Carol had little understanding of what Morianna’s words meant but hung on each one, some occasionally making sense.
“There are four directions for balance. Fire, which will always be beside or behind you, representing the South and the warmth you provide André who must face you. He will be drawn to your fire throughout the ritual because fire is irresistible. It is the male principle, power, purification, intense desire, the ability to penetrate and, as well, destroy. The dross from all substances is burned away in the alchemist’s blaze. In New
Guinea it is believed an old woman is the keeper of flame, storing it in her vagina to be used when needed.”
Carol felt spellbound.
“André in exchange for eternal life. This is the female principle, refreshment, sustenance, truth, wisdom, intuitive understanding. It is the direction of the moon, of emotion, and it is here you will sit as the virgin. André’s merge.”
Jeanette had finished but Gerlinde fussed with Carol’s hair, shaping it with her hands, getting it to lie perfectly against her face.
“Earth, your body. Here is the lover of life, harmonizer, as well as darkness and death. It is in this place and at this time that the cyclic pattern of birth, maturity and decay come together and transformation is brought about through ravishment. It is here that you must seek the wisdom of Sophia.”
Morianna and the girl, Susan, still resting contentedly against the older woman’s knees. Gerlinde crouched at Carol’s feet, Jeanette sat at the foot of the bed, Rene towards the head, and Chloe in the armchair. There was silence. Finally Morianna said. “From this time, but for the kiss, no one will touch you until André takes you Sunday at midnight. It is especially important that you do not permit his touch for the blood lust can drive him insane. The scent alone would be enough. The feel of it beneath skin becomes unbearable. You understand?”
Carol nodded.
Greeks revolved around the Eleusinian Mysteries. Over the next three evenings, through this ritual, you will experience what the ancient ones did—the process of birth, death and rebirth, the process which all but one here understands.” Morianna paused. “It is time.”
She stood, as did each of the others. Chloe and Jeanette led Carol into the hallway with Susan, Gerlinde, Rene and finally Morianna walking behind. The women moved quietly up the steps to the third floor. They entered the room opposite Gerlinde’s studio.
André sat cross-legged on a small Oriental carpet which had been placed over the wall to wall broadloom. He too was naked. He glanced at Rene, a flash like lightning shooting through his grey eyes, then looked at Carol. His face relaxed, which relieved her mind. He seemed full, content. He even smiled a little and she smiled back. Julien, Karl, Claude and Michael stood in one corner together. Although she was naked, Carol didn’t feel embarrassed.
Without touching her, Morianna took Carol to another small carpet in front of the fireplace, motioning that she should position herself so that her left side was to the fireplace and her right to André. Carol knelt. Immediately Morianna went about building a fire.
The room became hot quickly, especially for Carol who was right in front of the flames. Her left side pulsed with heat and the sweat ran down from her armpit and also from the small of her back triggering the fragrance of the cream that covered her body.
Once the fire blazed, Morianna stopped adding wood and, instead, added what looked like a braided rope. Immediately the room filled with a grassy scent impregnated with an undercurrent of sage.
“Can I have some water?” Carol asked Morianna.
The older woman glanced at her before moving away. “Your thirst will be quenched,” she said. Then there was silence.
Carol noticed the room, or what she could see from the direction she was facing. The space had been cleared of furniture—she could tell it had been there from the impressions left in the black carpet.
There were large cushions in solid witchy colors—midnight black, deep purple, orange and forest green—strewn across the floor beside the fireplace and along the terra cotta walls. The two corners within her vision had large vases filled with fresh flowers: orange Gladioli, red and blue tulips, pale yellow Tiger Lilies, violet and yellow Iris, white Narcissus. The other three walls were glass, as was the ceiling. In front of her the not-quite-full moon began to appear from the left, ready to wend its way across the clear sky behind the trees, passing in front of the glass wall before her. A window must have been open because she could hear leaves rustling and the sound of the wind, but it came from behind, from the other side of the room.
She heard church bells chime twelve times. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Morianna taking Michael up to André but she couldn’t see what they were doing. Morianna then brought the boy to Carol.
Michael’s lips were smeared with blood but he was grinning from ear to ear. Under Morianna’s prompting, he kissed Carol’s mouth. She realized that the blood must have come from André. It was cold, a little slimy, raw-tasting. She wanted to retch.
Her son held out a rectangular metal object for her to take. “It’s a phaser, Mom. Karl and me got it last night. You can zap Cardassians.”
This was the first time he had called her Mom, and Carol instinctively reached out to hug Michael.
“No!” Morianna shouted. “You must touch no one. Accept his gift and find a space for it in the circle you must now form around yourself.”
Carol took the phaser and put it on the floor directly in front of her. As soon as she did, Morianna led Michael away.
Then Claude went up to André, kissed him lightly on the mouth and touched his lips to a wound in André’s neck. He knelt before Carol, kissing her with bloody lips. His large brown eyes seemed sensitive, caring. He offered her a small porcelain figurine, an exquisitely formed harlequin, caught in a dance, painted in iridescent reds, blues and yellows on white, holding a smiling golden mask on the end of a stick before its face. In its other hand the harlequin held the silver mask of tragedy.
“I made this for you,” Claude said simply.
Next the girl Susan approached, kissing Carol with crimson lips, staring at her with round innocent blue eyes. Shyly she handed over a hand-bound book. “Love poems. For you and André to read together. I wrote them.”
Carol had placed the sculpture to the left of the phaser and now put the book to the right.
