Gabriel pulled the sheet of the bundle and I saw that it was a boy only slightly younger than me. It took me a few moments to realise that the limp hair and grimy face belonged to someone I knew.
‘Claude!’ I shrieked. He saw me through half closed eyes but he did not seem to recognise me. His breathing was shallow.
Gabriel stopped for a moment.
‘Get her away,’ rasped Arianne, standing angrily.
The display before me was sickening, the malevolent deed evident in the very ugliness of her.
Gabriel laid Claude across her lap and Arianne bent down.
I rushed forward screaming. ‘No, Arianne. You can’t. Not Claude!’
Gabriel pulled my arms behind to restrain me.
‘I know him,’ I screamed. ‘Arianne knows him. I cured him. Where now is your pledge to avoid the innocent?’
‘Arianne found him on the streets. He had left the monastery only to turn sick again. He is dying Lilah. Such pledge does not apply to those so close to death. He will feel nothing but relief.’
‘He is a child. Why did you not heal him?’
This accusation stopped him and he looked back at the boy. I noticed that Arianne’s eye teeth had grown and she bent down to the neck of the boy.
‘Stop!’ But she ignored me. She was new to this and Lewis stepped forward to puncture a hole in his neck. She bent down to absorb his blood this time.
I continued to fight against Gabriel. I was crying now and Lewis had his back to me ignoring my protests. Gabriel turned to me and whispered hastily.
‘Look at me. Whose life is more important?’
‘You are more disgusting than I thought. I am not like you,’ I spat, never before so enraged.
Lewis turned then but not before I noticed his slight amusement. I cannot say why but Gabriel chose to set me free at that moment, his face impassive.
Arianne was weak and her suckling was insufficient to kill the boy. I ran to pick up Claude. He was nearly my height and with difficulty I hoisted him up with one arm, dragging him away from Arianne.
Arianne made to grab at him but she was not quick enough and let out a high pitched squeal in frustration.
‘Arianne, this is the boy you begged me to save. Now you would have him killed’
‘You don’t understand. He was given a second chance but he was not meant to be. Your healing was for nothing.’
‘You sound so cold and heartless. I cannot believe that you are like this.’
This person who I had idolised was now changed. Could she have been damaged and broken all along, the monastery being the glue that held her together.
Gabriel was responsible for this. He looked with sorrowful eyes, only now realising that the child should not have been the one.
I lay Claude on the floor and placed my hands on him. Arianne rose from the table and tried to prise me away. I turned and slapped her no longer caring what she thought. It was as if the windows to her soul were closed.
She raised her hand to strike me but was grasped by Gabriel.
‘Come,’ he said to her. But she pushed him away.
When she lunged at me again she was thrown against the wall. I had a moment to see that the force had come from Lewis.
She stood up and looked at Lewis. ‘You!’ she pointed. She ran past him and up the stairs. There was madness about her.
Gabriel bent down to feel the pulse of the boy.
‘It is too late, he will not live.’
I felt the heat go through Claude’s body and then nothing.
‘I cured before. Why not this time?’
‘Sometimes the souls leave quickly, sometimes they hover. Having healed him before, the disease has probably recognised your forces and found a way to block you. It rarely has effect the second time.’
‘Please help!’ But Gabriel stood there unmoving.
‘Out of the way!’ said Lewis, pushing Gabriel aside.
It is still a mystery why Lewis helped but he did, perhaps to prove his power; perhaps to win my favour. What I cannot deny is that the healing he performed that night sealed Lewis’s own fate; something he did not foresee. His incantation brought back a small vapour that streamed into Claude’s mouth.
‘He is no longer human, just remember that,’ he said. ‘Next time you call us disgusting look upon this boy’s face.’
Gabriel had left the room. I did not see him go.
Lewis clapped his hand and several servants appeared from the darkness. ‘Bring one of the animals.’
‘Do not judge Gabriel too harshly,’ said Lewis calmly, devoid of any feeling. ‘It is not our rights as strigoi to heal a sick human, even a child. It is for the best that this relationship never change, that we do not weaken with empathy for those lesser born.’
‘Then why convert a human if you ‘do not want to interfere with the natural order of things.’
‘When it is for our continuation…well, that is another matter. For the good of our future these experiments will give us more knowledge.’
I held Claude’s hand for he was whimpering and holding his stomach. I did not need to ask but knew that these were the most severe hunger pains.
‘But you told me they rarely succeed,’ I said, defeated now by what was done, and which I could not undo.
‘This one perhaps was special. It was for Gabriel alone so that he can learn from his mistake.’
I wanted to ask why Gabriel was being punished but the servant returned with the lamb.
I noticed with horror that Claude now had incisors. Lewis bit down on the neck releasing the blood and then the boy seemed to instinctively know what to do. He sucked at the neck of the lamb until, with legs buckled, it fell to one side. Then he slumped to the floor, in wonder and horror at what he’d become.
