Futile Flame

by Sam Stone

  Soaring into the air I am relieved to feel more like myself. We float, holding hands above the city. We are in Chester. It is full of quaint older buildings. The hotel we are staying in is opposite the train station and is suitably ostentatious. It fulfils my needs, though Lilly is far less fussy than I. The hotel staff whisper amongst themselves that it is haunted, but for the most part our time here has been undisturbed. I see the train station from the air and fly in that direction.

  We move around slowly, looking for a likely target. A mother leaves the station leading her small child by the hand straight to an idling car. An old lady pushes her Zimmer frame down the street. A vagrant walks towards a bench at the front of the station, obviously looking for a resting place for the night. Without thinking I swoop down, picking the vagrant up off his feet and up into the air with us. His smell assaults my nostrils. He reeks of urine, faeces and BO. He is not the type of meal we would usually enjoy, but at the moment our world is on shaky ground. We cannot afford to be choosy.

  I gag the man with my hand as we pull him through the window of our room. Lilly closes the window behind us and then opens the bathroom door. I pull his shocked and frightened body inside throwing him roughly into the shower. We turn on the water, rinsing him. It feels as though we are washing and preparing a meal.

  ‘We are,’ Lilly laughs. ‘There’s no way I’m biting him till he’s clean.’

  The tramp stares at her uncomprehendingly, moans and complains in a scared, quiet voice. I strip him of his ripped, worn coat and begin to peel away the remainder of his stinking clothing. Once naked, we scrub his shrivelled body under the hot water.

  ‘Would you like some whisky?’ Lilly asks, kindly. ‘It must be awful being out on such a cold night.’

  The tramp’s cataract-impeded vision clouds up, tears fill his pale eyes. ‘Are you an angel?’ he asks through a mouth of missing teeth.

  Lilly smiles at him. ‘If it helps, yes.’

  I watch her wrap a towel around him and hand him a full tumbler of whisky, which he gulps down gratefully. Lilly, my seraph, my beauty, is a cold-blooded angel of mercy. She appears outwardly to have empathy with the man. She rubs his hair dry with a hand towel. Her expression is kind when facing him, blank and cold when he can’t see her. Then she feeds him glass after glass of the whisky until he begins slurring his words.

  She leads him to the chair beside the bed, sitting him down and handing him a renewed glass. He is now wrapped in the thick towelling bathrobe that is complementary to clients in our expensive suite.

  ‘You first,’ Lilly says.

  ‘I can wait...’

  ‘No, you’re still weak. Please, darling. I want to see you back to full strength.’

  I take the tramp without further thought. The skin on his throat is tough and weather-worn but my fangs break through easily. His blood erupts like a geyser, flooding my mouth. I taste the whisky, but it has no other effect than to tickle the back of my throat as his strength fills my veins. My power and vitality soar.

  Lilly joins me a few minutes later, sucking on the wound I’ve created. We then take turns. I can taste her sweet saliva mingled with the sharper tasting blood as we drain the vagrant of every last drop he has to give.

  After, when he lays dead and cooling in the chair, Lilly gazes down at his face. He looks peaceful.

  ‘Maybe I am an Angel of Death,’ she says, and I don’t doubt it.

  Chapter 32 – Present

  The Haunting Past

  Lucrezia smiles at Lilly and I as she places her coffee cup down beside her.

  ‘I was the Duke’s mistress for a year before I saw Gabriele in Florence. I remember he had the most beautiful voice. It was your debut, I believe.’ She turns to me.

  ‘I remember.’

  My mind goes back to the night I first sang, the night when I found my cousin Francesca with her lover in one of the reception rooms.

  ‘I tried to follow you.’

  ‘I know,’ she laughs. ‘In those days, that happened a lot to me.’

  Lilly looks from one to the other of us. Her expression is inscrutable, and I wonder if my darling is feeling a little jealous.

  ‘Gabriele was so beautiful, and so young. As he sang my fangs extended in pleasure and I had to hide them behind my fan until I could manage to get my lust in check,’ Luci explains to Lilly.

