A Dowry of Blood

by Gibson, S. T.

  “But he won’t,” Alexi said, his voice a hoarse whisper. I didn’t know if he was furious or on the brink of tears. Both, probably. “He just goes on burning. And I can’t look away.”

  “Tell him so yourself,” I ventured, even though I knew that none of us were so brave. “Maybe he’ll take it in stride.”

  Alexi gave me a withering glance. “After you, dear sister. What did you call him last week? A despot? I’m sure he’d love to hear that.”

  I laid there in silence for a long while, turning the treacherous beginnings of a plan over in my mind. It was only an inkling of a thing then, hazy and indistinct. But for the first time in a long time, I supposed that there was something to be done about our situation. About you.

  I tucked the idea away in a dark recess of my mind and let it ferment.

  Alexi fell back on old habits and took to stealing. He would secret away tiny baubles or bits of silverware in his pockets, hiding it away in his room for some uncertain future. I pretended not to see him, of course. I supposed I shouldn’t deny him whatever simple outlet for rebellion he had, especially since you kept him on such a tight leash in those days. You trotted him out to perform for us every fortnight, encouraging him to learn new monologues and scenes to entertain with. I suspect you hoped to keep his mind diverted and his hands busy, but he resented the lack of a true audience, the loss of the camaraderie of a band of players.

  When he complained, you plied him with kisses or wine, or shouted at him so ferociously the rafters shook. You even seemed jealous when he took refuge with us girls, locking himself away in Magdalena’s room to cry into her silk pillowcases and demand that I do something, anything to fix your beastly behavior. You were content to share Alexi with us so long as he remained soundly in your thrall. When he started to wander out of your grasp, you tightened your grip so much he could scarcely breathe.

  Once, I passed the cracked door to your room and overheard your voice, sharp with irritation.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” you asked. “Alexi, look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Overcome with curiosity, and a little worried for Alexi’s sake, I slipped towards the door and peered cautiously through the crack. If violence threatened to erupt between the two of you, I could make up some excuse to spirit Alexi away.

  Alexi was standing in front of you with his head bowed, kicking at the tassel on the rug like a schoolboy. You loomed over him, one of your silver pocket watches dangling from your hands.

  “I found this under your pillow,” you went on. “Really? Stealing? After all I’ve done for you, after all I’ve given to you. Why?”

  Alexi muttered something indecipherable, and you tossed your head like an agitated stallion.

  “You don’t know? Really, you don’t know? Try harder , Alexi.”

  There was a threat in your voice he seemed to pick up, because Alexi lifted his head and spoke up.

  “I wanted to have something to pawn. Just in case. You’ve been so bored of me recently, I can tell. I annoy you, and you find me childish, and you’d rather it just be the girls and you. You’re going to turn me out soon, I just know it.”

  You stared at him for a moment, gobsmacked. Then you set the pocket watch down on the table and massaged your brow with a weary hand.

  “Alexi, Alexi,” you said, sounding ancient. You took his face between your hands, tall and dark as a specter as you ran your thumbs over his plump cheeks. “I will never get rid of you, do you understand? I sired you and you are mine. No machination of man nor beast can change that.”

  Alexi huffed, but his eyes softened a little.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And if we should ever be parted, my prince, I would hunt you down across the continents like my own little rabbit, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Alexi said quietly.

  “Good,” you replied, kissing him sweetly and tugging him towards your bed. “No more stealing, understood? If you want something, just ask for it. Now come here.”

  “But Maggie and I were going to play cards, I—”

  “Hush,” you urged, pushing him down onto the rich fabric. “You talk too much.”

  You knelt between his legs as your deft fingers found the lacing on his pants. Alexi knotted his brow and opened his mouth as though he had more to say but then, perhaps heeding your words, he simply threaded his fingers through your dark hair.

  Alexi gasped when you took him expertly into your mouth, throwing his eyes around the room. In one shocking instant, they fell on me, still poised in the open sliver of the doorway in case I needed to intervene.

  I flushed as deeply as my undead state would allow, then gathered my skirts in my hands and rushed away down the hallway.

  I found Alexi crying once, pressed into a darkened alcove of the wallpapered halfway. He was scrubbing at his red eyes with the heel of his hand, his blonde curls disheveled as though he had been raking his fingers through them.

  “Alexi?” I whispered, holding the flame of my candle up close to his face.

  He recoiled, wrenching his face away from the flame like it was sunlight and buried himself deeper into the dark corner. I reached out a hand and touched his shoulder, felt the firm muscle beneath his shirt.

  “What’s happened, Alexi? You can be frank with me. You know you can.”

  He looked up at me with such a miserable, bitter expression I barely recognized him. Then he crossed his arms and let out a huff, every inch the petulant child.

  “What do you think happened to me?”

  The air left my lungs in a deflated rush. Of course. Who else in this house could bring somebody to tears like that?

  I set the candle down on an end table and eased my arms around his neck, pulled him into a tight hug. I smoothed his hair back from his forehead and he clung to me as tightly as death, his shoulders shaking as the last of the sobs wracked his body.

