Eternal Blood - Books 1-3 Wolf Shield, Sword of the Blood, Vampire Bride

by Maria Isabel Pita

  ETERNAL BLOOD

  Wolf Shield

  Sword of the Blood

  Vampire Bride

  by

  Maria Isabel Pita

  Copyright ©2011 Maria Isabel Pita

  Smashwords Edition

  The weightiest questions of metaphysics arise practically out of our desire to arrive at an understanding of the possibility of our immortality—from this fact they derive their value and cease to be merely the idle discussions of fruitless curiosity. For the truth is that metaphysics has no value save in so far as it attempts to explain in what way our vital longing can or cannot be realized.—Miguel de Unamuno

  Chapter One

  Audrey Goodrich arranged for a licensed Private Hire vehicle to take her safely home to Ashbury from a wine bar in Chelmsford. The rosy fog in her head blending with potential fog on the roads could prove deadly. If she hit a deer she would be extremely upset. If she hit a human being, well, her own life would be over; she didn’t know how she could ever recover mentally or emotionally, much less atone for her supreme carelessness. Her young driver didn’t try to make conversation. A tall black man, he had gracefully unfolded himself from the Mini Cooper to open the back door for her. She sat in the dark gratefully absorbing the intense silence between them. Inevitably, she began wondering what his life was like, whether he was happy or if driving countless people around to their chosen destinations was interfering with his own goals even while, hopefully, helping him realize at least some of his dreams.

  The vast night stretching all around them offered no answers to her questions. Her handsome driver remained an intriguing enigma, unlike the old school friends she had left behind in a Duke Street bar. They had just ordered a third bottle of wine when she excused herself. She could only drink so much before a switch went off in her palate and the fruit of the vine began tasting bitter. Street lamps—not to mention the glow on the horizon that was London—made it difficult to see any stars. Flying effortlessly above the tree line through the pollution-veiled sky, only her own ghostly face was visible in the window. The illusion was oddly empowering. She smiled. In those moments, turning thirty-years-old felt right and good, like crossing an important threshold.

  She asked the driver to stop the car at the beginning of the long driveway leading up to the house, concealed even in February behind centuries-old trees. She handed him some money and quickly let herself out.

  He murmured, “Thanks, miss,” in response to her generous tip.

  As always, the cold came as an invigorating shock. Still wrapped in a warm buzz, she enjoyed the sound of her high-heeled boots clicking confidently up the stone drive. The impenetrable darkness always made her body instinctively nervous, but she had long ago memorized every twist and turn in the path and she knew she was safe because she was home. Very soon she would glimpse the flickering of the two gas lamps Darlene and Edward conspired to keep burning night and day, as though they had never heard of global warming or any other such nonsense. After that, only a heartbeat or two would pass before she saw the golden glow emanating from her father’s study. He often stayed up until past three or four in the morning reading or writing or both, as if after the witching hour of midnight it was easier for him to travel back in time. Stuart Goodrich was a historian and a highly respected scholar who, every five years or so, published another ponderous tome dedicated exclusively to one arcane facet of a long dead civilization. But, as he had informed her more than once, nothing ever truly died it was simply recycled into the hearts and minds of future generations whether they chose to realize it or not. When she was a little girl she hadn’t understood what he meant—obviously she was herself and no one else—but as she grew older it secretly began thrilling her to know that the elegant ancient Roman lady she had once seen illustrated in a book—with her foamy white dress and coiling black ringlets spilling from a golden diadem—lived on in the infinitely tiny world of the blood cells she had just learned about in science class. And this elegant matron (who might have slit her wrist in a marble bath after the man she loved was killed in some battle or other) was joined on the mysterious river of her blood by numerous other figures who had all lived and died in unimaginably distant times and places. Each exotic personality smiled with enigmatic sensuality on the wood-and-paper barks of the countless books she had consumed and continued devouring. Recently, however, she had transferred the ever growing crowd to the sleek spaceship of her e-book reader.

