by Paula Guran
“Good,” Mister Pérouse continued, his breath fogging in the chill air. “We’ve been blessed with six new souls today—and if all goes well Jacques and Théo should return with more. For now, Doctor Jeffries, I’ll trust you to amend your lessons to accommodate five extra pupils. Initiate them quickly: these children have been unschooled for far too long.”
“I know what I’m doing, Anton.”
Mister Pérouse conceded the point with a tilt of his head, but still proceeded with his instructions. “No field trips until they are made familiar with the curriculum, d’accord? Bon. Now, as for the rest of you, allow me to introduce Harold et Adelaide.”
My heart stopped at the names. I was sure he knew us better than that.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, shivering with more than cold. Ma taught me always to be polite, especially when correcting someone’s mistake. “That’s Harley and I’m Ada.”
Mister Pérouse’s only reaction was to adjust his hold on Harl, and place a heavy hand on my shoulder. “The sun is well up, children. Help get Harold ready for bed. The Haven is his home now: make him welcome. Adelaide, this way.”
My feet were rooted to the floor as Harl was passed from Mister Pérouse to a boy a year or two older than me. Everything about him was lanky: limbs, earlobes, unkempt fringe. He carried my brother in arms that looked like bone sheathed in tissue, too weak even for such a light burden. But when he smiled his teeth were overly long. Sharp and white. The cleanest things in the room.
A panel stood open in the far wall, not so much a door as a breach in the room’s symmetry. Mister Pérouse drew me through it, then I was led down a narrow hallway. Small electric lights nestled in wall sconces, illuminating little but a series of old photographs—all depicting my guide standing proudly beside class after class of the Haven’s students. His steps were assured even in the darkness between lamps; I knew he could run these corridors blindfolded, if necessary. I stumbled in the black, and was pathetically grateful for the bulbs’ small haloes. I needed their comfort.
It’s weird how, in moments of panic, our minds focus on absurdities. Though my pulse raced and my throat cramped from holding back tears, I found myself wondering why they’d used plastic lights shaped like candlesticks; why they’d topped them with glass flames. Why not use real candles? And if they could see fine without them, why turn the things on? Except to allow black-and-white children, their faces so like the ones I’d just met they could have been one and the same, to follow me with their eyes as we sped past. They watched, expressionless, organized and catalogued in their wooden frames, as my feet were dragged along grooves their soles had worn in the floor.
Mister Pérouse’s apartments were at the far end of the manse. Up three flights of stairs, along the hall, and back down so many steps we might have ended up in the basement. My legs were shaking by the time we arrived; blood dripped down my thighs. A receiving room, a study, a chambermaid’s cupboard, and a master bedroom with modern en suite were all barricaded behind a thick oak door, secured with a brass deadbolt. The costumes he’d worn to Ma’s parties spilled from a wardrobe, littered his bed. Their fine fabric chafed my skin when he threw me upon them. When he showed me, in no uncertain terms, what my role was to be in this household.
I flailed and kicked. My screams, half-formed and breathless; wrists trapped in the vice of his hands. I butted my head against his until my skull ached, but he simply leaned back, waited for me to tire. He used the advantage years of practice had given him, pinning me down with his torso. Hungry saliva dripped on my cheek, trickled down my neck.
“Mama, Mama, Mama,” I cried, as he shoved my nightie up, pulled my drawers down, revealed the mess of blood between my legs. He wriggled more firmly on top of me, pressed my arcing back flat with his weight, then slid down my body until his face was in line with my crotch.
“Your mother is dead,” he said, matter-of-factly. His tongue, rough as a cat’s, began to rasp along my inner thighs.
No. The fight, the life went out of me. She can’t be. I’d squeezed my eyes shut, but now they flew open. My mind was blank, my mind raced. I looked up, not down. Ma’s voice rang in my ears, telling Harley tales. The cinnamon smell of her breakfast oatmeal filled my nostrils—not sweat, not blood, not Mister Pérouse’s lamb-carcass breath. In my mouth, raspberry cordial laced with brandy; the drink Ma gave me the first time I’d hidden my blood-soaked rags. No, no, no. I looked up, stared up. A watermark shaped like our state stained the ceiling. I tried to pinpoint the county where I grew up—a splotch of mold covered it. Covered Ma. I cried out—
Not dead.
