  “The same thing you are,” Theopolis says.

  “You’re not with -” the rude girl motions her head toward Jessica.

  “Yes, I am,” Theopolis answers. He puts his arm around Jessica and pulls her in through the door.

  “Well, have fun,” she sneers, twirling her long, red hair around her index finger.

  “My friend told me about this house. I’ve been here more than once, already,” Theopolis tells Jessica. All of a sudden, there is the loud sound of motorcycle revving out on the lawn. He turns when he hears it and heads back to the doorway.

  “Jess, come see this!” he calls. Several motorcycles are welded so they are ridiculously tall are being driven by two guys in top hats and a girl in a beret with long streamers tied to the back, plus two more choppers rev loudly, all circling around in the yard. Jessica and Theopolis watch as people cheer and some throw cups at them. When they finally park their motorcycles and climb up the stairs to the bungalow, one of the buys in top hats smiles at Theopolis and grabs his hand. He pats Theopolis on the shoulder.

  “Theopolis! My brother. Good to see you,” he says.

  “I was just about to say the same to you,” Theopolis says. Another one of the wild riders sits down on the railing of the porch and smiles at Jessica.

  Jessica moves closer to Theopolis, “You know this guy?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” Theopolis admits, “this house is known as the Clown House.” The guy who had called Theo polis his brother says, “Officially. So what’y’ya been up to, Theo?”

  “You know, school. That sort of thing,” he tells him, “I met Jessica, today. I took her to the bridge, on the way here. O! Tell her about the legend.” He smiles and turns his head to the side, almost far enough to make his top hat slide right off, but it doesn’t.

  “The Old Vampire Legend?” he asks, “warming her up? You old straw!”

  Theopolis jumps in, “It’s not like that! She’s -” he looks at Jessica, “like me, somewhat.”

  The guy sits back adjusting his hat, firmly, with one hand, “Ah, well then…” he exclaims, “you’ll have to hear the legend. It’s not a request; it’s a downright obligation! Come a little closer and have a seat.” He pulls up a camp chair on the porch and the two of them snuggle into an old loveseat. Two other ‘clowns’ take a place on the railing.

  “This old legends’ have more than just a little meaning to ‘ya, then,” he says to Jessica.

  The Old Vampire Legend

  “One dark and sultry night, the vampire legend begins, along a lonely road in days gone by, a black cape blew against a wind arriving from the North, so cold and bitter it brought with it a sense of loneliness felt right down to the toes. Beneath that cape, there stood the body of a man, but inside that man, a vampire, the likes the world had never known before him. A woman, going nowhere, sat crying in her carriage. Her horse had startled at the whistling and trembling shadows from the baleful gust. The horse had broken rein and run off into the night. Through her tears, she saw the man all at once just standing there beside her beneath the flutter of his cape, as it rose against the wind. Before she could talk, he crouched down and reached out to take her by the frightened hand. She didn’t grab ahold. The dark night, his pernicious looking cape a-flutter in the wind, but no one else was there for her, so what else could she do?” The guy in the top hat asks the other guests, as he pauses to take a si from his cup and look around at the anxious eyes now watching him. No one in the close huddle of friends makes any suggestion, so he continues on, telling them the vampire legend.

  “The woman in the carriage takes a moment to wipe away her tears, dotting at them with her finger, she takes a breath resigning herself to go with him. But, when she looks back up where he once stood, she sees that he is gone. She looks around for him; a faint, almost transparent figure is in the carriage with her - standing directly behind her. Just as she sees him, recognizing his cape a-flutter, once again, in the sharp wind, he disappears. Suddenly voices from trees begin to taunt her, she squints to see them, but they are only bats hanging form the limbs of the nearby tree. Were the bats there all along, she wonders, as their voices grow louder, almost menacing, she hears her name… ‘D-o-m-i-n-a!’ she looks around.

  ‘What?!’ Domina cries, disturbed by the eery sounding chatter of the bats. Instantly their chatter sounds like laughter. She begins to climb out of the carriage in haste and tears her gown. Then, she feels him help her down. This time he places a set of reigns in her gloved hand. Her horse stands right behind him. The bats swarm ‘round the tree from which they’d hung and then swoop near her, but only for a moment. She ducks in terror, and then they are gone. By the time she focuses her eyes upon the carriage, it is mended, yet it is as if no one has touched the carriage - from what she could see - at all. The mysterious man helps her inside and climbs in to sit beside her. At the bridge, he unhooks the reins and lets the horse go. He yells an unheard word, ‘Imbue!’ The horse runs off. Confused as to what has just occurred, Domina takes the hand he offers her and climbs down, with him, to the edge of a cantilever bridge; the Stygian Downs Bridge. Still holding her hand, he jumps - off the edge into the dark mist - pulling her with him. She screams a scream that lasts a lifetime, it seems, as she watches the world fall away. Images in visions fall beside her and all at once he has her in his arms hanging upside down, beneath the bridge, his image changed, he had bat-like wings that surround her, hold her from falling and his face appears wicked. Other bat-like figures hang there, too, laughing and chattering in strange voices that blend and carry in the wind. They rest there, until her heartbeat slows to normal and he whispers, ‘dirigez quelque chose de deux‘. He lets go. They fall into a world unlike anything she has experienced before. A dark world of riches and castles, of lies and deception from which there is no escape, until… one night, a night of long last, the mysterious man walks with her away from the rooms of Stygians Underworld Castle, away from the music and dancing, up a long, twisted spiral staircase to an attic/tower room.

