Deadman's Blood

by T. Lynne Tolles

  He leaned back into the couch, sighed deeply, and looked around the room. A painting caught his attention and he said, “That’s lovely. Who’s the artist?”

  “A nobody. Just something I picked up when I was traveling through Tuscany. So tell me, Anton, I don’t think you came here to talk about my taste in art; why did you come?”

  “To try and get to know you!”

  “But I think I’ve made it pretty obvious, I’m not...good for...the relationship type. Your persistence makes me think that I’ve become merely a challenge to your ego. The thrill of the chase and nothing else. I mean, come on...have you ever been turned down?”

  He filled his glass again, looking for confidence. He didn’t say anything for a long time then answered, “I will admit the chase has been titillating, Jules, but that’s not why I keep coming back.”

  “Really?” Jules said cynically.

  “Really. And I think if you would just get past this anger and cynicism, you might see that we have a lot of things in common.”

  “How’s that, rich boy? You come from royal blood and born into vampirism, I was a poor girl, made into a vampire, then cast away like a rag doll. I’m 400 years old you are what? 100? 125? How on earth or any other realm do we have anything in common,” she said rudely then filled her glass again.

  He stared at his glass. Her eyes burned a hole in the side of his head as he continued to stare at it and slowly graze his right thumb over its smooth, cool surface.

  “You’re right, Jules.” He took a sip of his blood wine then set the glass down on the table. “I’m a born vampire, and you are a made one, but it wasn’t me that hurt you so badly that you can’t even enjoy the company of someone who thinks you are worth an effort to get to know. The little boy, you seem to like to refer to me as, has learned his lesson. I never intended to pursue you as I have, but when we were locked in that elevator not so long ago, I felt a connection with you I’d not ever felt with anyone else. A kindred spirit maybe. One who, like me, had been brutally hurt by a loved one. But you’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t…or is it you can’t, let anyone anywhere near your heart.”

  He stood up, leaned over, and kissed her hand. “I’m sorry, Julianna D’Angelo, that I couldn’t know you for who you really are, because I think under all that anger, there’s someone, like me, that would like to find love again.”

  Anton turned and walked to the front door, opened it, and then turned back once more and smiled at her. Julianna sat sadly and somewhat dumbfounded on the couch as he exited the house and headed for his car.

  Anton was crushed. He was so sure that if they could just have a little alone time to enjoy one another’s company, he could melt the iciness she surrounded herself in, but obviously he was wrong. Whatever happened to her had blackened her heart to any pursuers. He walked around the car to the driver’s side and inserted the key into the door, when Jules instantly appeared between him and the car.

  Looking up at him in the dim light from the streetlight, she said, “I’m so sorry, Anton, I’ve been absolutely horrible.” She took both of his hands into hers, then stretched up in her bare feet and kissed his cheek. “Please forgive me and join me back in the house?”

  Her auburn hair framed her pale face in the moonlight. Her sapphire blue eyes pleaded with him to agree, to which no mortal or immortal man could possibly refuse. He silently agreed by nodding and she held his hand as she led him back into the house.

  Once there, she handed him his discarded glass, and she lifted hers. “A toast?”

  “To what?” he asked.

  “To love and friendship. May we both find our fill of both,” she said.

  “Okay. I’ll drink to that. To love and friendship.” They tapped their glasses together and each took a sip of the tasty blood wine.

  Over the next hour or so, they talked pleasantly as Jules consumed the majority of the blood wine. For the first time, Anton saw her at her most relaxed and the conversation was easy and pleasant. Her posture had softened. At first she had been stiff and guarded, whereas now she hugged her knees on the couch as she talked. She talked about her childhood, her mother dying after the twins were born, and how she had been thrown into the role of mother for them, a story that she had told him before. But this time she went further and told him a story of anguish, heartbreak, and pain that Anton would never forget.

  *****

  Julianna was a woman of twenty-four in the 1600’s, and was more or less considered a spinster in her time. She was incredibly beautiful, but she had two twin brothers the size of Mount Everest, and no man who came near Julianna ever got past her brothers. The brothers had decided until they were on their own and married, they wanted Julianna around to cook, clean, and take care of them and their father.

  But a wealthy man moved his family to the outskirts of town, and when one of his sons caught a glimpse of Julianna picking apples in her orchard, he could not stay away. He had to know her and, unlike the locals, he had no fear of the infamous brothers, Patrick and Peter.

  In this day and age this man’s perusal would have been considered stalking, but Julianna was flattered by his persistence and courage, not to mention the fact he was incredibly handsome. They stole moments when they could and carried on an intense love affair. Julianna fell for this man hard and she was sure he felt the same.

  Julianna’s father planned a big party for Julianna’s twenty-fifth birthday, and her new love and his family would be attending. The day of the party, a package arrived for her. It was a small box wrapped in fabric and tied with a blood red silk ribbon. She opened it to find a huge diamond ring. She was giddy. She felt sure that this was her love’s way of telling her that there would be an announcement that night at the party that could put an end to all their hiding in the shadows. So as not to alert her brothers or the guests of the impending surprise, she strung the diamond ring onto the blood red ribbon that had come on the package and tied it around her neck and set the ring unseen in her blouse.

