by Ana Calin
“You’ll be staying at the old priest’s house as his permanent nurse,” Tristan says. “At the moment the village women take turns attending to him, but his needs are already too great for people without experience. But don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Soraya and I will be coming to see you.”
Soraya and him.
I catch his eyes in the rear view mirror. God’s sakes. He looks at me like he’s pleading for something. My heart twists and turns like a restless animal inside me.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be safer among these people than among serpents, so I don’t mind being alone with the old man,” I manage.
I keep my eyes out the window as we drive through the village, avoiding Tristan’s eyes again for fear I might break down and cry. I just can’t bear to see him and not have him.
People stop in the streets, women with kerchiefs around their heads and aprons around their wide waists staring after us from their gates. They probably all know the new priest’s car, humming down the earth road and leaving a cloud of dust behind.
The tension is so thick in the car you could cut it with a knife. When we finally stop I can’t get out fast enough. We pulled over in front of an old traditional house with a wooden porch and a thatched roof, just like those I’ve seen at the village museum. Once inside a dingy vestibule, a young woman with chubby reddish cheeks walks up to us.
“Father,” she whispers, and lowers her head for benediction.
Tristan moves his hand over her head in the sign of the cross. If I weren’t so sullen, I’d probably giggle.
“Elena, here is the Father’s new nurse,” Tristan tells her in a warm but detached voice, motioning to me.
The girl looks up at me, revealing she can’t be more than sixteen, doe-eyed and innocent. Her face melts in surprise. I inspect myself, wondering what it could be that had that effect. I’m wearing a grey coat-slash-dress that covers me from neck to ankles, tight only at the waist. I feel a bit like Mary Poppins. But other than that, my hair is tightened on top of my head, and I’m not wearing any make-up. I shouldn’t be a surprising sight.
“It’s the serpent blood you took from Mark,” Soraya whispers acidly behind me. “It gives you beauty that’s unnatural to humans. You stand out to them.”
I huff, not looking at her as I reply, just as hushed. “I guess it slipped my mind. After all, I haven’t been among humans for a very long time.”
“I’ll take you to him,” the girl says shyly.
As she leads me deeper inside the dingy house, I glance over my shoulder at Tristan. His face is like a picture made of light in the gloomy house. At least Soraya is behind him, and I don’t have to see her face. But then Elena opens the door to a narrow little room, and invites me inside.
“The old Father doesn’t like Father Tristan around, that’s why he can’t come in here and make the presentations himself,” she whispers to me as I enter.
Seeing the question in my eyes, the girl shrugs. “He hits furniture and curses whenever Father Tristan is too close. He screams that ‘devil’ should stay away.” She bends to me. “He once told me a look into the young Father’s face could make people lose their soul.”
Which must be why she bowed earlier, avoiding to look at him when he came in.
I step carefully deeper into the room, glancing at the scant decorum before my eyes land on the hunched figure sitting in a chair by the window. There’s a small table with a nylon cover in front of him.
I approach carefully. The figure rocks back and forth, making a low humming sound; it may seem like he’s humming a song, but it’s most probably only the sound of old age.
“Be careful,” Elena says from the door. “Don’t touch him without permission, and don’t press to see his face. He’s very sensitive about it.”
The man may look small and hunched behind his cloak, like a big baby, the hood over his face, but there’s a creepy kind of danger oozing from him. I hunker down slowly by his side, trying to peer behind the side of his cloak to his face. All I get is a glimpse of him, but it’s enough to startle me—the man is either so old he dried up completely, or he suffers from some terrible disease.
“Hello Father,” I begin softly, moving as little as possible. “My name is Isolde—” I decide to give my maiden name. It’s the first step towards my freedom from Mark. “Jochs. Isolde Jochs. I will be taking care of you, and I’ll stay here in the house. You won’t have to be alone again.”
