by J. S. Volpe
Blood Ties
by J. S. Volpe
Copyright © 2012 J. S. Volpe
All rights reserved.
Cover Image: conrado/Shutterstock.com
As I kneel in the dirt, picking toadberries from the squat green bushes that line the southern end of the orchard behind Merrimont Castle, Spiro Agnew leans toward me and says, “Hey, Gee.”
My name is actually Jesus Christ XIV, but he still calls me by that silly childhood nickname. I wish he would stop. We are eighteen now, long past the age at which such things should be set aside.
“What is it now, Spiro?” I say, though I suspect I know: This is undoubtedly the prelude to yet another of his seemingly endless disquisitions on the supposed wonders of the outside world.
I look up just in time to see him cast a nervous glance at the castle five hundred feet behind us. There, from a second-storey window, Campielos, one of the younger Masters, watches Spiro and me and the rest of today’s farming crew as we do our work. The day is clear and sunny, so Campielos stays safely back in the shadows, his face merely a pale oval in the darkness.
Spiro always acts furtive when he prattles on about the outside world, though he need not. We are free to discuss what we like. The Masters are very generous in that regard. Besides, we are too far away for Campielos to hear us anyway, despite the Masters’ superior senses. Spiro is merely being paranoid and perhaps feels a little guilty for thinking about the outside world when we are treated so well here.
Seeing that Campielos’s attention is elsewhere, Spiro turns to me and says, “I heard something interesting—a story I’ve never heard before, about the other mortals. Out there.” He nods at the ivy-shrouded stone wall that encloses the castle grounds. The wall is fifteen feet high and seven thick, and from its top protrude metal spikes that mirror the jagged peaks of the Peletite Mountains which loom hazy and gray in the distance.
“Oh?” I say, concentrating on getting at a cluster of berries deep in the heart of a thick bush. I am tired of his fascination with the mortal world beyond the wall. Like my nickname, it belongs to childhood.
“Yes. Madonna XIX was telling a story her mother told her, a story that’s been passed down in her family ever since our ancestors were brought here. Apparently in the human societies out there they had a beverage made from some kind of plant—Madonna wasn’t sure which plant, exactly—but when you drank it, it did things to your mind. It made you feel really good. It made your brain think differently.”
I can’t help but laugh.
Spiro frowns at me. “Why is that funny? It’s true, and I think it’s fascinating.”
“It just sounds silly. A drink that makes you think differently? It sounds like a fable. And why would anyone want to think differently anyway?”
“She said it made you feel good,” he mutters. He is upset with me for laughing, for not sharing his wide-eyed excitement.
I can’t help it, though. The concept is ridiculous. “Do people in the outside world not feel good very often, then? Are their lives so miserable that they must imbibe liquefied plants to be happy?”
Spiro glowers and says nothing. We pick berries in silence for a while as small white clouds drift across the blue summer sky. When Spiro speaks again, he is once more smiling and exuberant, any bad feelings between us shrugged off as is his wont.
“Who are you hoping to be paired with?” he asks. He is referring to the upcoming Pairing Ceremony, a triennial event in which the Masters assign all the men and women between the ages of seventeen and nineteen into breeding pairs. There are six of us this year, including Spiro and myself. Spiro hopes to be paired with Mary Magdalene VII, whom he has lusted after ever since he hit puberty.
As for myself, if forced to choose, I suppose I would pick Marilyn Monroe III. But I am beginning to suspect I have a higher destiny, one that does not involve mating and reproducing. I am reluctant to tell this to Spiro, however, so instead I say, “Marilyn, of course.”
He grins. “I thought so. You always loved those blondes.”
I grin back with affected lasciviousness.
Chuckling, Spiro moves on to another toadberry bush.
* * *
When our work is done for the day, we return to the village, a cluster of huts and workshops and other buildings hugging the north wall of the castle. Some of us begin dividing up and distributing the harvested food, while those whose turn it is to serve the Masters bathe, eat, and go to bed for a few hours’ sleep. I am in the latter group.
