Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  In an instant, the countess was in front of him, her white skin luminescent. “Aren’t we eager? You are outside for the first time since you were a babe, and you want to return to the castle?”

  She was mocking him, but Richard kept his face carefully arranged, revealing nothing. He didn’t answer her. Eventually she gave a frustrated sigh of boredom and swept past him, head held high.

  “Carry her,” the countess demanded haughtily, pointing at the girl. “I shall await you in the tower.”

  Richard went to protest, but the countess was no longer there; in her place stood a wolf with shining white fur and golden vulpine eyes, which looked at Richard intently. Richard watched mutely as the wolf padded past him and into the night, leaving him once again in darkness. The castle was still a while away; Richard knew that he was being punished and cursed himself. Not for the first time that night, he briefly thought about fleeing, running away from all of this, but knew once again that the countess would never let him go unless it was on her terms. A low, mournful sigh escaped from his lips.

  “I must be imprisoned,” he said to himself, “So that I may be free.”

  Lifting the girl proved to be a challenge, but after some struggling Richard managed to manoeuvre her onto his back with her arms looped around his neck. Holding her arms together, Richard began the long, painful journey back to the castle. In the dark, feeling his exhaustion all the way into his bones, he imagined the girl’s heartbeat thudding into his back, each beat an accusation that he could not deny.

  5

  Richard stood in the circular stone room of the countess’ tower and waited.

  By the time he returned to the castle he was so exhausted he could no longer stand. The countess must have found him lying in a crumpled heap by the great doors, the unconscious girl splayed across his back, and brought them inside. He had woken up in the tower lying across a deep red fainting couch, his whole body aching and weak. It was still night, so he can’t have been asleep for very long, but the girl was nowhere to be seen and he was entirely alone. Instinctively, he knew that it would be best to remain here, quietly and obediently.

  The moon was sinking in the sky when the countess finally entered the room, carrying the unconscious girl in her arms as though she weighed nothing. The girl’s clothes had been changed, her peasant’s dress discarded for a thin white gown that might have been made from spider webs. Her straw hair was clean and brushed out in golden waves, the blood on her wound washed away. The countess crossed the room without a word, and Richard watched her. Such a slight thing, and yet she possessed such strength. She was stronger than him. In Richard’s books, women were weak, in all ways it seemed. But the countess was stronger than him, had endured despite her affliction, this thing that had cursed her. He could never win against her, he realised in a single, terrible moment. She would always be stronger than him, no matter how deceptively frail she seemed to the eye. Richard remembered her true face. The face she wore, her beautiful face, was what she used to be, not what she was here and now.

  The countess laid the girl across a raised slab of stone surrounded by fat stubs of half-melted candles, lighting them with a sweep of her hand and ignoring the girl as she moaned in protest. Her eyes were closed, but even from where he stood Richard could see her eyes twitching against the lids, constantly darting left and right. Though the wound was clean it was red and angry, a twisted blemish marking the girl’s young skin, and her chest rose and fell rapidly like a bird’s. Richard couldn’t take his eyes away from her.

  “You have chosen well,” the countess said without looking at him. “She is young and fair, and her body is strong. Her blood will be rich and pure, the very best.”

  Richard said nothing. He couldn’t. Instead, when the countess beckoned him forward, he silently went to stand beside her. The girl’s thin gown had settled into the grooves of her body, a body that would never grow any older, and a young girl about to enter womanhood. The splash of freckles across her nose made her seem much younger, and in the light of the burning candles her face was that of a child. But she was not a child.

  Richard took a deep breath, which would be one of his last, and as the air left his lungs, he let go of his sorrow and his shame. He looked at the girl and made himself feel nothing. He thought of what the countess had said of the ice in her veins, and willed his heart to be as cold and perfect as snow upon a mountain peak.

  “May we begin, mistress?”

