by O. M. Grey
If there are more of these creatures, I will need my strength, I reasoned. Plus, Avalon is back in my life, so there was no need to deny myself human blood anymore. I pushed any thought of Avalon’s disapproval out of my mind, justifying it with the fact that I didn’t kill this man. And I couldn’t deny my own nature forever. I would need my strength to protect Avalon, so it was really for her safety. And before I came up with another reason, I found myself already drinking from the wound.
The blood washed down my throat in bliss. It was as if I had been living in a desert for a hundred years and this was my first taste of water. I drank and drank until the man was dry.
Then, taking the axe, chopped off his head, to ensure he wouldn’t be drinking from someone else tomorrow night.
I turned to finish the job on Lord Wallace, but something caught my eye from the stairs. It was Avalon. And she looked horrified. Guiltily wiping the blood from my mouth, I couldn’t deny that she had seen it all.
She knew what I was.
I felt her love for me retreat, leaving a gaping hole in my chest, and I ached for her.
She turned and ran back up the stairs.
Dropping the hatchet, I followed. “Avalon,” I shouted. “Avalon!” When I reached the top of the stairs, Avalon was in the arms of another man, against her will. He appeared to be nearing fifty, and his age showed in the streaks of grey in his beard and sideburns. He was dressed very well, obviously well-to-do. His arms encircled her, holding her close to him with his black cane held up as a barrier. She was struggling and he was laughing.
“Arthur,” she cried once. I felt a strange prick on the back of my neck and blackness filled my senses. Then, there was nothing.
Chapter 22
I awoke in darkness, but my eyes quickly adjusted. Taking quick assessment of my situation and surroundings, I found that I was in some kind of stone cell. The mortar outlining the stones appeared a little brighter in the darkness. There was a single source of light, dimly leaking through a window in a heavy door. That was all I could take in for the moment. My head hurt as if it was clamped in a vice, but someone else was here with me. Then the sweetness of her filled my nostrils and overpowered the dampness and stench of rat droppings. There, cowering in the corner, was Avalon. She was crying. I tried to process all this information along with what I remembered.
She knew. She saw.
Then pain. Emptiness. Darkness.
“Avalon?” I said softly.
“You stay away from me!” she cried, hugging the wall.
She was terrified. Of me. But then why wouldn’t she be? I had lied to her all this time, but now she knew what I truly was. I felt her horror, as sure as the hard stones against my back. I felt her horror. It was Catherine all over again.
“I won’t hurt you, my love,” I said gently, but how could I make her understand that after what she saw me do? “I could never hurt you.” Regardless of how she felt about me, we were both trapped in this cell. Perhaps I can get her mind off what I am by engaging her help to solve the mystery of how we got here, and where exactly ‘here’ was. “Do you know where we are sweetheart?”
“Don’t call me that! You–you– monster!”
I had been called much worse in my time, but it never cut as deep as hearing the fear and renewed betrayal in her voice. And all for a few drops of blood.
“You’re like them” she said. “You killed Victor!”
“I’m not like them, Ava. I’m different, and you know I didn’t kill Victor. You saw what happened with your own eyes. I tried to save him that night. I was fighting on your side. True, I am a vampire, but that’s not what they are. They are something unnatural. Something created by man.”
“Unnatural!” she almost laughed. I’m sure the subtle difference between what was supernatural and unnatural was lost on her at this moment. Still, I pressed on. I stayed on my side of the cell, so as not to distress her any more than she already was.
“Darling, I am scared, too. But we must understand the situation fully. It’s our only chance to survive this and get out of here. Do you understand?”
I saw her nod and then wipe away her tears. She sat up straight against the far wall, flattening herself against it, as if to keep as much distance between us as possible.
“Do you believe that I won’t hurt you?”
Hesitantly, she answered, “Yes.” She must’ve been going over and over the events of the last months in her mind, believing that I had many opportunities to hurt her if I chose. Even her aunt, with whom she now knew I had been intimate, was unscathed. That was the first step: ensuring she wasn’t afraid of me. We had to work together to get out of this mess.