As is usual on nights that I serve the Masters, my anticipation makes sleep impossible. I lie on my cot, fidgeting, until the iron bell in the southwest tower tolls, then I join the small crowd at the mouth of the Conduit, a long round tunnel cut into the base of the castle’s north side. At its inner end is an iron door leading to the castle’s cellar, though we cannot see the door from here, for the Conduit is unlit.
As we wait, a girlish voice rises from the dark hills beyond the wall.
“Mommy?” it cries. “Mommy?”
A long pause, then again, louder: “Mommy!”
Another pause, then: “Mommy, it’s hurting me! Mommy!”
The cries continue, growing shriller and more urgent before degenerating into a series of warbling howls that sound disturbingly like laughter.
This is not the first time we have heard these chilling sounds. No one, not even the Masters, has ever been able to spy the creature responsible—and creature it surely is, for paw-prints about the size of a dog’s have been found in the muddy ground outside the wall following the creature’s visits.
Countless horrors prowl the rocky hills and tangled forests that surround Merrimont—trolls, remorthori, strange creatures made of metal (Larissa once called them robots), and worse. Two years ago we were harvesting corn when a giant strode past the wall, which reached only to the bottom of his sternum. He did not threaten us, only gave us a disinterested glance before he passed out of sight, but he could have kicked down the wall and stomped us into pulp had he chosen to. And once when I was a boy we saw a lenticular silver object moving slowly above the mountains. To have been visible to us at that distance, the object must have been larger than Merrimont itself. As we watched in awe, our work forgotten, it stopped, hovered for a moment as if deliberating, and then emitted a ray of red light from its underside. When the ray hit a nearby peak, the entire peak exploded in a white flash, hurling boulders at its neighbors and spewing up a column of dust and smoke. Through the smoke we caught a glimpse of the silver object descending behind the shattered peak. We never saw it again, but I do not doubt that it is still out there somewhere. The Wilds are a dangerous place to live, and I am glad we have the Masters to protect us.
As the mommy-beast’s howls fade, we hear the iron door at the far end of the Conduit groan open. For several seconds afterward there is only silence, and then we become aware of a few faint rustles as the six Masters who have come to escort us to the feast proceed down the dark stone passage. One has to admire their near silence; any such human procession would be a cacophony of clops and thuds. But not the Masters. They are as graceful and silent as the mysterious, translucent sky-mantas we often see gliding in intricate patterns in the sky above.
As usual, my breath catches in awe when the Masters emerge from the Conduit’s shadows—half a dozen godlike beings, former men and women now ascended to a higher state, their features smooth and perfect and unaging, their clothing of the finest materials, their bodies exemplars of strength and elegance.
“It is time,” says Michael, a tall, muscular Master with a love of paisley shirts and a head of white hair that contrasts oddly with his youthful features. Behin
d him, Nimbus, whose bright-pink leather corset and stiletto boots reflect her playfully extravagant manner, lights a lantern that she has brought. It is solely for the benefit of us poor-sighted mortals, of course.
The Masters lead us down the Conduit, through the cellar, and up a stone staircase to the castle’s ground floor.
As usual, the Masters are gathered in the Great Hall, a room so vast that even with the countless chandeliers and candelabra fully lit and the fire in the fireplace blazing like a small sun, the hall’s farthest corners remain steeped in shadow.
Rugs of beautiful patterns and colors cover the floor, and tapestries and paintings—most of them created by the Masters themselves, of course—line the walls. The Masters laze on couches and divans ranged around the fireplace.
We humans line up before them, and after some preliminary murmuring among the Masters to determine who shall feed upon whom, they pick those they wish to sup upon and dismiss the rest.
