by T. H. Hunter
She crossed the room. Before I knew it, she was out of the door, pulling it to behind her and leaving me to my thoughts again. The ward was empty, my grandfather nowhere in sight. I had a terrible feeling of foreboding. Please, please, let him have come through alright.
After what seemed like ages, the door opened again. An official-looking man with rimless glasses entered with the nurse. He was greying and bald, but smartly dressed in a black three-piece suit. He thanked the nurse, taking the tray she was carrying from her, and approached my bed. After he had set the tray down on the nightstand, he held out his hand in a formal manner.
“Miss Rebecca Flynn. How do you do, my name is Doctor Yurasov.”
I shook his hand as firmly as I could. He spoke excellent English, with what was probably a very slight Russian accent. He turned around, in an unmistakable gesture that he wanted privacy. The elderly nurse, who seemed rather in awe of Doctor Yurasov and had been watching the scene from afar, made something akin to a curtsey and left the room.
I was glad to see a large metal jug, a goblet, and some sandwiches on the tray. Doctor Yurasov pulled up a chair from the wall.
“Please, Miss Flynn, allow me,” he said, pouring the contents of the jug into the goblet and handing it to me. “This will get you back on your feet in no time.”
“Thank you.”
I was so thirsty that I set the goblet to my lips in an instant. The first drops tasted bitter, like iron. But it was strangely satisfying at the same time.
“What is this?” I asked, holding the contents of the goblet to the light so I could see its colour.
“We call it the essence of life. Go on, drink it,” he said.
At this point, he noticed my hesitation and chuckled.
“You have already been injected with it for the last couple of days. You were unconscious for quite some time, you know. If we had wanted to harm you, we would have had ample opportunity, I assure you,” he said.
He was right, of course. But that didn’t allay my horrible suspicion about the liquid.
“Is this …”
“Blood?” he interjected, chuckling again, “no, it is not, though I am not at all surprised you thought so. It is supposed to taste like it, after all.”
The sun flashed across Yurasov’s spectacles. I still hesitated.
“It is good to be careful, I respect that. You hold there a particularly potent formula, one I devised myself in fact, only to be used in special or life-threatening circumstances.”
I was not yet willing to trust him but at least I was getting some answers for a change. I drank the rest of the goblet. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was so thirsty I would have taken anything by that point. As soon as the bitter liquid trickled down my dry throat, a pleasant tingling permeated my body. A warmth spread that I hadn’t felt before. A sensation of satisfaction, as if I had been in the desert for days. Strangely enough, the pain in my leg seemed to be easing off, too. Perhaps it served as some sort of pain medication.
“Where am I?”
“We are high up in the Carpathian Mountains, in Romania. You were flown in here immediately after we rescued you.”
“Romania?” I asked. “Why on earth did you bring us here?”
“It is our last remaining stronghold in Europe,” Doctor Yurasov said. “The Council resides here, as well as the Royal Family. Our college is also located within the walls of Cranvin Castle.”
This seemed like a strange explanation, but I let it pass for the time being. There was something far more pressing to me.
“My grandfather, where is he?”
For the first time during our encounter, Doctor Yurasov looked troubled. He pushed his glasses closer to his face again. A terrible sensation, like a claw, had crept up my spine and had lodged itself in my neck.
“I am very sorry, Miss Flynn. Your grandfather has passed away. We could not save him. In fact, we are lucky that you survived.”
“He… he’s dead?” I said unbelievingly.
Doctor Yurasov nodded sadly. The news came like a hammer blow to the head. My worst fears were proven right. I stared out of the window, my eyes filling with tears. I tried to wipe them away. I didn’t like crying in front of strangers.
But the doctor had the courtesy to look out of the window as well.
After a few moments, when I felt that my voice might not break up, I asked:
“Who did this?”
“We think we know, at least in part” he said. “What I am about to tell you, Miss Flynn, is going to sound fantastical, but it is the truth nonetheless.”
He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt cuff. It made him look much more youthful and much less official.
“You are not a regular human,” Doctor Yurasov said slowly.
“Thanks for the diagnosis. I’d noticed.”
He smiled apologetically.
“What I mean to say is that you are not human at all. At least, not anymore. You are, in fact, in the early stages of Vampirism.”
“Vampirism?”
“You are becoming a vampire.”
“Sorry, Doctor, but I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“Fairy tales?”
“Come on, Doctor. I don’t know what your game is or what you want from me, but I’m not going to fall for a story like that.”
Doctor Yurasov smiled, though I could see he had expected a different reaction to what was evidently supposed to be the climax of his speech.
“I assure you, Miss Flynn, there is no game being played here,” he said.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I said.
“I can tell you that only if you accept the premise of your condition. That you are...”
“… a vampire? Why not a ghost? Or perhaps a wand-wielding witch? I always wanted to turn people into toads like they do in books, you know,” I said.
Doctor Yurasov was growing red with repressed anger.
