"Does he know what you are?" he asked.
"I am not sure how much he remembers," I answered. "I have stayed away since that night.”
"Perhaps, you are afraid to see him," he noted. "I think you are afraid he will not fear you; that he will love you, that he may even want to be turned." Wesley grabbed at my turned-up face, but I moved away.
"Living as long as we have has its disadvantages, Wesley," I explained. "You get tired -tired of being alone, tired of watching time race by in this toxic rainbow of color that if you touch it, just briefly, it may just burn you.”
“It is so vivid, that... But, you also get tired of losing the ones you love, seeing them waste away and slip into shadow – to where you will never be able to reach them. Everything around you – buildings, people – they erode, turn to dust, while you, you remain a constant force, indestructible, like the Heavens. And, you say that I may be afraid to love someone? Cannot you see why? This is no existence to bring anyone else into."
“What Hell are you existing in, dear sister?” he implored. “What have you seen, done, since we parted for you to feel this way? You still cannot see the beauty in eternity, Bree," he replied.
"What beauty lies there in death, Wesley?" I asked as I left him, moved the curtain, and re-entered the ballroom.
The wedding party was still seated and feasting, and their guests were still partaking in the festivities as I casually tried to escape along one of the sidewalls. There was little room to maneuver given my cumbersome bustle and the elaborate table arrangements to accommodate the plentitude of wedding guests in attendance. Wesley followed closely behind, and, catching up with my quickened steps as I neared the main doorway, he clutched my hand.
"Even death is beautiful, Bree," he replied. "When you embrace your nature, you can see the magnificence in both life and death. You should give yourself a chance to feel something other than the bitter cold of loneliness."
"I have become accustomed to this feeling, to being alone. There is no need to embrace anything or anyone. I am surviving just as I am," I told him as I pulled away, slipping through the crowded doorway.
He continued to follow me through the Great Hall and down the steps, and still out into the courtyard where only the horse-drawn carriages and the stars were witness to our conversation.
"Eternity, Bree, you shouldnot spend it denying yourself the comforts of love, or the solace of knowing who you really are. You are bound to go mad."
He came toward me as only a brother would, gently and securely, and embraced me. He sensed my pain, my turmoil. He had been there for me since I twisted my ankle running through our neighbor's field - I had been but a wee child then- to when they took our father’s plague stricken body from the house. His advice never came without love and sincerity.
"Give him a chance to share this with you," he urged.
"Wesley, I shared eternity once before, and I lost the man I loved in the process," I explained, "I could never do that again."
Wesley paused and held me closer. "And what will become of him then, of this prince of yours?" he asked.
"I will leave him, leave Russia. It is best that he forgets me."
"Do I not get a choice, then?" A familiar voice snuck through the darkness behind me. I turned to face Viktor, eye-to-eye. "I see you have taken another lover; my wooing was for naught."
"This man is not my lover."
"My Lady, I am not blind." He locked his eyes upon my own, yet I sensed he was fully aware of Wesley's movements. His pursed lips and tense arms, affixed to his side as a toy soldier paused in mid march, conveyed the man’s inner turmoil.
"Perhaps my illness, or your sorcery, has weakened my eyesight, but from my dining table I saw you emerge from the balcony and he pursue you. It took me some time, yet I did manage to worm my way through the crowd only to find the two of you in an embrace!"
"Viktor," I tried to explain.
"And after the night we had, my mistress, even if you are a heathen." He shook his head and began walking away. I started to yell after him – to ask him to stop – but I could not. I needed to ask him what he remembered about that evening, but when my lips parted, I found my voice mute. Then Wesley glanced at his feet, whispering, "He remembers…everything."
Everything, I thought. That night once again washed over me as I watched Viktor walk away: the bed curtains concealing his face, his ashen lips and clammy skin. These images now haunt the hidden recesses of my psyche. He remembered my coming to him that night, embracing him, forcing his blood into me. He remembered how it felt when his life was draining from him; how it felt when his heart struggled to pump, and his mind spoke with angels.
And he was walking away, this man who knew too much.
I was allowing him to go, as this was for the best.
Then, from out of the corner of my eye, I saw my brother, who always knew when to intervene on my behalf, jog up to Viktor.
"I'm not her lover, Your Highness," he said to the prince.
Viktor stopped, glancing back my way.
"He is not, Viktor," I called out to him. "He is my brother."
"Your brother?" he asked. His eyes wandered between Wesley and me. I gently advanced toward them terrified Viktor would turn the other way in disbelief. Yet, the moment I was sure I had lost him, his solemn lips morphed into a quaint smile.
"My apologies, I have been foolish," Viktor bashfully sighed into the night as he bowed. Wesley gentlemanly returned the gesture.
"No apologies necessary," my brother politely explained. "Now I will take my leave and enjoy what is left of this gorgeous evening."
With this, Wesley set off for town. His footsteps were rough as they ground into the walk's loose pebbles; but when he had submerged into the shadow, only I could detect the faint sound of his ascent.
"What are you?" Viktor bluntly asked.
"You should not ask questions you do not want the answers to, Viktor."
