The Oldest Blood: A Vampire Paranormal Fantasy

by F. E. Arliss

  They’d provided a lovely old bed with heavy carvings. It looked centuries old, and probably was. The linens were, well...linen. Which she normally hated as they were always scratchy. These appeared to be very, very old and were soft and deliciously comfortable. There was this lovely vanity and bench, at which she now sat - also ancient, though the mirror looked to have been replaced. Two deeply upholstered chairs with matching footstools were the only other furnishings. A lamp for reading was shoved behind each and a small table big enough for drinks and snacks set between the two chairs. Any remaining bare wall space had been used for a series of curved closet rods, shoe racks and rows of boxes on handmade curved shelves for any clothes she might need.

  The only art work was an enormous medallion carved into the middle of the floor and an intricate tapestry over the bed. She suspected they had some sort of interwoven protection in their designs. She’d have to ask Saulaces. Small, hand-loomed silk rugs were scattered in strategic locations - in front of the sink, the bed, the tub and the chairs. The rich colors in the rugs seemed to twist and spin if you looked at them too closely. Again, some sort of protection she guessed.

  It was small, intimate and very nice - for a millenia-old castle with no windows, running water, or electricity. Which, it now had in just the one room. They’d gone a long way to accommodate her and she was grateful.

  When she’d walked down the long winding stone stairs to see if she could find some breakfast, the ancient butler had bowed to her creakily from the waist and said, “Good morning, my Queen. I hope you slept well.”

  “I did. Thank you...I’m sorry, I’ve never gotten your name. I apologize for my lack of manners in that direction,” Remi muttered, ashamed of overlooking the elderly man.

  “I’m Graham, my Queen. Just Graham,” he added a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t mean to be too bold, my Queen, but if you might cast your mind over Lord Saulaces’s enhanced sense of smell. To me, though, your eau is delightful.”

  Remi stared at Graham for a moment, then turned and without a word, went back up the cold winding stairs and with a warm wash-cloth and a bit of the Cetaphil cleanser she used for her face, washed every trace of skin. She hadn’t thought. Her scented shampoo, body gel and lotion would probably be far too pungent for Saulaces’s keen nose. Why hadn’t he said anything earlier? They’d usually kept a distance, she supposed. But, now, in the closed confines of the castle, her scent would waft everywhere and permeate everything. It had been kind of Graham to mention it.

  Plus, if she was honest, she’d over done everything with scent in it last night because, well…she thought she stunk of blood, mold, rot, and the musty smell of the aged elders.

  Redressing and descending the stairs, she was met once more by the decrepit old man. “Thank you, Graham. That was most thoughtful of you,” Remi said, smiling gently at him. “I will rely on you from now on out to keep me from making anyone in the clan uncomfortable - unless it is a discomfort I deem necessary.” She added this last bit with a wink and grin of her own and the old man’s gums gaped open as his ribs creaked with laughter.

  He waved one gnarled hand towards what she knew was the back door and followed him out onto the stone terrace. Laid out on a small table was a beautiful breakfast service. Croissants warm from the oven, her favorite tea and fresh fruit all sat next to dainty china and gleaming sterling silver breakfast ware.

  “You are a gem, Graham. Thank you,” Remi said, gently squeezing the old man’s hand as she sat, allowing him to drape a snowy white linen napkin over her lap and pour her a cup of the fragrant tea. Fresh squeezed juice was sloshed into a crystal goblet and Remi, for the first time in weeks, heaved a sigh of pleased enjoyment.

  The entire castle felt happy. She wondered if it was her imagination, but the smiling skulls on her ring and bracelets, said otherwise.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Power

  The next few weeks were a revelation to Remi. Saulaces had said that the parure would simply enhance the powers and traits she already had. She already knew that if she laid hands on people with the intent to stop them, the ring had evoked a power that burned the Colchi who were attacking her. Whether it had been her intent or the rings intent to protect, she didn’t know. She knew the burning only happened when she chose it or needed it, as she’d never taken the ring off, and often touched people and things with it still on her finger.

  During her first breakfast she’d already discovered that her sense of smell and taste, eyesight, and intuition were heightened. Before she’d heard Graham trudging towards her with another carafe of steaming black tea, she’d intuited that he would be coming soon. When she somehow had the thought that Saulaces would arrive soon, he did. Same thing for Georgie and his arrival with Mr. Bemis. She’d intuited those arrivals right down to a few minutes.

  All of this from one small shot glass full of foul-tasting Colchi blood the night before. Wow!

  When Georgie had arrived, she’d hurriedly tugged him up to her room on the guise of unloading the things he’d brought her. Slamming the three-inch thick, many centuries old, oak door behind them, she pulled him close and demanded, “Smell me!”

  Georgie sniffed. Looked at her bewilderedly and said, “What?”

  “Smell me!” she demanded again.

  He took a long inhalation, moving his long, straight nose over her shoulder, neck and then upper back. “You smell fine! What is the matter with you?” he asked, raising his shoulders in a shrug. “I refuse to smell your armpits, if that is your next demand,” he added, grinning.

