A headache settled across my brow, forcing me to close my eyes, even in the dim light of the room. When I opened them again, I could barely make out thin strips of light slipping between tears in some old, dark cloth, hanging from the only window in the room.
How long have I been here?
Mary and the children would be beside themselves with worry. Would they have been able to survive this long without any means of providing food for our table? And what of John and his threats toward me? Would he extend the same punishment to my wife in my absence?
Question after question scoured my mind, causing the pain in my head to throb all the more. I twisted and turned, desperate to escape; to break my bonds and flee back home. My family needed me. I needed them.
Panic mounted, making my situation all the more desperate. I feared crying out, for the unwanted attention it might bring back into my room. But my struggles were becoming more and more audible, the bed creaked, my efforts turned into despairing grunts and anxious groans. My whole body strained, arched at the exertions of my attempts to get out. Sweat seeped from my body, into the thin material of my tunic, my long hair matted to my head and face, but still I continued. Pained despondency threatened to break my will, but I would not admit defeat.
Picturing the tear-stained, frightened faces of my family, I threw every last shred of strength into yanking away that which held me down.
The leather of my restraints snapped, and I flopped back down onto the bed, my energy spent, chest rising fast but heavy with my laboured breathing.
I am free.
I ran from the room, down the stairs toward the parlour. I wanted to find the evil that had put me in this place of darkened hell. I wanted to rip out her throat and swallow every single drop of blood within her beastly body. I wanted to tear off George’s head with my bare hands and throw it at him to catch before his body realized it was missing.
But I would not get my revenge – the house lay empty and quiet.
I would return for them both, but first, I needed to make sure my family were safe.
Chapter 9
Dawn peaked on the horizon as I stood outside my front door.
I had been inside that old house for too long; the rays of the approaching sun prickled my skin with an unpleasant tingling. It strained my eyes to the point of pain.
Wasting no more time, I opened my door, walking in. The musty smell of neglect pinched my nostrils. I looked around, seeing dust-covered surfaces and dirty crockery lining the cupboards and sink.
My brow furrowed. “Mary?” I could not keep the dread from my voice.
Rustling from elsewhere pulled my attention to the stairs. I waited, fear rooting me to the spot. Mary came into view and, while her beauty still struck a chord in my heart, the weariness and the strain over the last few days showed on her thin, pale face.
Her glassy eyes released crystal tears when she saw me, and she slumped to ground uttering my name. “Is it you? Or doth the hunger give me hallucinations?”
Even as she spoke the words, I heard her stomach growl. She grimaced with pain.
“Oh, Mary, my love. I am so sorry—”
“Where in the heavens have you been?” Mary gripped my shoulders with a lack of strength. “The children and I have been so worried, After I found you beaten, we feared the worst, I… .”
Her words became incoherent as her sobbing increased.
I soothed her, holding her head against my chest, stroking her hair while she wept. “I am so sorry, my darling. I—” I released my wife and backed away with haste.
She looked at, concerned etched across her features. “Lucas?” She used the wall to aid her in standing.
“Stay back,” I warned, turning my back to her, pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger. I could smell her… almost taste her. Despite her unclean appearance, the intoxicating aroma of what flowed inside her tickled my senses. “Stay back,” I repeated, hearing her shuffle closer. “I am sick.”
“Sick? What do you mean? How?”
The questions kept coming, making the pounding in my head all the more pronounced.
“Lucas, answer me, damn you. Thou madest me a promise… thou madest your children a promise. What ails thee?”
“I do not know, woman,” I barked at her, regretting it almost instantly. Not once, in all of our years together, had I ever raised my voice to the woman I loved with all of my aching heart. Not once.
She stepped closed, and I stepped back. “I want to help thee, my love, please, let me help thee.”
I could hear her heartbeat, thumping against her chest with erratic beats. The blood rushing around her threatened to deafen me, yet still she came closer.
