by Jan McDonald
He relinquished his hold on her mind as they arrived in front of his home, he had no need to control her; she was biddable because she believed he would make her a vampire. Perhaps she wouldn’t be so if she knew that the very idea was abhorrent to him; that it was the very last thing that he would do; that Vasile Tepes was about to orchestrate the slaughter of thousands of Created vampires. He would let her believe in her fantasy for a while longer and, when he had tired of her, she would follow the rest of his lovers.
Inside his mountain retreat he bowed theatrically to her, laughing at her wide-eyed expression of appreciation of the plush rugs and tapestries, the wide sweeping staircase and the baronial fireplace alive with flaming logs; she had no idea that he was mocking her.
Whilst his home looked ancient, it was in fact fitted with everything for his comfort and the central heating system was discreet; the flaming fireplace was for his visual pleasure and not of a necessity.
He escorted her to a comfortable couch in front of the blaze and pulled on a tapestry bell-pull for Nicolae, who seemed to materialise in front of them from nowhere.
“Whilst you are my guest here, beautiful lady, Nicolae will see to your every need. When you want for anything just pull on one of these, there is one in every room.”
Nicolae smiled at her and bowed his head briefly. There was no mockery in his gesture; he felt sorry for the girl, for it was certain that she had no idea of her forthcoming demise. It always ended that way. And it was he that always had to dispose of the bodies and any evidence of their presence.
Vasile was watching her closely, searching for any sign of anxiety or regret; there was none. She was fully aware of what he was and was relishing every moment – living inside a Gothic romance. He sensed the dark side of her nature surging to the fore and her delight as she began to realise her true self. There was no regret at leaving Dan with the others and whilst she had no knowledge of their fate, she didn’t question what was going to happen to them.
As he trawled through her thoughts, he struggled to prevent himself from laughing aloud at her belief that she could hold the pendant over him as leverage for him to turn her. Foolish girl; he could take it at any time he desired. Deep down, he believed it was exactly what she wanted and he would take pleasure in playing rough when the time came. In the meantime he would use her to satisfy both of his hungers.
He instructed Nicolae to bring him absinthe and two crystal glasses. He would enchant her first, and he enjoyed his blood warm with a hint of the anise and wormwood.
They drank together and he entered her thoughts again, clouded as they were with the delirium of the neat alcohol laced with the hallucinogenic wormwood. He saw images of a happy childhood in the care of her grandparents and knowledge of the early death of her parents but no memory of it – they had obviously died when she was an infant. Her grandfather appeared in her stored images – a distinguished and educated man with silver hair and beard and a twinkle in his eye. As she thought of him, Vasile picked up a hint of sadness at his being away from home much of the time as he searched the world for artefacts and antiquities to add to his collection.
Images of her grandmother were very different – a spare woman with a lean and severe countenance who rarely smiled. She did her duty to the child and, in her own way, she loved her. But she was one of those women whose love was contained and measured with little display of affection.
Vasile probed deeper as Lucy fell into a deep sleep, unaware that he was raping her mind with no shred of remorse.
There was grief and tragedy as he encountered the memory of her grandfather’s death and the subsequent selling off of his collection to enable her grandmother to keep their house. There was no money – he had spent everything in obtaining what her grandmother called ‘his damned trinkets’ and the sale of his collection barely covered the old man’s discovered debts. Eventually, the house was mortgaged and Vasile sensed the change then in the old woman as she withdrew into her resentment until she too wasted away, a bitter old woman.
Vasile frowned. He probed harder, searching for memories of the pendant. He put the image into her mind, so that it would lead him to the archived memories.
He found it among the images of her late-teens. It was her eighteenth birthday and her grandmother had called Lucy to sit with her and had handed her a black velvet pouch.
“This is the last of it all,” she had said, with bitterness that annihilated any affection – this was duty. She had continued in a thin, reedy voice, “He always told me that it was for you. He brought it home from a trip to Romania several years ago – the last trip before he died. He was never the same after that, fading away within weeks of his return. Doctors had no idea what was wrong with him – some kind of terminal anaemia, they said.” She sighed. “Anyway, he told me that I was never to part with it and that you should have it when you came of age. Well, I suppose it’s the modern thing now for that to happen on your eighteenth birthday. Personally, I think you are still a child, but I need to do this before … well, I need to give this to you now. It’s your birthday present from your Grandpa.”
Vasile watched her memory of slipping the pendant into her hand and he flinched at her innocence and delight, unappreciative as she was of the importance of the trinket in her hand. “It’s beautiful!” she had declared. “Look, Grandma, it’s a dragon and a goblet – and there’s some strange writing on the back of it. Do you know what it says?”
Her grandmother had shaken her head. “No, of course not, and I don’t believe that your grandfather did either. I have never opened the pouch since he gave it to me. It’s yours now; do what you will with it.” She had leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes then, effectively dismissing Lucy, who planted a soft kiss on the old woman’s forehead before leaving her in peace. She had died that night, quietly and with no fuss, in her sleep – departing this world as she had lived in it, with little or no interest.
Vasile continued to probe Lucy’s mind.