I didn’t look down; wouldn’t. In my mind I saw Mister Pérouse’s chin drip with my blood. Saw his teeth lengthen, glistening and red. Felt them pierce. The prod of his tongue. Sucking, drinking deep. Taking his fill.
Everything was silent.
A tornado howled through the room.
Face contorted, mouth shaped words. Expression evangelical, like Bible-bashers Ma sent from our door each Sunday. Still wearing the cowboy coat she’d made, he slithered back on top. Nicked the tip of his penis. Smeared his blood. Mixed it with mine.
Searing pain to dull throb. Breath whooshed out. In and out.
In and out.
His body preached at mine: I didn’t hear a thing. I looked at the county lines overhead, traced their borders with my eyes.
No.
He grew stronger, stronger. Licked my jugular. Moaned. Didn’t bite.
Numb, I watched us from the settee on the opposite side of the room. Looked at the spectacle we made on my mother’s costumes. My legs like slabs of ham on the mattress. His hips twitching, plunging. My hands clenching, unclenching, clenching. Intent and inert.
Waited for him to finish. Waited for my spirit to return. Waited to feel.
Not dead.
I didn’t see Harley or the girls for days afterwards. By then I was too tired to be scared for any of us.
Mister Pérouse kept me in his bedroom until my menses stopped flowing. Nightmares plagued me all day, then came to life at dusk. For five nights he drank his fill, reopened the thin cut on his cock, climbed on top of me. Humming all the while about a child born of blood. He rubbed my belly before pulling out, for luck or to mark his territory, or both.
Though they came knocking, claiming their turns with the “live one,” Mister Pérouse wouldn’t let Théo or Jacques in. “Mais, monsieur,” they’d protest, their voices muffled through the door. “Arianne hasn’t bled for decades—”
My master wouldn’t hear a word against her. “Patience, les gars. I won us three filles this time, non? The two youngest are yours—take them as gifts. Pour vous remerciez.”
The men said nothing.
“Aha,” said Mister Pérouse, sighing, rolling off me. “You’ve opted for the weakling’s fare—sucking a few hours’ of youth from babes—and now you’re here to challenge me? Mais c’est drôlel You want the Prime’s share? You haven’t the patience. Mon dieu, our houseful of little changed ones prove you have not the patience. A few short human years—what is that to us? A blink, no more—and Adelaide’s sisters could have been yours for breeding. To start your own empires, peut-être? They’ve many years of blood in them, these girls; many chances of bearing true kin. Can’t you see the benefit in that? Our numbers increased with children born, not simply made? Reinvigorating our bloodlines, les gars. Extending it, drawing power direct from the fountainhead. From our newborns right back to Adam’s kin, comprends? Linked all the way back to the source.”
I didn’t hear the men’s responses. My eyelids drooped; I pulled a chenille blanket up to still my shivering. If the past few evenings were any indication, Mister Pérouse would want another round with me before morning. I needed sleep more than information.
By the end of the week my master looked healthier, stronger. Ten years younger, more than fit to squash Jacques and Théo if they razzed him without the protection of three inches of oak. His back was straight, step
springy, as he set me in the chambermaid’s closet, and told me to get cleaned up for school.
“You must learn to speak properly, Adelaide, if you are to raise our child to prominence. I will not have my heir speaking like a pecore for all his mother’s failings. Fine soaps will only scrub so much of the yokel from you, chèrie.”
I didn’t want to wash, I wanted to go home. But the windows were blocked, the outer doors bolted; my freedom subject to Mister Pérouse’s whim. And for the first time since my arrival he fancied I could be let out. I could see other people. So I rubbed myself raw with the soap and sponge he provided, then slipped on a uniform so misshapen a hundred other girls might’ve worn it before. I folded my nightie and stuffed it beneath the low pallet I’d sleep on when my master had no other use for me. The shift was soiled and smelled rotten, but it was my last tie with Ma. I didn’t want to look at it, couldn’t bear to throw it away.
I don’t know what happened to Harley’s clothes. Like me, he was now dressed in a drab copy of the other children’s outfits. Unlike me, he looked content to be so.