“Back, I said. Stay back, Mary.” I hid my eyes with my hand, hoping that if I could not see her, then I could not hear that which I craved so badly. It did me no good; her blood called to me – sang to me like a liquid lullaby ready for consumption. “Mary!” I yelled, fraught.
“Daddy?” Margery tiptoed into the room. “Daddy, where have you been?”
My heart shattered.
My bonny child stood before me, her skin so pasty and taut she looked half-dead. Even through the lose material of her nightdress I could see the weight loss, see the bones in her exposed arms, her lank hair a bedraggled mess around her shoulders.
I wanted to break down and cry like a broken man.
But her blood called to me also.
I swapped my gaze from one pulsing vein to the next, watching their necks as they cried their tears.
My gums ached; an ache that only intensified the more I watched.
When I heard Thomas’s voice call my name, I ran from our home, blinded by the tears that felt like acid in mine eyes.
∽∽∽
Under the shade of the trees I lay, surrounded by the dead bodies of animals, bled dry to satiate my ravenous thirst. Their flesh did not placate me; with no taste to it, it only got in the way of what I desired most – their blood.
I cried, but even as I cried, staining my face with my sorrow, I could already feel the cracks of the dried blood around me, telling me it would be time to feed again very soon.
But where would I go? And when would this end?
I could not return home because I feared I would kill my wife and children, even before I could think about it. I refused to return to George’s stately home. A curse swam in my blood thanks to that man and his insane harlot companion. As much as I wanted them both dead, ‘twould be too much for my addled mind to handle right now.
Edward’s, perhaps? But what would stop me from killing him? I could go nowhere, be around no-one. I would be condemned to this life of misery and loneliness, and I did not even know why or how. What would now become of me?
Standing, I wiped my mouth, wincing when dried blood tugged at the hairs on my face as it came away. Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked. I walked for hours, until, out of habit, I found myself in the woods beside my house.
I crouched low, observing when John walked up my garden path and knocked on my door.
His plump, red face wore a sly smile. I hated him – his blood I would gladly devour until he shrivelled like a fruit left too long in the sun. A sun that, though not beating directly on me, burned my sensitive skin to levels of almost painful discomfort.
I shrunk further back into the forest, watching.
Mary answered the door, her eyes not quite meeting John’s. They exchanged words, mumbled ones that I could make out clearly.
“Hath he returned?” John asked.
Mary shook her head.
“Then ye know what needs be done.” He barged his way into way into my home, causing a gasp from Mary as she stumbled backwards.
When the door slammed, the screams began.
Chapter 10
I raced from between the trees, but before I could get far, I collapsed to the ground, wailing in agonizing torment.
My skin burned, red-hot. It blistered and sizzle
d, some bursting, causing fresh waves of pain. I closed my eyes against it, trying frenziedly, blindly to claw my way back to the shelter of the woods.
When the shade touched my skin, it felt like a thousand pails of freezing water washed over me. The burning did not subside, however. It only intensified; mingling with the cold to feel like icy blades stabbing at me, over and over.
I turned on my back, between the large roots of a sturdy oak tree, crying out again when layers of skin peeled from my body. Looking down, through hazy eyes clouded with my torment, I tore at the smouldering, charred material of my tunic, smoking from the heat of my scorched flesh. Strips of skin still stuck to it, were ripped from me. I gritted my teeth so hard I feared they would grind down to fine powder, or fall out of my mouth whole.
Unable to do anything more, I lay, eyes closed tight, jaw rigid, breathing heavily through my nose until the nausea relinquished its grip on me.
I could still hear Mary’s screams and I wanted to curse John’s name. Time and time again I tried to yell for him to stop, but my dry throat would not allow for it. I sobbed, as loud and as hard as my broken body would allow. I grieved for my lost humanity, for the man I once was, but now no longer, for the helpless fool who could nothing but lie on his back while he listened to his wife’s anguished cries.
