Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  The disappointment at her departure sparked an uncomfortable memory from a time he’d believed was well behind him.

  Chapter Two

  It’s often said that the undead cling to the life that has been taken from them. Juliana, however, could have let hers go easily had it not been for Elis. On the night they met, she handed him a peppermint stick to keep him pacified during Angel’s Mass. She appeared like any other nun to him, though younger than most. Her starched wimple hid well the scabs dotting her neck. Taking the sweet, he hardly noticed the chill of her skin as it brushed against his hand.

  Elis would see her again many times as he grew from boy to man. He changed, of course, but Sister Juliana stayed just as she had been that first Christmastide: youthful and cold, with a distant look of unsated need in her eyes. Now a young man, Elis squirmed in his church pew, sweat prickling the line around his neck where wool met skin, knowing without seeing that those ravenous eyes were upon him. Every time he dared look at her, her gaze would be demurely cast upon her folded hands. But he knew hunger when he saw it. She was lovely and frightening, like a feral cat that purred as it ate the heart of its kill.

  A fortnight after Elis turned twenty-three, now working as a tanner alongside his uncle, word came that a tragedy had befallen the convent. A nun had been savaged, according to his uncle, her blood drunken by the beast responsible. Dread froze his hand, knife set to mid-scrape upon cowhide.

  “Was it…” It couldn’t be her. Please, not Juliana. “Who was it?”

  “Sister Anne.” Uncle crossed himself. “Best not to go out alone until the beast is captured.”

  Sister Anne. Which meant…thank God. Elis could have cried with relief and then cried from the shame of feeling such relief for the life of a woman he had no claim over and never would. Men were damned for far less than harboring the desire to steal a bride of Christ away from the Almighty.

  Uncle clucked his tongue. “Who knows what the beast has done with the other one.”

  This time, Elis’ hands left their work altogether, knife clattering to the ground. “The other one?”

  “Aye.” He nodded. “Sister Juliana is missing. We must pray that God, in His infinite mercy, sees fit to spare her.”

  Elis insisted on joining the search. Into the thickets the villagers tumbled, men with torches lit and bravado raised. Each was set upon finding the beast and destroying it and, if they would admit to it, each also fantasized about saving the fair Juliana. Every man prayed he would be the one to whom she would owe her everlasting gratitude. These thoughts carried them deep into the forest. Illusions of heroism and the curve of Juliana’s backside as it swayed under her tunic spurred them on long into the night.

  Elis had similar fantasies but, unbeknownst to him, he was different from the other would-be rescuers. Those men held to their desire, knowing its object was unattainable. For Elis, though, what should have been love unrequited was love returned ten-fold. Juliana had waited many years for this moment, for Elis to become a man, for him to come to her.

  She hadn’t expected it to take quite so long. In fact, she’d waited for him, believing the growing pull between them would bring him to her as soon as he reached manhood. If it had, she’d have been ready. Every night, she jammed the door to her cell with a bit of wood to ensure it would remain unlocked in case he came. Each morning she made a point to pass the tannery on her way to market, knowing he’d spy her through racks of salted pig hides. She endured the tedium of endless masses, kneeling and praying to a God whose favor she no longer sought, and she did it simply to be in the same room with him.

  For years she stayed, playing out a role cast upon her by her father in the life before this one, this life of hunger and obsessed desire. All for him. All so that they could be together.

  Weeks and months and years passed, and still he didn’t come. Juliana grew tired of waiting. Still, never would she lower herself by going to him. No.

  She would make him come to her.

  Normally, Juliana survived on the blood of sheep and cows and wild creatures—prey whose deaths were likely never to lead back to her. She had a great thirst for blood of any kind, of course, and Sister Anne had made a hearty meal. Vanquishing hunger was one thing, however; vanquishing need was quite another. And that need could only be met by the strapping young Elis. There would never be anyone else who could give either of them what they soon would give to each other.

  Elis was coming for her. Just as she’d planned, Anne’s messy death and her own unexplained disappearance had led men on a hunt. But only Elis would find her, she had made sure of it. And when he did, he would know everything she knew.

  They would spend the rest of eternity sating each other’s thirst.

  The search party, along with their dogs, turned south, convinced that her trail led in that direction. Something—an inkling, intuition perhaps—told Elis to continue west, though he was advised against it.

  “There’s nothing but a deep ravine in that direction,” the smith warned him. “In this dark, the only thing you’ll find to the west is your own death.”

  Smith was right, though not in the way he’d been thinking. Death did pay Elis a visit that night. It had come and then departed, not even staying long enough to drink a cup of tea.

  He found her asleep, her back pressed against the wall of a shallow cave, dank and cheerless, eight miles directly west of the convent.

  “Juliana!” He rushed to her side, hoping she was asleep and fearing she was dead. In truth, she was both, but neither. She had died long ago when, as a novice, she’d been bitten by a visiting priest with a penchant for nubile penitents. Although she rested at times, closed her eyes and dreamed of dreaming, she hadn’t properly slept since before she was turned.

  Elis grabbed her arm, shaking it gently, repeating her name. Her touch made his nostrils flair, a trace of mint splashing up from a tide of fetid rot.

