by Titus, Rose
Laura’s eyes widened. She gripped the edge of her seat.
“None of the other prisoners had the will or the courage to challenge the guards, many were either in chains or weak from abuse, or they were just plain terrified. But Pavel was a different sort of person. Well, you know that already. He flew into a rage and threw the guard against the wall. Even wearing his helmet, the guard was knocked completely unconscious. Then in came the other tough guys to aid the fallen guard. But Pavel took them all on, overwhelmed them through agility and cunning. He got hold of the last one to charge him and opened a vein in his throat and drank his fill. It made him stronger still, and then he proceeded to weaken the other guards as well so they would no longer cause him trouble. Pavel then stole their set of keys, tossed it to the prisoners behind him as he took hold of the frightened maiden and hurried into the dark night to make his escape. On his way out he beheaded another guard with the sword he took from one of the unfortunate men he had fed from. He stole a horse and took the girl and rode away into the dark night with her.”
“Are there any pirates in this story?” she asked, again wondering if he was making it all up.
“I do not think so. All these events happened well before piracy became a popular way to earn a living.”
“You’re not making this up, are you, Rick?”
“Not me. But this has been re-told so many times, perhaps it has been exaggerated once or twice.”
“What happened to the girl?” she prodded. “Was she pretty?”
“Very. And she knew it, too. Her name, according to legend, was Princess Olga, not a pretty name, but she was young, and very beautiful.”
“What happened?” she smiled. “What went on when he rode away with her?” And she began to imagine all sorts of things that could have happened in the dark forest.
He smiled back. “The girl was more trouble than even Pavel could handle, a wildcat. And he would do nothing with her because he was in love with Yelena, who was even more beautiful, and pure, and good, remember?”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
“She demanded very loudly to be let off the horse, and became extremely angry. And so he stopped the horse, let her down, and started to ride away. She shouted for him to wait. ‘But you wanted to get off,’ he said, ‘You would leave me here in this wretched forest filled with bandits and wolves?’ Just then a wolf cried off in a distance, and she began to cry. And so he rode back to her, picked her up, put her back on the horse, and kept riding.”
“She sounds like a spoiled little thing,” and then she wondered if she could have a cup of tea. He rose to get it for her, and she was surprised that he even kept it.
But as he went into the kitchen he kept talking. “And so they kept riding deeper into the darkness of the forest.”
He tried to calm her but she continued to helplessly weep. It was nearly dawn. The soldiers had stupidly come for him at dusk and Pavel knew he was fortunate that they did not come earlier. He knew a safe place to rest, and remain well hidden for the day. “No one comes here now, not for many years has there been anyone here.” He helped Olga dismount and he led the mare down the stone steps.
“What is this hideous place?” she hissed.
“An old sanctuary of gods long forgotten, well hidden. The entrance way was built into a deep cave. What is this?” He stopped suddenly before going in. “I smell smoke. Someone must be inside. Here, woman, hold onto the horse.” He handed her the horse’s tether.
“How dare you order me? I am a princess!”
He gazed at her steadily and silently and thought a moment. “Yes? How good of you to inform me. Thank you. Hold on to the horse. Or if you do not, perhaps this good mare will remain here without your help after all. She is well mannered,” and he went further down into the darkness. He could see the faint light of the fire’s blaze.
“Pavel?” a timid voice called out. “It is you? Please, please say that it is you.” For she could not see him approach in the darkness.
“Yelena!” he put away his sword. “What are you doing here?” She ran to him and he held her tightly. “I was worried for you,” and he could see her father Yuri, and her mother, her younger brother and sister by the fire that lit the chamber where sacrifices to forgotten gods were once held. “What is this?”
“After they took you away, they burnt our home, killed our animals. We barely escaped with our lives. But they set your free?”
“No. I escaped, and much trouble follows me.”
“The king’s men?”
“No. A thousand times more terrible. Your Highness,” he called out. “It is safe to enter! I believe I must get her myself before the lady falls in the dark and injures her royal foot.” Along with the horse, he led her quietly in. “My good friends, may I present the Princess Olga, daughter of our lord’s enemy Prince Yaroslav.”
The people rose to greet her with respect. Yuri bowed and encouraged the rest of his family to do the same.
“Finally, some people who know their place,” she barked.
“Madam,” Pavel interrupted, “If it were not for me, your place would be an unholy one indeed.”
She looked away and did not reply.
“But never mind, we all had a rough night,” he removed his cloak and put it over her shoulders. “Find a comfortable place to rest, if you can.”
“I will not sleep in the same place as a horse. It is improper!”
“Yes. But just for one night I believe this good natured horse will forgive the inconvenience.” And he proceeded to remove the saddle and bridle. “I will get my own horse tomorrow night, if he hasn’t been stolen. This animal is exhausted, and not well cared for.” The princess whispered something obscene and he ignored her. “Yuri, I am truly sorry. It is because of me.”
“No! Please. We will not blame you.”
“And what is this?” Olga demanded suddenly.
“What now, woman?” Pavel now wished he had left her to the guards.