  In the center is a candlelit table where a man, pouring wine from a long and deliciously decorative decanter. The mysterious man is known by this wine pourer as none other than L’Onormichaelis Nostramadeus (known only as Nostramadeus by vampire buffs) a most genuine of known vampires, and he seats the unaware Domina at the table as the steward disappears. One her hand he places a ring of three diamonds - the middle star shaped - with blood-red rubies on either side. Out the arched windows she can see that she is very high up, in a tower, above the strange, strange land -
appearing very far-off to her from the window. Two plates are served, her’s heaping with foods so rich and tempting, his empty. She motions toward him to take her plate, to help himself. He does not move. She sets the plate closer to him and picks up her fork. She takes a bite and marvels at the decadence commenting quickly on the deliciousness with sounds and utterances of approval. Still bent toward the plate she looks up and he is gone. She looks around the room. He isn’t there. A waiter enters the tower with two more plates of food, both of which he puts in front of her. She asks him where the man once seated at her table only several seconds past has gone. The steward tells her he will not return, at least not that he knows of. She has chosen food and not to be food. And what food he has in store for her! Domina instantly becomes very angry. She demands to see the man she thought would save her - to talk with him, and insists that he be returned to her at once. At first, the waiter leaves the room; yet after many hours he returns, with more plates, heaped full of food - this time desserts. ‘This is not what I want!’ Domina screams. Where is her man, she asks; she wears his ring! Maybe it would taste good, the waiter tells her. Domina orders him out of the tower at the sound of this nonsense and goes to the window and screams. After one day where all her requests are met only with food, food, and more food, Domina demands new clothing and a place to wash.

  ‘Nothing is to her liking,’ one waiter mumbles to the other as plates are brought continuously trying to appease her at the obvious choice of her own. Upon the third day, Domina refuses to eat at all.

  ‘Try the ring out the window,’ the waiter says, under his breath, ‘but I won’t be the one that told you.’ Then he sets down a plate of cheesecakes and leaves. Domina throws them at the wall, she licks her fingers and sees that much of it is down the front of her gown. She pulls at her ring, it won’t come off. She pulls again until she is crying. She cries and sits down. She sits all that day. The next day, she finds an ancient book, covered in dust with a lock on it. She tried to open the book at its latch, but it won’d budge. She pulls a pin from the once done-up, now falling down hair and opens the lock on the book. Suddenly the ring upon her finger loosens, almost to falling off. It is a book of incantations. She reads it night and day, until one night she finds among the ancient pages of the book instructions on how to summon; and, she begins to chant the incantation’s words, nonstop, until finally, help arrives.

  A thin man, almost spindly, arrives at the top of the stairs. Domina believes that she has summoned him, although he denies this and tries to tell her it is all in his business to climb the steepest tower and ask her how she is.

  ‘Dreadful,’ she answers, and he agrees, by the looks of her upright standing gown, that is, covered in bits of cake and dirty from the dust of many days wear. He is a brown wearing man, himself, a monk Domina thinks, but he is not - a lute player, actually, is what he is and he brings his lute from behind his back and plays a little tune to which she begins to sing. As waiters scurry in and out, Domina sings words to ease her escape to tell him of the quiverous shake in her heart caused by seeing him arrive to help, yet not being able to go. She wants to go, with all her heart, she sings, and as she’s summoned him, she convinces him, he must oblige. Suddenly, Domina grabs the volume of incantations and sings the words inside the book out loud and strong to sway his opinion to her side. His objection melts into the hand she reaches out to him and swiftly down the windy staircase they both descend.

  Out into the night she wanders, not knowing the land, she stumbles upon an old shrew who glowers and utters the words, ‘Unskilled whore!’

  ‘I am not!’ Domina pleads, and shows to her the ring she wears. ‘I’m engaged to a man of wealth and honor, but he has left me, can you help me find him?’

  The old witch takes Domina to her home. Across the way, from the witch’s hut, Domina sees a house under a large tree with a huge canopy of branches. She watches a woman inside, through a window, with hair similar in shape and style to the huge canopy formed by the tree’s branches. She is puttering about - inside the house - back and forth across the lit-up windows as the sky fades to dusk. The house looks like a story book illustration Domina remembers seeing as a child, but the huge mass of hair and the huge mass of arching branches of its tree canopy nearly make Domina giggle as she watches the demure lady set about accomplishing her tasks while dusk arrives. A lamp outside the garden gate illuminates upon the turning of dusk to darkness and the warmth of light shines out the windows encompassing her huge nest of hair. Domina wonders if she actually sees all this or if it is that her situation seems so bleak she would imagine this warm, storybook page come to life as if there were a place to go. As Domina contemplates, the witch binds up her wrists in twine, too tight, and tells Domina that she will meet this man of wealth and honor while Domina remains tied up in the back room of her hut. The witch begins to plan a transforamtion into the likeness of Domina and after she lights the cauldron, she frames Domina’s face, thumbs touching thumbs, fingers outstretched, she mocks a photographer’s intentions to cast light on his victim and then shoot the photo, but instead she traipses to her pot and begins to toss in bits of this and loads of that, singing hideously as she goes along.