  ‘I can understand that,’ Lilly smiles. ‘He is pretty buff.’

  ‘I was so cruel to you,’ Lucrezia says suddenly, looking into my eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ I say quickly. ‘What happened next, after Florence and Venice?’

  Even this brief reference reminds me of my haunting past. The pain from loss of all I had loved in my mortal life was too much to bear. I did not want to remember how we met again ten years later in Venice. Nor how she seduced me in the Doge’s Palace. I couldn’t revisit all that had happened after my re-birth. It would bring about too many of the most torturous memories, particularly of the death of my son, Gabi, and the lonely years that followed.

  Lucrezia’s face clouds over. A new fear bleeds into her eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure what you need to know. But after you... after Venice, nothing eventful happened. I just existed. Went from one court to the other. Enjoyed the life for a while, as well as the powerful men. They were so easy to seduce. It didn’t matter how beautiful their original mistresses were. In the end I grew bored and I began to live the life of a recluse once more.’

  I stir sugar into my coffee as I listen to her speak. Her lyrical voice makes the years that have passed seem so very casual and normal. This is an immortal’s life passing by without incident; except, of course, for the daily routine of murder and the constant craving for blood, which ultimately drives and motivates all of our actions.

  Lucrezia brushes her blonde curls from her eyes as Lilly nods sympathetically to her story. I am not zoned out. I scan Lucrezia’s words for information. As always I am very aware of Lilly’s heightened energy, as it flows around and through me. I stroke her leg under the table subconsciously. It is almost as though I cannot be near her without touching her, as if I still cannot believe she is really mine.

  ‘And nothing significant happened?’ Lilly asks, sounding surprised. ‘You never found Miranda?’

  ‘No. And as the years passed I gave up hope of seeing her again. I knew she must have died. When I’d known her she was in her early twenties, though she seemed to have the experience of old age. As I reached my two hundredth birthday, I knew there was no point in even considering that anyone from my old life still existed, save perhaps Caesare. But I still thought of her and I still dreamt of the day she saved me. Other than that, nothing of note happened. At least not until Paris many years later.’

  Chapter 33 – Lucrezia’s Story

  Cold Flight

  ‘He’s coming. Run, Luci.’

  I felt the wind rushing through my hair as I was swept up from my bed and out through the open window into the night sky long before I could become fully lucid. The white lace hem of my nightgown caught on the edge of the balcony, tearing loudly as my captor refused to pause. The translucent fibres were visible in the candlelight as the tiny threads snapped and sprayed into the air in a cloud of dust, reflected by the light shining from the moon.

  I had been ripped from my sleep yet it lingered still, numbed my senses. I couldn’t open my eyes, and my head lolled over the arm of my captor like a rag doll carried by a spoilt child.

  It was Caesare, of course. But Caesare was no adolescent. He was a man. No, he was more than that; he was an immortal, and that was far more dangerous. I tried to shake myself out of the dream. Miranda had been so often in my thoughts lately, and now I knew why. Some instinct had warned me of Caesare; somehow he had penetrated my protection spells. Then, he had two hundred years to learn how.

  We ascended through the cold sky. The freezing Paris fog whipped over my now bare legs as we rose up and above it. There was no respite
from the cold, even though I knew – had known for a long time – that the cold could not hurt me, that I couldn’t be easily killed. Nevertheless, extreme conditions could be uncomfortable and even painful. My face, hands and feet stung with the frost. My dull eyes tried to pick out light from the windows of bars and restaurants; any signs of life below. The freezing fog was too dense and distorted the buildings, warping them into unrecognisable phantoms.

  We travelled through the night. My limbs we numb, my faculties dimmed, often I cried out in pain at the relentlessness of Caesare’s flight.

  ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Caesare! No...’

  My face was buffeted by the wind. Though I could barely see my brother through my half closed eyes, I noticed for the first time that he had shaved away the facial hair that for most of his life had been his trademark. His teeth were gritted, his jaw set into a harsh line. His eyes, peering out from under the brim of a hat firmly placed on his head, pierced the night like green beacons. His silence was more terrifying than any of his old threats had ever been. I was held immobile with his arms braced around my waist.