The figure stirs. I’m used to that, since most old people hear nothing with greater pleasure than the fact that they won’t be alone anymore, if they can hear at all. But then, even to Elena’s surprise, his head moves so that his face meets mine.
The skin crawls all over me. That face seems taken out of a horror movie. I can barely keep back a gasp. The man is as ugly as the devil himself.
Elena is so terrified that she yelps, turns around and hides her face in her palms, running back into the hallway. I can only hope Tristan is still there to intercept her.
“Isolde Jochs,” he repeats my name in a scraping voice that hurts my eardrums. It’s like a felt pen scratching a board, I can feel it in my teeth. “Any relationship to Juliet Jochs?”
“How do you know my sister?” I breathe in surprise.
He grins, revealing ugly teeth with black holes. A foul smell comes out of his mouth, making me crease my nose. He’s so old, that his organs must have started rotting on the inside. But then I see them—the vampire fangs, as yellow and bony as a tiger’s fangs.
I jolt back. “What the hell are you?” I breathe.
“Isn’t it obvious, child?”
“You can’t, you just can’t be a vampire. They’re—”
“Beautiful, eternally young, immortal,” he says. “Like the young father who replaced me here?”
“So that’s why you didn’t want the young father around you. You didn’t want him to discover.... Or—” It hits me. “Does the young father know you?”
He laughs, but it immediately transforms into a cough. It turns violent. His whole body twists with the effort and surely also pain, but I don’t know if I should touch him and help. I decide to try, but he holds out a hand so dry it seems the hand of a corpse.
I hold my breath until he speaks again.
“There’s a reason I made sure he didn’t see this face,” he says, motioning to his face. “He does know it all too well.”
“Then why are you revealing yourself to me?” My heart beats like a rabbit’s. This can’t be good. “You know it was Tristan who brought me here. I will tell him.”
The old priest still holds a hand at his mouth, trying to control the aftershocks of his cough. He speaks with difficulty. “I couldn’t resist when I heard your last name. Your sister and I have a history.”
“Yes, I remember your story. Juliet told me.”
“Of course she would.”
He coughs hard again, looking to the door. “I need something to oil my throat. Make me some warm milk, if you want answers. And don’t tell Tristan DeKnight anything yet. Or I’ll disappear, and your answers along with me.”
I would have appreciated a ‘please,’ but I’m too eager for his answers indeed.
Elena isn’t in the house anymore, and I still hope Tristan intercepted her before she could go spread the word about the old father’s ugliness to the village, but then it hits me—How come this was the first time she saw his ugliness, if he’s served here as a priest for so long?
I find the milk. The house has few amenities, so the ancient fridge isn’t hard to find. As for the small radiator connected to a precariously looking socket under the kitchen window, I’ve seen worse in the poor houses of the forgotten elderly in the coast town, so I know how to use it. The best part about having so much experience as a nurse for the poor elderly, is that you’ve seen it all, and you can work with anything.
As I warm milk in a chipped kettle, an idea comes to me.
“Can you change your face?” is the first questi
on I say as I bring the old priest a mug of warm milk. I help him drink it, keeping a cloth under his chin.
“You catch on to things fast. What gave me away?”
“Elena’s reaction. If you served as a priest in this village for so long, she would have known this face, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to her.”
“Yes, it’s true. I have the ability of changing my looks to, let’s say, less offensive masks. All thanks to that villain brother-in-law of yours, the Prince of Midnight.”
“What does Radek have to do with this?”
The priest fixes his eyes on me. I force myself to hold his stare, telling myself I’ve seen worse. Nothing can scare me anymore, and even if it could, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
But just as I begin to get used to the old Father’s hideous appearance, the cells in his face begin shifting visibly. It’s like a whole army of ants has begun moving and whirling until the dry-skinned appearance is cleared, and a middle-aged man with intense dark eyes and a silver beard appears in front of me. Those eyes are dark as the pits of hell.
