by Riley Moreno
Pensmore Castle loomed like a grotesque, bloated giant at the top of the hill, the Ozark Mountains providing a scenic backdrop to the house of bloodlust and hedonistic macabre. There were caves in those Mountains, heavily fortified and tunneled through for an easy escape if Pensmore was eve found or taken. The Coven must always survive.
The Pensmore Coven was a hundred strong, with numbers growing every twenty days. The Ozark Mountain region had provided them with isolated small towns that the younger looking members of the Coven had infiltrated, rotating after every few years. Dorian was in Highlandville High this year, having graduated from Joplin High last year. Ameera had taken over Joplin now.
The rotation was very strict; if the Coven expected to stay in the Ozark Mountains for the conceivable future they needed to be discreet. No more than one person missing from one district at a time and since there were over twenty high schools in the region the disappearances went unnoticed.
Runaways, they were termed because their bodies were never found; gone to New York, or LA to chase the American dream of making it big. Then there were the occasional hunt gone wrong, man goes missing and turns up with puncture wounds and bite marks, the body torn to pieces by some wild animal. But other than that the Ozark Mountain area slept peacefully unaware of the sinister shadow it lived under.
Dorian walked in to the cavernous main hall, his sneakers squeaking on polished marble. The twin staircase was covered in scarlet carpeting, like the blooded wings of a wounded angel. Dorian wished for a scalding hot bath to wash away the disdain of the day.
“You’re home early,” Ameera called from the large sitting room before Dorian could climb the stairs. “No satisfying prospects?”
Ameera was delectable; there was no other word for her. She had raven black hair that curled ever so softly over her cherubic cheeks. Her slightly upturned nose twitched and scrunched playfully and her cornflower blue eyes could mesmerize without her needing to use hypnosis. She had been a blooming fifteen year old when she had been turned on the wastelands of present day Siberia; her first victims had been her twin younger brothers, trusting three year olds who had followed their sweet sister to the ice ridges just beyond their home. She had developed a taste for children ever since.
“I have a few lined up,” Ameera said plopping on a sofa gracefully, her shapely legs jutting out of a flouncy short skirt. “None of them young enough though,” she mused inspecting her nails. “Don’t you just love it when they squeal though?” she laughed suddenly, “like pigs.”
“I have no taste for it,” Dorian sneered.
“Of course you don’t” Ameera rolled her eyes, “your taste buds are still new.”
“Plus I don’t thrive on cruelty,” Dorian mocked and Ameera stopped inspecting her nails. In the blink of an eye she was pinning him to the doorframe, her powerful grip on his throat, her teeth bared to reveal the two sharp points of her canines.
“I’d be careful how I address my Creator,” she hissed in his face, “if it weren’t for me you’d be dead in the dank caves of Qumran where your blessed lover stabbed you in the heart.”
Dorian didn’t respond, his face a mask. He knew if he showed any sign of weakness, a quivering lip, a moist eye or a clenched jaw Ameera would make him suffer for it. So he stared in to her blue eyes till the fire in his own black eyes died away. She let him go with an arch smile and headed back to her sofa and her nails.
Dorian climbed the steps deliberately slowly and waited till he reached his room. He shrugged off his off his clothes as the bathtub filled with scalding hot water. He examined his body in the mirror, lithe yet strong, a swimmers body with a face like a Greek god. He had been a fisherman in his past life, fighting against the waves in his small boat, jumping in the sea to play with the dolphins, rescuing the girl who had appeared at the spot where a star had fallen from the sky.
Demelza.
He had loved her from the minute he set eyes on her but her love was fickle, when he had been turned in to a monster she had stabbed him, killed him in a frenzy of hate. The only way he had survived was because his Creator, Ameera, had refused to let him. She had commanded him to remain tethered to the Earth, to her, in spirit, like a kite remains tethered to a tree even though it is torn to pieces as it clings on for dear life, anything to the fate of flying off and away in to the stratosphere; the unknown.
