Immortal with a Kiss

by Jacqueline Lepore

  I would have been mad not to have been afraid. The memory of what I had faced that past spring still held me. I had been thrust against forces so vile and so strong they had defeated mortal men for generations. I still grieved for all I had not been able to do, and for all that had been lost. I had to keep reminding myself that despite my failings I had saved Henrietta. I had kept a terrible force from being unleashed upon the world. I had done battle with a great vampire lord and won.

  But in weak moments I would think of the child I had not been able to save, and her mourning mother. I would think of the priest with his broken faith wandering the world looking for answers no earthly source could supply. I would think of Valerian Fox, whose quest for salvation had not ended.

  And I would, of course, think constantly of my mother, who I had learned was a vampire. I wanted so badly to save her. Now, here was a link to her, a tie to her past.

  I had to go, of course. I was frightened, unsure of myself as yet, but I thought again of the uncaring Fates, furiously spinning their gossamer thread, and I would have been but a fool to tangle them with something as inconsequential as my free will.

  Chapter Two

  I cannot describe what it was I felt as I packed my belongings into the old portmanteau that had once been my mother’s, one of the few things I had of hers. I could have afforded much better, for my late husband, Simon, had left me a wealthy widow upon his death a year ago. Yet I would not give it up.

  When it was crammed full, I summoned a carriage to take me into the city and settled in a finely appointed room at the best inn. It was there, embarked and committed at last, that I finally opened Miss Markam’s journal pages.

  A newspaper clipping fluttered out as I unfolded the packet, and a scrap of foolscap slipped out with it, bearing Sebastian’s scrawl: Victoria Markam has gone missing.

  A single thump punched a rude blow to my chest. I turned to the carefully cut piece from the London Daily Mail. “Five Dead Near Penrith. Unknown Disease Terrifies Village.”

  The article, which I read quickly, gave very little detail. Perhaps there was not much to report aside from each of the victims having been struck down with a mysterious malady in which they grew pale and listless. They died within three to five days, suffering from melancholia, delusions, delirium, and severe anemia.

  That weird sense of destiny settled more tightly around me. I had seen this plague before. It had been referred to as a wasting disease in Avebury. Valerian Fox, who had much more experience in these things and had served as my mentor, had told me that this was what an unaware population called it when those among them began to expire from exsanguinations. That meant a vampire was feeding. I unfolded the journal pages and adjusted my lamp closer.

  Miss Markam’s hand was delicate and exact. A schoolteacher’s hand, laying out her thoughts in evenly balanced lines as formal and ordered as a document of state.

  I am put out with Margaret, her pages began. She has always been unpleasant, but she is now sly. I am stymied by her recent friendship with Vanessa, who is generally well regarded by students and staff. I am concerned about Margaret’s influence on the sweet-natured Vanessa.

  I felt instantly sorry for the maligned Margaret. I had been such a one as she, my quick mind seen as unattractive and suspicious, while my sister, Alyssa, had been our family’s Vanessa, the favored one.

  I catch them whispering all the time. Even young Eustacia knows something is wrong. She is my little informant, only because she cannot lie when I pin her with pointed questions. I know they go to the woods. Margaret mocks me even though she is only a tradesman’s daughter and above her station here. But she acts like the Queen herself, and all the others follow her. I shall speak

  The sentence was left uncompleted as the entry continued on another page which was not included. What followed was dated some days after.

  The Irish boy was here. I saw him waiting in the copse at dusk. I spoke to Miss Easton about it, but she never sees anything. So I chased him off myself. He was brash and disrespectful, the same gloating manner I hate so much in Margaret. Such arrogance. I wonder if I should go to Miss Sloane-Smith. I fear she will not take my side against the girls. There was that business last fall, and she does not like me.