He watched as she had left her grandmother sleeping and rushed to her own bedroom, eager to fasten the pendant around her neck and admire it in her mirror. Vasile scowled – this was an insult to him as he witnessed her girlish joy in something of such import. He determined to dispose of her without too much delay; already he was losing his taste for her.
In her mental imagery, Vasile watched Lucy stop and frown as she withdrew something else from the pouch – a folded piece of paper. She opened it up and gave a small gasp as she realised it was a letter from her grandfather.
My Dearest Lucy,
If you have been given this necklace by your grandmother, I am afraid, dear one, that I have passed from this life. I am stricken with some damn illness that no-one can define and am wasting away daily; some of the doctors think it may be related to two injuries on my neck that appear infected. Don’t grieve for me, child, I have enjoyed every second of my life and have been fortunate to travel widely collecting what your grandmother calls my ‘damned trinkets’. It is one of these that I am giving to you for your coming-of-age birthday. It doesn’t have any priceless jewels in it, but it comes with something of a request. There is something very special about this trinket – something that requires you to take great care of it and allow it to pass into no other’s hands. There are those who seek it, and for this reason it has been cut in half, way back in its history – perhaps even at its creation. I am told it contains a secret, though I know nothing of this, and that it must be kept in sacred trust. I have always loved this piece and leave it to you with my love.
Your ever-loving Grandpa.
Vasile’s face took on a sneer. Foolish old man to believe that this would never come his way; it was his destiny to unite the two halves of the seal and retrieve Vlad’s chalice, thereby restoring the House of Tepes to its former authority among his kind.
He took the pendant in his hand and tugged it roughly from around Lucy’s throat. Two things happened at that moment – first, the image of its creato
r flashed across his mind - Mihai Rabinescu! And second, and more unexpectedly, he felt a sudden urge to kiss her.
She stirred and, before he understood why, she was in his arms and he was kissing her with a consuming passion that he neither welcomed nor understood. She was awake then, and returning his kisses. He pulled away from her and buried his face in her throat, his elongated canines piercing the flesh and finding a vein. He drank from her, savouring the hot saltiness of her blood, allowing it to fill his mouth as he pulled the life-force from her distended vein. She moaned softly, and appeared to swoon – a victim of the mind-probing, the absinth, and the sudden blood loss.
Suddenly he allowed her to fall back onto the couch and stood abruptly, wiping the traces of blood from around his mouth with the back of his hand with all the savagery of his inherent nature.
He strode to the fireplace, grabbing the crystal decanter of absinth and a crystal glass as he glanced back at her, passed out on the couch. She was murmuring softly as her hand sought the puncture wounds at her throat. Impatiently, he yanked on the bell-pull at the side of the massive, marble mantelpiece to summon Nicolae.
His servant materialised, rather than entered the room.
“Take her to the guest room, Nicolae. I will decide what to do with her later.”
Nicolae murmured his comprehension and picked her up as though she were a small child – despite his advancing years he was possessed of incredible strength. He left the room as unobtrusively as he had entered it, leaving Vasile alone in his black mood and intended intoxication.
He carried Lucy into a bed-chamber adorned with ancient tapestries and beautiful hangings, and laid her gently onto a heavily-carved, oak four-poster bed. He pulled a brocade coverlet over her, murmuring, “May God help you, child.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE BAD HUNGER
Beckett had taken Raven into a small bedroom adjacent to the room where Darius lay tossing fitfully as the agony lessened and the hunger grew. Lane sat on the bed beside him, bathing his face and crooning reassuringly to him that it would all soon be over. She was glad his eyes were closed so that he couldn’t see the blood-tears from her black eyes.
Since taking in the blood of the First Once via Mihai, she was changed. Her eyes, once a rich, dark brown were now coal-black, surround by fine red veins. Mihai had told her the red-veining would fade but she would always cry tears of blood. All her senses were enhanced and, following the sudden surge of ancient knowledge, her thoughts and inflow of information had settled and filtered. It was Mihai’s blood that was taking precedence and she was glad of it.
Adopted into the powerful House of Medici in medieval Florence, the niece of Cossimo Medici and child-bride to his son Pietro, she had been made vampire six centuries previously and had seen the world develop, as science replaced alchemy. It was science that she was now pinning her hopes on to find a cure for vampirism, if there was such a thing.
Angry at herself for staying asleep in Greece for so long, and for leaving Beckett and Darius alone, she wanted to take full responsibility for what had happened. If she had been there … if Beckett hadn’t kept his promise to her and left Darius while he waited and watched her wake … if … if … if! Her instincts were to feed Darius herself, but she knew that she was still in a weakened state and in any case, his first feeding, most certainly, should not be of a strain of the Blood of the First One. Even she knew that.
She had half expected Becket to do it, but on reflection she realised that once Darius was stable he would need a permanent donor and what lay ahead of them would require all of Beckett’s strength.
Her thoughts were interrupted as Darius sat bolt-upright in bed, wide-eyed with realisation of what had happened to him, and the memory of the slaughter and fire at the Sanctuary brought a cry of anguish from him. He looked at her with such sorrow, she felt her vampire-heart would break and nothing would be the same ever again.