Three thousand years he’d waited to be returned to his body and science had finally advanced enough to provide him one. Cryogenic chambers that regenerated around the soul, bringing back the limbs once lost. It had been a risk with Dorian who had no body to speak of, but they had found a descendant of Dorian’s brother, a man with ancient DNA in his body. One of his limbs had done nicely to recreate his ancestor.
He had missed his body. He had not missed its need to hunt. It was his turn to bring the prey this month and he did not rejoice in it.
Chapter Three
The New Girl
Her mouth stuffed with her third peanut butter and jelly sandwich of the day Demelza pushed open the school doors to Highlandville High, her hoodie providing some cover from the rain pelting outside. Her eyes were watering already and the contact lenses itched so bad she was continuously rubbing her eyes. She headed for the principal’s office to receive the code to her locker number and her schedule. She was already attracting attention without wanting to, but that was an occupational hazard of being new in a small town.
Demelza maneuvered the crowd like a pro, not making physical contact with anyone as she made her way to her first class. She kept a sharp eye out for Kathrine Kinney, one of the girls who claimed to have seen her missing friend outside her window one night. They were supposed to have English together.
She took a seat in the back of the class, keeping her hood up so she could observe the students without being too obvious. Katherine Kinney ambled in, her periwinkle blue dress hugging her figure in a way that was bordering on provocative but still decent enough to pass school dress code. She was a pretty girl with golden blonde hair and green eyes, and she had a pointed chin and full lips.
Her target sighted, Demelza was about to start the mundane business of being a student when a boy walked in and completely shattered her world.
Dorian!
Demelza would have known that face anywhere. Those piercing dark eyes shadowed by thick lashes, a straight narrow nose, not without character, and that mouth that had left her trembling on the edge of the abyss till she fell for the smile that crept up is shining, brilliant face.
She realized that she wasn’t breathing. She felt her fingers go numb and then tremble so she found it hard to hold on to her pencil. Countless days and millennia had gone by since she had last set eyes on that face.
Maybe it’s just a trick. He hasn’t punished me enough so He tortures me with Dorian’s image reborn. Yet her heart leapt with joy and her eyes filled with tears of relief. She felt her throat constrict with a yell of triumph and her feet itch to be by his side.
He sat in the first row, his back to her, but she knew that back, intimately, recreating their brief intimacy over and over in her head over the years that she had believed she had lost him. Wiping her face with the back of her hand she resolved to get to know this boy who looked so much like her Dorian, the case of the missing students forgotten.
“We have a new student,” the teacher, a frumpy middle aged woman with tea stains on her blouse, said squinting through her reading glasses at the note in her hands. “Demelza Saint?” she looked up enquiringly at the class till she spotted the hooded girl in the back. “Would you like to come up and introduce yourself, child? Tell us where you’re from, and a little bit about yourself.”
Demelza stood up reluctantly, seeing the boy had thrown her off her game and she didn’t have to pretend to be the shy new girl in school, the nerves were genuine, like a shy bride meeting her husband for the first time she kept darting looks at the boy. Demelza had seen the boy stiffen when the teacher had called her name and
she wondered why.
She stood shuffling her shoes in front of the staring class, noticing them looking at her head quizzically and she hastily removed her hood revealing her red hair winding down her spine in a thick braid. She studiously avoided the boy’s eyes, chiding herself for acting like a naïve young girl in love.
“Hi,” she waved; her head down, “my name is Demelza and I’m from Creekwood, Illinois. I like reading books and listening to music,” keep your interests neutral and boring, don’t make a splash. “That’s all I guess,” she shrugged at the teacher who nodded for her to sit down.
Demelza sneaked a look at the boy before she walked to her seat and stopped dead in her tracks at the intense hatred she saw. She wasn’t imagining it. The boy had looked at her with a steady loathing, as if he knew her and despised her.
