Finally Julius felt like he could breathe. The horse, sensing his mood ease, slowed from its headlong gallop. It settled into a mile eating canter, hooves pounding a soothing rhythm on the hard packed road. A cool breeze tugged at Julius’s hair and coat and he relaxed back into the saddle, his motion becoming one with the stallion.
It was so much easier when he was away at war. He’d actually been disappointed when his commander announced they were returning to Great Britain following an unsuccessful attempt to oust France from the King’s precious Hanover. Away from home he could pretend that all was well with his marriage, that his beautiful wife was eagerly awaiting his triumphant return. Reality was always a cold, hard slap in the face. But he knew that his father needed him, wanted to hand over the running of the large estate and take more time with his beloved wife. Honoured with the title of Baron, his father’s responsibilities were many, both to home and to country. At twenty-seven Julius was already past the time to begin assuming some of the household responsibilities. His younger brother, born almost a decade after him, had been spoilt into, what was looking like, perpetual immaturity by his mother, so Julius would get no reprieve from his responsibilities on that front. The prospect of running the estate, thus proving himself a worthy replacement for his father, weighed heavily on his conscience, and he knew he couldn’t run away to war forever.
As his mind whirled in erratic circles, the horse slowed further, first to a jog and then a walk. Giving the horse its head he silently raged at the unfairness of life, knowing that there was no perfect solution, but desperate to find one that would make life just a little less intolerable. The stallion wandered off the road taking a footpath into a thicket of dense brush and small trees. Less moonlight lit the way through the tall foliage and Julius debated turning back, but the horse seemed sure of his footing and the way ahead. Julius wasn’t the only one who rode the stallion; when he was away at war his brother or one of his cousins usually kept the horse in work for him, one of them must come this way regularly for the horse to be so confident.
A few minutes later Julius knew why. As the trees began to thin out they crested a gentle rise, and the land dropped away to reveal a small clearing encompassing a reed-lined pool and a thickly grassed bank. Julius couldn’t help the wry grin. It was the perfect spot for a tryst, either his brother of one of his cousins was probably coming out here to meet a lady. Or perhaps she wasn’t exactly a lady. Whatever their reasons it was a quiet, peaceful setting, its serenity called to him and the ride had left him thirsty.
He dismounted, loosened the saddle’s girth a little and led the horse closer to the surprisingly clear water, both of them dipping their heads to slake their thirsts. As Julius lifted his head the sound of rustling caught his attention. It wasn’t the quiet, irregular rustle of a small animal, more of a measured, consistent sound. Like a person approaching from the far side of the pool. He instantly went on the alert, berating himself for leaving the manor without his sword at his side. While this area of Essex wasn’t known to be dangerous, bands of thieves weren’t unheard of.
The woman who stepped from the trees made a small sound of surprise as she saw him in the moonlight, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ as her hand flew to cover it.
“I’m so sorry, my Lord, I didn’t think anyone else came here at night,” she breathed. Her voice was pure velvet, soft and smooth. She dipped her head, allowing her mane of chestnut hair to conceal her face, but not before Julius caught a glimpse of her large, expressive eyes, dainty nose, high cheekbones and pale, creamy skin. “I’ll just be going.”
“It’s quite alright, my Lady,” he assured her quickly, “my horse and I simply wanted a drink, don’t let us chase you away.” She dropped her hand from her mouth, tugging on her shawl to demurely cover her shoulders and throat.
“Thank you, my Lord,” she said, “but I should probably go.”
“What are you doing out here? Are you alone?” A cold shiver suddenly ran up his spine and something deep inside him flared to life. That strange sense that sometimes warned him of an unseen enemy in the midst of a battle. Adrenalin surged and he tensed, ready for anything.
“I…” she hesitated, “I am alone. I just came here for a little peace.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper, a tiny thread of fear laced into it. “Please, my Lord, please don’t hurt me.”
Julius’s innate chivalry flamed to life, burning away his internal sense of wrongness.
“Of course not, my Lady,” he reassured her. “I would never hurt any woman. Put your mind at ease. Come and sit. I will leave you to your peace.”
Simone. She’d whispered the name, a gentle sounding name, falling from her perfect angel’s lips. He’d had to work hard to draw more from her, forcing him to use persistent, gentle interrogation to pull words from her. She was in hiding, fleeing an arranged marriage to a brute of a man. She lived in a cottage on the outskirts of the village, keeping her appearance disguised during the day. Her nightly trip to the pond was the only time she felt safe enough to allow herself to simply be who she was.
Her mere presence made him ache for her. She was utterly bewitching, her beauty drawing him in, her nature a captivating mix of femininity and strong-willed defiance. She enslaved him with her reluctance to speak of herself, feeding him only tiny morsels of herself, keeping him hungry for more. Playing him like a harp in the hands of an angel.
He returned to the pool night after night; until the passion between them was too powerful to resist. Their first night together, in the soft grass alongside the water, had been more than he could possibly have imagined. She was fire to Eleanor’s ice; red hot passion to cold, hard indifference. She was responsive to his every touch, as eager to give pleasure as to receive it. Her body was lean and delicate but strong and indefatigable. The chemistry between them was all but explosive.