  “You’re sure I don’t stink,” Remi asked, doubt lacing her tone. “That Colchi blood gave me the worst breath. I could feel it oozing through my system. Look!” she added, parting her hair where her roots were now white-blond.

  Georgie whistled, “Cool!”

  “And look at these!” she demanded, sticking out her hands and flicking her now super strong nails at him.

  He took her slender fingers in his and ran a thumb over the newly improved ovals of her nails. “Wow! It’s almost like you’ve had them done!” he crowed. “I love it! Can I get some of that stuff?”

  “Trust me you don’t want it. It tastes awful and I can smell, hear and see way better - like, too better almost. It sorta hurts in a way,” she added, grimacing. “I knew almost exactly when you left the apartment and when you were going to arrive. Some sort of weird intuition thing, I suppose.”

  “Awesome!” Six enthused, only to be given a very dirty look by Remi.

  “Maybe it’ll be awesome in the next few months or years, but right now - it sorta hurts,” she added again, this time on the verge of tears. “Everything is so new and strange and weird,” she exclaimed, sniffing back the tears that wanted to fall.

  “It’s ok,” Georgie soothed, pulling her into a hug and sinking down into one of the chairs. “Cry all you want. I know it’s foreign and scary.”

  “It is,” she admitted, and then cried her eyes out as Georgie rocked her gently in the far too comfortable old chair. Remi fell deeply asleep with her head on Six’s shoulder.

  When the door cracked slightly a couple of hours later, it was to find Georgie with his head leaned back on the velvet upholstery of the chair sound asleep. His arms were still wrapped around Remi’s torso and she drooled peacefully onto his shoulder, her tear-streaked face pressed into the now stained fabric of his pinpoint-cotton shirt. The door closed silently. The castle was still.

  Over the next few weeks, Remi’s powers were explored. Frankly, they were what she’d had before, only amplified about a thousand times over. She’d always had good intuition, now she was infallible with her guesses. Though to call them guesses would have been completely wrong. They were more like x-rays that developed in her mind out over the universe.

  She was stronger, faster, and though she’d always had a good mind for strategy, her planning and complex thinking had increased. Saulaces still demanded she and Georgie take weapons and self-defense training.


  Though Georgie no longer trained with Remi - her strength, speed and attack skills were blindingly efficient. So much so, that she’d cracked his wrist the first day they’d sparred together. After that, he just grinned at her wickedly as he sparred with Jin. If she landed a strike against Saulaces or one of the elders, he would hoot wildly from the sidelines, causing disgruntled elders to glare at him as Remi tried to hide her laughter.

  It also turned out that she could teleport. Not long distances like the elders or other Colchi, but she could move herself a few feet if she wanted it desperately enough. When Saul had backed her up to the very verge of the steeply-inclined moat during a bout using her least favorite weapon - some ancient iron thing with a round ball on the end embedded with spikes - she’d wanted to be anywhere but on the receiving end of the blow that was coming. Saul called the evil thing a ‘morning star’; all Remi could think was that she wanted it to swing through empty air. It did.

  To everyone’s astonishment, she was behind him about three feet away. Remi stared at the deft move Saul made to avoid his own strike as the ball swung through empty air and continued back towards him. He swirled and ducked - the ball passing through empty air once again. Dropping the weapon on the ground, he whirled to stare at Remi.

  As always, the first to recover, Georgie shrieked, “OMG! You so teleported!” And racing over, swung her up in his arms and swung her around jubilantly. “You’re a teleporter. Oh, please, take me to Morocco where I can walk hand in hand with my lover in public and no one will care!”

  Remi, less sure of what had happened, said pithily, “No one cares if you hold hands here either, doo dah!”

  “The family doesn’t like it,” Georgie returned, still grinning. “So, what was that? It was teleporting, right?”

  They both turned to look at Saulaces, who had watched this exchange stony faced. “Perhaps,” he said grudgingly. “Perhaps, if she can repeat the move. Then, it might be a type of transmission of energy.”

  Georgie crowed, “Ah, Saulaces, you can’t believe she can do it! Transmission my eye!” He released Remi to go to a small wrought iron table and pour himself a glass of water. “She can teleport,” he hummed happily, laughing to himself in smug satisfaction. “Remi can teleport.”

  Over the next two weeks, the distances she could move herself increased. At first, she couldn’t summon the skill except for when she was in grave danger - usually having been driven to a swan dive onto the stone terrace below or some other mind-bendingly terrifying situation that Saulaces backed her into.

  Eventually, she could summon it at will, for very short moves of a few feet. With concentration, the ability was growing, but for now, a few feet was enough to save her from being mangled during training.

  Remi’s intuition was very sharp now, and her fighting skills improved vastly. When a strategy session ended with Remi trumping all of the elders' machinations (she thought it was a lot like Monopoly - which she’d always been terrible at), they deemed her ready to meet the heads of the other clans.

  Remi wasn’t so sure about that, but with Saulaces at her side and Georgie and Mr. Bemus to accompany them. She felt she might as well acquiesce and get it over with. Internally, and to Six, she admitted she was curious. The meeting was planned for a week later and would be held at a neutral meeting place.