“Alright, Miss Flynn, we will have it your way. I will prove it to you. I will demonstrate what you will become.”
I was taken aback at this. He must have been lying, though I didn’t know for what reason. He stood up and walked to the foot end of my bed. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with apparently great effort, his physical shape became blurred, and then he jumped towards the far wall. To my utter amazement, his body was catapulted through the air until he landed, with all fours, on one of the walls. Instead of sliding down, however, he began crawling along it, as if he had been wearing suction pads, but at a speed that would have put any athlete to shame. Then, he dropped back onto the floor, panting. The sudden silence in the ward gave me the creeps.
“Doctor?” I asked.
Nothing.
Slowly, Doctor Yurasov recovered. He steadied himself and walked back to the chair he had been sitting on next to my bed.
He was quivering with exhaustion and collapsed onto the chair, though clearly satisfied with the result of his demonstration.
“Forgive me, Miss Flynn,” he said, panting. “I have been out of practice for a long time now. This is what you get if you sit at a desk for too many years.”
He fumbled with the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a flask, which he quickly opened, taking a large swig.
The whole thing couldn’t possibly be true, and yet…
I shook my head in disbelief. I didn’t know how he had pulled it off, but there must have been some trick involved. A projection, a curtain.
“Look, I don’t know how you did this,” I said. “Even if I believed you – which I don’t – it still doesn’t mean I’m a … a vampire.”
“No?” he said. “Did you not notice how delicious the liquid was to you? How it satisfied a deep, inner need you’ve never felt like that before?”
“I was thirsty. Or perhaps there were some drugs in it.”
“Oh, it is a drug, no doubt about that,” Doctor Yurasov said. “A drug we need to sustain life, in fact. One that you will need, too, from now on. Unles
s you want to kill to get your blood, though I do not recommend it. The Vampiric Council, for one, will have something to say about that.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was all just too strange to believe.
Doctor Yurasov reached below the nightstand and produced a small mirror. He gave it to me.
“What?”
“Have a look,” he said.
“I don’t…”
“Just look,” he said simply.
I raised the mirror to my face. To my shock, I saw nothing. There was no reflection. Instead, I could see the wall behind me, as clear as day.
“So, do you believe me now?” he asked.
“I – I don’t know,” I said, though my resolve was crumbling. “Perhaps if you explained some of the other things.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Why did they attack us?”
“They wanted to kidnap you. We sent some people over to clean up after we got you out of there. We had a closer look at that “delivery” of theirs, too. I think they planned on getting you to the car in it without arousing suspicion from the neighbours.”
“But why?”
“It is complicated, Miss Flynn. We don’t know everything.”
“Try me,” I said.
“For centuries, vampires have existed, living amongst their human prey in secret. Of course, the need to drink blood exposed them. And not all humans were particularly accommodating to their wishes. They started fighting back. The most prominent group called themselves the Slayers’ League, a religious organisation founded over a hundred years ago. It operated worldwide and was quite successful, at least at the beginning.”
“So they attacked me and…?”
I wanted to add my grandfather, but it was just too painful to even say it right now. I wasn’t ready to accept it and swallowed the rest of the sentence. Doctor Yurasov looked concerned.
“Yes. But that is not the whole story, unfortunately. We have had a truce with the Slayers for over twenty years now. The war had been raging on and off for decades. We lost a lot of good people – and so did they. And so an agreement was drawn up to end the violence. The Slayers would leave us in peace under the condition that we no longer killed for blood.”
“They were hardly peaceful,” I said.
“Quite right, Miss Flynn. And this is what is worrying us so much. The peace was always a tentative affair, we all knew that. Too many groups had an interest in the continuation of the conflict, also within our own ranks. An entire world changed for us overnight. But it was worse for the Slayers. You see, they were robbed of their prime reason for existence, of their hated enemy they wanted to destroy above all else. Many of them never wanted peaceful cooperation but total annihilation of what they considered to be the ‘scourge of humanity’. The entire basis for their organisation vanished. Incapable of reform and resources stretching to breaking point, the League quickly decayed. Even Colonel Bradshaw, their leader who had been the driving force behind the peace talks, couldn’t stop it.”
“So what changed?” I asked.
“With their lack in personnel, it was easy for us to infiltrate their organisation. That’s how we knew about the attack on you in the first place. Our spies within the League told us of a change in the power balance. The most determined members were seeking to remove Bradshaw, seen by many as an appeaser. In a desperate attempt to retain power, he turned to the only financier he could find. An international corporation by the name of Criswell Cosmetics. As you might imagine, very few people are willing to waste money on what presumably is a figment of the imagination.”
“But why would they be interested in the League?” I asked.
“That, we do not know. All we do know about the Criswell imperium is that they are absolutely ruthless in their business dealings. In other words, it is hardly charity. They must have a very good reason for what they are doing.”
“Even assuming that I believed all of this – and I’m not saying I do – I still don’t see how I have to do with any of this, Doctor,” I said.