  A violent cascade of fear engulfed my heart. Every muscle in my body ached. I drifted in and out of consciousness. If I had been mortal, I would have died for certain in the first hour.

  Horror and panic swam with the fresh blood I’d consumed that evening, swirling around my stomach in a nauseous mass. He had found me. How on earth had I thought to escape him?

  Caesare was stronger, more powerful than I remembered. His arms felt like forged metal as I struggled against him. My efforts had little more effect than the punches of a child in the throes of a tantrum. As I hit out he barely shrugged to subdue me and I tired quickly. I realised I must be victim to some wicked spell because my body felt so weak and limp against his strength when physically we should have been evenly matched.

  The night stretched into early morning. I could see the sun rising over the snowy peaks of the Alps. At the sight of this distant, rising inferno Caesare gasped and we abruptly

  plummeted thousands of feet towards the ground. I shrieked in fear, not knowing whether the impact from such a height could kill us both. The roar of the wind in my ears deafened me as we fell down and down and the hard, snow-packed earth grew closer to my horrified eyes. I tore at his thick, black, velvet frock coat trying to break free, but he pulled me closer to his chest. Even though I pushed against him with all my remaining strength, I was helpless as we headed down, gaining momentum. I closed my eyes, bracing my body for the collision.

  Caesare halted in mid-air. We were thirty or forty feet from the ground. The sudden stop jerked my body agonisingly. My head hit his shoulder with a concussing blow. I grunted and flopped against him. He held me for a moment. I felt him push my hair, a knotted mass, away from my fear-frozen cheeks with uncharacteristic tenderness. Confused, I opened my eyes and saw that his eyes burned with a new, unfamiliar light. My heart thumped as he scrutinised me.

  We headed down farther and arrived in the midst of a dense forest. Caesare flipped me effortlessly in his arms, like a groom carrying his bride; running with me, gliding easily through the trees.

  ‘Are you insane?’ I gasped when I was able to speak again.

  His laughter roared and a flock of birds screeched up into the air in fright.

  ‘Please stop! I can walk for myself.’

  ‘No. We need to make my lair before the dawn fully breaks.’

  ‘Why?’

  He ran faster. He was quicker, more agile than I had ever been. I realised with fear, as I looked up into his face, that the vampiric infection was different with him. It was far darker, more intensely evil. I knew then the answer to my question. The superstitious belief held by peasants was that vampires had to shun the daylight, yet this had never been the case for me. Somehow Caesare had evolved and now he fulfilled the common belief. The sun was painful, possibly even deadly, to him.

  The dawn began to filter through the trees. Caesare stumbled, smashing our bodies against the hard wood of an oak as he sought cover; but my body was numb now and I no longer felt pain. When an occasionally sliver of light landed on him he howled like an injured wolf. But always he ran, keeping to the shadows as best he could. His grip also tightened around me. I knew that escape was completely impossible.

  The trees thinned. Gaining shelter from the warming sun became increasingly hard for him to achieve. He flitted from shadow to shadow. His hold on me loosened as he became more distracted. I began to hope that maybe I could break free of him. No sooner had the thought drifted through my mind than a drug-like drowsiness anaesthetized me again. Caesare had been exerting some supernatural will over me. He was using the last of his strength to retain his control. I fought the swoon that threatened to engulf me. The snow-covered trees blurred into a swirl of brown and white that no longer made any sense to my repressed senses.

  Ahead loomed the most prevalent, darkest shadow yet. As the forest dwindled we came upon an opening that led directly into the mountainside. With a last spurt of energy Caesare broke free of the remaining tree cover. His eyes were now red balls of bleeding fire. I felt his skin quickly warm and ignite as he headed through the sunlight.

  Chapter 34 – Lucrezia’s Story

  False Security

  I woke to the sound of running water. My eyes were hazy, crusted with grime from the journey. My limbs felt stiff and sore. Under my body I felt the soft texture of pure silk spread over a yielding mattress. My fingers twitched with pins and needles as feeling began to return to them. I lifted my hand and looked at it stupidly; it felt as though it didn’t belong to me. I forced it to move and tried to rub my eyes. My nails were torn and thick with dirt as though I had tried to claw my way out of the grave.