  A pen crossed out the rest of the page, signaling it was of no import. I made out some reference to a chatty tea with another teacher and disregarded the rest. The next entry also had omissions above and below the following: A young boy in the village has been missing for near a week. He did not return after setting out for home from his uncle’s farm. The girls were disinterested in this tragedy, standing apart while the other students could speak of nothing else. Margaret and Vanessa, and now a few others who have joined them, were interested only in whatever secrets keep them constantly whispering like bees until I fear I will go mad with the buzz.

  That was followed by another page, dated soon after this. I discussed with Ann my concern about the growing problems among the girls. I strongly sense them conspiring something. But she makes excuses for them. She argues they are well-behaved in her class, as if it were my fault they do not treat me well. I fear I am the only one who sees what is happening.

  Another passage on the next sheet read: A man came in from the fields to find his wife gone without a trace. No one has seen her for a fortnight now.

  I inhaled sharply and tried to assert my rationality. A missing boy, a missing mother and child—these things sometimes had explanations. Women ran off, children got lost or found more entertaining things to do than return home promptly. It was possible these happenings were not the result of dark deeds. It was certainly not conclusive.

  I read more of the pages, deciphering the rapidly deteriorating penmanship that chronicled Miss Markam’s obsession with the growing circle of girls. I was frustrated with how little she knew, yet her conviction of something somehow wrong rang through every passage. The rancor of her scrawled words made her seem small, a petty tyrant unraveling because her authority was being usurped, and I wondered if that was all that was at work here.

  I lay the pages down, rubbing my tired eyes. While I could see there was reason to suspect vampire activity in the area, it also appeared Miss Markam was the sort whose nerves made her brittle, apt to imagine all manner of things. She was prone to drinking in excess, Sebastian had reported. How reliable was her account? And why was no one else at the school in the least perturbed by the great dangers she seemed to sense growing among the students?

  I feared weakness regarding my mother had caused me to act precipitously, and I was not certain at all there was anything to be investigated at the Blackbriar School after all.

  A nightmare that night took me back to Avebury, to the chalk downs where the hawthorn tree had stood with its grasping branches. Valerian appeared at my side, his angular, sharp-featured face rendered true in every detail. I studied the leashed power of his frame, his dark and inscrutable eyes, the sensitively curved mouth I had kissed once.

  Even in the dream, I felt the presence of the bond that had drawn us together. I had never examined that feeling too closely, but there was no mistaking how happy I was to see him again, all my brittle disappointment at his having left me without a word these last months forgiven in an instant.

  He, however, remained stoic. “They are in the forest,” he told me, and I heard the far-off sound of girlish laughter riding sweet and pure on the air. Margaret, I thought at once. She and the other students with whom Victoria Markam was obsessed were here.

  I turned urgently to tell this to Valerian. He stood frozen, his rapier-thin body as rigid as steel, his finely tailored clothing hanging on him like a corpse. Behind him a shadow rose, a familiar and dreaded one. A dragon, curled like a serpent, ready to strike. The sign of the Dracula, the feared and mysterious Dragon Prince. I felt its hatred pulsing out to me like rays of heat off a bonfire.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but the dragon did not threaten Valerian. It hovered. Watching. Biding its time. />
  Valerian looked haggard, and I thought: He is dead! But his lips moved. He told me to go, and I backed away from him, not knowing if he had been changed at last, if Marius had found him and bestowed the fatal kiss that would make him my enemy.

  I ran to the forest, and he called to me again. When I turned, he was beside me, although he had not seemed to move. In his eyes, a world of sadness smoldered as he intoned in a voice dusty and not his, “Do not forsake Father Luke.”

  I reeled at the reminder. I grieved for Father Luke, the warrior priest who had run in disgrace from his church and from us after we had defeated the monster together. What had happened in Avebury, on that plain where standing stones marked the presence of an ancient and terrible evil, had destroyed him.

  The cries from the girls, meanwhile, were pure joy and delight. They drew me away, taking me deep into the shaded forest, away from Valerian, and I was relieved. I did not like his mentioning the priest. Am I to save all of the world? I thought bitterly.

