* * *
Anton slept deeply that day after the hard exertion of last night. The four coins he’d earned were in the pocket of the shirt he wore to sleep, and, when he woke up in the afternoon, they jangled in his pocket.
When he stepped into the dining room of Andrei’s abode, the room was empty. A large table was spread with a beautiful white tablecloth and a loaf of bread with some cheese wrapped in a blanket beside it. He eagerly tore off some bread and placed some bits of cheese he broke off onto it and began to eat.
Ileana heard him and entered the room. When she saw him, she said to him, “I hope you slept well. How about I help you break your fast with some eggs and beer?”
She returned a few minutes later with some boiled eggs and a frothing mug of beer. Anton opened the eggs and wolfed them down between large gulps of beer, with little attempt at civility.
“Slow down, slow down,” Ileana cheerily admonished.
She brought out a small bowl of the same foul-tasting vampire wares that he’d eaten the day before, along with a steaming bowl of beef stew, remarking, “We got the stew cooking up for Andrei’s dinner tonight. You might try mixing in the medicine with the stew to take the edge off the taste.”
“Are you crazy?” Anton replied, “That’ll just ruin the stew. It smells too delicious to be ruined.”
“Suite yourself,” she said. Anton raised the brown liquid to his lips and closed his nose while he put it in his mouth. It tasted at once sweet and rotten, like rancid milk mixed with honey, with a hint of sour like an unripe berry. He could feel it coating the interior of his mouth and slipping down his throat with a stench that wouldn’t wash away no matter how many gulps of beer he took.
After Anton finished eating, he announced to Ileana, “I’m going to visit my family.”
Ileana said, “Alright. But don’t be too long. Vasile will be up shortly and I’m sure he’ll want to train before dark—target practice with the bows and knives and all that.”
“I’ll be quick,” Anton said, and he rushed out through the back of the house. He tried to rush home, but the food weighed heavily in his stomach, and the overpowering taste of the vampire medicine was still in his mouth.
When he saw his family’s farmhouse, he felt like it’d been an eternity since he’d seen it, even though it’d only been some two days. Apparently his sister’s Constanta felt the same way, since she joyously ran out to come greet him with her arms outstretched.
“Oh, brother, I worry so much about you. These past two nights I’ve been dreaming about you being bled dry by some frightening vampire. It’s horrible.”
They walked inside and his mother who was baking bread was there to meet them. Anton’s father, Josif, was soon to follow. He still looked displeased and asked earnestly, “Does this mean you’ve given up this vampire-hunting business?”
“No, father,” Anton said, and he reached to his pockets to pull out his gold. He placed the four coins on the table, saying, “My formidable hunting skills earned me this. One for each of us.”
The three of them marveled incredulously at the wealth that he’d thrown on the table.
Anton turned to his father, saying, “I told you vampire-hunting would be worth it. I told you I would lift us out of this rut. What do you say now father? This is only my first week.”
Constanta and Viorica were dazzled by the coins and picked up one each, his mother asking, “For us? This is too much.”
His sister gushed and gave Anton a warm hug saying, “I have the most wonderful brother, ever.”
Anton’s father picked up his coin, bit it and inspected it closely. He said, “What am I going to do with this? I can’t pay for anything with gold coins. Am I supposed to go down to the blacksmith and buy a horseshoe with one of these? Cornel wouldn’t have enough money in his whole store to change this.”
“I can get Andrei to change it for you,” Anton sighed with growing frustration.
“Then you can just give him back the whole coin,” Josif sneered, “We don’t need his charity.”
“It’s not charity!” Anton said, starting to yell, “I bagged a vampire. I mean, we, Vasile and I, did. We shot him through with half a dozen arrows, and this is what Andrei paid us.”
“Oh my God,” Constanta exclaimed, “I should thank heaven you weren’t killed.”
“You’ll see that I was right to try to prevent you,” Josif said, pointing his finger directly at Anton, “I just pray that you figure it out before you end up dead.”
Anton had hoped that his visit with his family would raise his spirits, but it had failed to do so. They invited him for dinner, but he said that Vasile was expecting him and that he needed to commence training.
He walked out the door and Constanta walked him down the road some way so she could talk with him alone.
“Are you happy with this apprenticeship big brother?” she asked, “Do you like hunting?”
“It’s terrifying,” he answered, “The vampires are so cold and powerful. And it’s even scarier to see them up close. I don’t have much of an appetite for killing. But I’ve only just started. Things will improve. Though, I do miss spending time with you three—especially you.”
“I love my big brother too,” she said, giving him a big hug, “But I worry about you. If you died out there, it’d be horrible. I’d be all alone, and so very sad. I need a big brother to protect me.”
“I always have protected you and I always will. You’ll see,” he assured her, adding, “You know what I’m going to do for you? I’m going to use my money to buy you some of Andrei’s vampire medicines.” He expected this to make her happy, but when he turned to look at Constanta, her reaction was less than positive. A disgusted look spread across her face. Anton said, “They’ll make you stronger and healthier and more beautiful. You won’t get sick anymore.”
“I don’t want to eat that,” Constanta said, continuing to embellish the look of disgust on her face, “It’s made from dead vampires. Yuck. It’s almost like cannibalism.”
“No, it’s just like the medicine that old apothecaries make from human corpses and mummies—they take dried bones and grind them up and such. But these genuinely work. Vampire wares are just like any other medicine. And besides, it’s not really cannibalism. Vampires aren’t people. They’re monsters. Evil vicious monsters that would grab you out of your bed at night if it weren’t for Vasile and I.”
Constant remained unconvinced, but she was willing to concede, just for the sake of placating her brother. “I guess I can try,” she said.
This made Anton happy and he promised wholeheartedly to bring her something within the next few days.
He was then off, returning to Andrei’s where he found Vasile impatiently waiting for him. Vasile told him as soon as he arrived, “We’ve got training to do. We’ll start with the longbow. And we need to start practicing your crossbow handling and knife-throwing.”
That afternoon, the two of them doggedly practiced until the setting of the sun, after which they went out for an unsuccessful night’s hunt.
Elixir of Flesh Page 19