by Howe, A. E.
I should have been more skeptical, but I was anxious to be on my way. My family’s situation back home in the Carpathians was desperate. With the moon almost full and the way clear of highwaymen, I decided that I would ride night and day until I reached the city.
On the second night out from the village, I was riding half asleep through dense woods. In the darkness I could see nothing, so I was letting my horse choose the path. Halfway through a copse of trees, someone dropped from above onto the back of the horse. Before I could turn to fight them off, I felt fangs sink into my neck. In desperation, I threw both of us onto the ground.
The fall didn’t break my attacker’s hold on me, nor dislodge the teeth sucking blood from my neck. So I plunged my dagger into my assailant’s stomach, but this did no more than the fall to free me from the monster’s grip. As we struggled, I felt the life draining from me and then I blacked out.
When I came to, I was on my back and so weak that I was unable to open my eyes. The place where I lay was cold and damp. At last I heard two voices. They were speaking in a dialect that was unfamiliar, yet I could understand most of what they said.
“You disobeyed me,” a man’s voice said sharply.
“I thought he was a highwayman,” a young woman’s voice answered.
“Around here? Nonsense. We chased away the ones we didn’t kill years ago. Look at his clothes. Do they look like the clothes of a bandit? Shame on you, Edda!”
“I’m sorry, Papa. What are you going to do with him?”
“He would be dead already if I hadn’t followed you. I must save him. And to do so will be at great risk to our family. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Get your mother. We must do this together.”
I blacked out again, but soon woke to find the man’s wrist pressed against my mouth and his warm blood running down my throat. I choked and tried to fight him off, but I was too weak to resist.
“You must drink it,” he told me firmly. “It is the only way for you to survive.”
After a while he pulled his wrist away and I surprised myself by trying to grab it back, only to discover that my hands were bound.
“No more from me. Vitaliya, give him some of your blood.”
“Yes, Thanases.”
I opened my eyes to see a woman stretch out her arm to me. Blood was dripping from her wrist and I suckled at it hungrily.
“That’s enough,” the man said after a few minutes. I struggled to hold on as the woman pulled her arm away and the man placed a hand firmly on my chest. “Settle. Edda, you now.”
A younger woman knelt beside me and held her bloody arm to my mouth. When she had determined that I’d had enough, she pulled her arm away and I heard a strange voice cry, “No!” Only later did I realize that the voice was my own.
“The change will happen soon,” Thanases said to me. “It will be painful, but we won’t leave you.”
I passed out again. When I regained consciousness, pain doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt. It was a physical torture unlike anything I’d ever known. But the worst was an intense craving for more blood that maddened me. It seemed to stretch on for weeks, though Thanases told me later that the transformation only took two days.
Eventually, I heard him whisper softly to me, though the words rang in my ears like gunshots: “It is over. I should warn you that you will be especially sensitive to light, sounds and smells. The sensations will overwhelm you at first, but you’ll slowly get used to it.”
He removed a cloth from my eyes and helped me to sit up. I groaned and tried to cover my eyes from the harsh light that surrounded me, only to feel the ropes that still bound my hands. More ropes secured my legs. Squinting, I realized that I was in a cave and that the only light came from the dim glow of a single candle, though to me it illuminated the room like the brightest sun.
“What have you done to me?” I croaked.
“We’ve done you a great wrong. All I can do now is try to make it right. I pray that I’ve done the right thing.”
Over the next two days, I gradually adjusted to the increased strength of my senses, though I was still very weak. Edda, young and vibrant, and Vitaliya, mature and strong, sometimes came to sit with me in my part of the cave, sometimes giving me more blood. But when I tried to get them to talk, they would only shake their heads and tell me that Thanases would explain everything.
On the third day, Thanases came and sat on a rock a few feet away from me.
“What is happening to me?” I begged him, fighting against the ropes holding my arms. For a long time I thought he wasn’t going to answer me; then I stopped struggling and studied my captor for the first time.
“Good. I see that you are beginning to think,” he said, watching my face as I made note of his gentleman’s clothes, clean but worn. His square, hard face was framed by blond hair that was long and wild.
“Damn you!” I swore.
“Yes, I believe that I am damned. And I fear that we have damned you too.”
“Don’t talk in riddles. Turn me loose.”
“For your own good, I can’t do that.”
“My people will be hunting for me.”
“No, they won’t. Not yet. I went through your papers. You’re on a mission to raise troops to help defend your family’s lands. They won’t think you overdue for another month. Even then, where would they start looking for you?” He shrugged.
“If you know all of that, then you will understand how important it is that I leave this place. Give me my horse and belongings and I’ll be on my way.”
“For your own safety, I can’t let you go until you understand what has happened to you,” he said solemnly.
“I know that someone dropped from a tree onto my horse,” I said, and only then remembered the searing bite on my neck.
“That was Edda. She disobeyed my orders.”
“Is she your daughter?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You all live here?” I had heard them talking in other parts of the cave during my days of convalescence. “Why?”