  The growth in the woods was jungle-like, thick and stubborn, and growing more so as I fought my way through it to the girls. I had almost reached them when their voices changed abruptly from happiness to horror; they began to scream, their cries terror-filled, bone-rattling, turning my veins to runnels of ice. And then I felt him: Marius, the mighty vampire lord.

  His voice was in my ear, in my head, saying my name like a vile incantation, like a lover’s call. My body crawled to an awful, thrilling awareness. I felt his hand on my neck and his breath lifting the fine strands of my hair. As before, when I’d looked into his eyes not knowing the danger, I felt the rasp of his putrid mind against my quivering soul.

  That was when I woke, gasping as my mind scrabbled away from the terrible dream. I felt for the taper on my bedside table. It flared on my first try, even with my hands trembling, and I sat up in the puddle of light until my heart settled. The truth went through me in jagged spikes of electricity, jerking my back straight as I stared into the darkness beyond the sputtering flame of my candle.

  I was not only going to Blackbriar for my mother. I had another, equally powerful motivation driving me home to England, to a place where a plague of “pernicious anemia” often meant a vampire was gorging himself. Where there was evidence of a vampire, there was a chance it was Marius. And perhaps I could make right what I had taken from Valerian, for when he had been forced to choose my life or his own salvation, he had made an admirable, though agonizing, sacrifice. I owed him.

  Now awake and facing no hope of resuming my rest, I penned a letter to Valerian, informing him of my plans to return to England. I posted the letter along with another to Sebastian, giving him my intentions and asking him to make some arrangements for me with a London employment agency, for despite my misgivings about Miss Markam, my mind was more than made up to proceed to the Blackbriar School.

  A week later, I made a surprisingly fine journey to England on a kindly sea. Barely establishing my wobbling legs under me in Northumbria, I climbed immediately into a train car and headed west, across to the brooding Pennines into the heart of the Lake District, then to the jewel known as the Vale of Eden. The train made swift passage through a series of cols around which the fells rose gently like towering swells on a sea of rock, and a day later I arrived in Penrith, where I changed to hired carriage and followed the old Roman road that ran along the Eden River, northward to the isolated moor beyond the majestic Bryce Fell.

  The mountain was already whitened by recent snows, reflected perfectly in the clear waters of the Houndclaw Tarn lapping at its base. Next to the lake was the village of Blackbriar, bristling with the charm of cobbled streets and storefront windows crowding its lanes. As I clattered along toward the inn which I had been told was the best to be had in these parts, I peered out the window and saw people going about their business with cheerful smiles.

  I had not expected this. If a vampire were here, how was it nothing was in the air, no sense of terror or skittish looks? My limited experience in Avebury had taught me that fear gripped a population in a peculiar way when a vampire was nearby. The fear it brought with it was like a wash of watercolor over everything, an ugly and angry red that cast the most innocent thing in a lurid light. One could sense the creature’s presence, even smell it. Or at least I could sense it with the blood inheritance with which my mother had gifted me.

  I felt nothing terrible here. As dusk descended, I arrived at the Rood and Cup, my destination, and my doubts renewed at the bucolic picture of the cozy inn. Had I done naught but follow a lark in coming here?

  When my hired carriage gained the small courtyard, the innkeeper came out to meet us, offering me a beefy and scarred hand to aid me in my descent down the step.

  “Evening, mum,” he muttered, but his friendly smile disappeared with startling alacrity as the driver called to him, indicating that my mother’s portmanteau needed to be unloaded from the top of the conveyance.

  He scrapped the hat off of his head. “Oye,” he muttered, his good nature replaced by sloping shoulders and a petulant shuffle. The monstrosity I used for travel was indeed large and unwieldy, and I could well understand why he was not at all happy to have to wrestle it down from its perch and then carry it up the stairs to my room. But when he grabbed a leather strap and began to roughly jerk it up the stone steps, scraping the bottom of the heavy trunk against the ground, I opened my mouth to object. My sharp command was cut off by the sudden appearance of a woman who came bustling into the courtyard like a player taking the stage at Haymarket. Her voice was raised to a shrill, commanding ring. “Mr. Danby, you great oaf! It’ll be your hide if you do this lady’s property harm. Have a care, and none of your sulking, mind you!”