“I am sorry,” Yelena was bringing the younger children into the next chamber to sleep and leave the princess undisturbed. She returned when the lamb Olga was pointing to bleated loudly once again. “It got away from me, I’m sorry.” She came and led the sheep away by a rope. “It won’t happen again.”
“You will see that it does not.”
Pavel turned to her in disgust. “Olga, please! It is all these people have left.”
“You will not address me in that manner.”
“We will not be keeping it long, Highness,” Yuri took the rope his daughter held. “It is merely a stray. We found it wandering the forest and took it along. Pavel, we were hoping that somehow you would return to us,” and he held onto the rope more tightly.
“You’ve done enough for me already, my friend. Keep it for yourself, for your family.”
“No Pavel! Since the days of my father’s father, when the princes took away our land, and our animals, and even our women, they have outlawed what my family has done since the beginning of time. I will do now what my grandfather did long ago.”
“Never mind it, Yuri,” Pavel whispered. He spread a blanket on the ground for Yelena; he would rest on the stone floor. “My people are no longer powerful. What was a century ago is no more.”
But Yuri proceeded to lift the lamb onto the altar and he tied it down as it struggled and bleated helplessly. “I have never before done this, perhaps soon the king’s dogs will come here to kill us all. I must do this once, before I die. I remember coming to this place as a small boy, when my grandfather was teaching my father the old ways. The temple was well kept then, with vessels of the finest silver, the daggers, it was well lit and clean, before the king’s men came and looted it.” While he spoke he searched the leather sack of the few belongings he was able to take. “Yes, here it is,” the dagger, in pure silver, the only valuable thing he owned.
“Yuri, you could have sold it, you need the money.”
But Yuri ignored him and searched ag
ain through his bag.
Olga stalked silently into the next chamber where the children and their mother slept, and Pavel was relieved.
Yuri continued, almost sounding as though he spoke to himself. “I remember you there. You came but not as often as the others. They all said you were out hunting. I am old now, but I remember seeing you, you look the same now as then, of course you do. You were my favorite. Yes, do not laugh.” Pavel went dumbly silent. “We all had ones we thought of that way. There was a beautiful woman, with raven dark hair and amber eyes, and the young men liked her, if only to just look upon her terrible beauty in the cold moonlight. She left this forest to go with a young hunter and warrior, some say he was also a bandit, that is what they say. But you... when you did come, if you came at all.” He produced from his leather sack a silver drinking vessel, old, tarnished and scratched. He looked at it by the golden light of the fire. The lamb bleated. “You always stayed awhile, and spoke to us, as if you actually liked us. I know now that you do, but then I did not expect that you would.”
He lifted the blade above the animal’s throat. After several moments the lamb ceased to struggle. The hot blood flowed off the altar and into the silver chalice Yuri held.
Pavel silently accepted it. Its warmth and strength filled him.
“As we have done for centuries, we honor the dark goddess of the night, through you, her undying children, awakened by the moon’s silver light and fed by her dark red river of life everlasting. And I have forgotten the rest, and I remember now that I am supposed to say this before you actually take the…”
“I do not even care.” He did not thirst after his dealing with the guards in the dungeon, but had taken it to please Yuri. “It is just good to be finally remembered, to have fresh blood that I do not need to fight for, and to be among friends.” He finished the rest of it. “Have your wife cook the meat tomorrow. Do not burn it. That is a waste. Feed your little ones. The sun is up, I must rest now. As for her highness, I’ll decide what to do about her tomorrow night.”
“Oh my God! Rick. You mean there was some kind of religious cult around people like you?”
“That was long ago, a very long time ago, all gone, and forgotten.”
“Then tell me more about it, please!”
“Well, no one can remember much, that far back.”
The phone rang. “Oh hell. Excuse me a minute,” and he went to answer it.
It was his older sister Alexandra. “Rick.” She sounded deeply concerned. “You must come over to speak with Martin, please, now.”
“But...” But Martin was a cop, and to make matters worse, he was a homicide detective. “Oh hell, what now? Okay, I’ll be there.” He hung up. “Sorry, Laura. We’ll have to finish this a little later. It’s a family situation, I think.” He purposely left out the part about the homicide detective. But he wanted to be sure she would be back. She would need to come back now, to hear the rest, then she had a reason, he hoped, not to go through with it.
“I didn’t know that people like you had families.” It was more of a question than a statement.
“We do! That’s how we get this way.”
Martin gazed silently into the large glass tank that held Alexandra’s collection of brightly colored tropical fish. Each swam around the tank slowly, appearing happy to be in its own placid dark world. He sat down at the kitchen table, looked into the dark black steaming pool of coffee in his cup, inhaled the strong vapors.
“Look, I’m sorry about—”
“Me too.”
He changed the subject. “Okay. He’s coming, right?”
“Yes.” She sounded quietly definite.
“And he knows about these kinds of people?”
“I suppose.”
But Rick walked right in without knocking. “Hi kids.”
His sudden appearance disturbed Martin. He had never met Rick before. He looked him over: Rick wore a leather jacket—black, and faded black Levis. He would have looked as if he belonged on a motorcycle if he wasn’t so clean cut. Alexandra had said he was her younger brother, from Irina’s second marriage to an American businessman who died of old age decades ago. He was an artist, she said, and even though she implied he was quite a bit younger, they both looked to be about the same age – early thirties.