  ‘Off with the dress. I’ll need that,’ the Witch snarls.

  ‘It won’t fit you,’ Domina protests flatly.

  ‘Grumble, grumble,’ the Witch grumbles. Again, she frames Domina, her thumbs touching, fingers outstretched, the body this time, and traipses back and forth from jars full of ingredients - from shelf to boiling pot.

  ‘There!’ she shrieks, ‘Now, take it off!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Domina replies, ‘my hands are bandaged. Tied with string.’ Once again the Witch grumbles something and raises her wand, but instead of magic, she uses it’s sharp side to cut the string.

  ‘Grumble, grumble. There,’ she says again, ‘now take it off!’ Domina rubs her palms against sore wrists.

  ‘Not much for variety in your vocabulary, are you?’ she asks, but she is rudely interrupted before the last syllable of the word ‘you’ is uttered.

  ‘Take it off!’ the Witch screams as she picks up a skull and slams it down onto the fireplace mantle. Suddenly, Domina’s head sears with pain.

  ‘Ouch!!’ she cries, and then tells the Witch, ‘He won’t love you. He can’t possibly love you… you’re too mean!!’

  ‘Did he love you?!’ the Witch asks, pressing her scowl nearly into Domina’s face to get good look at her while she asks herself this question and comes to the inevitable conclusion - forsaken.

  ‘He would love me, but I don’t want his love,’ Domina says, touching her head. The pain stops.

  ‘I just want out of this town and I just had to get out of that tower!’

  ‘Then I can see to that. Give the dress to me!’ the Witch exclaims.

  ‘But I’ll help you. I’ll say whatever you…’

  The Witch yells at her, ‘You little cheat! Take it off!’

  ‘O tiny toenails, hold your horses!’ Domina whines, but she takes the dress off and slaps it on the table as the Witch instructs her. Standing, now, in only her corset, ruffled slip and undergarments, Domina watches the Witch as she rings a little bell. An unsightly bald man, a troll, comes out of a back door. The Witch walks off with Domina’s dress under her arms - It is white and yellow with white, lace edging at the top; long sleeved with a small, flowered print (coincidentally, nearly the same white and yellow patterned fabric that dear Jessica adored at the age of her first, real taste for writing; and as it happens, the year Old Nostramadeus was ‘called’ to her home, isn’t it? Wasn’t it? But this top hatted legend teller doesn’t know these details so don’t let me interrupt, it’s just the old Witch is shouting commands and that always makes me nervous, so listen now, again to him, as he tells what the Witch is saying.)

  ‘Take her to the back room and keep her quiet!’ the Witch yells. The troll puts the twine back around Domina’s wrists - but not so tight - and holds her by one arm. He w
alks her through the same door that he had come in through, and seats her in a wooden chair.

  Out in the front room, the Witch pours the brew she has just mixed up into a brown, clay jug and marks it 3 times along the side in even portion marks. She takes an enormous swig and wipes her mouth with the back of her black, silk sleeve, and then puts a cork into the top of the jug.

  Two days later, the Witch looks astonishingly like Domina, but not exactly. The Witch tries on Domina’s dress. She tugs and pulls, as best she can, to get the zipper. The dress is too tight.

  ‘Sleep kittens and jimminey’s wench!’ the Witch complains, ‘where is that bottle?’ She grabs the jug, un-pops the cork, and chugs the witch’s brew to the very last drop.

  ‘Ahhh,’ she says and falls back into her wooden rocker, falling fast asleep. The bottle in her hand drops to the floor causing the sound of a crash. Domina is alone in the back room - the strange and unlikable little man has gone out. Domina turns her head to the side, listening closely, but the crash sound is all she hears. There is nothing else that can be heard from where she sits. The Witch’s lowly snurggling has not yet risen to the pitch of her usual snore.

  ‘Are you out there? Everything alright?… Hello?’ There is no answer. Domina begins to rock the chair in which she is now bound - tied once again in twine by the gnarled hands of the little troll - back and forth she rocks until the chair is bouncing. Domina bounces the chair, and herself, over to a shovel hanging on the wall. She maneuvers around until her twine bound hands are up against the sharp edge of the metal shovel. She rubs furiously - twine against metal edge - until bits of the twisted twine cut clean through from wear against the metal. With only a few strands left unbroken, she hears the mumblings and disdainful comments of the bald little troll approaching from outside the Witch’s hut.

  ‘Blast! He’s back!’ Domina thinks and hurries, rubbing twine against metal as fast as she can go. At last her wrists break free - her hands untied! Domina quickly moves her chair back into position, leaving her feet tied to the chair as they were. She places her hands, once again, behind the chair, as though they are still tied there, just as the scorned, little humped over troll enters inside the dim, little room. Domina sighs a deep, long sigh. He looks at her.