“Dorian?” she whispered inaudibly but it was as if he had heard her and he sneered at her before looking away. Demelza was too shocked to do anything but sit heavily in her seat, her mind a complete blank at the impossibility of it all.
Chapter Four
Thin Line between Love and Hate
The weather had steadily gotten worse as the boom of thunder joined the incessant downpour and the day continued from morning to noon. Demelza stood with her loaded food tray deciding which table to sit at. She didn’t see Dorian anywhere but Katherine Kinney was sitting alone on a table by the window.
“This seat taken?” Demelza asked cheerfully.
Katherine shrugged noncommittally and went back to stabbing her tatter tots. Demelza sat down and started scarfing down food. Katherine watched Demelza with a hint of distaste.
“Hungry are you?” she said sarcastically.
“Starving!” Demelza exclaimed between shovelfuls of food. “I’m Demelza by the way,” she extended a hand.
“Katherine,” she said with a small smile. “We have English together. I like your hair; it’s a very unusual color.”
“I get it from my Mom,” Demelza said and took a large gulp from her milk carton. “I like your eyes,” she said frankly, “and I love that dress.” Demelza knew exactly what to say, Katherine was like countless other girls she’d met in her travels: vain, popular and accustomed to a lot of attention. Her claims to have seen the missing girl, Dorothy Meeks, had made her a joke and her stock had plummeted in the hallowed halls of the school; hence the eating alone and avoiding people.
“Thank you,” Katherine smiled prettily, “my aunt sent it all the way from Chicago. You’re the only one who noticed!”
Demelza sensed a whine in there and continued to compliment the dress and how it looked on Katherine keeping an eye and ear out for Dorian. She was completely flustered and needed to focus on the case. If it was in fact Dorian she had seen, Dorian brought miraculously back to life, then they were in deeper trouble than she had anticipated. Dorian meant that Ameera and her coven weren’t too far away.
“We had matching dresses, actually,” Katherine was saying, “but Dorothy wouldn’t let me wear mine because of the whole Wizard of Oz thing. She could be mean but we were friends, until she started dating Dorian and then I hardly ever saw her. He’s also pretty cut up about her running away.”
“Who?” Demelza asked nonchalantly.
“Dorian Fisher,” Katherine said, “he’s also in our English class. The one with the dark brown hair, the thick lashes?”
“Oh, yeah,” Demelza said her heart beating faster and sinking at the same time. “But why would she run away? I mean, wasn’t she happy here?”
“She was always flighty,” Katherine shrugged, “there were times when she’d dare me to run away with her to New York. God, did Dorothy love New York. I guess she had a bit of a complex, the whole running away to the Land of Oz like she was the Dorothy. I saw her once,” Katherine said cautiously but it seemed she hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long she had thrown caution to the wind and was blurting everything she’d kept bottled inside out. “After she ran away. It was about five days after she’d gone and I thought I saw her outside my window staring at me. Maybe it was a dream,” she laughed it off but Demelza could tell that the experience had unsettled Katherine.
“I bet that was a shocking experience,” Demelza said.
“It was!” Katherine said with relief at being understood. “I miss her. She was my only friend.”
The bell rang to signal the end of lunch and Demelza took the last spoonful of her pudding. She checked her schedule and sighed to find Physical Ed on her sheet. She found the prospect of holding herself back immensely irritating but the humans needed to be indulged if she wanted to pass off as one of them.
“I’ve got PE now,” Demelza said, “see you around?”
“Yes,” Katherine said with a wider smile than before, “I’d like that.”
The gym was humid and stank of human flesh. The amount of sweat a body could perspire was astounding to Demelza who had never had the experience. She assembled with the rest of the girls in her gym shorts and waited for the coach to instruct them in a mundane sport Demelza wouldn’t enjoy. She watched the boys’ line up across the gym and saw Dorian lazing on a bench looking bored.