“This is the face the village people have seen all these years,” he says with a grin, revealing teeth and short vampire fangs that could easily pass as too-long but human canines. “It’s the face I used to have when I was a young human, working as a priest in Bran, where now those two villain brothers reign again. Radek the Handsome and Vlad Dracula.”
“The Old Priest,” I breathe. “You’ve become a legend in Bran.” I squint at him as I remember the details of his story. “But Juliet said it was Vlad Dracula who transformed you, not Radek.”
“Yes, Dracula turned me into a vampire. But you see, after it turned out one look into the feared Prince of Midnight’s face could imbue vampires with superpowers instead of infecting them with the Black Death—as it happened with humans—I decided to take the risk. The Prince of Midnight had transformed a friend of mine, Gruia. Heard of him, too?”
I nod, stories linking together in my head. “He’s the one who almost turned entire Bucharest into the freaking Walking Dead. He could infect vampires with rabies.”
“You’re well informed.”
“Of course. That was a major event a year ago.” It was happening underground just as I met Mark Serpaint.
“Yes, it was.” His face now looks like a cunning fox’s, as if he’s got much more hiding behind those words. “While Gruia was busy in Bucharest, I took a trip to the Northern Mountains, where a special monastery exists.”
“The monastery of the Black Monks,” I whisper to myself, the info linking together in my head. “Survivors of Radek’s curse, now turning into monsters themselves, and spewing Black Curses when attacked, infecting people.”
“Well informed indeed.” He pats my cheek. I want to jerk away, but I don’t. I have to keep him talking. I want all the answers.
“Yes, I figured if they inherited his curse, then maybe they inherited his power,” the old priest continues. “It was a great risk, but it was worth a try. My body, in the ugly form that you have seen it, was difficult to bear. I didn’t care much if I died in the process. So I climbed up to the monastery, sneaked inside, and attacked The Abbot—Lucian, you might have heard about him as well. Of all the monks, he was the most likely to have the power.
“So I provoked him just enough for him to spew his curse at me, then managed to flee. Like I said, it could have meant death, but what choice did I have? Live as the hideous creature you saw before, persecuted and plagued with all kinds of pain and aches, or risk big and win big.” He leans closer with his intense dark eyes. While he’s been talking, I lowered myself into the chair opposite from him. The daylight filtering through the window reveals his face clearly, the face of a normal man with an abnormal, fear-inducing stare.
“And win I did, Isolde.” Wicked satisfaction plays in his face. “With this new superpower, I drew up a plan. And you played the main part in it.”
“Me?”
“Thanks to you, I will finally see Lord Dracula and his men fall.”
The connections in my head fail. “What part can I possibly play for Lord Dracula? I’m just his extended family. I’m not personally important to him.”
He grabs my arm and grins satisfied.
“You’ll see how it all comes together. The die is cast, there’s no turning back.”
I try to yank myself from his grip, but he’s too strong. “I won’t play along, Old Priest. If you placed all your bets on me, it was a bad call.”
“Oh, it was the best call. You’ll play along, if you care about Father Ruben’s life.”
“Father Ruben.” My breath hitches, hot blood creeping up my neck to my face. “He is here?”
Tristan
I SPREAD A MAP OVER the table, under an oil lamp. It’s the map of the tunnel caves inside the mountain. They’re beautiful, a radiating octopus with many tentacles, carved inside the rock by Mother Nature.
I sense Soraya in the doorway behind me as I pore over them. I can smell her, and the hot tea she’s cradling in her white serpent hands. I can also feel her jealousy like acid on my back.
“How did it feel, seeing her again today?”
My jaw clenches. I refuse to respond, keeping my eyes on the map, but Soraya insists.
“Don’t pretend it was nothing, I saw the way you looked at her. Besides, for weeks you’ve tossed and turned, thinking about her.”
“I wasn’t thinking about her,” I throw over my shoulder. “I was making plans in my head, that’s why I was restless.”