“Good. What do you remember? Tell me everything from when we parted at my place until I saw you in the cemetery. Why were you there?”
“I followed him. Lacy,” she said, but she couldn’t look at me. At least she was talking, that was a good start. “The apothecary was closing shortly after I arrived, but there was someone already there. I waited my turn, planning to inquire about Dr. Lacy, but then the clerk addressed the man there as ‘Dr. Lacy.’ It couldn’t have been a coincidence!” She looked up at me in her excitement, but didn’t hold my gaze. Rather, she dropped her eyes back down to the stone floor and continued, “He had ordered a pound each of yew needles and gilead buds, which I thought to be quite excessive, and then turned to leave. He tipped his hat to me as he left. I went to the counter, so as not to raise suspicion, but I knew I couldn’t waste too much time or I’d lose him. I told the clerk that I must’ve forgotten my purse, gave my apologies, and quickly left. Fortunately, Dr. Lacy was still in the street, just getting into a hansom. I took the next one and ordered the driver to follow Lacy’s cab at a gentle distance. From the window of my cab, I saw Lacy get out of his cab at the cemetery and then proceed inside. I paid the driver, who pulled up within a minute after dropping Lacy off, and then went in after him. I lost him among the tombstones and vaults, but then I came across the Wallace family chamber. I decided to go down quietly to see if he was there, hoping you had been led there as well. But then I saw you–”
She stopped short and gasped. She was crying again.
My dead heart was breaking. I so wanted to comfort her.
“You monster,” she whispered.
I so wanted to assure her I wasn’t a monster, but we’d both know that was a lie. I tried to take her mind off my state of being and back onto the matter at hand. Surviving.
“After that, Ava. You ran upstairs and...” I urged her on.
She wiped her tears on her sleeve and after composing herself, she continued, “He was there waiting for me. Then I saw Cecil with a syringe.”
“Cecil?” Certainly she meant another Cecil.
“Yes, Cecil. Your butler!”
I tried to process this information, but it just didn’t make sense. Cecil? Why would Cecil be in the cemetery? Had he followed me?
“I thought he was there with you,” she continued, “but I couldn’t figure out why he had a syringe. I mean, I suppose all this went through my head. It happened so fast. Before I knew it, Lacy had me restrained and Cecil injected you with something.”
“Cecil did this to me? After all the years of service...” My voice faded off. Betrayal wasn’t new to me, of course, but each new betrayal stung like it was the first.
I would’ve been a foolish king.
“You collapsed. They blindfolded me, and then we were here. That’s all I remember.”
“Cecil,” I said again. “I can’t believe it.” My mind was reeling for clues over the past few months, angry with myself for not seeing it myself. He had been more insolent as of late, but...
Then I remembered the night he was gone. Love, he said, and like a schoolboy in love myself, I believed him.
“Arthur!” she scolded, snapping me out of my self-recrimination. “What are we to do? We’re trapped in here!”
She was right. Time for self-loathing later. I tried to stand
, but I faltered. The room swam before me, becoming blurry then clear again. Back to blurry. I fell back against the stone floor.
Hard. They had drugged me with something strong, it seemed, and the effects hadn't completely worn off. Perhaps it was the same substance Victor had spoken of. The tranquilizers they had used on that vampire they tortured with the sunrise. Perhaps that would be my fate, too.
Avalon instinctively made a move toward me, but then thought better of it. Still not sure of me.
“Our weapons?” I asked, standing up again, more slowly this time. My head was spinning, and I caught myself against the wall.
“They have them all.” She sat now with her back against the wall, hugging her knees. All her fear of me seemed to have subsided for the most part. Perhaps seeing me in a weakened state coupled with the sting of Cecil’s betrayal ignited some empathy towards me, for now we were both solely concerned with getting out of this cell.