  Later, a cryptic note came to the house just as the package had arrived. It said simply, meet me in the barn and was signed with an ‘O’. She couldn’t wait to see her love, and when it was time, she raced down to the barn to meet him. But when she entered the barn it was not her love that was there, it was his brother, Edward. She knew he too had feelings for her as she had often found him lurking about. She felt instantly uncomfortable as she always did with Edward, and when she turned to leave, he grabbed her, turning her back to him in his steel arms and covered her screams with his iron hand.

  Julianna couldn’t move and she was scared, but when his eyes turned a crimson red and two razor sharp fangs appeared from his gum line, she was absolutely terrified. He bore down on her and bit her hard on the neck, draining her nearly to death. Unable to move, she felt him drop her to a bed of straw. Her heart was nearly out of beats, and then she heard a crunch, like someone biting into a turkey leg, and then a warm, sweet nectar dribbled on her lips and into her mouth. Like a thick brandy, she felt it burn as she swallowed and it continued to burn her throat as it passed to her stomach. Another swallow and then another and then her heart stopped and all the world she knew disappeared into a fog of gray and then black. Like sinking in a murky pool of water; falling and sinking until she could see no more light and she no longer existed.

  She woke to pitch blackness and gasped for air as if she hadn’t taken a breath in days. The air was stale and putrid. She tried to sit up but she hit her head as she raised it several inches. She was lying on something cold and damp. She tried to feel around and realized she was in some kind of cold stone box. Barely able to move, she started to panic. She kicked with her feet and screamed as loud as she could, but as she had feared her voice only resonated in what she now knew now was a crypt.

  Extreme rage and panic rumbled through her body and with a strength she had only seen in her brothers, she pushed hard on the roof of the crypt and it flew across the small family mausoleum. She jumped out
of the crypt and stood looking at the broken lid shattered to pieces all over the floor. On the side of the crypt was chiseled her name, birthdate, and 1645. They think I’m dead? she thought and then she sprinted towards the house, running faster and easier than she had ever run in her life. She wasn’t even breathing hard when she came up to the small house she had known as home.

  She pushed open the door, smiling and yelling, “Father!”

  Her father had been sitting there as he often did this time of evening, reading his bible, and when he saw Julianna he screamed in terror and held his bible between them. He stumbled out of his chair as he backed away from her screaming, “Get out, you demon, and leave my daughter’s body in peace!”

  “Father! It’s me. Julianna. I’m not dead. See? It’s me!”

  He clutched his chest and Patrick and Peter appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Dear Mother, Jesus, and Joseph!” Peter said.

  Patrick leaped down the stairs in three huge steps, coming towards her screaming, “Get out, Devil!”

  As he got closer to her, a terrible ache ran through her body like agonizing hunger times one hundred. It burned in her gut and she could see Patrick’s blood pumping through his veins. The sweet smell of young, fresh blood swept through her and made her salivate something awful. She wasn’t sure if she was going to vomit or scream when a gut wrenching burn started in her stomach and radiated out in all directions. Her eyes burned and her teeth hurt and by the reaction she saw on her brothers’ and father’s faces, she knew something was happening to her. She turned and ran.

  She had to think. What is going on? Where is my love? That’s it! She had to find him. She ran to his house and found Edward there. Instantly, she was uncomfortable again and flashes of that night in the barn raced through her brain. “Where is…?”

  Edward interrupted her. “You’re not welcome here.”

  “Why? I just want to see…”

  “Leave now,” Edward insisted.

  “No. I...please can I just see O....”

  “You heard me, get out!” Edward yelled.

  “Now wait a minute! You did horrible things to me and left me for dead, and I want to see your brother right now or I’ll bring the elders into this!”

  “And who is going to believe a poor, dead spinster over a nobleman like myself? I’ll say it again,” he said brutally, “leave now!”

  “But where is...?”

  “Now!” bellowed Edward.

  The commotion brought the rest of the family down and now all were yelling at her to leave.

  Leave? Where am I to go? Where’s my Love? Why has he abandoned me? What is wrong with me?

  She wandered around the town for hours. Anyone who saw her ran in fear. She couldn’t understand what was going on. She could hear their thoughts and their fears and those scared her more than the looks on their faces. After several hours she happened upon a drunk man staggering about, probably trying to find his way home. As he got closer, she felt that hot, gut wrenching pain again and her mouth salivated as two razor-pointed fangs pierced their way through her gums and poked at her bottom lip. She could hardly control herself. She ran to the man and eagerly drove her fangs into his neck and lapped up the warm fluid rushing into her waiting mouth. It was delicious. Her head was swimming in his thoughts and her thoughts; she felt drunk herself with power and life. But she remembered the man that had done this to her and she pulled back, refusing to be like him. She set the man up against a building in the shadows in the hopes he would sleep off his drunkenness and remember this all as a bad dream.

  Too bad I can’t do that - wake up from this horrible nightmare. Nothing would ever be the same again. She was...an animal or something. She had no idea what she was, but she refused to kill for a meal.