“You okay?” His neck was swaddled with bandages, and the sun was fading from his skin. Veins were visible in his eyelids and temples and he smelled of sour milk. I brushed my hand through his hair, trying to ignore the hints of grease I found there, and pulled him close. He returned my embrace quickly then stepped away, too embarrassed to be seen hugging his sister with so many eyes watching. The other children were too occupied with their tasks to notice. Some recited poems in my master’s language; some tidied the beds, then arranged folding screens to separate sleep and work areas; some clambered high up the walls, scaling the bricks from gallery to gallery under Doctor Jeffries’ watchful eye. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see any ropes. Catching my perplexed gaze, Harley shrugged and rubbed his hand along his jaw, so much like his father it hurt.
“Mister told us about Ma,” he said. “Beth and Miah ain’t took it so good—Miss Arianne gave them medicines so’s they’d calm down. They’re a lot better now, though.”
“And you?” I asked.
Again, that shrug. Who was this boy? The Harl I knew got fired up if he didn’t get his way; if he thought Ma spent more time with us girls than with him. And now that she’s dead? A shrug. It didn’t make sense.
“My gums is sore,” he said, almost sheepishly.
“Give us a look.” To my surprise, he peeled back his lips and opened his mouth. I couldn’t trust what I saw: it wasn’t bright enough where we were standing. I drew Harl over to the first long dining table, sat him close to the lamp. The results were the same.
His incisors, top and bottom, were more than twice their usual length. I explored their rough edges, hoping touch would prove their appearance a trick of the light.
Gently, I positioned my forefinger behind the tooth and pulled towards me. It had grown far too sharp, far too long. I tried again, just to be sure it was real, and as I did so a pearl of creamy liquid, like snake venom or dandelion milk, beaded on my fingertip.
“That hurt?” I asked, tugging, watching the drop grow fat and heavy. The syrup spilled over, soon began marbling with red. Harley’s blood oozed down the length of my finger and pooled, ghosted with white fluid, in my palm.
“Nuh.” He shook his head, unintentionally snicking my digit in the process.
“Watch it,” I said, snatching my hand away, sucking to stem the flow——being leached from my neck. No: Harley’s neck. Energy sapping from my body, pulsating. Teeth stinging like horseflies in the dip beside my collarbone, the crook of my elbow. Smiling faces, kissing, drinking. “He tastes like swimming,” a high voice says. That’s Nellie Porter, maybe. Or Ike. No: Ike’s at my feet, draining the webbing between my toes. They like me, I think—Harl thinks: and, They need me. I’m warm, so warm the room is fuzzy. I’m sleepy, so sleepy. I can hardly feel the table beneath my back. My plate is broken; rare beef from dinner squelches under my hip. “He tastes like sunshine,” says Alistair. I giggle. My friend is giving me a hickey, and now there’s a fire in my belly. A hunger. I sit up, nip him on the shoulder. Barely break the skin. “That’s enough.” Doctor Jeffries claps, whistles till the tingling stops. “End of lesson.” The small mouths pull away, melt into the room’s dim corners. The doctor keeps Ike and Alistair back. “What have I told you? Stun with the jus; drink only enough to make you feel strong; bite hard to inject your charge. Don’t be greedy: no killings within the Haven.” My head is woozy, I can’t lift it to see where they’ve gone. Too heavy. “No killings in the family—”
“When did this happen?”
Harley looked at me like I’d gone crazy. “What?”
“This—” I licked the last trace of Harley’s venom-laced blood from my finger. “This.” I yawned, felt a prickling in my lips. “The biting, them other kids—”
“Oh, that.” Harl crossed his arms, flicked a lock of hair from his eyes. “Ain’t nothing. You know, it happens.”
I wasn’t convinced by his cool demeanor. Again, I tasted the blood and milk from Harl’s tooth, and it hit me like a kick to the ribs. The scent of cedar and hot dirt. Bullfrogs at the bottom of gullies on our land like croaking men clearing their throats. Ma’s chamomile shampoo. Her soft singing lifted on bathroom steam. Pure, unrefined memories of home. The other children had tasted these moments. Ingested them. And Harl hadn’t stopped them.
“I can’t believe you’d let them do that to you,” I hissed, emphasizing the word let. “You ain’t even tried to stop them—not even a little bit!”