He was hooked, as thoroughly caught as a fat, spring trout on fisherman’s fly. In his haze of love and lust, he was utterly ignorant of the alarm bell peeling wildly in the back of his consciousness. He could so easily have left things as they were. He could have continued his days as his father’s responsible son, Eleanor’s caring husband and loyal subject of the crown, all while sating himself at night with Simone’s body. It was his sense of propriety; his need to protect and nurture Simone, his desire to give Eleanor her freedom, that lead him to make his fatal mistake. He tried to force Simone’s hand, pushing her to marry him so that she no longer had to live in hiding, promising to put Eleanor aside using the excuse of her inability to bear him an heir. His pig-headed respectability trumped all Simone’s warnings as well as his own.
After years of being denied its warmth, the fire of love had turned his brain to mush, it had become his opium. The moment he’d discovered her true nature, and his own mistake, was the moment she sank her elongated fangs into his neck and began to drink.
Vampire. The love of his life was a Vampire.
And now so was he; a ravenous, murderous, barely-human creature who couldn’t bare the touch of sunlight nor have any part in normal society.
At first he blamed Simone, raging that she could’ve just walked away. She callously told him that she would have if she’d just been able to alter his thoughts like she could with most humans. She couldn’t tell him why he’d been resistant to her mind control, but the fact remained that she hadn’t been able to erase his memories of her, and couldn’t leave him behind knowing what she was and that her kind existed. It was against the rules.
Simone liked to bend rules, even break some of them, but that particular decree was a line she insisted had to be towed, and perhaps she actually wanted him almost as much as he wanted her. He just hadn’t wanted it to be like this. He would’ve chosen death over this.
It had been days before some vestige of his previous nature returned to him. She’d chained him inside an iron-lined coffin in a dank, roughly-hewn cellar beneath her cottage. When sanity eventually cleared the murk of bloodlust from his brain he’d fi
nally laid his newly enhanced eyes on her and had seen the truth. His new sight saw so much more than his old, frail, human eyes. The imperfections of her skin, artfully hidden by pastes and rouges, her eyes, more grey than green, enhanced by careful dressing and kohl, her hair reddened by artifice. She was not nearly as beautiful, or as young, as his human eyes had led him to believe. Or perhaps it was just that the haze of love had been lifted. How could he love a creature such as her? And now he himself was exactly such a creature. An abomination that could only live by drawing sustenance from the vein of a living human being.
He’d killed three in as many days. The last, a girl no more than sixteen. Her body still lay on the ground in the corner. A serving wench, Simone had assured him uncaringly. Someone no one would miss, save perhaps the local village innkeeper, who would find another just like her in a matter of hours.
Julius had thought it impossible to hate himself more than he did after Eleanor’s admission that his touch physically sickened her. Now he was also a monster; a cold-blooded, serial killer. The girl’s blood still covered his face and hands, the scent so strong he could barely keep his stomach from regurgitating the meal. The only thing keeping it down was the knowledge that the alternative would force her to bring him another victim.
With the loss of her projected beauty and innocence, Simone also dropped her charade of demure civility. The true nature of her character had become obvious through her choice of his victims, as well as her genuine enjoyment of his gruesome acts. She wasn’t intelligent enough to realise that the scent of her excitement only made him hate both her and himself more. If he’d paid attention to his natural foresight he would’ve killed her the first chance he got, but he’d been ignoring his innate sense of wrongness for so long, that he no longer trusted it, barely even heard it, and when he did, didn’t recognise it for what it was.
Hours after removing the corpse of the dead servant, she’d returned to the cellar with a smug grin on her face.
“You don’t need to worry about your family looking for you anymore,” she informed him, scuppering his one hope that someone would come looking for him and put an end to his miserable existence.
“What did you tell them?” he demanded, hating the idea that she’d been anywhere near them.
“Oh, I didn’t have to tell them anything,” she said, “I simply left a body for them to find, one without much of face unfortunately, but the right height and build. Such a pity, he had such a nice face too.” She pouted in mock regret. Julius gritted his teeth, understanding now why she’d taken all his clothes, his shoes and even his jewellery. “I know it’ll be good for them to be able to mourn your death. And I’m sure it’ll be a spectacular funeral,” she assured him. “A pity it’ll be held during the day, or we could go and see who turned up and listen to all the lovely things they said about you.” She smiled sweetly at him, and he wanted nothing more than to scream and rage and punch things. Instead he turned from her, not willing to let her see how deeply he’d been affected by the news. To his family and the world he was now dead. His only solace was that Eleanor would have her peace from him. She would be left the grieving widow, and if she never re-married would still be looked after by his family until her own death. And, despite the breakdown of his faith in God, prayed for Him to allow Eleanor some small measure of happiness.