“Because we are not quite human anymore.” After a pause he added, “And neither are you.”
“Don’t talk rubbish!” I barked as fear crept into my heart. Not just fear for my safety, but for my very soul. I knew that something dramatic had happened to me, but to not be human? What could he mean?
“You will be burned by the rays of the sun if they touch you.”
“You are mad!”
“That is why you are bound. If I let you run out into the daylight, you would die.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said flatly.
“I knew you wouldn’t. I didn’t believe it either.”
“Who are you?”
“I was a priest.”
“Yet you have a wife?” I scoffed.
“She came after,” he said with a depth of melancholy that made me shiver.
“What happened to you?”
“I crossed paths with the wrong demon. I was at an inn one night where Vitaliya was serving food while her husband poured drinks. A stranger came in and tried to grab Vitaliya. When I challenged the man, he released her and gave me an evil smile as he left the inn. When I went outside later, the creature attacked me and dragged me off to a crypt where he’d made his home. He turned me and a nightmare began.”
“If Vitaliya was married to—” I started to say, but the former priest held up his hand to stop me.
“After the demon turned me, I went a bit mad. I went back to the inn, killed Vitaliya’s husband, then changed her. Crazed, she also changed her daughter, Edda. We all went berserk for a while before I realized that we must come back to God. Forty years ago, we came to live in these caves. Since then, we have tried to take blood only from those who do harm to others. But Edda…”
“This is all ridiculous,” I said, though I could feel the truth of his story in my veins.
“I will have to prove it to you. I
regret what we’ve done to you and perhaps I should have let you die.” He reached down and pulled on my legs, dragging me toward the entrance to the cave. With my hands bound and still weak from the transformation, there was nothing I could do to stop him.
Vitaliya met him with several blankets in her hands. She helped Thanases to wrap one completely around my lower body, then she knelt beside me as he pulled another large blanket over his head and wrapped it securely around himself.
“You need to stay under here,” Vitaliya told me as she placed a third blanket over my head.
“Are you as insane as he is?” I snapped.
“You will find out soon enough,” she said grimly.
Again Thanases grabbed my feet. I skidded over the rough ground, clutching at the heavy woolen blanket with my bound hands. I was tempted to twist and turn until I could see where I was going, but I hesitated. Their attitudes had not suggested they were lying. Suddenly a little light came through the blanket and my eyes watered, even though I knew it was only a tiny amount of daylight.
Thanases dropped my legs. “I am going to free your hands. But remember—if you uncover yourself, you will die.”
I felt his hands searching for mine and he poked me once or twice with his knife as he cut through the ropes that held me. Finally free, I flexed my hands. Part of me wanted to untie my legs and run away, but the strangeness of the situation made me hesitate. I didn’t dare ignore the warnings.
“Move your hand to the edge of the blanket, then I suggest you try extending a finger outside. It is twilight. The sun is weaker now.”
I did what he suggested and lifted a small edge of the blanket to expose my smallest finger to the rays of the setting sun. To this day I can still feel the searing pain that burned through my flesh.
I screamed. Screamed from the pain and the knowledge that they had transformed me into a monster.
“Drag me back inside!” I yelled, fearing that he might have left me alone outside the cave.
“Wait,” he said calmly from a short distance away.
Huddled like a child inside my blanket, I saw the light fade. A little time passed, then Thanases jerked the blanket off of me. I cringed, not knowing what to expect. Through squinting eyes, I could see a blue line of light along the western horizon where the sun had set.
“You are now a creature of darkness,” Thanases proclaimed, untying my legs. “May God have mercy upon your soul.”
I struggled to my feet, stiff and sore from all the time spent lying on the cave floor. We were standing on the ledge of a cliff, the forested ground more than one hundred feet below us.
“What are you?” I asked.
“Vampir. As are you,” he answered sadly. “From this day forward, you will derive all of your sustenance from the blood of others. You can never go out in the sunlight again. To cross running water, you must protect yourself with gold and the soil of your native land. During the day, you should sleep in a coffin, for you are dead to the diurnal world.”
“You are insane.”
“You know better!” he said, thumping me on the chest.
Days of pent-up rage at being kept as a prisoner erupted from me as he touched me. I grabbed at him and hurled him over the edge of the cliff, surprised at my own strength. The last thing I heard before he disappeared into the abyss was his laughter.
I screamed in fury, my voice echoing across the dark valley. What do I do now? I wondered. I turned back toward the cave, but before I reached the entrance I heard a sound behind me. Turning, I found Thanases climbing back onto the ledge, his clothes torn and dirty.
“You, like me, are also invulnerable to most dangers,” he said, panting a little. “Things that would have killed you no longer can. But hunters will come with stakes to drive through your heart and swords to sever your head. Those you must still be careful of,” he said with a strange laugh.
I’d called him mad and now I knew it was true. No wonder. At that moment, I knew that my own sanity was at very grave risk.
Chapter Three
Blasko grew suddenly quiet. As Josephine held his hand, she realized that she could feel the rough scar on his small finger.