Time slipped by. I could not be sure how many minutes or hours passed before I heard John leave my home, his snorted laughter like a prized pig boiled my blood, and still I could not move.
I would have to wait until the sun disappeared, and the moonlight took its place in the sky.
With every minute of that wait, I pictured John’s face, and with every new image came a new way of watching him die. The one that sickened me most would be the one he would experience first-hand. I would end his miserable existence by drinking him dry. I would regret nothing.
He deserves it, the swine.
“Who said that?”
A friend… your only friend. The only one you’ll ever need.
“Where art thee? Show thyrself, coward.”
Tsk, tsk, there’s no need for name calling; I am here to help you, Lucas Drake.
“How doth ye know my name?” My eyes searched the woodland surrounding me for indiscernible voice.
I know much more than that, my child.
“And yet, still you hide. Begone, mischievous beast. I am no child of yours.”
Oh, but you are. Slave to the darkness… my slave. And you will see me soon enough. ‘Tis almost time to feed again, young apprentice. Almost time to take that life you so desperately want to snuff out… to taste his essence for yourself, and to devour his soul for me.
“I will do nothing for a man who must hide… if, indeed, you are a man. Leave me be.”
Oh, I am so much more, and you will see. You will see.
Mary’s anguished cries rang through the dimming light of the day, and, as I stood on shaking legs, I wondered why I did not hear my children.
Edging closer to the forest’s end, I watched the sun disappear over the horizon.
And then I ran, with speeds unnatural to me. I ran to my house; the home I shared with the love of my life and the children we both cherished so much.
No! Not yet… End him first. Take his life, taste his blood. Hurt him the way he hath hurt her.
My vision inked over, a deep scarlet. The more the voice urged me, the deeper it got until I could see nothing in front of me but the path that led to the one thing I wanted so badly.
John’s face… dripping in congealed blood, his throat a gaping hole of flesh and muscle.
Once more, I ran, further, through my fields, through my neighbours’ fields, until I saw what I sought.
His house loomed, a blackened silhouette behind the bloodred curtain covering my eyes.
A hate so deep and powerful almost knocked me off my feet. I swayed, eyes wide, staring at my prize. A hand reached out in front of me – my hand – and it opened the door, slow, quiet.
Shadows swallowed up the interior, lit up only in places by the moonlight filtering through.
I stepped inside, inhaled, smelled the sweet stench of well-cooked meals and freshly-laundered linens.
Oh, how the privileged do live.
Snarling under my breath, I tore up the stairs, knowing instantly where to go – I could smell the foul bastard’s stench from a mile away. I burst into his bedchamber where he jumped out of bed, white as the sheets he lay on and trembling like a meek, little lamb off to slaughter.
Whereas my appearance before would never have intimidated him, he cowered now, in the corner from the blood-spattered, unkempt sight of the madman before him. Before me.
Take his life. Drain his body of the blood he is not worthy of. He hath wronged thee; he hath wronged thy family. He beat thee, left ye for the crows to peck at. Do not show him the same mercy. Devour him; leave behind nothing that his family might mourn over.
“L-Lucas.” Pitiful. Pathetic. No better than a broken animal. “I’m s-s-sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt her, she—”
His words gurgled in the blood spilling from between his lips. Underneath my sharp nail, a neat, open line stretched across his throat, from which more of his life fluid easily flowed, saturating the stark brilliance of that freshly-washed nightshirt my oppression paid for.
Do not waste a drop, Lucas Drake.
“Yes, master.” I buried my head in John’s thick neck and drank.
Chapter 11
For long moments I sat in John’s bedroom, staring at the milky whites of his eyes, frost-like in the moonlight that shone through his uncovered window.
That powerful surge of adrenaline that rushed through me when I sank my teeth into the supple, broad neck of his began to ebb. The nourishment that animals provided me held nothing to what I had just now experienced. The taste alone… a pure delicacy, sweet, pure and plentiful.
My hunger satisfied, I drop John’s dead carcass to the floor and left.
