‘Go,’ she said cheekily. ‘If you don’t leave now another day will go by and you will be even paler and scrawnier. You need more colour to your flesh.’
I did as she wished, reluctantly. I went out into the blizzard. Large flakes of snow whipped around my body in swirls from various directions, and though it was the middle of the day, the sky was as dark as evening. I wore a thin silk shirt open at the neck, loose cloth trouser, and supple leather boots not meant for winter. Such weather is an ally to the strigoi – our prey weakened, lethargic, and inactive.
At the edge of a village far away from our home, doors were closed to the winds. I walked through its centre listening to the voices within and came across my mark. Inside was the shouting of a man drunk on beer and the smashing of clay pots. Inside my mind, I brought forth the image within the hut.
‘Where is another one?’
The wife replied that she didn’t have another pot of beer, and three small children huddled on a cot in the corner. The woman had moved in front of them but the man pushed her aside to pick up one of the children. The mother screamed to let the child go.
‘Go outside,’ he roared to the smaller one. ‘It is because of you we have no money for beer. Get out brat!’
The child was thrown from the doorway and the door slammed behind. The woman sobbed inside begging to retrieve the child but the man paced menacingly. His thoughts said that he was not finished with his punishments and the beer muddled his reasoning.
The child, a boy, lay face down in freshly fallen snow. He had a cotton jacket and trousers too small for him and no shoes, and would surely die if left too long exposed. He stood up, rubbed his head, and looked around him. There were no tears or wails as he searched the various doorways wondering which one to go to for warmth but surprised me when he turned to head into the forest.
I followed him for a while curious to see what this small human would do. He staggered slightly, his legs too small for the two foot blanket of snow. It was then he sat down and lent against a familiar tree. He closed his eyes to go to sleep, perhaps later he would return after his father had fallen into another drunken slumber. Perhaps he was hoping for a more permanent sleep. I became worried that he would die from the cold so I stepped forward. My boots did not make a sound but as I got closer he sensed my presence and his eyes flew open. Human children were in touch with their other senses, which faded as they grew older.
The boy, of about four in age, looked at me deciding whether to run. Then unconcerned he turned his head waiting for me to go; expecting no charity.
‘Are you cold?’
The question threw him and he nodded cautiously. ‘And I’m hungry. I have not had anything since yesterday.’
I took off my light silk shirt and wrapped it around him. I waved my hand and several branches broke free from the trees to knit by magic and form a perfect pyre. I waved my hand over the wood and a small fire blazed.
I sat down next to him and he made no move to go instead, looking at me through widened eyes as if I were an apparition. He did not know what to make of me but I saw stories of wild magical beasts fill his head along with a mixture of relief for the warmth.
I dug my hand deep in the ground. When I pulled it out there were some roots. I pulled a small branch from the tree to roast them, and watched the skin blacken. After a time I handed him the stick. He nibbled at the vegetables still eyeing me cautiously, as if I might disappear as quickly as I had appeared.
‘That’s a nice stick,’ he said eyeing my silver cane enviously.
I handed it to him and he rubbed his hardened little hands along its smoothness.
‘Do you want to return home to your mother?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t ‘til it’s dark.’
‘Do you want it so that you don’t have to leave your home again to sit in the cold?’
‘Yes,’ he said directly, his interest piqued.
*
When the boy knocked on his door, the mother opened it to collect her son but the father pushed her aside. He stood in a rage, his fists clenching.
‘There is a man who wants to talk to you.’ the young boy said, pointing toward the forest.
‘What does he want?’ he asked gruffly.
‘He says he needs somewhere to sleep, and he is hurt.’
‘Tell him to find a whorehouse!’
He was about to shut the door but noticed the boy held something of value. The man grabbed at my walking stick and weighed it in his hand.
‘He says he has plenty of coin to pay you,’ said the boy.
The father opened the door again and squinted in my direction. He could not make me out clearly for I was leaning against a tree, separated by a wall of fine mist.
‘Get inside,’ the man ordered the boy and took off in my direction.
I was still shirtless, the sleet falling gloriously on my bare shoulders as I turned to walk deeper between the narrow tree walls.
‘Where are you going? Wait up you moron.’
I put on a fake gait so that my pace was slow and he easily caught up. I mumbled something as if in high fever and then fell to the ground. It was just the right bait. He bent down to feel inside my trouser for money and when he couldn’t find any, he kicked me hard in the stomach.
‘Die in the snow, you lying dog.’
There was the dilemma. I was about to kill the man who tormented his family, yet without them they may starve for he was no doubt a hunter and provided them with the necessities of life. How many times had I questioned this type of kill yet always came upon the same answer. It was best that they had half a chance than none at all.
I sat up as he walked away. ‘You forgot this?’
He turned surprised at my clear speech. I held up a bag of gold in my hand.
‘Give me that you bastard.’
‘Why? Are you planning to lend me a feathered bed to sleep?’
‘Not fucking likely but I will happily take your money.’ He pulled out a blunt knife and stepped towards me.