Gabriel
I tracked her through the forest listening to her growl like an animal.
When I had taken her blood I had seen things from her past that I did not like. I saw what her father did to her, how he beat her and made her do things that not even a wife should endure. I saw her time at the monastery and images of little Lilah always in her wake. I was exposed to her innermost thoughts and these disturbed me. There was blackness there: a dark muddy infection inside her that had been distant and hidden deep within her. I could see when I drank her blood that this sickness was unlike the physical kind; not apparent even to herself.
I also saw her need for greatness. I saw possession towards me and jealousy of Lilah. In the early days there had been a strong desire to parent the small child but this had been replaced by rivalry. I feared for Lewis’s young protégé.
I followed the tracks. She had already torn apart a small rodent, the remains of which were scattered across the forest floor. She was faster than normal for someone new to the craft. Had I made a mistake? Could she have been touched by something out of my control? And in the back of my mind I wondered whether I could really kill her if it came to it. I had never killed another of my own kind before, witch or otherwise. Such tasks were left to others.
She led me to a stream where ice had begun to form along its rim. An ear piercing cry cut through the still air and I ran along the bank of the creek towards the sound. Arianne was bent over a man while his wife and baby stood helplessly by. She was draining every vestige of life from the man and, by the time I had reached her, leaving just an empty shell. She still held tight to him as if I might take him away.
‘Enough,’ I commanded, and as I approached she crouched like a wild beast, her fangs exposed.
Never in my two hundred years had I seen such an instinctive violent response from my own kind, much less my beloved. Most started with animals, tentatively adjusting to the new hunger in their bodies. She tossed the remains aside and turned towards the woman who stood in the shallow part of the creek, her skirts drenched. The woman had thought to cross the creek to run but could not find it in her heart to leave her husband.
Arianne was about to step into the water when she
suddenly collapsed onto the ground in a still heap. Believing me to be an accomplice, the woman turned her attention to me and screamed in terror, this time attempting to cross to the other side of the creek. The child in her arms made it difficult and she fell forward into the water. Torn from her arms, the baby was cast further along in the freezing rapids. It took only moments for me to swim and collect the drowning child. Still petrified with fear, the woman, with arms outstretched, beseeched me to give back her baby. Clutching its sodden form, she trembled badly as I helped her from the water. She held the child away from me as far as she could, never once taking her eyes from my hand on her arm to steady her.
Once back on land I knew what had to be done. This was not a mess that Lewis would have condoned. Everything we did must be concealed. It must appear that we have never been anywhere.
I touched the woman’s temples and she instantly fell asleep with her baby supported in my arms. With the magical heat from my hand I erased all that she had witnessed in these moments. I carried her then to a cottage nearby, placing her limp form on a cot, to dry near the hearth, with the baby beside her.
She would wake, with only the memory of the previous night believing that her husband – whose bones had been buried deep in the ground – had left early, to never return.
Arianne was nowhere to be seen. I suspected, or rather hoped that she had returned to our house for it was clear what I must do. A huge sadness overcame me. We would never be together and the power had made her mad as Lewis suspected. There were two choices. I could hand the rabid creature over to Lewis or I could kill her myself.
I thought of Lilah’s face. Perhaps Lewis was right. I made spontaneous decisions that were not always the best for our kind. How would I face Lilah knowing what I had agreed to?
Returning to our house, I sensed that Arianne had already returned. Inside our bedroom, she was reclined in a bath, the water a faint pink from her kills. Her teeth had returned to normal and she smiled serenely as if all that had happened had been imaginings only. I walked toward her cautiously watching her lather her shoulders with soap.
‘Come!’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Sit with me’
I sat down cautiously on the edge of the bath.
‘Did you think you had come to kill me?’ she said calmly. ‘Don’t look so surprised. I knew that Lewis planned to kill me if the change did not work.’
I said nothing.
‘It won’t be necessary,’ she said casually. ‘You see it was just a moment of madness. It was like a fire had been lit within my belly and a heavy cloud had descended on me. I was overcome with a terrible thirst that had to be quenched and all I could think to do was run until it passed. Then I smelled blood and was so drawn to it as if there was nothing else that mattered…’ She frowned remembering. ‘And after I had drained that man of his blood, it was if the clouds had parted. I have never felt this good.’
The youthful sweetness in her expression and her earnest account made her seem blameless and this unexpected change confused me. Murder was now far from my thoughts replaced by the sudden need to defend her.
‘We have to be careful…’
‘Yes, I know,’ she interrupted. ‘You’ve told me the rules. Do not harm the virtuous. Only take from the worst kind of human.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. Arianne had returned to me.
‘I know I made mistake. I took a life I had no right to.’
‘And Claude?’
‘Lilah would have made sure he lived. I knew that. It was why I agreed to have her there.’
Arianne looked at me. I had to believe her for the sake of us both and for Lilah.