  “Do you think he knows?” he whispered, face buried in my hair. His breath was hot on my neck. “He must not know how cruel he can be, how he cuts right to the heart of you, otherwise he wouldn’t… No one who knew would keep doing it over and over again, would they?”

  “Oh, Alexi,” I breathed. I drew away from him by a few inches, cradling his face in my hands. I gently rubbed the crease from between his brows with my thumb, then began kissing the tears from his cheeks.

  “Alexi, Alexi,” I repeated like a mantra. He gripped my arms and pulled me closer, turning his face into my kisses. One moment I was kissing his cheekbone, the dimple a few inches below, and then his mouth was on mine, warm and insistent and real. Heat flooded my chest in a rush as I kissed him back. I hadn’t felt this alive in a hundred years, I realized. Lately, I hadn’t been feeling alive at all.

  I let Alexi press me back against alcove and we disappeared into the sweet, forgiving darkness. His hands roamed down my waist and under my dress, hiking the skirts high. I devoured him with kisses, chasing his mouth whenever he drew away for a single instant. I had never allowed myself to want this because I assumed it wasn’t a possibility. I had assumed he was too enthralled by your charms and Magdalena’s sunny smiles to even notice me in this way. But now, with Alexi’s hand cupping my bottom and his stubble scraping my cheek, I realized how long I had been concealing a treacherous hope.

  Our lovemaking was hurried and amateurish and all the sweeter for it, Alexi pressing inside me while I twined my fingers in his hair and urged him on with soft repetitions of his name. We gasped and clung to each other in the alcove, kissing each other as though these may be our last kisses ever on the earth. I came quickly and with a cry, my hips braced securely against the wall while Alexi took me under my dress.

  When he finished, he sagged against me, the curls at the nape of his neck tight with sweat. It was such a small, human detail that I suddenly wanted to cry. Young. Alexi was so young. What had we done to him, bringing him into this life?

  “Little Alexi,” I murmured as he nuzzled my throat.

&
nbsp; “I love you, Constance.”

  Somehow, it sounded like an apology, and the tears pricking my eyes threatened to spill over.

  “I know, my darling.”

  We were both a mess, but managed to right our clothes and smooth each other’s hair into some semblance of order. I pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand and released him into the heart of the house, praying that he found his way to refuge before the monster roaming the halls caught him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back into an argument.

  I met the monster myself minutes later in the hallway, when I almost collided with you as you stalked around a corner.

  “Have you seen Alexi?” you demanded, not even looking at me. “He’s being hysterical.”

  “Oh, I… that is to say, I haven’t, ah...”

  Your eyes flashed over to me as you opened your mouth to snap, but I must have been very obvious, with high color in my cheeks and my dress askew. Or maybe your keenly developed predator senses could smell him on me.

  “Oh,” you said, voice thick with disdain. “He was with you.”

  “My lord,” I began breathlessly. “I didn’t intend — ”

  You pressed past me as you continued on your mission, barely pausing long enough to throw me a flat final word.

  “He only fucked you because he was angry with me and Magdalena’s been sick for three days. You know that, don’t you?”

  Yes, I decided as I gasped for breath, run through with the rapier of your words even as you disappeared down the hallway. He knows how cruel he can be.

  There was no huge argument that predicated my decision to betray you, no ultimate act of tyranny. I simply broke under the weight of a thousand tense nights, a thousand thoughtless, soul-stripping words. I felt like I was losing my mind in that place, and eventually my desire to do something about it, anything about it, outweighed my fear of you.

  We had lived in the house for months, maybe years, before I had the courage to act. I immediately implicated Magdalena and Alexi. I had spent so long trying to protect them from you, but there was no way forward without their help.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Magdalena whispered. She had taken to lowering her voice, even when you weren’t around to overhear her. At the moment, you were out hunting. We had a scarce hour or two to ourselves before you came back.

  “Aren’t you at least a little curious?” I pressed. The three of us were huddled around a flickering candelabra in one of the many parlors. The house was not outfitted for electricity, and so we made do with firelight. “About what we might learn?”

  “What you’re proposing is suicide,” Magdalena went on. “What if he catches you in there, rooting around in his things? God, I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “He won’t catch her,” Alexi chimed in. “He’s miles away tempting some milksop out of the village so we can all eat. We’ve got a little time.”

  “What exactly are you hoping to find?” Magdalena asked.

  I fixed my mouth into a grim line.

  “Anything that will get us out of this place. This is no life. You can’t tell me that you’re happy here, like this.”

  “Of course not,” she muttered. “But I’d just as soon walk into the sun as I would go rooting around in his things, looking for answers to questions he won’t let us ask.”

  “He knows more than we do,” I said, voice pleading. “We don’t even know the full range of our power because he’s kept it from us.”

  “He wants to keep us docile and complacent,” Alexi said. “Like pets. Don’t you want to know how we came to be?”

  “Or how ones like us might be killed,” I added quietly.

  Both Magdalena and Alexi looked at me with shock.

  “You can’t mean…” Alexi began.

  “Sister, be reasonable ,” Magdalena finished.

  I pulled them both into a tight hug, my heart hammering in my chest. We stood like that for a moment, the three of us entwined and shadowed by the flickering candles, until I began to speak.