"The other night, in my room, something happened. I felt pain, and death, and... my heart," he struggled to explain as he clutched at his chest, reassuring himself that his heart beat stayed strong and steady.
"You almost died," I told him. His cheeks took on a sudden ghastly shadow as the blood drained from them.
"What?"
"I almost killed you."
“How?”
"The vampire's kiss."
His body stiffened; his heart raced.
"You have heard the tales, the myths. The vampire will come in the night. It will drink your blood; steal your soul."
"But the vampire is a demon, Bree, and legend" he said, still guarded - still uneasy. "And you look nothing like either."
"No, you are right, I'm not a demon, nor am I a legend" I told him. "I am a nightmare. I haunt and stalk, and destroy. And nothing I touch is ever the same again." "I do not believe any of this," he said. "You are telling a farce, I am sure of it!"
"If it helps you to believe that, then believe what you must. But, for your safety and for my sanity, please just stay away. I cannot go down this path again."
With that, I left him in the courtyard. I walked to my carriage, entered, and rode off without looking back. The hollow pit inside where my heart should have been still felt an ache, a dull sickness where his blood had been. I could still hear his heart beating, feel his eyes watching the carriage, but I pressed on. The song his heart sang to me – its intoxicating melody – would have to still itself, or I would leave Russia.
The next evening, I shut myself in out of desperation. I struggled to remove the rhythmic sound of his heartbeat from my mind. I immersed myself in Anselm of Canterbury's philosophies, but even that was not enough to distract my thoughts for long.
Staring into the fire, watching the flames lick at the bricks, and listening to the wood crackle, was driving me mad.
I found no solace in the garden either; only the moonlight casting its dusty glow over the sleeping plants as they kept me company, my haunting obsession taunting
my clouded mind. I never get to experience its vibrant beauty, the arrays of color, touched by sunlight; and I have forgotten what flowers look like in the daytime – stretched out, ready to bathe in the sun’s glow, ready to grow, to live. Now I only watch them sleep; forever cursed to watch them sleep, forever cursed to view life beneath the pale fog of moonlight as my guide, and casually forget the sun-kissed glories that I am missing. I fear the day I can no longer remember the warm glow of sunlight.
However, the moonlight is passionate, and the night air calm and the waters still flowed into the marble fountain at the center of the garden; and, being drawn to it,
I went over and sat at its base. My fingers playfully tickled at the surface as droplets from the tier above fell onto my hand. The water was cool and dark with a silver tinge from the moonlight. That is when I heard footsteps sneaking onto the garden gravel.
"The stars are hidden tonight," he remarked.
"But the moon is full," I replied.
"It is always there shining on us, is it not?" I stood, finding him at the edge of the garden in a cobalt suit, his hair impeccable, as always. I motioned toward a wrought-iron bench near the fountain. A patch of ivy had coiled itself around the structure's arms and legs, binding it to the plant, concealing the bench.
"I have much to share, Bree," Wesley said, taking my hand. "So much I must tell you, but, to be honest, that I fear sharing."
"Wesley, what is it? Why have you sought me out after all this time apart?"
"After you left, I made another. I needed a companion," he began. "Her name had been Bethany. She was a servant in Paris. Remember Paris?"
"Yes," I replied. We spent an entire winter in Paris during our youth because our mother wanted us to experience France while we learned French.
"The man who owned her, he was cruel, Bree. He did not just beat her; he raped her. He raped all of female servants, and cruelly beat both the men and women. He was so vile, such a putrid excuse of humanity. I would watch her at night- watch her serve him, bathe him, but it did not stop there. She was his best servant, never made a mistake, yet he just beat her senseless.”
“One evening,” he continued, “I found myself at his estate and he bragged to everyone at the event about how he treated her, how he tied her up... And, I watched her filling his goblet - the sadness in her eyes, that level of dejection, it was more than I can handle, Bree. I could not allow it to continue."
"Why did you not just kill him?" I asked.
"I did," he replied. "Later that night, once the party had dispersed, I returned and killed him."
"Why did you not leave it at that?"
"She saw me. That always complicates matters,” he half-chuckled. “I made her that night, but she could not handle the reality of what she had become. She went mad and lasted almost a year before going into the sun. I found her ashes next to an opened window in our house, no note. At least you left a note before you left." He smiled. "But, you know, it was for the best. Some just cannot handle it. Some were not meant to be turned."
"I completely understand you," I replied.
"That is when I began searching for you," he said. "But..."
"Wesley?"
"I did not know where you had gone, Bree," he began.
He pulled his hand away and stood from the bench. His feet scratched at the pebbles as he walked to the fountain, his fingers skimming the water. He stared into the water as if he were searching it for something, then he turned to me.
"You were harder to search for than a grain of rice in a pail of sand!"
"Wesley, where did you go?" I asked.
"I... I went to the convent."
“You should have never gone there!” I declared. “What did you do to them?”
"Nothing, I promise." He insisted. "When I arrived there was such a cloud of death over the place, so heavy that it called to me. I searched the minds, but I did not find you, not even a thought. Then I got to one, one whose heart was failing. She was calling out to you from her death bed, calling out for help passing over."