“What did you do? What became of Thanases and the rest?” Josephine asked softly.
Blasko brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “We’ll save that for another time.”
He stood up and she followed him back toward the car, thinking that his usual mask of calm reserve hid some frighteningly dark memories.
As they walked, they could hear that the rhythm and blues from The Dock had given way to a local mix of jazz and Dixieland.
“I have an idea,” Josephine said, encouraging Blasko to get into the car.
She drove to The Dock and parked under a spreading live oak that was draped in Spanish moss, its branches unmoving in the still heat. There was another car parked on the opposite side of the oak. Josephine cast a furtive look at it and saw a young couple slouched together in the front seat, the smoke from their cigarettes drifting out through the windows.
“Are we going in?” Blasko asked.
“No. But this is where white folk come to park and—” Before the words were out of her mouth, a short dark man in overalls cautiously approached the side of the car.
“Pardon, ma’am. I got the good stuff and the cheap stuff,” he said with a tip of his hat.
“A pint of your best.”
“Yes, ma’am!” The man hustled over to a couple of boxes hidden under an azalea bush. In a moment, he was back with a bottle.
“Five dollars,” he said, holding out his hat for Josephine to drop the money in. “Thank you, ma’am.”
After the man had returned to sit on a stool by his boxes, Blasko turned to Josephine and watched as she tipped the bottle up and drank an ounce of the clear liquid. “You have no idea what you’re drinking,” he said, astounded.
“The man who sold it to me is Martin Telford. His son was killed in France. Everyone in the county respects that man’s ability to build a still. If Alabama ever goes wet again, I’d be proud if our bank loaned him the money to open a proper distillery.” She didn’t bother to offer Blasko a drink, as his condition prevented him from experiencing the effects of alcohol.
They sat in amiable silence for a while, listening to the jovial sounds from The Dock.
“The music is… wild,” Blasko observed. “In an odd way, it reminds me of the mountains and the villagers of my homeland.”
“Working people around the world share a common culture.” Josephine rolled her head on her neck, feeling the alcohol loosen her muscles and her mind. “I’m going to Florida and I want to go now,” she said, surprised by her own determination. “Uncle Petey’s letter said that he would leave another note at the post office on Cedar Island. If he did, then maybe that will explain why he went there.”
“Of course,” Blasko said as he tried not to look at the other car where the two people were engaged in some rather intimate… wrestling. “I will have to make some preparations for the trip.”
“You don’t have to go,” she told him, receiving a narrow-eyed glare in return. She took another pull from the bottle, then replaced the cork. “Okay, fine. That will give me time to visit the paper tomorrow. Anything we can find out might help,” she said as she started the car.
Josephine had slept for about four hours when she was awakened by someone softly calling her name. She barely resisted the urge to jump when she saw Blasko standing over her bed.
“I believe I can be ready to leave tomorrow night,” he said. “I’m sorry. Were you still asleep?”
“What time is it?” she asked, squinting to see him in the darkness. “And haven’t we talked about you barging into my bedroom in the middle of the night?” She reached out to turn on the bedside lamp.
“I only have ten minutes before the sun comes up. I wanted to tell you that Anton is preparing our supplies for the trip. Of course, we will have to take both cars.”
“I hadn’
t thought it all through yet, but if Anton is going… Don’t you think he should stay here and watch over your rooms?” Josephine still found Anton a bit odd and she wasn’t sure how he’d be received on the roads of the Deep South.
“When I’ve traveled I’ve always had a… watchman on duty during daylight hours. I sleep more securely.”
“You didn’t have one when you came to this country,” Josephine said lightly, receiving a certain amount of pleasure from the heat that flashed in Blasko’s eyes.
“You know very well that you kidnapped me,” Blasko said with passion before realizing that she was goading him. “It is precisely because of persons like yourself that I need protection,” he said, his eyebrows raised.
“Okay, Anton goes. I want Grace to go too. There’s me and you, all of our luggage. By the way, how are you going to transport your… bed?”
“Ah, ha!” Blasko said with delight. “Anton is quite skilled as a carpenter. He’s made me a coffin that breaks into three parts that fold into the approximate shape of a suitcase. They are weighty, but can be handled easily.”
“He did this tonight?”
“Certainly not! I thought of it months ago. We acquired the wood and he’s been working on it steadily. The last section still has to be assembled and we will have to forego the final coat of varnish, but I think it will serve its purpose.”
“Bully for Anton.” Josephine paused, considering all she’d need to do. “Sure, why not? We can leave as soon as you wake tonight.”
“We will be ready,” Blasko said, then cast a nervous glance at the window. “I must go.”
Before Josephine could say a word, he’d disappeared back into the hall. As she heard him hurry down the stairs, she fell back onto the bed. This is crazy, she thought, but then realized, I don’t care. She rolled out of bed to start her busy morning.
“Here’s the list of items to pack,” Josephine told Grace, after informing her of their plans to leave that night.
“I know how to pack for a trip to the coast,” Grace told her, sounding affronted as she took the note.