  To his surprise, the countess offered no remark, merely nodded her head. They had both been looking at the girl in silence, thinking their own thoughts. Richard supposed that the countess had lost count of the number of lives she had taken to sustain her own, but it was possible that some small remnant of her old self remained, enough so that she might stop and contemplate the nature of her existence occasionally. Perhaps the girl reminded her of herself in some way: that youth, that potential about to be snatched away.

  “We will begin,” the countess said. “But I must ask you something first.”

  At this, she tentatively touched his hand, which hung loosely at his side. Richard offered no response, but the countess persisted until she had laced her fingers through his.

  “Tell me, Richard,” the countess said, “What is the sun like?”

  Richard blinked. “I thought that your kind did not crave the light of the sun, mistress.”

  “We do not,” the countess conceded calmly. “But that does not mean I have forgotten it.”

  Richard wanted to pull his hand away, but the countess’ grip was too tight. He had seen pictures of men and women holding hands, lovers and friends and families. The countess’ actions were too intimate, implying affection where there was none. “I have only seen the sun through the bars of my windows, mistress.”

  “But you have seen it,” the countess insisted. “You have felt its warmth upon your skin. What is it like, Richard? I only want to hear of it one more time.”

  Her voice had turned plaintive and thoughtful, and her fingers loosened and withdrew from Richard’s hand, spreading them across her collarbone. “Please.”

  Richard’s shoulders slumped, a fresh wave of exhaustion flooding through him. He continued to let go, to discard all feelings, good and bad.

  “There was heat and light,” he said. “It looks like a bright ball of fire burning in the sky, like a phoenix egg suspended above me. In that room with those boys, those boys who are now long dead, we would look at it through the bars and reach for it, thinking we could simply pluck it from the sky. It seems so close, and yet it is so far away.”

  The countess had closed her eyes, letting his words wash over her. She smiled wistfully: “A phoenix egg. You are a true poet, Richard.”

  She seemed satisfied, and turned her attention back to the girl. “She will awaken soon. We must begin.”

  Her voice had turned sombre and Richard felt his heartbeat quicken. The countess bid him to kneel before her and the altar, and he did so without question. Time seemed to blur around him as he moved. He willed his body to remain as still as stone when it wished to quiver like a leaf.

  “It begins with you,” the countess said, laying her hands gently on the top of Richard’s head, an act that was almost affectionate. “There will be pain, but that pain will fade. Do you accept this?”

  Richard’s mouth was dry. He swallowed, trying to work the moisture back into his mouth. When he spoke, his voice cracked: “Yes. I accept this.”

  Her fingers trailed through his hair and down his neck, and he wondered how the boy from all those years ago had felt while he had knelt before her. Did he feel fear, sadness or elation? It hardly mattered, Richard realised; it had been too late for the boy, and now it was too late for him. He couldn’t change his fate, trying to do so would be like commanding the tides.

  “You must look me in the eyes, Richard,” the countess commanded softly.

  Richard’s breath hitched. The countess’ eyes were dangerous; whatever power it was she had,
it came from there. Richard knew what it was to be held in the grip of her endless blue eyes, how easy it was to forget who he was and relinquish the small amount of freedom that he had. Her eyes would will him to give himself to her entirely. He wanted to resist, but instead he dutifully lifted his head and let her gaze find him the way it had found him all those years ago in that parlour. He resigned himself to that feeling of helplessness, that complete loss of control that came from looking into the depths of her midnight eyes. His thoughts began to slip away, as if he were entering a dream, until all there was were her eyes and a night sky for him to fall through for eternity. His body slackened and his head lolled back, suddenly too heavy for him to hold up.

  It was then that the countess brought her mouth down upon the tender, vulnerable space between Richard’s neck and shoulder, lingering for a moment the way a lover might, before taking a sharp, sudden bite, sinking her teeth deeply through sinew and muscle into his hot, human blood. Richard’s body jolted as burning pain shot through his shoulder. He groaned, causing the countess to smile against his skin, purring as she drank.