While Simone never actually said anything, he knew she was surprised by how quickly he learned to control his urges and his Vampiric powers. His fourth victim left the cellar on her own two legs, her mind wiped of the experience, and with nothing to show for the event except for two healing puncture wounds on her wrist and a slight lethargy which she would put down to too much sun and not enough food. Simone’s eyes had narrowed in annoyance when she returned to find the girl alive, uninjured and waiting to leave.
They left Essex the next day; Julius having no choice but to follow her like a lapdog begging for scraps. He simply didn’t know enough about his new state of existence to risk going off on his own, and despite everything he couldn’t bring himself to run off and lie waiting for the sun to rise and end it all. The will to live is, after all, a most resilient thing.
He hadn’t meant to stay with her for long, but then, like any bad habit, he simply kept putting off the inevitable. Her already skewed sexual needs slowly grew more perverse, though the progression was so slow, and steady, that he barely noticed the downhill slide into Hell.
They moved from town to town, city to city, constantly relocating to avoid detection and retribution for their acts. Until finally there were no more towns or cities that were safe for them in Britain. They took a boat across the channel to Europe, where Simone revelled in the hedonistic underground culture of sex and opium. Julius, now tiring of the vicious, empty lifestyle, began to wander the streets alone at night while Simone partied her fill, returning to their quarters only to help her dispose of the bodies of those who hadn’t survive her particular brand of sexual experimentation.
It was at this tipping point that the universe finally decided to throw him a lifebuoy. His lifebuoy came in the form of a beautifully elegant woman, with steel grey hair, sad eyes and a heavy accent. Svetlana came across him disposing of a body into the river Seine, drawn by the scent of blood and death. She was the first Vampire he’d encountered since Simone had Turned him and he’d begun to believe they were a rare breed.
At first she was furious with him, admonishing him for killing unnecessarily and endangering her own safety, by alerting authorities to a killer on the loose where she made her home. His unmistakable surprise at her anger over the corpse and her statement that she had a permanent home here, quickly cooled her rage. Somehow she seemed to sense his relative youth as a Vampire and his inexperience with the way others lived.
She led him to a bench in a secluded park and they talked for hours. He drank in her wisdom and experience, absorbing every word. She reminded him so achingly of his mother; fiercely independent, high in morals and prone to bouts of whimsy and eccentricity, and above all else transcendentally inventive and creative. She taught him much in those few short hours. About Vampire politics and societal structure; rules, expectations and repercussions. That there were many like them in the world, so many that it seemed Simone had purposefully been keeping clear of others. That he had options, and that he could forge his own pathway. That he had no excuse to step away from his natural sense of morality and righteousness. That being Vampire did not necessarily equate to being evil or a monster.
During a slight lull in their conversation Julius asked how she’d been Turned, unsure if he was offering offense by asking, but confident that, if he was, she’d calmly put him in his place. She was silent for long enough that Julius’s heart sank, thinking that perhaps he’d offended her too deeply, but then he noticed a red-tinged tear trace a path down her cheek.
“I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong saviour,” she explained finally, her voice a husky whisper. “Late one night our village was attacked by marauders while all our men were away fighting to secure our land. They raped and beat us, set fire to our homes and then began slitting our throats.” Julius’s fists clenched; he’d seen that kind of behaviour in his time at war, and found it repulsive. “We begged for mercy, but they didn’t care. They calmly butchered us all, leaving those who’d fought them to bleed out, instead of making the deaths quick. I was one of those who didn’t die straight away. I lay on the cold, hard ground waiting for death to take me, praying for it in fact.
And then a man rode up on a horse. I was the last one alive. He was attracted to my looks, something about me called to him, and he gave me his blood, gathered me onto his horse and took me away with him.” She wiped a tear away from her face. “He was good to me, taught me what I needed to know about being a Vampire, but I could never forget my husband. My darling Miloslav. We had been so in love, so lucky to have one another, I pined for him. My soul was incomplete without him. Months later I ran from my rescuer, making
my way back home. My village had been rebuilt, it didn’t look much like the old village but I could scent my husband. I found him alone in his new home.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath, but continued. “He was shocked, of course, amazed that I was still alive, his eyes were wide with wonder and love. And then I explained to him what had happened to me, what I was. I knew he’d understand, that he’d protect me, help to hide me, and we would still find a way to be together.” She reached out blindly and caught Julius’s hand, as though the memories had cast her adrift and she needed an anchor. Julius squeezed her fingers without speaking. “I was wrong. He cast me from him, screaming for the others to bring weapons and fire. I barely escaped the village. The next day I decided to kiss the sun. I simply no longer had the desire to live. I wished that I’d been left to die in the village that night.” Her voice broke then. Julius raised her hand to his lips. He didn’t want to make her remember any more.
“I, for one, am very grateful you didn’t,” he told her, and he meant it.
Then he asked her to take him in, teach him, be his mentor. She smiled, the ghosts of the past forgotten, and put her hand to his cheek. She told him that he was destined for great things, but that she was not the one who would lead him, she was merely there to show him his alternatives. The path he ultimately took had to be his own decision. She did promise to be there if he ever needed her in the future and wished him well. And then she was gone.
A Short Trip To Hell: Hellcat Series Origins Volume 1 Page 2