The sickly and ugly among us are rarely or never picked. Others, including myself, are picked every third night without fail, often to sate one particular Master’s hunger. The Masters have favorites, the same way we mortals have our favorite foods. I have been Larissa’s favorite for nearly five years. The other Masters have long since ceased to even consider me when I stand there in the line. I am hers. They all know this and honor it.
Usually the Masters spend the night here in the Great Hall, talking and laughing and debating philosophy and sharing their latest songs and poems and tales, and all the while feeding on their chosen mortals. Sometimes, however, a Master may retire to his or her bedchamber to feed in private. Such has been my fate in recent months, and tonight will be no exception, for as the other mortals take their places alongside the Masters who have chosen them, Larissa rises from the red divan she has been lounging upon and approaches me, her black gown whispering, her lustrous black hair swaying, the firelight imbuing her alabaster skin with a soft orange glow.
She takes my hand and leads me up a spiral staircase to her room, that cozy bower I have come to know as well as I know my own hut. We stop at the foot of her bed with its black silk sheets and pillows of red and gold and dark green.
“My boy,” she says with fondness as she faces me, my hand still in hers. Her skin is cool, like a root freshly plucked from the ground.
Her eyes rove over my face before finally settling upon my neck, where a knot of small, round scars attests to previous feasts. She leans forward, her eyes heavy-lidded with hunger, and glides her tongue along the length of my neck. I hear her soft sigh in my ear as she begins to unbutton my shirt. Whenever her long, slender fingers brush my bare chest, a thrill races through me.
After casting my shirt aside, she draws me close to the cool hardness of her body and resumes nuzzling my neck—licking here, nipping there, prolonging the delicious anticipation until we are both nearly mad with yearning. Then, only then, do I feel her muscles tense as she prepares to enter me.
She opens her mouth and settles it over the curve of my neck. Her tongue flicks my skin once more, and then her canines, two long, thin spikes, press against the soft flesh of my neck, sending a shudder through me. They press harder, harder. My skin dimples beneath them, stretches taut, and finally gives way as they slide into my flesh.
Larissa begins rhythmically sucking my blood into her, and within seconds I enter a swooning, dreamy state. The universe recedes from us, becoming as insubstantial as a mirage, until I am aware only of her teeth in my neck, the gulps from her lovely throat, the steadily weakening pulse of my blood. I go limp, but her inhumanly strong arms catch me and hold me close to her as she continues sucking, swallowing, nourishing herself on my body. There is no greater pleasure than this.
My swoon deepens toward blackness, and sensing this, she unsheathes her teeth from my neck and lays me on the bed.
I smile up at her, the broad, all-accepting smile of a simpleton, as she licks the last remaining traces of my glossy blood from her lips.
She lies down beside me and regards me with her ink-black eyes.
“You never fail to enjoy it,” she says, her voice soft, musing.
“Of course,” I say. I am still falling back to earth, descending once more into normal, corporeal consciousness. This part always saddens me; I wish I could stay in that state of exalted bliss forever. Returning to the world of dirt and worms is disappointing after such ethereal delights.
I frown as the implication of her words finally registers. “Do the others not enjoy it?”
She gives a sad sort of smile and brushes a lock of hair from my forehead. “Some do. Others…resist. Not outwardly, of course. They would never dare do that. But some of them, when the feeding begins, their bodies stiffen as if clenching all their muscles to prevent entry. And afterward, they are visibly sickened.”
I am shocked. I had always assumed the others felt as I do.
As if reading my mind, Larissa chuckles and says, “That is one reason why you are different from the others. Better.”
This is not the first time she has praised me above all of the other mortals here at Merrimont, and such comments have kindled in my breast a secret hope that I have been chosen to ascend, to be transformed into a Master in the Ceremony of Ascension.
Ascensions are extremely rare. The oldest among us claim that the last time a human from our castle ascended was over a hundred years ago, the human in question being Darius, who now lives in Blackwell Castle, two nights’ journey to the east.