  It was like nothing he had ever experienced. The countess had promised pain, and she had not lied, but it was an exquisite, revelatory sort of pain. Richard’s eyes were open, fixed upon the space where the countess’ face had been, but it seemed to him that he could see all things in all times all at once. The pain spread through his body, creeping up his neck, and Richard felt his mind expanding and shifting in his skull until he thought it might burst. His whole body seemed to twist and transform even though he couldn’t move. He could feel the blood leaving him, every single cell flowing from him and into the mouth of the beast, draining him of life.

  The countess released him. The feeling of her fangs leaving his body was as sharp as a slap to the face, and suddenly Richard could see clearly again. He fell back, his head hitting hard against the floor, too weak to even blink. The countess was kneeling beside him now, a thin knife in her little hand. She lifted Richard’s head and cradled it in her lap with surprising gentleness, and for a fleeting moment he thought that this was what love must be like. He watched her draw the blade across her wrist without flinching, and when she offered it to him he was too weak to turn away.

  “Drink, my darling,” she said tenderly. “Drink and be reborn.”

  Her blood was thick and cold, like it was coagulated in her veins, soaking into his tongue and forcing him to swallow. Richard accepted the sharp and metallic taste seeping into his tongue, trickling into his stomach, and felt a hunger awaken inside of him, a hunger the flooded through him and gave him new strength. He clamped his lips around the countess’ wrist and sucked the skin into his mouth, biting down, not hearing the countess gasp with pleasure. Her fingers twined into his hair, gripping at his skull with a strength that threatened to shatter the bone into nothing but shards.

  Richard drank and drank, his thirst blooming into a raging force that coursed with violence and need, until there was some new thing inside him, something that trickled through his veins and poisoned what little blood was left. It went directly to his heart; in his mind’s eye he could see it turn black, shrivelling and drying up into a husk, and he felt it when it stopped beating. It stopped beating, but he did not die. There were stars in his eyes, his body wracked with fire. This was the true pain of hell, an eternal roasting of flesh and twisting of insides, nothing but agony until the end of time.

  He could not say how long he suffered through the agony of the changing, only that it felt like an eternity. He was left only with darkness and pain, no longer breathing, no longer needing to breathe.

  Then the countess pulled her wrist away, and with that he felt a jolt shoot through him like the bolts of lightning that he had seen on the horizon during the many storms that crossed the sky during the long nights. He sat up, body pulsing with want and desire and hunger. His teeth, he realised, felt suddenly too large for his mouth, and when he touched his fingertips to them they were met with sharpness, pressing against his skin as keenly as the blade of a knife. He looked at his finger and watched as a tiny, perfectly formed pearl of blood was beading up. He realised that he could smell it, so tantalising like the blood from the meat he had feasted upon over the years. Without hesitating, Volkov went to taste the sweet, sweet liquid, to feel it spread on his tongue and down his throat and soothe his raging thirst.

  But the countess moved with the swiftness of a bird and stayed his hand, with her hand locked around his wrist.

  “No, Richard!” she hissed, dark eyes blazing with fury. “Your first blood in your new life must not be your own. You have taken my blood, for I am your maker, and look what we have here, look.”

  She grabbed his chin and forced his gaze upon the girl on the stone altar, and Richard remembered the rock in his hand, the sight of her blood, her youthful face in the candlelight. He realised that his vision was clearer, and it seemed to him that the girl somehow shone, and he went to her and beheld the veins beneath her skin, calling to him, demanding that he drain them dry. The girl’s eyelids fluttered open, eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and Richard swore that he heard her lashes cutting through the air.

  The countess appeared by his side, and she looked at him with a smile. He hadn’t bitten the girl, not yet; he was waiting for her permission, despite the intense need to sink his newfound fangs into the girl’s neck, or the femoral artery in her leg where the blood would flow thick and hot. He knew this from the many hours spent studying medical journals about everything, including anatomy and the intricacies of the circulatory system. He held himself above her throat, mouth open and teeth so close to puncturing the flesh that his hunger burned even stronger.