  The man cast a sullen look in her direction. But she, who I suspected knew exactly what reaction she would get and didn’t care, had already turned to me, her scowl transformed into a smile. “Well, then, miss, look at you with all the dust from the road on you. Come on, then, and we’ll get you to the fire. You’re hungry, I’ll wager.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a warm smile for both the offer of food and her handling of Mr. Danby. “I’m Mrs. Andrews. I will be needing a room, please.”

  “Of course you will, dear,” she declared. “Look at you, poor thing. You’re as beat as a puppy. I’m Mrs. Danby, of course. Now come along. You’ll catch a chill in this night air. Nice cup of tea will fix you up, won’t it? And I made rabbit stew today. It’s what I’m best known for, and my bread’s the envy of the county.”

  I found myself inside the great room, my cloak off before I knew it. “There,” Mrs. Danby pronounced, giving the fine wool a few swats. “Janet will have it aired and cleaned.”

  Janet, a pretty thing of maybe sixteen or so, appeared as if summoned by magic, bobbed a quick curtsy to me, and carried off my cloak as if it were an ermine-lined cape such as the queen would wear.

  I found myself in a low-ceilinged bower, beams dark with age overhead and boards worn pale by countless boots underfoot. I could smell the delectable aroma of meat and spices and my stomach rumbled in response. Tables were set up neatly with chairs, although there was no one about as the hour was too early for supper. Mrs. Danby situated me at a table near to the shoulder-high hearth.

  “Now, this is cozy, isn’t it?” Mrs. Danby’s quarter-moon eyes were warm and her broad grin beamed at me, hands clasped as if she found especial delight in seeing to my comfort.

  “I’ll bring you tea, first. That should warm your bones straight away. Then I’ll bring you the stew.”

  I sighed, smiling my gratitude. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  “How long will you be staying, if I might ask?”

  “I’m not sure. I am here to see a Miss Sloane-Smith about a newly vacant teaching position at the Blackbriar School.”

  Her frown drew her entire face into a pucker. “Yes, that business with poor Miss Markam. Who would have thought, a young, strong thing like that coming down with the consumption? Thoug
h she was a troubled soul, there’s no denying that. Ah, well, it makes one appreciate every day of healthy life God gives you, it does. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they’d be needing a replacement, sad as it is. Well, good luck to you, then. Will you be riding up there tomorrow?”

  “That is my plan,” I replied, pulling back my trust a little bit. Her mothering had disarmed me—an admitted weakness of mine—but her inaccurate statement about Miss Markam’s having died of consumption left me wary. I would do well to keep my guard up.

  Her husband was just now bearing my trunk, which was perched safely on his shoulder, up the stairs. Mrs. Danby, who seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, called out without ever breaking her gaze from mine, “That better not have a scratch on it, Mr. Danby. Put her in the yellow room, and get Janet to unpack her things.”

  I laughed. “It is very old, Mrs. Danby. I hardly think your husband can be held to account for a scratch, when there are far worse already in evidence.”

  Mrs. Danby twitched a pert smile. “You’ll be settled in a trice. I’ll have my boy run up with the message for the headmistress to expect you tomorrow, and I’ll make sure Colin O’Hara is here to drive you.” She stoked the fire with a few brisk pokes before disappearing into the kitchens to bring me my tea.

  I looked around me at the pleasant room. Small-paned windows shut out the miserable day. In the hearth, the flames sprung to life, high and bright and greedy, filling the air with the pleasant aroma of wood smoke. The silence was punctuated by the sharp snap of sap popping and the heat and quiet combined to lull me into a state of lassitude that made my eyelids heavy until a reedy voice from the other side of the room spoke.