  She wandered around the outskirts of town, living in the woods, taking bites from people in the dark. Surviving really, but not necessarily living. She clutched the ring that still hung around her neck from the red ribbon and she wondered what had become of her love. She gently pulled it out to look at its beauty. Only when holding it up in the sun could she see the blood red color within. She dropped it back down her shirt and moved on.

  Over time she learned to control and master her abilities. For years, she watched and waited for her love to come back. But she never again saw him. Once she learned what she had become, or at least what the folklore books thought she was, she learned how she could kill one of her kind and that’s when she hunted down the unsuspecting Edward. So smug, thinking he had gotten rid of her so easily. He had changed her life and made her into a monster. She couldn’t be near her family or ever be normal again because of what he had done to her that night in the barn.

  After her father died and her brothers had married and had families of their own, she decided her love was never coming back and that it was time to make a change.

  She bought a ticket with money she had lifted from those she had fed upon and headed for the new colonies across the Atlantic Ocean. It was a terrible, torturous two months at sea. Disease was rampant among the passengers. The crew stayed clear of the steerage passengers and she couldn’t blame them. During the voyage, she fed on mostly drunken sailors, as it was too hard to be down in the dark steerage with the hopeful passengers and the horrible stench of vomit, waste, and body odor. She saw children die from small pox and chicken pox, dysentery, and cholera. She tried to ease their pain with her mind, but there were so many and it was so exhausting.

  When they landed in the colonies, she took to wandering again. For centuries, a young woman traveling unescorted was unheard of. Women couldn’t buy land or own property of any kind. Julianna often dressed as a man just to avoid suspicion. She also never stayed in any one place for any amount of time. It wasn’t until the Victorian age that things finally started to change for women, but not before the years of loneliness and wandering had taken their toll.

  *****

  “What I learned, Anton, is that love sucks and you can only depend on yourself. Survival is all there is,” Julianna proclaimed.

  Anton could see that she was quite inebriated. “Come on, Jules. Let me help you to bed.”

  “Mmmmmmm. That would be nice,” she said.

  He scooped her up off the couch and carried her down the hall. Her head wobbled back and forth and she pointed to the bedroom when he got close. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck as he continued into the room. He set her down on the bed and pulled back the coverlet.

  She had a seductive smile on her face as he pulled the covers over her and leaned into her. “Aren’t you joining me?” Julianna asked.

  “No, Jules. That wouldn’t be right,” Anton said.

  “Aw, come on. It’s a big bed. I don’t snore. At least I don’t think I snore,” she said.

  “It’s not that, Jules. I just think that if we decide to take that step together that we should both be coherent and sure that we want to do this,” Anton explained.

  “I’m coherent,” she slurred.

  “Of course you are, Jules,” Anton said.

  “A kiss then?” she asked as she sat up.

  “Ummm. I suppose,” Anton conceded.

  He leaned in tentatively and stopped a few inches from her lips, wondering if this really was a good idea. What if I can’t stop? he thought. What if she wouldn’t remember? What if...

  She came the rest of the way in and gently kissed his bottom lip. So soft were her lips that he couldn’t resist kissing them back. Her hands raked through his hair to his neck and then pulled him hard to her lips. Both so starved of love for so very long, the need to kiss became a necessity essential for their survival and they clung to one another for dear life.

  Quite out of breath from the rush of his hormones, Anton pulled away from an astonished Julianna. She pouted. “Jules. I can’t,” Anton said.

  “You can’t or you won’t?” she said.

  “I won’t. Not like this. I want us both to be sober and aware of our actions. I wa
nt a relationship with you, Jules. A real, bonafide, ‘make it work’ relationship. I’m already falling for you and I don’t want to screw it up,” he explained.

  “Really?” Jules said, rather astonished.

  “Don’t act so surprised,” Anton said.

  She seemed suddenly sober. “You want a relationship with me? To love? And... But I’m a monster. I’ve done things and seen things that no normal person should see,” Julianna admitted.

  “I’m not exactly normal either, Jules. And you are no monster. You’re beautiful, spirited, smart, and talented. You are amazing. Like no one I’ve ever met or will ever meet again,” Anton said.

  “Really?” she said, completely enthralled.

  “Really. Now get some sleep and I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

  Flabbergasted by the conversation and what had just happened, she laid back down watching him as he left. She replied, “Okay.”

  “Goodnight, Jules.”

  Barely able to speak, she replied, “Goodnight, Anton.”

  Chapter Six

  Darby was sitting on the couch in the guest house, knitting away, when she heard, “I’m hungry.”

  “I am too,” she answered, assuming she was talking to Devon. A whoosh of air passed by her and then Devon’s hand was on her shoulder, startling her.

  “You are too, what?” he asked.

  “Geez. You have been awful sneaky lately. I didn’t even see you come into the room,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you, but you were the one talking.”

  “No. I was just responding to you,” Darby said.

  “About what?” Devon asked.

  “You said you were hungry,” she said.

  “Uhhh. No. I didn’t. I mean I am, but I didn’t say anything,” Devon insisted.

  “You didn’t? But I heard you distinctly say, ‘I’m hungry’,” Darby argued.