  ‘In a way you did,’ a voice murmured softly from somewhere above me.

  Memory returned in a rush and I tried to sit up, collapsing back as dizziness overtook me. Caesare. Oh my God! He could still read my thoughts.

  He chuckled. A tremor shuddered through my body.

  ‘Of course, Luci. I always could.’

  I focused my eyes above me, expecting to see him towering there. Nothing. I tried to move my head, but my neck was immobile. Panic gripped my mind. I was paralysed, helpless. Maybe I had been injured irreparably during the journey? Crippled in some way? My other hand flew to my throat. I gasped for air, suffocating on my own fear as I pawed at my skin. There was an invisible force that held me flat against the bed.

  ‘Be still,’ he said. ‘Your strength will return soon. I had to use a spell on you. It will take time to wear off.’

  So. He knew about spells and magic. Why was I surprised?

  ‘Where am I?’ I croaked. ‘You have no right...’

  ‘You belong to me.’ His voice was definite, matter-of-fact.

  White hot tears leaked from my eyes and slid down my temples to merge with the grit in my hair. I shook my head in denial. Relief rushed into my face in a hot flush when I realised I had movement at last. Slowly my limbs began to twitch back to life and I felt less powerless. Within a few minutes my eyesight sharpened and I could see the ceiling of the room more clearly. It was draped in purple silk that scooped down and up in the style of a luxurious Arab tent. I turned my head slowly, expecting discomfort or pain but felt neither as it moved freely.

  My eyes scanned the room. The wall to my far left was covered in a bright tapestry. Woven in rich, warm colours, it depicted the scene of a masked ball. I was fascinated, even mesmerised by the vibrantly dressed revellers, as they stood poised with their dance partners. Around the dancers, a group of musicians with intense expressions played their instruments. Chamber music came to my ears. The figures on the tapestry moved, swirling and sweeping as the music grew louder, faster. I struggled for breath, my pulse racing in time with the melody. I closed my eyes and the music faded. I looked once more at the tapestry and immediately heard the angelic tones of a harp. Confused, I turned away. The music faded again to a distant echo. I lay, my
hands covering my closed eyes, until the room steadied and only silence remained.

  When I opened my eyes again I found myself looking at an ornate fireplace that was carved from rock rather than marble. Caesare stood, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece as he gazed into the flames. He was dressed in black, just as he had been when he tore me from my bed. He wore a black ruffled shirt, loosely over tight leather breeches. Only now he no longer wore the velvet frock coat and brimmed hat that had been pulled down over his brow to shelter him from the sun. Beautiful, elegant, slender, feline, even down to the long tapered fingers that rested on his face, my brother was indeed a handsome man. His beardless face looked younger and fresher than I recalled. In the firelight his skin glowed with that same translucent whiteness as my own. His hair, the same white gold as mine, was pulled back into a tail that was tied neatly by a leather thong. I admired his profile. Sharper, crueller than mine, but the family resemblance was so acute that I almost felt I was seeing myself dressed as a man.

  He was lost in thought, or maybe he merely enjoyed my scrutiny. I wasn’t sure, but I pulled my eyes away from his hypnotic frame and looked around the room.

  I found I could sit as I pushed up against the downy mattress. I shuffled upwards, resting my back against an ornate headboard that was covered with carved cherubs. Its design matched the furniture in the room. There was a writing bureau, open with a piece of parchment lying flat next to an inkpot and quill.

  At the bottom of the bed there was a wardrobe; beautiful carvings swirled around the fine mirrors that covered the doors. A shivering, bedraggled wreck sat wide eyed in the bed. With shock I realised it was my own reflection. I looked like a mad woman deserted at the gates of an asylum. My nightgown was filthy and torn and hung from my shoulders like paupers’ rags. I closed my eyes to the horror of myself and flopped back against the comfort of the pillows.