As he went for my heart I grabbed him by his collar and flipped him to the ground. He looked surprised at my strength. For Arianne was right. I had grown bony these past weeks and looked an easy mark for those not seeking a challenging fight.
My teeth were instinctively drawn to the greasy, wrinkled flesh of his neck and one puncture from my incisors and blood poured into my mouth so quickly it dribbled from the corners. It tasted blissfully good and I did not realise how hungry I had grown. Like a ravenous beast I ate ferociously until the man went light and limp. There was no question that I would take his soul. It had been months since I had taken one but perhaps in my delirious greedy state I wanted to take everything I could from this man. At his final breath I placed my lips just near his and inhaled. Vapours burnt the sides of my throat and into my lungs but the feeling was so invigorating I felt as if time had stood still long enough for me to float to the sky and back.
I lay down for a period, I do not know for how long, savouring the experience. Could I ever stop taking a soul? Was I fooling myself that one day I would give up this drug? I had lied to Lilah. This unlawful act made hunting so much more enjoyable. I was indeed a hypocrite, pretending that it didn’t matter, and annoyed that Lewis had ruled out the practice. It did not worry me that we needed to sleep more because of it. In fact sleeping for a decade every so often was better than one hundred years.
I buried his husk deeply covering any trace of me then returned to the boy’s house and knocked once. By the time they had answered and discovered the bag of gold on the doorstep, I was half a mile gone.
I wandered in the direction of my home still with an emptiness not unlike a human has for hunger and found an old Romani woman lying in a tent made from doe skin, which barely covered the length of her; her feet buried in snowfall. She had been abandoned by her family of drifters perhaps because she was gravely ill. I bent near her to listen to the strength of her heart and she smiled a toothless smile, her long gre
y hair pulled back into a tail tied with leather. She was still wrapped in furs. The family was not completely heartless and perhaps she had volunteered to stay so that the younger ones could be fed her portions.
‘I knew you would come.’
Gypsies knew we existed and appeared to know many of our secrets. They were the ones to tell the stories of us around their campfires to keep their children close, and we left them alone for the most part. Perhaps one of their stories told why they kept their distance; their suspicions being justified that we would come for them if they did not look after their own.
I bent down towards her neck for there was nothing left but to die of cold hunger and disease. As my mouth found her neck she whispered ‘thank you’. I drained her blood and saw the generations who went before her travelling in summer, the colour of the clothes, the jingling of their earring and bags of trinkets that they sold. I saw her as a small child dancing in long floating skirts around the fire, her parents and relatives clapping on. I heard the sounds of her screaming as she lay in a thicket watching the sun lowering behind the trees, while her baby was placed into her arms, covered in blood and mucus and laid on her chest.
I saw her dancing naked and comely, ample breasts swaying with the music, watched by a pleased and lusting husband. All these passed through me in an instant. The final seconds of her life and many others were the sweetest and also the saddest for these souls that finished their lifetimes too early. I would most certainly leave her soul to find a life everlasting. I had just finished the last of her blood when there was a shriek that made me jerk my head back in fear, the sudden disconnection from rapture making me slightly dizzy.
The scream made the back of my neck tingle. It came from many miles away far beyond the reach of the old lady’s ears, had she lived.
My feet barely touched the ground as I sped effortlessly weaving between the trees, not a trace of my footstep to be seen. In the silence of the forest, I heard the crack of a twig in the distance and the sense that a creature was in great pain.
I could smell human blood. Something bad had happened to Arianne. My teeth gritted, dried blood on the sides of my chin from my last kill had not been wiped away, so much was my haste.
I could see and hear the sounds of movement and then I was upon it. Two wolves were pulling at her limbs. The crack I had heard was not a twig but her arm. Arianne groaned; only breaths away from death. Her clothes were shredded; her body bleeding from several scratches and bite marks, and a gouge from a claw across her cheek.
The wolves stood and looked at me a moment. I could have killed them both for taking something that was mine but it was their nature as much as it was mine. In this way we were brothers, sharing some beastly bond in our frenzied lust for blood. It took them seconds to realise they were now dealing with something they could not fight and they backed away reluctantly before running deeper into the forest.
I sealed some of Arianne’s wounds, the worst ones at her neck and torso, then carried her nearly lifeless body back to our house. I laid her on the fur rug in front of the fire and removed the clothes that had been turned to strips. Pieces of flesh hung from her body. Her cheek was split and some of the skin was missing, the raw flesh exposed.
I cried some blood tears, blinding me, before I gained my control again. Her breath was shallow, her lung punctured.
With my hands I spread the heat into her body sealing up the tear in her lung. I drew the bones in her arm together fitting them like pieces of a puzzle. When I had healed her internally I carefully sealed the lacerated skin on her body and limbs.
Finally, I began the repair of her face. I was wretched by this stage, barely able to raise my head up. Had I fed regularly I would not have been so weak. Never again would I wait so long to take sustenance. Perhaps this painful event would not have happened. In many ways I blamed myself for the events that lay ahead.