  The countess clapped her hands together and laughed delightedly “Ah, how I adore an obedient servant! I do love you Richard, as well as I can love.”

  Richard closed his eyes; the concept of love, like everything else, was far away from him. His hunger was beginning to cause him pain, a deep and terrible pain in his gut that convulsed in his muscles and through his limbs. His throat ached, as if it was being shredded from the inside, but he would not beg. The countess pouted, pulling a little girl face before rolling her eyes like she had lost interest, and waved her hand dismissively.

  “Feed then, Richard Volkov,” she said. “Take her.”

  Richard bit down with eagerness, his teeth easily tearing through the girl’s tender flesh. Hot blood flooded his mouth and the girl groaned in pain, too weak to fight against him. The blood was so sweet and so soothing; he quickly became lost in it. The finest wines, the richest foods, all the pleasures in all the word were nothing compared to this. It was just as the countess had said: the blood was fine, the blood of a young, strong body that juddered violently beneath his hands. It was like life itself was pouring into him, energising him and giving him strength. He would not stop until he had taken every drop from her.

  The girl weakened in her struggles, and if he concentrated hard enough he could hear her heartbeat slowing. She was barely breathing, and when she did it was a wet, rasping gurgle.

  Richard had never felt so powerful, and as he continued to drink he realised that he was aroused, as if the girl’s blood contained some potent magic that stirred and inflamed his loins, instilling in him a desire he had never felt before. He withdrew his fangs from her skin abruptly, eliciting another quiet moan of pain from the girls’ lips. Richard looked at her face, her skin white as paper, eyelids fluttering and eyes rolling around in her head. He looked at her breasts against the thin material of her shift, rapidly rising and falling with her receding breaths, and realised that he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to clamp his lips around her neck again to feed on her as he fucked her, and he wanted to feel her die in his hands as he did so. Such feelings would have once repulsed him, but now, lost in the heady haze of feeding, he revelled in it.

  But the countess’ eyes were still on him, and he felt his lust dampened beneath her gaze. He remembered the things she had s
aid, the way that she hated men because they hated her for being a woman. To Richard, the countess’ qualities had nothing to do with her sex; the blackness in her heart and the blackness that would consume his own heart cared not a one for who it claimed.

  He clenched his fists on either side of the girl’s body and knew that his other desires must wait; he supposed that he had all the time in the world now, to indulge in wickedness. For a moment, he wondered where the man he was had gone, and so quickly, that he would consider something so unspeakable. But then his head was filled only with the scent of the girl’s blood again, bringing with it a fresh wave of hunger, and he knew that he was already beyond such moral quandaries. He had already done the unspeakable; whatever soul he had was now lost. If he was damned, he would not fight against it. The thirst that had raged so powerfully within him had finally subsided, and he found that he could only lie there with her body growing cold under his own, sated at last. He found that with this new fullness, his urge to violate faded away until he felt nothing at all.

  “You must let me feed now, Richard,” the countess said, her voice at his ear. “It is necessary to the ritual that we share in this beautiful sacrifice.”

  It took all the strength he had to move away from the girl beneath him, but he could feel a strange pulling from his centre that compelled him to do it. She lowered her head and sank her own teeth into the girl’s neck, and this time there was no sound from her, no way for her to express the horror and agony of her last moments. Richard watched her body convulse one more time before going limp, her arm hanging heavily over the altar. Her heartbeat no longer sounded in his ears, and he knew that she was dead. He remained there a while longer and the countess languidly drank the last of her life force until there was none left. Richard suspected that he had not left much for her. He didn’t particularly care.

  He looked down at himself. His shirt was already torn and dirtied, dried sweat plastering it to his body. Now it was covered with innocent blood, a great stain across the front collar to tail that reminded him of the painted bodies of warriors on the battlefields in his books. It was smeared across his skin, dried and crusted in the hollow of his collarbone. His hair hunk lankly in his eyes, and when he ran his teeth along his newfound fangs, he found them suddenly retracting, growing smaller.