I felt my way along the cold stone wall, colder than even my skin if I could feel its chill, until I reached a wooden door. I should be able to kick this down if I could get some strength back. I needed more blood, but I wouldn’t feed from Avalon, not even if it was the only way to save both our lives. I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t make her fear me. There had to be another way. I looked out the tiny window near the top of the door, and through it I saw a laboratory unlike anything I could’ve ever imagined.
Torches lined the walls spaced about five feet apart, and a large wrought iron chandelier supporting dozens of candles hung from the ceiling. The wax had built up around each black arm, creating ivory mounds of hardened trickles topped with a single point of light. The candles and torches together gave off enough light to brighten the place considerably, although darkness waited along the edges, begging to crawl back in.
The rest was similar to the black magic dens of my original time, but instead of bubbling cauldrons brewing up potions and foulness and herbs drying from the ceiling, this was mechanical and hard. Yet the overall feeling was the same. Three large glass vessels, big enough to hold a full grown man, were at the far end of the laboratory. They were filled with some sort of gelatinous liquid and wires were coming out of the top of each. The liquid moved, as if it was being circulated through a pump. To the right of the vessels were huge gears, similar to those I saw on the dirigible, and they were turning steadily, perhaps circulating the fluid. The front of each glass vessel had a control panel with knobs, dials, and gauges. Two of the three had occupants suspended in the viscous solution. One was a werewolf, trapped in its shifted state; the other appeared to be a human corpse, judging from the decay. I continued to watch, whether out of horror or curiosity I couldn't say, then one of them moved!
“Dear God, they’re alive,” I said out loud. Or at least animated. Now it was I who was horrified. Were they conscious in there? What was this treacherous man doing?
My eyes scanned the rest of the laboratory. Some sort of steam escaped from a vertical pipe causing a thin piece of hinged metal to bob open and closed at the top of the pipe. An iron platform hung suspended overhead by chains, to the side of the chandelier. In the center were two large tables. On one lay Lord Wallace, still paralyzed. On the other lay our weapons along with other mechanical contraptions. Dr. Lacy was examining our weapons closely and then writing in a leather bound book.
Then I saw Cecil, and my blood boiled. He carried in a tray of tea and sat it beside the doctor.
A growl emerged from deep within, and I wanted to kill and drink and exact revenge in the most painful way possible. I heard a whimper from behind me. I turned back to Avalon, who was crying. My eyes had adjusted enough and my strength was returning. I noticed that she had been misused. How had I not seen it before? Her clothes were torn and dirt smeared her face. I went to her, and she cowered, trying to shrink into the wall. But I would not let her push me away, not if they had violated her.
“I will not hurt you, my love,” I repeated. “Did they?”
“They were rough, but I was not ruined,” she said, lifting up her torn blouse over her shoulder.
“Where is your cloak?”
“They took it, along with yours, I think.”
I spun around, scanning the interior of the cell. Sure enough, mine was gone, too.
“Are you cold?” I asked Avalon, trying to take care of her the best I could under the circumstances.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her hands were in a defensive position between us, so I backed off and sat a few feet away from her. Between our grim situation and Avalon’s coldness, despair destroyed what little strength had returned.
“To end like this,” I said, sinking back into a seated position against the stone wall, feeling defeated. “And you. You’re so young.”
“How old are you?” she asked. I sensed a hesitation in her voice, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. There was no sense in lying. Not anymore. Perhaps this would serve as a deathbed confessional for us both. Perhaps she knew this. Perhaps that was why she’d put her fear of what I am aside. After all, what else was there to do in this cell but to talk?
“Over three hundred,” I answered honestly. She gasped, surprised.
“But–you look so...”
“Young,” I finished for her. “ Still in my late teens when I was turned. Fortunately, I did look a little more mature for my age, but still quite young. Yes. Although in my time, it was not all that young. I was already married, and we were trying to beget children. That was the duty part of it, but we did so joyfully.” My mind filled with images of Catherine in her rosy youth, laughing, running, rolling in the grass with me on the royal grounds. She was indeed my queen.