  She spotted the gas lights pulsing steadily on either side of the large front door as she wondered for the thousandth time what really had happened to her mother. Audrey was only eight-years-old when her mother had simply disappeared one evening, leaving her purse, her papers, absolutely all her worldly possessions behind. The police had searched for weeks that stretched into months but Wilona and her abductor, if there ever had been one, left not a single clue behind her husband and daughter could hope on.

  Audrey quickened her pace as her legs—exposed by thin black stockings beneath a short skirt—abruptly felt the chill, no longer warmed as they had been at the wine bar by admiring glances. A dense ground fog was rolling in and the moisture wafting around her ankles gave more teeth to the cold. It seldom dropped below freezing in Ashbury but for the past several years it had snowed more than once in the winter. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, blizzards… BBC Essex was filled with reports of record-breaking destructive weather she had fervently told her friends just a few hours ago was a clear indication of climate change. They had, more or less, agreed with her but quickly changed the subject to the much more important topic of men and how pathetic they generally were, unfaithful liars or boring selfish mama’s boys, etc. etc. They seemed to fail to realize that conversations about the environment and about relationships were one and the same if you really thought about it, as Audrey tended to do about everything.

  She paused on the path as she heard the wail of a siren in the distance. She wondered if there had been some kind of accident in the village but then the way her heart began racing told her the sound was not mechanical; it was alive and issuing from the throat of an animal. Perhaps a neighbor's dog upset at being left outside on such a cold night? She began walking again at a deliberately sedate pace because in truth she was somewhat unnerved by the mournfully undulating howls. A line from an old seventy’s comedy popped into her mind, “Children of the night, shut-up!” yet there was nothing funny about the fact that another irreplaceable species went extinct almost every time she blinked. England’s rich forests were only tattered remnants of themselves while (selfishly many people would say) she clung to her family’s forty acres, all that remained of a once grand estate.

  She was disappointed to see that her father had apparently gone to bed. No warm welcoming light greeted her from the wing where his study was located. Darlene, Don, Edward and Consuelo all lived in the back of the house. Her childish disappointment was replaced an instant later by a rush of adrenalin that set her heart pounding and her feet moving without her even thinking about waiting to find out what those two pale gleams were she abruptly discerned amidst the trees. There was something in the woods watching her, something too close to the ground to be a deer and with eyes too large, too silvery, too intent to belong to a fox…

  By the time she reached the front door her lungs were burning; she hadn’t run so fast in years. Only then did she dare to glance behind her even as she thrust her key into the lock with a trembling hand. She could no longer see the eyes she had felt watching her, but as she quickly closed the heavy door behind her,
all her nerve ends told her she had brushed up against a real danger on the very doorstep of her home, which until then had always felt perfectly safe. She had turned thirty-years-old today and before the clock struck midnight the Powers-That-Be had given her a warning as a gift—no place on earth is ever completely safe and she would be wise to remember that.

  Chapter Two

  Before breakfast, Audrey visited Merlin’s grave in the woods. Her beloved Shih Tzu had died four-and-a-half months ago, on the first of October. He had been with her thirteen years, three months and seven days. She would miss him for the rest of her life. It was still hard to believe he was gone forever, at least as far as the limited awareness she enjoyed during her waking hours was concerned. Thank God she sometimes dreamed with him. The night after he died, standing outside on her bedroom balcony, she had looked up at the sky and cried, “Oh my God, it’s Merlin!” because she had distinctly seen his profile, his adorably regal head, colossally shaped by moonlight, clouds and sky. Her little boy’s unmistakable countenance dominated the heavens for a few undeniable and blessed seconds. Then he was gone. She had been lying on her bed crying and stepped outside just in time to see him.