"Calling to me?"
"She kept screaming 'I want Bree. Get me Bree. She has flown into the world... get me my angel, Bree,'" he replied. “I was shocked to hear your name, so clear after all those years. Of course, no one knew who Bree was. They thought she was seeing angels, beginning to cross over. Someone was constantly with her, right up until she died. So, I could not safely visit her, question her."
"Who was she?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"They called her Sr. Veronica..." but I interrupted him.
"Her name was Elizabeth," I stated. "How did her life end?"
"It was serene, quiet.. in the end."
"In the end?"
He shut his eyes.
"You do not need to know this. It is not going to bring her back."
"Either tell me or go away right now, because you have already told me too much for it to hurt," I said, tears misting my eyes.
"Her death was preceded by violent attacks," he reluctantly began. "It began with seizures. Then her eyes failed. She stabilized, and stayed this way for months, but then she suffered from convulsions. A priest sent for, to bless her room, but this did not help. As her convulsions increased, her health grew weaker." He paused and his voice grew softer.
"But the night I came, the night she passed, that night was peaceful. There were no convulsion, no seizures. Her ears heard perfectly, but she was calling for you. She was reaching into the dark void trying to find you."
"She died," I said aloud, making it real.
"Yes, she died calling for you, my sweet sister."
"What did she say?" I asked. "I... I need to know. Tell me what she said."
"She told the women gathered at her bedside that they needed seek you out, but they did not know who you were. One of them suggested you were an angel, another said you were a deceased friend or relative. That is when," he paused. "That is when she said you were not there."
"What do you mean I was not there?" I asked.
"Bree, you do not need to know this. There is only pain in these words!" he urged, but I could not listen to his warning.
"She said her angels were there for her, all over the room, faces she knew, faces she loved, but that you were not there. And she knew you should have been there..." He would have continued but I cut him off.
"Just stop. Please."
I left the bench and walked through the garden, opened the doors to the main room and entered. My plush, cranberry armchair sat in front of the fire with the volume of Anselm of Canterbury's philosophies lingering on the seat. I snatched up the dusty tome and tossed it onto the floor where it made a moist thud on the oak boards.
"You do not remember her, do you?" I said to him through my tears.
He had followed me and stood behind at the door. The fire was raging, its crimson claws grasping at the orange sparks escaping the consuming warmth of the fireplace.
"Should I?"
"We all grew up together," I said. "As children, we would spend our summers together. You knew her brother Phillip."
"Phillip. The child who ate bugs?" he asked.
"That would be him."
"Whatever happened to him?"
"The plague. They sent Elizabeth to the convent as father had sent me. She ended up dying in the end anyway, just like everything else in this world. It all eventually dies, does it not?"
He sighed. "Yes.”
"Except us," I replied. "We are doomed to stand back and watch them all fade into nothingness until we forget they even existed."
"Humans die, Bree. We survive; it is what we do. Call it a curse, call it a gift, call it whatever you wish, but you have to move on," he told me. "You must move on; so do they."
I could not move on, though. I let the fire slowly die out until it was nothing more than smoldering embers, and when the first rays of dawn threatened to approach, then finally did I take to my room. Wesley was still in the house somewhere, long since retir
ed. I took comfort knowing he was there as I slipped away from reality.
The nights stretched on into a seeming blur of eternal nothingness, a black void eating into my mind, and all I could focus on was her face and all the faces of those I had lost through the years; the faces time had robbed from me. Their heartbeats were drums echoing in my ears, tiny saccadic glimpses of ghosts from a past, from several pasts, that I could no longer visit.
They were all lost to me, and I wept for them, for her. I had become a creature of habit, a creature of force. I had shed so much of my humanity that I had forgotten the most fragile thing about mortals: They are mortal and they die. Just as the seasons change, as the wind grows colder in autumn and the leaves turn brown and fall from the trees, they die. Still, her death shook me. Her death changed me.
If it had not been for Wesley, I would have walked into the sun, ending it all. What had I become but a monster? Did she even know as she laid there dying, did she know what she called out to? She thought me an angel, but I was far from it. And I did not even know what I was or where I belonged. I was an abomination that should not exist, but I could not do it. He would not allow me. He held me back. He saved me.
For months, I hid from the world. I watched the flames dance before me in the fireplace and shadows creep along the walls, night after endless night. I detested my nature, the way I had to feed to live and I then refused to feed. Wesley eventually brought me victims when I got so weak I could not hunt, but I still lived without killing. I vowed to never take a human life. They were too precious, I told him.
Viktor came to me three times and Wesley sent him away. At first, I was too distraught to see him. The blood tears stained my face nightly. Then the second time he came, I barely had the energy to sit up from lack of feeding. The third time he came, I told Wesley to tell him I was dead, but he refused. Instead, he told him I had found another lover.
I may not have had the energy to feed on my own, but I could read Viktor’s thoughts. He knew I had not found another love. He had been watching my home. He knew I had not left during the day or during the night. No one had seen me in months. He was worried his sorceress, his vampire, had left him.
Descent Into Madness Page 10