  To their amazement, the neutral meeting place turned out to be the underground vaults of the burned Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris. The site was closed for construction and huge, heavy duty locks had been placed on all the entrances. It was the perfect place for a meeting that no humans, except for Remi and Six, would ever see.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Conclave of Clans

  Remi’s first worry about the upcoming conclave was what would happen when she met the Empusa that had killed Kandake. Many times she’d asked Saulaces to explain what the fight had been about. Finally, he’d reluctantly told her that the Colchi were in many ways the “law-keepers” of the clans. The Empusa had been allowing serious illness to occur in their food and clothing factories because of poor conditions. Then simply fed on the near dead bodies, making them fully dead within minutes.

  The Colchi had assembled to either talk them into ‘correct behavior’ as Saulaces put it, or they would enforce it physically. It had come to physicality. Kandake had been killed for worker’s rights. Somehow that seemed fitting to Remi. It didn’t make her like the Empusa any better - just like them even less.

  Once again, Remi was stumped about what to wear. What did one wear to meet the Queens and Lords of an assortment of vampire clans from around the world? In an underground vault, no less. In her mind, she had firmly entrenched the idea that the Colchi were the first, the oldest, and the most powerful clan ever formed. Surely what she wore should reflect that? How?

  Who knew figuring out what to wear could be so much of a pain in the butt?

  To Georgie, this was, of course, the most exciting part. He’d arrived laden with boxes and bags and pronounced, “I have the exact thing!”

  Half an hour later, standing in front of the floor length mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door, she had to admit it suited her.

  “I knew you’d want to wear pants,” Six said, muttering this as though it was a curse. “So, I knew you’d want to be comfortable, able to move, and look commanding, so this is THE outfit!”

  Remi had donned the Balmain boat-neck bodysuit eagerly. She’d loved everything about it from the first. It was black and white and had a mesh insert that showed her skin in an oddly geometric slash that ran across her upper chest and then down over her ribs in an elegant ninety-degree point-end vee. The body was black, while the boat-neck and long arms were white. She’d shoved the sleeves up a bit to let the diamond bracelets with their black intaglio skulls show. It looked commanding, edgy and risque at the same time.

  The pants, black silk, with camel and white strips on the sides of the slim legs were from Burberry. Paired with the Balmain bodysuit, it looked like they’d been made for each other. Layered over the top of this was a camel, cashmere trench coat from The Row. Georgie helped her cuff back the arms so that none of the parure was hidden.

  It was all very understated and commanding looking and it let the diamond and black intaglio skull parure set of the Colchi queen dominate the look. The dangling black skull of the necklace seemed to watch the room, the background of the white bodysuit it rested on causing it to pop visually.

  For fun, and for a true statement of Remi’s own style, Georgie had brought a pair of crocodile-embossed, deep red Givenchy boots inlaid with silver studs and adorned with a row of buckles up the side. To her shock they had a row of stainless-steel spikes embedded in the toe. Just like the ones she’d seen Kandake wear on her black platform boots the night they’d met. She’d described them once to Six when she’d had a little too much to drink - explaining how occasionally she felt like ramming those spikes up someone’s ass. Strong words that only slipped out when she was a little inebriated.

  The boots had a two-inch stacked heel and would give her the comfort of movement and add a punch of rebel Colchi-clash to the rest of the commandingly elegant outfit. The original design had a lower half-inch heel and no spikes on the toe. Only Georgie would know how to get a design house as powerful as Givenchy to remake a pair of their signature boots to a custom order!

  Even Remi had to admit she looked stunning. Powerful, yet current, sophisticated and non-conformist. That was exactly what she wanted to convey. Georgie carefully clipped Kandake’s tiny black beaver-fur top hat to her short white-blond crop. Delicately pulling the black netting down over her eyes, he smiled at her and smoothed the dainty red feathers that flashed along the hat’s left side. “She would be pleased,” he whispered. Raising her hand and placing a kiss on her trembling knuckles. “You look like a Queen. You are a Queen.”

  “Yes, you are,” came Saulaces deep voice from the doorway. “You look wonderful. She would be proud.” His voice seemed to seep in
to Remi’s bones and warm her. “Let’s go show them what the Colchi are becoming...powerful members of the upper world, not just the lower one.”

  No one bothered to get in cars for this trip. That was for the weaker bloodlines. Saulaces simply clasped Remi to him and teleported them into the vaults beneath the old cathedral. Other elders appeared around them. One releasing Georgie, who tugged at his crumpled black suit and straightened his red tie. Once again he’d matched his attire to her own in a subtle way. She smiled to see that he wore a pair of lace-up, camel wing-tip oxfords.

  The sudden appearance of the Colchi amidst the gathering caused a stir of alarm and awe as enormous luna moths fluttered into the shapes of the elders. The groups stepped back quickly and gathered in knots around the sides of the kerosene-lantern lit catacomb. As far as Remi could see, there were eleven groups represented at the conclave.