  Ever since then, she hadn’t been quite so miserable. She had felt some magical force touch her, soothe and energize her with a vision of the little being she had loved so much. And as the days slowly passed his absence began feeling like the unreality while his continued presence became an undeniable fact. It didn’t matter that he lived “only” in her memory now, she could still feel him, almost even see him at times, and she knew, deep in her heart (as the expression went) they would be together again. She couldn’t possibly doubt that for a moment. She thought of Merlin as her GOD DOG for he had purged her faith of most of its doubts. Her spiritual beliefs were stronger than ever and her beloved pet—like a four-legged guardian angel who had been her constant companion while in the meantime boyfriends came and went—had everything to do with her new-found inner strength.

  For the most part, Audrey kept such thoughts to herself. Only Aapti was privy to her most profound feelings. Her Indian friend considered repressed emotions much stranger, and certainly more dangerous, than passionate outpourings of sentiment which were, she declared with her innately profound confidence, the very spice of life. Only Aapti new Audrey had twice dreamed of Merlin playing happily in a gated garden with other dogs his size. Aapti never subjected her to sad, condescending smiles but rather listened intently, silently nodding, as if she understood exactly what her friend was talking about and didn’t doubt for a moment that the little Shih Tzu she too had loved was romping around in a better world now. Aapti embraced loss and sadness with the same determined joy she had exhibited in the face of her elaborate wedding plans and now concentrated on her impatient pregnancy tests. She would never dream of suggesting that Audrey take an anti-depressant to feel better about the death of her pet. “There is a pill to cure everything now!” she scoffed. “As if we are only machines and you can simply press a button to make all bad things go away. But the only thing that will go away is you!” Audrey agreed, understanding that by “you” Aapti meant the soul and not just the body it inhabited.

  Leaving the large old oak tree Merlin’s little body was helping to feed, Audrey started back toward the house, bee-lining it for the kitchen where Consuelo would have a hot breakfast of eggs, toast and tea ready to go for her. Just then a troop of Robins flew in from somewhere and invaded one of the holly trees on her path. Their wings flapping energetically, they perched on swaying branches battling each other for the bright red berries. They didn’t even seem aware of her and she found herself smiling. A sudden urgent rustling in the underbrush brought her attention abruptly back to earth as a black streak raced across the forest floor—her fourteen-year-old pussy cat, Whispers, whose former owner had had her declawed. That never stopped her. Entirely black and petite, Whispers boasted a personality the size of a lionesses’ and commanded the respect, tainted with fear, of the entire household. She still had all her teeth and if you touched her the wrong way, or annoyed her for any reason, she didn’t hesitate to use them. Stuart had christened her “A pussy of strongly held opinions”, a note of admiration in his voice, while his housekeeper of more than twenty years frowned and refrained from commenting. Until he was out of ear shot, then Darlene let Audrey know just what she thought of the little black demon she had inexplicably decided to adopt.

  “You know perfectly well I didn’t adopt her, she adopted me, Darlene. I think she liked the fact that I offered to name her after an ancient Egyptian queen before I realized she wasn’t a stray, and that I fed her milk and cheese. Hilda probably gave her only cheap dry food for ten years. And imagine chasing a pussy away with a broom every time it kindly brought you back a treasure!”

  “A treasure?” Darlene fastidiously wiped her hands on her pristine white apron. “You call a dead mouse a treasure?” She walked away. Her broad back could broadcast disapproval without her having to bother saying another word. It had no effect on Audrey. She and Darlene adored each other and everyone knew it, but rituals were necessary to preserve life’s sedate decorum by keeping unseemly displays of emotion at bay.