“Hi,” Martin mumbled simply.
“Rick,” Alexandra began, “This is Martin. Martin—”
“Yeah, hi,” he mumbled once again, without looking up at Rick.
“So, like,” Rick stood over him. “Is this about all the parking tickets? Or the time I ran the stop sign?”
“Hell,” Martin realized a sense of humor ran in this family. “I only wish it was so easy.”
“Rick,” Alexandra broke in. “Don’t joke around. Okay?” She got up to go to her refrigerator. “Want some?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Martin did not like what he was about to see. Alexandra just ignored him and simply poured it into two large mugs, put them into the microwave. “Martin, learn to live with it, will you?”
Martin took a sip of his black coffee and shut up.
“Hey,” Rick grabbed a chair and sat. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on, please?”
“A lot of bad and scary shit, and Alexandra tells me it ain’t you guys. So, like, who, or what, the hell is it?”
Rick looked directly at him. “Tell me about the scary shit, then, Martin.”
“Okay, recently there has been some really gross slayings of homeless. I did some checking, okay? Couple years ago, some very similar stuff went on, all right? We got a serial killer, and from what little I see, he looks real ugly.”
“So?”
“So, one of the victims was in an alley, with a big letter V painted over him in his own blood. Okay, so then I got worried. But everyone I talk to says ‘we didn’t do it.’ Then another poor fool was dead on the door step of the library, very gross scene. It got cleaned up before any tourists got out of bed. Something is going on, and has been going on, and I need help from you people. I can’t deal with this.”
“That is bad.”
Alexandra put the blood filled mug down on the table in front of Rick; Martin looked away from it. She then sat down and took a sip from hers.
“Okay, let’s say it’s none of you. What about people who are believers? You know, cultists? You know.”
“Yeah,” Rick began. “I know. I was hoping they were all gone, but maybe they’re not. Okay, it goes way back to the dawn of time. Archeologists and historians have tried to cover it up, we think, or else when they find what they find they misinterpret it. Maybe they don’t want to wonder if we’re more than a figment of the superstitious imagination. I did some research on my own, read some dusty old books written a century ago and forgotten, and we have our own memories of what once was. Nobody killed anything more important than a goat in those days. And it was just a few times a year.” He kept speaking, but got the feeling that Martin was only half listening. “Anyway, it all ended around the tenth or eleventh century, or so. People started hunting us down like animals, instead of giving us the free lunch. We think it has to do with people blaming us for the plague, or Christianity coming into that part of Europe, or both maybe.”
“Yeah, yeah. Skip this and get to the twentieth century, will you?” Martin grew irritated.
“Okay, well, we didn’t hear anything about stuff like that going on for hundreds of years. We believe it’s a dead tradition. But anyway, a lot of really strange crap went on in the sixties, especially in California, you know what I mean?”
“Shit yes, you don’t need to tell me,” Martin’s older brother jumped off the roof of a building after dropping some acid. He was nineteen. Martin was riding to his friend’s house to show off the shiny new bicycle he had just gotten for his birthday and saw the police standing over the body that was on the sidewalk. “Go on.”
“Well, okay. I guess it was in sixty eight, I read this article in this underground newspaper abou
t a band of hippies who lived in a bus out in the desert. And get this. They all believed their leader was a vampire. I knew right away it wasn’t true, because none of us would stay out in the desert and risk exposure to such strong sunlight. But I needed to see this for myself because they interviewed one of his chicks, she called herself Starbird for godsakes, and she went on about how they worshipped this idiot as a vampire. I said to myself, oh hell, because I knew right away they would have this scene all messed up man, like, maybe they read about it in a book on mythology and made the rest up. I went out one night and this spaced out chick came up to me and said her name was Magic and then she told me she loved me. Magic wore extremely short cut off shorts and a pink lace bra. That’s all. But I was not impressed, because when I looked at her I could see that no one was really home. I hung around with her getting what garbled information she could mumble, then she brought me to see the ceremony. They set up a stage area, a platform for this crankcase. He sat on a throne in a black robe with a hood, his face was painted chalky white with black charcoal around his eyes, like a death’s head. Looked like the grim reaper. He wore plastic fangs, too. Big ones. I suppose they would only look real after dropping some acid or smoking some grass. So after some girls in little white dresses finished chanting this nonsense phrase over and over again his high priest or whatever brought out this basset hound and tied it down on the table and killed it. I was real upset; I like dogs. Anyway I guess I should have been glad it wasn’t me. They were high on all sorts a dope. I saw people passing out lots of drugs, all sorts of pills and people were popping them without knowing what the hell they were. This idiot drank the blood out of a punch bowl, spilling it all over the place like a jerk. Then he let out this wild scream, got up off his fancy chair, and threw off his robes. He had nothing—nothing—on at all. Nothing under his ugly costume. Then these girls surrounded the stage and tore off their little white dresses. The fool leaped into the mostly female audience with a big howl. I went to my car, gotta go, bye-bye everybody.”