‘I always loved that boy. I would have begged you to heal him if not for what I did. You have to believe that. But it was my way of staging the event to bring him there since I knew you would not agree to cure him.’
‘You didn’t tell me he was a friend of yours, and Lilah’s. You lied about the boy. You could have fed from an animal.’
‘Yes, but you yourself said that to take a human first is usually best.’
She had told me that she barely knew the boy who we discovered lying on the side of the road, full of disease. I had not recognised him from the monastery, so grey was his face, his hair matted with soil and grease. Arianne had also said that he had left the monastery weeks earlier of his own free will to run with a group of wild boys who beat old beggars on the street. The only truth I could confirm was that he was indeed fatally ill when we found him.
She drew me towards her, and though there was no resistance on my part, all I could see was Lilah’s face now and the hope that she would forgive me in time. I did not fail to notice that the scar on her face may have paled but had not been cured by the change.
Lilah
It was months since the change. Each night I lay in fear for Arianne, and Gabriel did not come to the castle now that the relationship with Lewis was strained. I trusted no-one.
Over coming weeks more witches were brought to the castle. They had each been given rooms in the wing where I stayed; though none so privileged in a room like mine, with free access to Lewis’s library. Several communal rooms were open to allow them to dine together and learn about their history and craft, as I had done, but from only a handful of books selected by Lewis.
Often I wondered what was to become of us. Gabriel told me the castle was a place to learn but what then? What followed? Did I go back to a life before with my newly acquired knowledge? I questioned whether Gabriel had ever been my friend or simply recruiting all along. And I have often wondered whether it was Arianne he really wanted; that I had been part of an elaborate plan to win her favour.
There were whisperings coming from the other witches in the breakfast room, and they quietened when I entered. Most of the witches were amiable, with the exception of one in particular: Neve was a nasty gossip who sought the attentions of many male strigoi with plans to marry. After an awkward silence during the meal, she then told me brazenly what the group had just been talking about.
It seemed that Arianne was running wild and Gabriel was having a hard time taming her. She laughed when I looked openly shocked.
‘Friendship, my dear, is as thin as ice especially in our circles.’
I did not dispute that but waited quietly while Irene served me bread and cheese, and remembered humbly how I had once been on the other side of the service table in Emil’s house. There were times I wished for a servant’s simple life without the burden of my craft. Some hope had left me the night of Arianne’s conversion.
‘Do you want to know what else we heard?’ She did not wait for my response. ‘That Gabriel is half the man he was. She has reduced him to her servant.’
The piece of bread I had placed in my mouth created a large lump in my throat, making it difficult to swallow.
‘What is wrong pretty lady?’ asked Neve, in a falsely servile manner, and placing extra cheese on my plate. ‘Are you not hungry?’
‘No,’ I muttered praying that I would hear no more on the topic of Arianne.
‘It is quite unusual for a strigoi to marry anyone else than a witch but apparently the man-creature is besotted despite Arianne’s insatiable appetite for blood.’
I felt my stomach lurch and stood up as graciously as possible. I heard more twitters and whisperings as I left the room.
Several strigoi lounged in the foyer and nodded towards me. They were not like Gabriel who did not conform to ideals that witches were lesser species, even though we had the same blood. The space between us was vast, cold and suspicious; our separate wings a clear divide of our differences. Theirs was a world I would not experience and Gabriel had at least promised me that.
I slipped into the library and browsed the ancient bound books, which covered Lewis’s desk, placed there for my studies. But the books I sought would not be found there that day. I climbed a ladder to search the writing on the spines of others until I recognised one of the titles.
So far
in my secret studies I had discovered that witches could be converted to the strigoi by simply drinking human blood. Though this method was considered laborious, and mostly unsuccessful; due to the length of time and unnecessary malady the witch endured over several weeks, it was not favoured over the one I had witnessed performed on Arianne.
I also learned of potions for healing burns. Lewis had let me heal animals using techniques I did not know existed. For example, if I healed an animal while the palm of my other hand rested on the tall trees I could generate even more healing power, taking strength from nature. The forests were full of cures and secrets.
Though Lewis and I spent much time together our relationship remained formal as a tutor with his pupil. His aloofness did not allow for any chance of friendship. Without the companionship of Gabriel, the castle seemed empty. The other witches seemed ignorant and bewitched by their extravagant surrounds, perhaps too young in this house to really understand who they were and what they could become. They had come from poverty and were happy being garbed in silks and fed food they no longer had to beg for. Lewis said that most harboured the desire to be strigoi rather than healers and he did not comment further on the subject; nor did I ask. I wondered how much they knew, and suspected that their ignorance of their own kind would not give them the choices that I had with my recently acquired knowledge.
My plan was to finish my apprenticeship with Lewis then try and forget my strigoi past. Though grateful for the learning I was equally fearful. I would heal the sick on the streets and perhaps even work for a town apothecary where my healing practices could be disguised or legitimised.
Lilah Page 16