  “I should have told you both a long time ago, but I was afraid. Of losing him. Losing you both. But I’ve done this once before. And I’m terrified by what I found.”

  I told them. I told them what I had discovered and what you had implied; that there had been brides before, a countless number, and none of them had outlived loving you. I spared no detail, and soon Alexi was trembling beneath my touch.

  “We’re all in danger,” I whispered. “If he grows too displeased with us, if we no longer entertain him...”

  Magdalena had turned to steel in my arms. She held me tight as death, thinking for a long while.

  “We’re disposable to him,” she said finally. Her voice was stiff. “Replaceable.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have said more, I should have done something before now. But I was so afraid of him.”

  “Don’t you dare apologize,” Magdalena said, dark eyes flashing with passion. “I never want to hear you apologize for something he’s done ever again. It has to stop, Constanta. It all has to stop.”

  “What are we going to do?” Alexi asked quietly. He looked very pale and very, very young.

  “Uncover what he keeps hidden from us,” I said. “Alexi, you can pick locks can’t you?”

  “That’s right,” he said, still looking a little dazed. Finding out your husband would kill you at the drop of a hat was destabilizing, I knew that well. “I used to spring locks all the time when I was squatting with my friends. It’s easy enough.”

  “I’ll need you to come with me as far as the door, then. You don’t have to come inside if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” he said, puffing out his chest. A bold-faced lie, but a valiant one. “And I’m not letting you go by yourself. Maggie?”

  Magdalena was gazing off into the distance with a hard stare, her lips pressed into a thin line. She was probably thinking of all the ways she wanted to punish you for your duplicitousness.

  “Someone has to stay on the ground floor to welcome our dear husband home,” she said slowly. “Just in case he arrives while you two are still otherwise occupied.”

  Alexi sucked in a breath through his teeth.

  “If you cover for us and we’re found out, you’ll be paying double hell. You know he hates it when we take each other’s side.”

  “He won’t find out,” she said, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly. “Because I’m more clever than him by half.”

  “So we’re agreed?” I asked.

  Your voice, sneering and snide, came into my mind. Levelling all sorts of ugly words at me. Ungrateful. Unfaithful. Mutinous.

  I smothered the thoughts with a quick litany, begging any saint who would still listen to give me strength.

  Alexi gave a decisive nod.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then we’d better get going. He could be back any minute.”

  I seized Alexi’s hand and we started to bustle out of the room, but Magdalena’s voice stopped me at the door.

  “Constanta?”

  “Yes?” I asked, turning back around.

  Her eyes were as dark as a night without stars.

  “Find out how to make him hurt.”

  The basement was vast and dark, running almost the entire length of the house. Alexi made short work of the lock on the door with one of my hairpins, and then we carefully traversed the stairs one after the other. I could hear Alexi breathing behind me, shallow, quick breaths betraying his fear. He was terrified of being caught down here, but he had come with me anyway, and I was deeply grateful for his bravery.

  The floor of the basement was made of damp earth, tightly packed down by thousands of footsteps. We picked our way through moldering wooden chests and shelves of wine left to age, doing our best to navigate without bumping into anything. My eyesight was keen in the dark, but Alexi was too young to have developed the skill yet. He followed closely, one hand clutching the sleeve of my dress so we wou
ldn’t be separated.

  It didn’t take long to find your hideaway. I could make out the shape of two long tables littered with ephemera, and after some groping around, I found an old oil lamp. Alexi, who was clever enough to always carry a pocketknife and matches, lit the lamp and cast its glow on the room.

  Your strange devices looked even more ghoulish in the flickering firelight. Forceps and vials, eclectic light bulbs and compasses, all scattered around in an arrangement that only made sense to you.

  One of the tables had been cleared into a makeshift gurney, and the wood was stained with blood. Perhaps you had carried out one of your experiments on a victim after you had drained them. Or before.

  Alexi held the lamp high and we set about trying to find something, anything in the mountains of research to arm us against you. We riled through books heaped upon books, case study notes, and scientific journals, none of which contained what we were looking for. It didn’t help that we had to painstakingly return the papers exactly the way we had found them, which caused us to hemorrhage time. With each passing minute, my dread steadily grew. How long had we been down here? Ten minutes? Twenty? We could have spent the whole day down there and still not found what we were looking for, but we didn’t have that kind of time.

  In the end, it was only sheer, blind luck that saved us. Alexi was flipping through a heavy leather-bound journal he had found stacked up with other books, and he gasped out loud.

  “Constance! Come look at this.”

  I pressed in close to him so we could share the light of the lamp, and flipped lightly through the journal. It was full of your looping, tight hand, pages upon pages of your personal theories and thoughts. It was not a diary. It was a casebook, containing all you knew about the nature of vampires.

  “This is it,” I whispered.

  I flipped faster through the pages, digesting everything I could. You had laid out your theories about our bodily processes, our strange hungers, our heightened abilities that came with age. You had also documented how long a vampire might be expected to live, if no act of brutality got in their way. You had jotted down a few quick notes about one death you had personally carried out. Your sire, I realized. The man whose blood had made you strong enough to sire vampires of your own.