  “Juliana.” His voice echoed the tremor of her heart. She lifted her head as he brushed her hair back from her face. Finally, she allowed his gaze to meet her own.

  His breath caught. Her face was as cold as midwinter. “Are you hurt?”

  She smiled. “Not with you here.”

  She took him then. Or rather, she gave to him, gave him a death that yielded more life than his existence as Elis, assistant tanner, ever could.

  Her lips made his tingle. Her kiss pacified his fears the way her peppermint candy had once pacified his tongue. He barely noticed when her mouth trailed along the pink flesh of his neck, leading to the throbbing artery bringing blood from heart to head. His struggle was short and without commitment.

  He wanted this. He’d come to her, just as she’d always known he would.

  They left the area as soon as he’d regained the strength needed to travel. First, they sailed to Ireland, and eventually, they followed the surge of the persecuted and brave on to the New World.

  They subsisted on pigs and strays and each other. For many years, there was no one but them, no one to break the trance that held them together. Her blood tasted of fresh mint and honey, his of leather and lime. The world pressed on but for them it never changed.

  When it suited their purpose, they would kill a human. There was no shame for them in doing so, but also no immense pleasure beyond the thrill blood always gave. Should a farmer catch them feasting on his flock, they would simply do what they had to do and then move on. They moved on and moved on. This is what they would always do. There was no question of them ever stopping.

  Juliana had never been a nun—not in her heart. She’d been turned while still a novice and her years with the Sisters had been endured to pass time while waiting for Elis rather than because she clung to any religious conviction. Still, as the Protestant Reformation fueled the emergence of countless sects, she found herself drawn to observation, reading revivalist brochures and religious dogma. So it was, she found herself under the shelter of a canvas tent one rainy autumn evening on the plains of North Dako
ta.

  Browned corn stalks lay trampled around the tent and, inside, a small group of believers swayed in a circle. An old woman with free-flowing silver locks stood at its center, arms raised to the heavens.

  The woman crooned, a muffled sound that struck Juliana as halfway between language and madness. She took a step towards the circle, hoping to be able to ascribe meaning to seemingly random utterances. One step forward, two steps, three, and the woman fell silent. Her audience ceased their swaying. All eyes turned to her in a unison that made even one as preternaturally cold as Juliana shiver.

  “What is this?” The woman moved in Juliana’s direction. Breaking the circle, she was released from its protection. The adherents formed a wall at the woman’s back.

  Juliana suppressed the urge to turn and run. Never had she felt such fear, not when Father Maurus had turned her, not when she’d made her first kill, not even when a mob had formed one autumn night in colonial Virginia, determined to take out the monsters they’d rightly believed her and Elis to be.

  The woman approached, laid hands upon her shoulders and still, Juliana refused to move, refused to flee. She considered the strange woman’s eyes, puzzled by the recognition she saw there.

  “It’s you!” the old hag laughed—laughed at Juliana. “You’ve come. She has waited so long for you.”

  Had Elis been there, he’d have made her leave with him, packed their newly unpacked home and left for yet another fresh start somewhere. But Elis wasn’t there. He loathed religion in general and religion as entertainment especially. A sacred circus, he would have called this. Without Elis, Juliana had only her own judgment to guide her and it led her right into the center of the newly rejoined circle. Her hands clasped with the woman’s, she closed her eyes and listened as rain pelted against the tent.

  “I knew because you smelled like her.”

  Juliana’s eyes opened wide as the woman breathed these words against her neck.

  “Like peppermint.”

  She tried to pull her hands from the woman’s, but the woman held on fast. “You don’t really want to leave, do you?”

  Juliana shook her head. She didn’t. She hadn’t felt this sort of pull since meeting Elis, but it wasn’t the woman herself she was drawn to, it was something around her. Juliana scanned the faces of the revelers; each was as meaningless to her as the next.

  “She is here, Juliana.”

  Juliana. A name she was sure she hadn’t given the woman. “Have we met?”

  The woman laughed again. “The spirits are in their glory this All Hallows’ Eve. But such things pass. She is here, on the cusp. We must act before it’s too late.”

  Elis would hate this woman’s overly dramatic speech. Cusps and glory. His eyes would roll, and he would miss entirely that there was something deeper behind her rhetoric.

  “I… I don’t understand.” It had been so many years since she’d panicked, she was slow to understand that that was what she was experiencing. She longed to claw at her arm where her skin had begun to crawl. Something was gravely wrong here.

  A howl arose from the woman’s throat. On cue, her followers cried out as well, matching the otherworldly pitch. The circle tightened. Juliana imagined a pack of starving wolves surrounding her, ready to make their kill.

  Still clutching her hands, a warmth spread from the woman’s fingertips to her palms, her wrists, her arms. Juliana couldn’t have pulled away if she’d wanted to. Her touch might as well have been the sun for all it bleached out Juliana’s other senses.

  The woman continued to moan. Her weight shifted from leg to leg. The crowd shifted with her. With each unruly gust of air, swaying oil lamps threw fragmented shadows across their faces.