“I am so sorry, Lane. I failed you. I failed Beckett. Where is he? I can’t bear the shame of it. He trusted me, and I let him down.”
Before Lane could answer him, Beckett’s voice made him spin around.
“You failed no-one, Son. No-one! Vasile Tepes and his foul crew will pay for this, and they will pay with their lives. The Born have declared war – a war that can only end in blood-shed and slaughter of the innocents. I am sorry – sorry that this has happened to you, that you have become this thing that will make you a target along with the rest of us, infant and ancient alike.”
Darius slowly nodded his understanding. “It’s okay, I thought I was going to die, instead I am become like you, and I will do my best to make you proud.”
Beckett’s voice broke as he said “You do that every day, Darius. I have always been proud of you.”
A sudden spasm overtook Darius and he bent double, gasping at the pain. Another pain, this time in his mouth, twisted his face into a paroxysm of agony as his preternatural new canine teeth erupted, needle-sharp and elongated.
His face was a mask of fear that wrenched their guts and twisted their hearts; they were used to dealing with this on a daily basis, but this was different – this was Darius.
Lane held him to her and Beckett knelt at the side of the bed, fixing the boy’s eyes with his own, holding him trance-like to calm him.
“Listen to me, Son. You need to feed. You need to feed or you will die. You know what has to happen, you have seen it often enough at the Sanctuary, and I have seen you soothe and calm others to whom this was happening. You have a donor. She is here and has already given as much of her blood as I dare take. It will be enough, but you will be hungry still. You must fight that hunger, the hunger that will come even after feeding, because that is the road that will turn you into a cold-blooded killer if you don’t resist. You know all this, I have heard you explain it to many, but once the hunger takes hold you may lose sight of that. But we are here. No-one is going to leave you alone until it passes. Do you hear me?”
Darius had gone deathly pale, his pulse-rate had fallen to a faint and intermittent beat. They had to act swiftly or they would lose him. He opened his eyes as Beckett held the cup to his lips and allowed the first drops of Raven’s blood to trickle into his mouth. He swallowed. Beckett allowed a slow stream of the red, life-giving fluid to fill his mouth. Darius gulped it down like a starving child.
His eyes were wide open, red-rimmed and red-veined as the blood surged in his veins. He gulped until the cup was empty, and then he opened his mouth, his teeth coated red, the canines glistening with the remains of the blood. “More,” he said, “I need more.”
Beckett pressed him gently back against the bed, shaking his head. “No, Darius. This is the bad hunger. You know this if you search your heart. You have fed, and you will need to feed again soon, but this is the hunger that you need to fight. Do you understand?”
Darius nodded slowly, his face almost translucent against the white pillow. “Help me,” he whispered.
Lane had disappeared moments earlier and she returned now with Roman Woolfe at her side. She held a syringe that was loaded with a sedative.
“This will help him fight it,” she said.
Beckett allowed her to take over and administer the drug that would hopefully keep him sedated while the bad hunger wore off. He prayed it would.
Darius’s eyes were half-closed and heavy-lidded in seconds; Lane had given him the limit. As he drifted into a quiet clam, he smiled as his consciousness merged with the blood. “Raven,” he said, as he surrendered to the powerful opiate.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: A WORTHY COMPANION
Vasile Tepes was agitated. He was pacing his private sanctuary, pausing often to stare out of the massive picture window at the ruins of his ancestral home squatting on the crags on the opposite side of the valley at Poenari.
He made a sudden decision, threw the glass and remains of the absinth onto the floor and left the room with a grim expression and determined stride. Half-way across the vast landing he met Nicolae coming to
wards him.
“Sir, I have taken a telephone call from Alexis Vasilakis, he declined to be put through to you but simply bade me deliver a message: that the House of Vasilakis had considered your proposal and feel that they cannot support it at this time.”
The principle of shooting the messenger was high on Nicolae’s mind and he took a step backwards to await Vasile’s wrath. The anticipated explosion didn’t come; his master simply clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, nodded in silence and strode away towards the staircase leading to the underground crypt where Vlad lay awaiting his restoration.
The air down there was frigid and Vasile suppressed a shiver. Things were not going his way, which invariably meant that someone was about to have a bad day. He could almost feel Vlad’s impatience and, for the first time in over a century, the ancient ruler was inside his head. Do not fail me. Find my chalice and free me. The implication that Vasile would not benefit if there should be much more of a delay was unspoken and unheard but, nevertheless, understood.
He cursed Alexis Vasilakis, knowing instinctively that, had the proposal come from Vlad, co-operation would have been instant. The resentment coiled inside him and his rage overtook him.
He took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door to Lucy’s room with a crash. His desire for violence made it likely that she would be providing the outlet for it. She stirred as he entered the room and turned to him, opening her arms to him with a vulpine smile that shook him to the core. He stopped abruptly and stared at her. Momentarily, the thought passed through him that she would make an exceptional vampire. She was beautiful, possessed of arrogance that would match his own, with a hint of potential cruelty that he could only admire, and she had an underlying strength which challenged him. Yes, she would make a powerful vampire indeed, worthy of being his companion.