“Tell me,” she said softly. A story of my woes to help her forget hers. I can certainly oblige her that.
“Her name was Catherine, and she was the love of my life. I adored her. Believe it or not, I was to be the King of England. I was the eldest son of Henry VII.”
She sharply drew in her breath at this. She knew exactly of whom I spoke.
“Arthur Tudor,” she said.
“At your service, m’lady,” I said, with a flourish of my hand, feigning a proper bow.
Renaissance style. She must’ve been well read to have even heard of me. Everyone knew my brother, of course. My notorious, fat, smug brother.
“But Catherine, she--”
“She married Henry, yes.” She knew her history well. How I loved this woman. So like Catherine. So unlike Catherine. So perfect for me. May she never cease to amaze me. “But we get ahead of ourselves. Catherine and I were so in love. I did play the young braggart with the court. All that nonsense of being ‘in Spain,’ as only something that immature and crass would survive all these years, but I adored her and she me. That fact has been lost in antiquity. It was actually something quite unheard of for a royal marriage. Normally, it was duty, and love possibly grew over time. Marriage was something that was endured, especially a royal marriage, as my brother made quite clear to the world. But it was not so with Catherine and me. We spent afternoons riding and we’d find a meadow away from everything–court, duty, my father–and make love there. Just the two of us. No pressure. No obligation. Only each other and our love. I suppose we were like many young couples in love, blind to what was around us.”
Avalon sat in rapt attention, listening to my story. I had never told anyone this. I had carried it with me for centuries. But my love deserved the whole truth, and it was time for me to unburden myself of this dark weight.
“A sickness was spreading throughout London,” I continued, “so the officials of my father’s court had me and Catherine whisked away to Wales. After all, I was heir apparent. The future of the country depended on my well being, but it didn’t help. We both came down with the fever, and it looked as if we would both die. It was a horrible sickness, killing thousands. Then the night of my own death came. Catherine was asleep next to me; her fever soaked the bed sheets, but I was already feeling cold. I knew death was nig
h. It was only out of my great love for her that I did not wake her to say goodbye. She needed her rest if she were to survive. I prayed to God to save her, and in the middle of my prayers, a strange woman entered the room, dressed in all black. I thought her to be the angel of death.
I crossed myself repeatedly as she approached me. I remember trying to act as was expected of a future monarch, fearlessly. Such a foolish child. Yet this woman was beautiful. Unearthly.
Unlike anything I have ever seen. Her skin seemed to glow, and I was certain she was an angel.”
Avalon’s eyes were wide with interest, but she listened quietly.
“She, as you might’ve guessed, was no angel. I was too weak to protest when I saw the fangs, let alone fight back. My only thought was of Catherine, but I could do nothing. Paralyzed between my frailty and my horror. She bit me, but not on the neck, on the underside of my arm. I felt so useless, so worthless, my arm hanging loosely above me, as she fed on my blood. I was so feeble,” I said, burying my head in my hands. Reliving this night, even after so long, was taking its toll. Every detail came careening back to me with all its torment.
To my great surprise, Avalon moved over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. She was comforting me! She knew I was a monster, yet she was comforting me. Oh, my love!
“Go on,” she said tenderly. Her kindness and her love gave me the strength to do so.
“Then, as I lay there on the brink of death, she opened her wrist and let the blood flow into my mouth. I remember that like it was a hazy dream, for I must not have remained conscious for long. The next thing I knew, I awoke in a crypt parched. I had never felt so thirsty in all my days, and I couldn’t quite make out what I was doing in a crypt. It was night. They hadn’t yet sealed me inside the tomb, so I merely sat up and looked around. I was in a small chantry, surrounded by marble statues and huge windows. Thankfully it was night. I stepped out of the tomb in the center of the ornate, marble room and recognized the inner chapel of Worchester Cathedral. The priests must’ve sealed my tomb empty the following day, fearing the king’s wrath if they had reported my body stolen. I made my way out into the darkness that would become my world.