Harl sighed, and for the third time his shoulders rose and fell noncommittally. He looked empty. Emptier. “I can’t always fight, Ada. Not always.”
Beth kicked me in the shins when I took her face in my hands, drew her mouth to mine, and sucked blood and venom from her teeth. Where Harl’s fangs had grown close together, adding a rat’s angular profile to his already narrow features, Beth’s had sprouted from her canines. Blunt but strong. When the hanging lights reflected in her dark eyes, she was no longer a seven-year-old girl but a feral cat.
I dragged her behind a folding screen, checked that no one could see us, and sat her down on the foot of a cot.
“This ain’t—isn’t—my bed, Ada. I mean, Adelaide. Mine’s over there—”
“Quiet,” I hissed, grabbing her face again and drinking. I stopped the instant the flavor of her memories shifted from ash to honey, when the liquid was more red than clear. My mouth was numb from her poison; it itched down my throat, made me woozy. Beth bit my lip as I pulled away—then immediately asked what had happened, why was there blood on my chin? Exhaling, I swallowed visions of her and Miah smothered in a swarm of grabbing hands; suckling at Arianne’s shriveled neck and breasts. Something was missing, and it wasn’t just my sister’s memory of the past thirty seconds.
There was no essence of fear. Not in Beth, not in Harl. Tinges of sorrow seasoned the cloudy blood I drank, yet it wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t purely their own. They felt Ma’s loss, I could taste it. But not acutely, not like I did. That sadness was buried in them, beneath dozens of other, foreign sadnesses. Those they’d adopted from their new playmates.
For a few moments Beth was bright and happy, the way she’d always been at home, and I knew it was because of me. When she sat on my lap, wrapping her scrawny arms around my waist, the hug she gave was genuine. Threading her fingers through my hair, she seemed content. Harley loitered by the closest pillar and watched us for a while, not joining in but not discouraging. I wanted to ask him to come sit with us, to hide beneath the blankets, to help keep the ghosts at bay.
But at that moment Arianne strode past a gap between the screens concealing us from the common room, leading by the hand the boy who’d carried Harley the day we’d arrived. His eyes were glazed, a silly smile plastered on his face. His feet scuffled along the floor as though too heavy to lift.
Four steps later, the clunking of Arianne’s heels stopped. Four more steps brought her back, h
er glare so sharp I winced. She released her companion’s hand, then pushed the screen away, sending it clattering to the floor.
“Va t’en!” she growled at Beth, her gaze never leaving mine.
She wrenched Beth from my lap, slapped her bottom. “Go!”
Harley shrank from Arianne’s wrath, inched away to avoid drawing her attention. As it was, he could have tap-danced and she wouldn’t have noticed: her crimson-eyed stare was reserved for me.
“Stay away, you espéce de salope! You’ll have your own soon enough—these are not for you.”
I rose clumsily. “Arianne—”
She held up her hand to silence me. “Non—not a word, petite bête. The classroom, you can enter. Do not come behind here again.”
As though on cue, Doctor Jeffries called us to our lessons. Diction and composition first; then while the other children climbed, learned techniques of stealth, and practiced bleeding each other on the table, I was isolated from the group. Taught to pore over books tracing the history of Mister Pérouse’s people. By the time the tutorials were over, I was shaken—and Beth’s posture had stiffened. When I crossed to her circle of desks, she looked at me as she would a stranger. Her mouth twitched, barely suppressing a hiss.
Harl had drifted away to join Alistair and the other boys. His footsteps already more like floating than walking.
For the next two years I did what I could for Harley and the girls. I’d milk them whenever they let me; whenever Arianne was away; whenever Mister Pérouse released me from our rooms. I dreaded the coming of my bloods, not because it meant I’d have to endure my master’s attentions—these moon-time visits were exercises in stamina on his part, and I’d become expert at being and not being there while they lasted—but because it meant I was kept away from the kids.
Twice it seemed Mister Pérouse’s work had paid off: my periods stopped, the second time for twelve weeks. My master, already confident in his role as Prime, now strutted like a peacock as he gave Théo and Jacques their instructions; directing them to tackle Tapekwa County next, to find themselves suitable mates in Napanee. To steal farmers’ young, the more isolated the better, to become pupils of Mister Péouse’s school. Fatherhood, it seemed, made him benevolent.