“It was no accident they attacked you, Miss Flynn. It was a targeted strike. They wanted you. There is absolutely no doubt about it. You must know that the condition of contracted Vampirism is extremely uncommon. We call it the Scarlet Curse. In fact, there are very few vampires alive who have it. Most of us were bitten, and subsequently transformed, or born to vampire parents. Contracting it, on the other hand, is very rare.”
“The Scarlet Curse doesn’t sound too positive,” I said.
Doctor Yurasov chuckled.
“It is the old name. The very first vampires came into existence that way. To a regular human many centuries ago, contracting Vampirism could only be seen as a curse, for you had to kill in order to survive.”
“But why would the League be interested?”
“That is the mystery, Miss Flynn. We know from our sources that they have focussed all of their recent efforts on identifying those who are like you. For months, they have been working through hospital records, medical reports, anything they could get their hands on. It is a time-consuming and inefficient process. You see, there are medical signs, but they are often inconclusive. The Vampiric Council decided long ago that it was simply best to wait until the signs matured. In any case, there was no real alternative. Surveying thousands of hospitals for a handful of individuals would have been like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. An active vampire is much easier to find, as you might imagine. Then, they are initiated into our world, for their sake and for the protection of their surroundings. Vampirism takes a long time to mature, but progresses very quickly once the first symptoms have established themselves. The thirst for blood soon overwhelms the afflicted. Family and friends – who are naturally closest – might well be the first victims. In other cases, when the afflicted either resists the darker impulses of drawing blood from human beings or has no opportunity to do so, they die. You see, a vampire cannot live without blood.”
“So this is blood after all?” I asked, looking into the goblet.
Doctor Yurasov looked at me, adjusting his glasses, his expression unreadable.
“It is the old problem, one that has been plaguing our society since the beginning of time, the curse of our entire existence. Blood not only sustains our lives but provides us with extraordinary powers. But the bloodlust is uncontrollable. Many have tried to control it and have invariably failed to do so. Death is our constant companion, one way or the other. We have been working for centuries on this problem, to find a way to live without having to kill,” he said.
“Couldn’t you just…erm… ask for blood donations or something?” I asked.
“I wish it were as easy as that,” he said, smiling. “But the process is a lot more complicated. Mere blood is not enough. It must be drawn in a forcible act from a live victim. As you might imagine, that didn’t make us too popular with the neighbours.”
“But you did come up with a substitute,” I said, inclining my head towards the jug of Elixir.
“Indeed, Miss Flynn. Our scientists have been working on it for generations. In the early days, it was designed for emergencies only. Since then, however, it has become our staple diet. It is far from perfect, as you will notice. We all live in a permanent state of withdrawal, for the urge to drink never truly leaves us. Our powers, also, have greatly diminished through our abstention. We cannot change who we are, but we try to supress our darker instincts.”
“So, you’ve become a kind of vegetarians?”
Doctor Yurasov laughed.
“It is not the word we use, and certainly not for the noble reasons you might think, though many pretend it is, of course. I will not lie to you, Miss Flynn. Many vampires enjoyed the hunt for blood and the cries of their victims. That predatory nature is built into us. The simple truth is that the war with the Slayers’ League brought us close to extinction. We had to give up our old ways of life to save ourselves. There aren’t many of us left anymo
re, and we have had to make arrangements with our former enemies. As a result, the Vampiric Council has prohibited – under pain of imprisonment and, in some cases, death – to draw blood. An unpopular decision, to say the least.”
“So what happens now?” I asked after taking another sip of the liquid. The strange tingling sensations spread throughout my body once more.
“You will have to learn to use your abilities properly, you will have to be trained. If you are not, you are a danger to your surroundings, as well as to yourself. But you will hear all of that at the ceremony.”
“The nurse mentioned it, what exactly is it?” I asked, placing the goblet back on the nightstand.
“It is the initiation into our world, perhaps the most important event in the life of a vampire. It is also a requirement to enter the castle, where you will learn our ways. After you prove yourself during the Trial, of course.”
He pushed up his glasses again as if the matter were settled.
“And if don’t join you?” I asked, sitting up.
“What do you mean?”
Doctor Yurasov seemed genuinely bewildered by this question.
“If I want to go back home.”
“That is not an option for you.” Doctor Yurasov said.
Now it was my turn to be perplexed.
“Not an option?”
“No. Your home is here now.” he said.
“But you can’t just decide for me!” I said.
“We will not risk the exposure of our world. The Council has already decided the matter, long ago.” he said
“Excuse me?” I said.
This was the last straw.
“I’m not going to be your prisoner!” I said.
“The matter is settled, Miss Flynn. You will remain here with us. I will let you rest a little more. The Trial will take place in two weeks from now. The other prospective students are already in training.”
And with that, Doctor Yurasov stood up and walked across the hall towards the door.
After he was gone, I lay there, fuming. I wasn’t going to be forced into any of this. This was my life, they couldn’t just decide this for me.