Through the haze of my contentment, another thought emerged – one I had forgotten, but now remembered with a physical ache.
Mary.
With peculiar, increased speed I ran – one foot in front of the other as fast as I could, until I found myself, once again, outside of my home.
No sound came from inside, and my panic increased tenfold.
Opening the door, the reek of blood hit me at once, a rock to the chest, making it difficult to breathe, or even to think.
No lamps were lit, but I could see the swirls of dust dancing in the glimmering light of the full moon, leaving in its wake a sombre, blue-grey atmosphere.
I saw her, lying on the floor a weakened state. She did not move, but I could see her breathing – the rise and fall of her chest; a sight I had watched with joy many a time.
Closer I moved, noting the skirts of her smock rumpled, torn and bloodied, bunched around her waist. Bleeding scratches left criss-cross patterns across her milky thighs and I closed my eyes against the smell, trying not to breathe in the heady fumes.
“L-Lucas?” Her voice croaked with a thirst I knew only too well. “I-is that th-thou?”
“Aye, my love.” I dared not step closer, for already I could see the dried blood around her nose. It destroyed me. I could not touch the woman I loved for fear of what I might do to her. My heart ached in a way words could never describe. Hot tears fell from my eyes, heavy and plenteous, spilling down my face before I crumpled to the floor.
“Help me,” she begged, and I cried all the more.
“I cannot,” I wept, my words losing themselves behind my sobs. “I do not want to hurt thee, and I fear that I might.”
Her body shifted as she tried to look at me – to look at the man who denied her comfort, a man she thought she knew and loved with all of her heart, a man as broken as she.
He eyes widened at the sight of my blood-soaked being while she tried to open her mouth to speak, to ask me a dozen more questions that she didn’t even know yet.
“The
devil,” she managed on a whisper, the fear in her eyes growing as she tried to move away from me. “What hath ye done with my husband.”
“Mary, ‘tis I—”
“Back!” She lifted her hand, stumbling as she struggled to hold up her weight. “Back, foul beast. Begone from this place.”
“Mary,” I pleaded once more. “I am thy husband.” On my knees, I clasped my hands together and begged her to recognize me.
“Leave!”
Spluttering coughing from the children’s room alerted me to their presence. I looked in their direction, a breath escaping me.
“No!” Mary cried, desperately trying to throw her broken body at me, to stop me from seeing my babies. “Leave them, they are sick. Thou hath made them sick.”
Looking back at the despairing, frail form of my wife, I stood and raced to the children’s room, withdrawing the moment I entered, from the stench of excrement, vomit and blood. “No,” I breathed, stumbling against the doorframe.
Both Margery and Thomas lay in their dirty beds, shadows of the boisterous, healthy children they once were. Even beneath the filthy linens, I could see the shape of their bones. I wanted to be sick – I heaved, but nothing would come.
Thomas pulled himself up, enough to raise his head and half-open his swollen eyes in my direction. “Is that you, Daddy?” His voice, barely a whisper, wheezed between cracked, dry lips.
Even that simple question drained the energy from him; his body began to convulse, racked with rattling coughing and spluttering. He leaned his head over the side of his bed and vomited blood.
The smell clouded my senses without warning. A sharp pain erupted from my gums and I cried out, clasping my mouth and nose with my hand. Turning, I ran for the door.
“Stay gone, devil,” Mary cried after me.
When I reached the woods, I collapsed beneath a tree, eyes already stinging before I roared loud enough and hard enough to tear my throat. I cursed loud and fierce… cursed this wretched form bestowed upon me and against my will.
I wanted the beast gone. Shredding the remains of my shirt, I clawed at my skin, spilling blood, tearing flesh off in strips, cascading my very essence across trees and leaves, bathing them in the darkened crimson of the poison inside me, eager to reach my heart and rip it from my body, extinguish the endless despair that threatened to choke it.
Lucas - A Faction Series Prequel Book 1 Page 4