“You don’t fool me, Tristan, or anyone else for that matter.” She comes close to my side so that I can see her bitter face. “Even that girl earlier today at the priest’s house could see how you stared at Isolde like she was a goddess.” There’s hurt in her voice at that last word. I angle my body to her, narrowing my eyes as new suspicions make their way into my head.
“Soraya, it’s not like you want to be with me because we’re in love. It’s a strategic alliance that you’re after, and Mark as well, we’re both aware of that. So why this hatred of Isolde and what I might feel for her? Why the jealousy?”
She smiles. “I thought you’d never ask.” She cradles the mug of tea in one hand and sinks the other into a pocket of her long black dress. She pulls out a familiar object, and current runs through my heart—the bottle with Madam Magda’s love potion.
Soraya huffs. “You should see your face, Prince of Spades. Expressing emotion again, stupefaction. You were hard and cold for too long, and now you can’t temper the expression of your feelings. You probably can’t temper them on the inside either.”
She steps so close that we’re now face to face. As a serpent woman, she’s very tall, only a few inches smaller than me.
“If I were to tell you that I’m going to enjoy watching Mark beating Isolde to a pulp when this is over, watching him kick her while she’s down, what would you feel, Tristan?”
My fists clench, and electricity breaks out in my irises. Soraya’s eyes search mine for answers, bitterness in her face, her long cheeks turning red with frustration.
“Fury mixed with a violent need to protect and avenge her,” she says. She holds up the small bottle with the golden cap. “On one of the nights you were out at the strip club with Mark, I went through your things. And this right here is what I discovered. I tasted it, took just a little bit, trying to identify the substance. I couldn’t tell at first, I even thought it was some fragrance you liked to use, and I put it right back to where I found it. But then Mark had me keep an eye on you, and I fell in lust. The feelings came quickly and intensified in a matter of days, and then I knew.”
She allows the feeling to finally show freely in her face. “Who was this love potion meant for, Tristan?”
The cat is out of the bag. I might as well tell her, and stand by it.
“It was meant for you and Mark. Falling in love with you was the only thing that would have determined Mark to let Isolde go, even though he’d made h
er his mate.”
“And when Mark forced you and that whiny little bitch to drink from those tumblers on that first night....”
I let her draw her own conclusions.
“You’re truly in love with her,” she whispers, revelation in her voice and in her face.
I raise my chin, eyes fixed on her face as I make the decision. Yes, I will tell her the full truth, and by telling it to her, I will admit it to myself.
“I don’t know if what I feel for her is love,” I begin. “But every time I think about her my heart fills with the sweetest sensation. I feel like a ravenous beast when I look at those rosy lips. I want to stick my cock in her and my fangs into her throat, drink from her, and spill my cum inside of her. I want to take her lifeblood into me and pour mine into her, possessing her, making her mine so no one can challenge my claim on her.”
“Good luck with that. She’s Mark’s mate, and nothing can change that,” she spews through her teeth.
I grin, baring my fangs, my irises turning sharp as blades. “Let him come and make that claim. I’ll torture him to death right in front of my sweet white dove, Isolde.”
Her lips tighten in a strained line, frustration reddening her eyes.
“But you know what’s the worst thing for me right now?” I continue, determined to turn the knife in her wound, just like she planned to turn it in Isolde’s. “That my sweet white dove thinks I’m with you because I wanted to. That I preferred you to her.” I snort. “As if that were even possible. How could a man ever want you, when he can have her? How could a man ever want a vicious, cruel creature like you, when he could have an angel like her.”
“She’s not as pure as you think,” she hisses. “She hates serpents, and she would watch you torture us with delight. How is she different from me?”
“She is different, because her hatred was provoked. Serpents did things to her, including you. Mark abused her in vile ways, and you watched out of sheer pleasure. And since we’re speaking with the truth, what is the relationship between you and Mark? You’re not his sister and, sadly, you’re not his lover—that would have spared Isolde and me a lot of trouble.”