Demelza’s heart missed a beat and she began to blush. Now that she knew it was Dorian she wanted to get as close to him as possible. She wanted to run her hand through his hair, and kiss his lips. But she reminded himself that Dorian was a vampire, probably responsible for the missing people, and that she had come to bring him and his coven down.
Why were they always at odds? She remembered the few brief weeks they had had together after her fall; the reluctant touch, the unloosening of tongues and hands, the final giving of all that she had to give; the silent fisherman and the trembling angel discovering each other in the small hut by the sea; a slice of heaven that was forever forbidden to them by their union. And then it had all come crashing down.
She had to get close to him; she inched closer to where he was, hoping she’d be selected in the same team, or maybe the opposite, anything that allowed the most physical contact. She was disappointed when he walked forward and handed the gym teacher a note excusing his participation in class. She watched him sit on the bleachers watching the game of dodgeball and she didn’t need to fake physical ineptitude, her heart was beating so fast and her stomach full of so many butterflies she kept tripping on her own two feet.
The shower was a blessing; her skin felt like it was on fire. She had sensed his eyes on her throughout and the scars of her wing stumps felt like they were ablaze again. She closed her eyes and imagined his fingers on her shoulders, traveling down to her arms, enfolding her delicate hands in to his powerful ones as he pulled her back to him.
Demelza took a shaking breath to come back to the present where Dorian was a vampire stealing young girls in to the night, and seemed to hate the very sight of her. She patted herself dry and put on her clothes. She needed to put Dorian out of her mind and concentrate on the task at hand. Sarah and Adrian didn’t know about Dorian, none of The Priesthood knew about Dorian, nor would they understand. She couldn’t risk them knowing about him because all they understood about the unholy was its complete annihilation. There was no other alternative.
How does that make us different from the monster’s we hunt?
Demelza set her hood on her head as she left the school grounds. She sent a quick text to Sarah, telling her she was scouting the expanse of woods and hills near the school and would be home late. Not that Sarah would worry. It’s not like Demelza could die.
The heavy rain became a spraying mist in the thick woods the smell of pines and sodden earth a heady perfume. She smelled resin, pinewood and animals in the distance. She also smelled the underlying scent of old blood. That was never a good indicator of anything untoward in the woods though, carnivorous animals were mostly responsible for the recent kills that she smelled so she put it down to one of those. A coven that hunts together must be discreet and so must have a place where they dispose of their victims, a gathering pla
ce.
Like the caves of Qumran.
Demelza walked in earnest, looking at a map of the area on her cellphone. She was looking for the nearest cave she could find, cursing the clever location as she saw the entire network on the map. The Ozark Mountain area was a veritable hive of caves that ran in to each other and opened all over the mountain region.
It will be near impossible to close the coven in; they have too many escape routes. I’ll need the entire Priesthood for this operation. But then I risk them finding out about Dorian. And what if one of the Priesthood killed Dorian in the fray?
It never entered her mind that Dorian would be responsible for the deaths of her comrades.
The mouth of the cave was narrow, big enough for a human child to enter standing while an adult would have to crawl on all fours. There was moss on the rocks and complete darkness inside. Demelza stooped down and took a peek inside. She cursed her contact lenses, rubbed them out of her eyes, letting them fall to the forest ground, and looked again.
The walls were slick with rainwater reaching them from some fissure in the ceiling; the floor was littered with bat droppings and tiny bones of birds and mice. It was a disused cave, frequented by some small feral animal in the winter months. No use to her.
“You haven’t changed.”
Demelza stood rooted to the spot. She could sense his eyes boring in to the back of her neck.
“Neither have you,” she said turning to face Dorian. He was leaning against a tree, his arms folded across his broad chest, his dark eyes hooded as he observed her from afar. Demelza wanted to lean in to those arms and kiss his clenched jaw to ease away the loathing she sensed from him but his indifference kept her where she was.
“Looking for more filth to exterminate?” he asked with a tight smile. “Or weren’t you satisfied with stabbing me through the heart?”