When I had finished working on her body I began to repair her face. The healing warmth in my hands came from deep within me, pulling at every muscle, and every last bit of strength to stretch and seal the skin. With no more left in me I surveyed my work. She was breathing evenly and I had put her into a restful sleep.
I threw her torn garments into the fire and bathed her with water scented with crushed roses to remove every trace of blood so that she would never have to see what had been done to her. There was one reminder that I could never remove now that the time for healing had past.
As I lifted her onto the bed she spoke softly.
‘I can never be safe unless I am one of you.’
‘No, my darling. That is not the solution. I will just have to take you everywhere so that I can keep an eye on you.’
She rolled over and fell deeper into a sleep. I crawled in next to her and that is all that I remember for several days, for it had been a long time since I had used my healing skills to such an extent. I had again broken the strigoi vow to save a human and I would gladly suffer any punishment to keep Arianne in my life.
When I woke it was afternoon. I still felt weak and knew I must feed that day to replenish all that I had lost. Sleep was not enough. The smell of baking bread drew me to the galley in search of Arianne but there was no sight of her. Outside, beads of ice had again begun to fall. I stepped out into the grey to search for her but she appeared from the forest carrying bundles of twigs and branches. Despite her near-death experience she seemed unaffected. She did not reward me with a smile but stepped around me as if I was not there. I followed her inside
‘You should not have gone out.’
‘I was bored. You were sleeping and I could not wake you. What else was I going to do?’
It was a tone from her that I had never heard before.
‘I was worried.’
She looked at me for the first time and smiled and I felt relieved, though the smile quickly faded as if she remembered something. She walked to a long mirror and surveyed her face.
‘You didn’t heal it properly.’
It sounded more an accusation than a statement.
‘I’m sorry there were so many… you were in danger of dying. Your potentially fatal wounds had to be healed to save your life. You must understand that I tried. I healed for hours until I could do no more.’
‘Can you try again?’
‘I cannot repair the same wound twice, it does not work.’
‘You should have been feeding more regularly.’
I walked up behind her and put my arms around her from behind. ‘Like I said, I am sorry.’
But she pulled away from me. It was the first time she had ever done that and it confused me. Rejection was not something I had known before.
‘You must consider what I asked you. I want to become one of you.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then this is what might become of me? An ugly scarred aging woman.’
‘But you are still beautiful to me.’
‘I want more than that.’
‘Beauty was not even a consideration at the monastery. Why should your vanity be so important to you now?’
‘I am a different person now. I am not that girl you spied upon in the gardens.’
Something had changed that day. A thread between us had broken and the fibres within her had begun to fray. Perhaps her madness was there all along waiting for an event to draw it out. And now my initial infatuation had been replaced by something else that drove me to grant her wishes. Guilt. Guilt that I could not have prevented the suffering.
Arianne
It was a long way back from the castle and as we were to leave I thought of my young friend. There was a part of me that loved her still, the part who watched her grow from a small child. But there was a part of me who saw a threat somewhere ahead. I saw the way she looked at Gabriel. I would need to keep a close eye on her and by becoming more powerful I could control it.
‘Gabriel,’ I touched his arm lovingly.
‘He flinched ever so slightly. He seemed wary these days: sli
ghtly on edge. He had been so confident yet somehow I felt more in control. Who would have thought that I could yield so much power? I sensed that Lewis thought that too, which gave him cause to hate me. Another one I would have to watch.
‘I want to see Lilah.’ He looked unsure. He was very protective of the girl. The innocence of her was starting to get on my nerves.
‘Very well,’ he said. Ever since the incident with the wolves he had not been able to deny me anything. Guilt was good when it was in my favour.
She responded to my knock on her door. Gabriel followed but I asked him for privacy. Again a look of concern crossed his face.
Lilah stood to greet me and just for a moment I had a flooding wash of affection as I remembered the trusting child who would wrap her tiny arms around me. This girl had shown devotion to me her whole life. Her departure had left a wound that I couldn’t repair. Perhaps my jealousy could be overlooked for even her eyes said she still loved me.
‘Lilah,’ I said. ‘I wish to make amends to repair our broken friendship. I do not like that we have been apart.’ Those words sounded hollow even to myself, but they seemed to work and she yielded a little.
‘I’m sorry. I have not been too receptive to your arrival here.’
I put my arms around her in ardent embrace. She had grown lovelier in the year that had passed. Her dark brown hair was coiled upon her head. She did not wear adornments on her ears and neck, nor rouge on her cheeks. But she had no need to. Her lips were full, and the chestnut colour in her eyes seemed to attract all the light in the room so that from any angle they shone a pale gold.
We sat together on the chaise longue near the tall windows. Lilah’s plain dress modestly covered her breasts. We were so different, she and I, for she did not embrace her newfound womanly gifts nor did she like lace and paint brushes. But not even paints could disguise my scar.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said, tracing a feathery finger down the line of my face. There was no disgust in her look just a slight worried frown.
I told her of the wolves and how Gabriel saved me. She looked horrified covering her mouth at times.
Lilah Page 14