“What are you thinking of, my pet?” Larissa says with a knowing smile.
Embarrassed by my fantasies, my cheeks reddening, I change the subject. “Why do you never call me by my name?”
She waves a hand dismissively. “It is a silly name. As you know, Michael is in charge of naming the mortals, and he often chooses names that tickle his rather foolish sense of humor. Many of the names he bestows are drawn from the history of his homeland.”
“Where was it? His homeland, I mean.”
“A place called New Orleans. Nowhere I am familiar with. But then, most of us came from different realms. Very different, in some cases. At any rate, Michael usually names the mortals after famous figures from his homeland. In some cases those names are familiar to others of us who are not from his realm.”
I am rapt, all attention. The history of the Masters has always fascinated me, and Larissa knows it. “And ‘Jesus Christ’—my name—it belonged to some famous person that you, too, are familiar with?”
“Yes. He was a myth. A cult figure who is of no relevance any longer. The world has moved far beyond such things.” She shrugs. “Most of the other names from his realm have no meaning to me or to most of the others—Spiro Agnew, for example, or Franklin Roosevelt. But he seems to find them humorous. We have urged him before to be more serious in his selection of names, but he claims, correctly, that we gave him the right to name the mortals and it is his to exercise however he wishes.”
She opens a drawer in the marble-topped table beside the bed and takes from it an old leather-bound book. “Now then,” she says, handing me the book, “read to me. Let us see how your education is coming along.”
Over the last year Larissa has taught me to read and write, using books from the castle’s enormous library. As far as I can ascertain, no other mortal here at Merrimont has been so honored. What’s more, most of the books she has selected concern the history of the vampires—the venerable race to which the Masters belong. Over half the library is devoted to their history, for vampires have existed since before words were even invented and have filled countless volumes with their millennia of triumphs, tribulations, lore, and legends. They distribute these books only to each other, taking great pains to keep them from mortal hands.
Why would Larissa praise me so highly and teach me not only to read, but to read about the vampires’ secret history and thereby learn the ways of their ancient and private society? Why, in other words, does it seem as if I am being schooled? Why, un
less I have been chosen?
But of course it might be only wishful thinking. I know nothing for certain and must not pretend that I can understand the workings of the Masters’ minds, minds so full of centuries of knowledge and wisdom that they are godlike, inscrutable.
I am surprised and elated to see that the book she has chosen for today is The Book of the Lost World, one of the most important volumes in the Masters’ library, containing as it does the pre-Cataclysm histories of some of the oldest and most renowned vampires.
She has marked a page with a black silk ribbon. I open it there and read out loud the story of how a vampire named Sebastian the Red battled and slew a vampire slayer in a land called California. When at the end he impales the wretched girl on her own stake, I laugh in joy at his victory. Larissa smiles at my glee.
“California…” I say, staring at the exotic word on the page. “What kind of place was that?”
“I do not know. Many lands were lost in the Cataclysm, and that was one of them. I suppose it was once a mighty realm, but now, like Michael’s homeland, and mine, and so many others, it is nothing more than a name in fading ink.”
“Ah.” I scan the pages I read, zeroing in on the phrase “vampire slayer.” I have run across it before in other old books, but have never had the nerve to ask about it, perhaps fearing the answer. Now, though, I ask.
“Are there really those who would slay vampires?”
One side of Larissa’s mouth curls up in a sort of rueful grimace, and she emits a soft grunt, as if she’d been hoping I would never think to ask that question.
“Alas, yes. There are some in the outside world who hate us, who consider us soulless and evil. And some of these people go so far as to hunt us down wherever we are and destroy us.”
“That’s horrible!”
“Yes. In fact Sebastian the Red himself, once one of the mightiest of vampires, was slain by such a vampire slayer, a man named Hull, only thirty-eight years after the Cataclysm.”
I scowl, rage and disgust boiling within me. “I hope this Hull met a suitably grisly fate.”