  When Whiskers—promptly renamed Whispers by her new owner—abandoned poor old Hilda and determinedly adopted Lady Goodrich, the rumor swiftly spread through the village that the cat had become the young woman’s familiar. It was said in jest and yet there was an undercurrent of mingled curiosity and suspicion beneath the modern rational façade everyone was obliged to adopt to some extent. But Ashbury’s roots were centuries deep and, as Stuart said, nothing really died, especially entertaining superstitions. Personally, Audrey was in complete agreement with the local gossips. Whispers was definitely her pussy, as evidenced by the superhuman (super feline in her case) effort she made to restrain herself from subjecting the hand that fed her to love bites of painfully unrestrained fervor. Audrey admired Whisper’s intense response to everything but did not hesitate to gently slap her exquisite little head in reprimand if she got carried away. Their relationship was one of mutual respect and ever growing affection. Whispers was smart enough to prefer living in a house where there was a fine replica of an ancient Egyptian statue of the cat goddess Bast prominently displayed in the master’s study. She had unnerved more than one visitor to Stuart’s academic lair by sitting perfectly still right beside the statue, like it’s mirror image, and then abruptly lifting her paw to casually lick it just as the unsuspecting person walked past. Audrey always rewarded Whispers for such intelligent mischievous behavior (Darlene used other, invariably negative, adjectives) with a kitty treat.

  Audrey indulged in two soft-poached eggs and a hearty slice of freshly baked whole-grain bread before discussing the day’s menu with Consuelo, a native of Toledo, Spain, whom Stuart had acquired during a tour of the city’s Medieval churches. Consuelo avoided the damp English weather so unpleasing to old bones by scarcely ever leaving the warm, divine smelling kitchen she ruled over with a profound satisfaction that made everything she cooked taste fulfilling. Stuart wrote massive tomes crammed with a minutia of information and spoke very little but when he did anyone within earshot felt compelled to listen. Audrey hadn’t been there but she could imagine the effect he had had on Consuelo—the only cook serving the numerous customers of a popular little café tucked away in the shadow of a crumbling cathedral—when his tall, fair-haired figure stepped into the tiny, steaming kitchen. “Señora,” he said, “you are an artist” and handed her his business card. “It is my fervent wish to take you back to England with me for I have no desire to live another day without your superlative cooking. I will arrange for your Visa, pay you whatever you wish and guarantee you an honored position in my home for as long as you live.” Consuelo never tired of telling the story, invariably ending it with the reverent statement, “I felt like a preencess in a fairee tale!”

  Audrey was ten-years-old, and still seriously missing her mother, when Consuelo arrived looking
terrified, her black eyes vulnerably wide. Stuart had asked her to give him a detailed shopping list so her kitchen would be fully stocked the moment she set foot in it and immediately she began whipping up a batch of chicken, beef and spinach empanadas while Audrey sat watching her curiously. Once they were cool enough to eat, Audrey took a tentative bite of one, chewed more boldly, and then promptly consumed one of each kind before politely asking for seconds. As far as she could remember, Consuelo hadn’t stopped smiling since. The only time the Goodrich chef had looked uncertain about anything was three years ago, when Audrey returned home from her emotionally disastrous stint in London determined to triple the size of the estate’s garden even while reverting to strictly organic farming methods. Don raised a bushy red eyebrow, but did as the misses said and began spoiling the laying hens with flax and bird seed to supplement their organic laying pellets. They had always been allowed to roam free and eat whatever they pleased. A large cold frame was constructed and soon the kitchen had fresh produce to work with year round.

  The project kept Audrey busy for nearly a year and deepened the bond between her and Consuelo as together they kept concocting delicious yet also healthy dishes. To her relieved surprise, it had taken her less than a month to get over the man she had left behind in London, but she was still struggling with the self-consciousness he had drilled into her about her lack of a career. Obliged to work for a living, her ex had grown less and less successful at pretending not to resent her extremely cushy Trust Fund, especially after he romantically got down on one knee and proposed to her in an expensive restaurant (his treat). Somewhat to her surprise, she had heard herself tell him she wasn’t ready to get married, not yet. “Well, what do you want to do with your life?” he had demanded with a stiff smile as he resumed his seat, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment at being rejected in public. “When you’re not out shopping all you do is lie around the flat reading romance novels!” He laughed and glanced around them as if this explained everything and he was not to blame she was stupid enough to turn him down. He didn’t seem to realize her reading list was much more extensive. He also seemed to have forgotten all the gourmet meals she usually had waiting for him every evening after he got home from the bank, where he worked as a loan officer.