  The woman’s grip tightened. Her eyes flew open and it was all Juliana could do to stay upright. They were worlds made of glass, swirls of green and blue without a pupil to be seen. She opened her mouth again, but instead of an unearthly howl, a voice as sweet as a peppermint stick sounded.

  “Juliana, Juliana.”

  She recalled the night she’d turned Elis, how he’d repeated her name again and again when he’d found her. But this wasn’t Elis’ voice and it wasn’t the old woman’s either.

  It was her own.

  “It’s not your fault we were separated, Juliana.” The woman’s globe eyes lit upon her. “You are a monster, but not of your own making.”

  “Who are you?” In her shock, she had to ask, even though she already knew what the answer would be.

  “I am you. Your soul. I watched three brothers die and an older sister marry a man she loathed. My parents gave me to the church, where I was meant to stay until I died. And so I did.”

  Juliana shook her head as the spirit continued. “You are dead without me, Juliana. You know it. Even Elis cannot give you what you truly need. You are a beast, separated from your conscience in a way that never should have been.”

  “No. No, no!” Juliana tried again to break the connection to the old woman, but the warmth had spread from her shoulders down to her chest, to her thighs. She couldn’t stop it. “What do you want from me?”

  “No, tell me what you want from me.” The spirit’s command, like the warmth spreading through Juliana, could not be ignored. A thirst as overpowering as bloodlust came upon her, but instead of supple flesh, all she wanted was more of what this spirit was already giving her.

  “I want more. Everything.”

  The woman continued to sway. “I can give you that, but only for a while. I was meant to pass beyond this world long ago. You’ve kept me here, a spirit in the ether. I will have to move on before much longer.”

  Juliana nodded. She wanted this more than anything, no matter how impermanent it may be. Her will was all the spirit needed. She was filled with it, as suddenly as the sky is filled with light as the sun crests a hill.

  The howling resumed its maddening lament, yet none of the believers nor the silver-haired woman made a sound. All were silent save for Juliana, the burden of her newly returned soul lifted only by her screams echoing into the slate grey dawn.

  Chapter Three

  She would eventually return to him. Elis knew this, knew Juliana often left on one of her futile spiritual expeditions and stayed away for a week or more. Yet when she had been gone only two days, he found himself worrying, his mind straying from his own studies, books on astronomy and electrical transmitters sitting unread under porcelain cups of fermenting sheep’s blood.

  By the fourth day, unwilling to pace the floors any longer, he left in search of her. It had been some silly traveling evangelist she’d expressed curiosity about—Presbyterian or Methodist or some such thing. He inquired about it in town. The miller mentioned with a sneer that there’d been a meeting. “Spiritualists.” He shook his head disdainfully. “A bunch of damned souls, if you ask me, seeking to talk with the other side. Pure evil.”

  Spiritualists…of course. That was the sort of extravagant dog and pony show Juliana would be drawn to. He followed the miller’s directions out of town, passing several farms until he came to a tent in the middle of an abandoned corn field. Under his boots, dried husks crunched into hardened mud as he stepped towards the tilting structure. He’d never had Juliana’s calmness of mind, though the chill in his veins did temper his anxiety somewhat. Had it not, the scene that awaited him would have done him in altogether.

  Putrefying bodies, at least a dozen or more, lay strewn around the tent, Sunday-best clothes stained red, vacant eyes staring upwards as though their last thoughts had been of their salvation.

  Elis stepped over the carnage, that horror barely registering in his concern for his beloved. “Juliana!”

  Bodies formed a halo around her. She sat perfectly upright, unmoving, her eyes glistening. He couldn’t tell if she’d heard him or if she even knew he was there at all.

  “Juliana!” He went down on his knees in front of her, a supplication to the only deity he could ever believe in. “What has happened?”

  F
inally, her gaze lifted to his. He rubbed dried blood from her lips. “She resisted me when I returned to her.” She gestured to the dead at their feet. “She did this before I could stop her.”

  Elis’ body tensed. If there was another undead creature here, they could both be in danger. “She?”

  “Juliana. Your Juliana.” She brought her hands to his and stilled them as they rested upon her cheeks. “She thought she wanted me back, but when I came, she saw our death. And she was afraid.”

  “What madness is this, Juliana? There is no death for you.”

  A gurgling sound escaped her throat, a strangled laugh. “Death is all we have, Elis. Death is what we live. Now that I’m here, spirit and beast together, there is no escaping its finality.”

  “You make no sense, love.”

  “The one you knew is a beast inside of me. I can hold her at bay for only so long.” She let go of his hands and ran her own up his arms to his face, cupping it gently. “Your Juliana cared for you and so I do too. That’s why I’ve waited for you. I knew you’d come for me, just as you did all those years ago. We can leave together, Elis. I think it must be that way. We must both go.”

  “You know I’d go with you. Always. But to where?”

  She patted his cheeks. Her blood-dried lips curled into a smile. “To Hell. Where we can pay for our sins.”

  Letting her hands fall, it took only a moment for her to secure the wooden stake she’d hidden in the folds of her skirt. Hands raised again, she thrust it towards his chest. Elis veered to the side. The stake scraped along his shoulder, tearing his shirt.