Next to kneel before her was Jeanette. Carol was startled by the sight of the sticky red gore smeared across those sophisticated lips. After their kiss, Jeanette handed her three pieces of handmade paper, rolled and tied with a braided vermilion satin cord. “They’re astrological charts I cast, for you, André and Michel, based on Sunday midnight.” Carol took them and placed them behind her.
“It’s a miniature.” Gerlinde handed her a small canvas. On it she had reproduced Bocklin’s painting The Island of the Dead, depicting the loneliness of a soul being transported by Charon across the silent river Styx. Gerlinde’s eyes filled with pink-tinged tears and Carol almost started crying herself. “Remember, kiddo, we’ve all been there,” the redhead said, kissing Carol’s lips lightly, passing the ritual blood. Carol placed the little painting next to the horoscopes.
Karl approached. He handed her a vial of crushed rock he said was alum. “Put this in water, in a dark place for five weeks or more. Be sure there’s no movement.” His wet lips brushed hers. He hesitated and then said quietly, tentatively, “‘At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless. Neither from nor towards. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance...’” He looked a little embarrassed reciting Eliot. He stood quickly. Carol placed the alum close to Gerlinde’s gift.
Chloe gave Carol a ruby colored rosebud, tightly closed, its long thorny stem resting in a slender clear-glass vase. “Because it will go from bud to bloom to fading, the virgin, the mother and crone.” She kissed Carol with scarlet lips. “The rose has been called ‘The Flower of Venus’. The old myth
s say the gods created the rose to celebrate Aphrodite’s rising from the sea and that it became red when she pricked her feet on thorns as she sought her slain lover Adonis.” Carol placed the rose to her right, between her and André.
Morianna was next. By now Carol had figured that the order probably had to do with the length of time they had been vampires. The Eurasian woman pressed into Carol’s palm a brownish green stone of chalcedony streaked with carmine, a smaller version of the one she wore around her neck. “Bloodstone. It endows courage, wisdom, vitality. The wearer is audacious, brilliant, courageous, generous, obedient,” she said, her eyes laughing. “It was said by Pliny that heliotrope brings the owner success if a calm mind is maintained when engaged in hard combat,” she added, as their lips met. There was a mild but definite electric charge, a feeling that had intensified with each kiss. The stone was placed to the right of the rose.
Last was Julien. His dark eyes stared into Carol’s, almost absorbing her. He said nothing and offered her nothing tangible, except for the kiss. But Carol felt a connection with him that seemed incomprehensible yet penetrated to the roots of her soul.
She suddenly realized that each of the gift givers was now seated in a circle about her and André reflecting the exact position of their gift around her. Chloe was behind André, so that Carol couldn’t see her. Julian sat next to Susan, the only space left in her circle of gifts except for the fireplace.
Suddenly Rene, who had been seated against the glass wall watching, stood and walked towards André.
“No!” André said.
Rene must have felt the power of his furious rejection. She stopped as if she’d slammed into an invisible wall and turned away from him. “Well at least let me offer Carol a gift,” she said, vaguely facing Morianna.
The vampiress considered a moment and Carol expected her to say no, but she said, “The nine has altered. Proceed.”
Rene walked to Carol and knelt in front of her. There was a peculiar glow in her eyes and Carol smelled alcohol on her breath. She looked about to move forward, to kiss Carol, when Julien said, “Do not kiss her,” in a tone that kept Rene back.
“Well, I didn’t come prepared for a celebration,” she said lightly, and smiled. “How about a set of earrings. Genuine rhinestone.” She pulled the triangular clips from her ears and pressed them into Carol’s hand, making flesh to flesh contact.
Carol looked around her circle of gifts. She didn’t know where to position them. Suddenly the earrings seemed oddly out of place. They felt hot from the heat of Rene’s skin, and the points of the triangles sharp-edged in Carol’s palms. That frightened her. Why? she asked herself. Rene’s my friend. Has been my confidant for years. If it wasn’t for Rene she would never have found Michael again. But something felt wrong, and she couldn’t identify what. All she knew was that she had to battle an urge to toss the earrings into the fire. That would hurt Rene, and for no good reason. But at the same time Carol felt upset just holding them and upset that Rene had touched her. She dropped them close to the hearth and suddenly realized she was sweating from more than the fire’s heat. She looked up. Rene was not, of course, in the place corresponding with the earrings, as far away from André as possible. She could not have fit into the space between Carol and the fireplace. But Carol wasn’t prepared for the space Rene had chosen—on André’s right, three feet from him.
Rene violated the pattern, which Carol felt was her fault. She should have paid more attention to where she put the earrings. She glanced at André. Clearly he felt his space invaded. She smiled, trying to reassure him, but his eyes reflected a murderous darkness that Carol couldn’t stand seeing, so she looked away.
They stayed silent for hours except for the occasional music Claude played on a flute and the sound Morianna produced from a bell. She didn’t ring the bell but instead ran a thick baton of blonde wood around the rim creating an eerie reverberation that penetrated into Carol’s bones.
She thought of many things. The gifts, the givers and what this ritual meant to her. She thought of Michael and of André and how her entire life had changed.
She could see that this was the passing of her lifetime and the passing of her solitude. Tonight she would come to André like the girl Kore, young, innocent, open. He was to be her lover, her eternal husband. He would give her his blood and then, on Sunday, he would take hers, the way a man takes a woman for the first time, fully, completely, ‘a ravishment’ as Morianna had put it. Carol had never viewed anything in this way before but the symbolism made her feel the experience was larger than her existence and, at the same time, all her own. There is something sacred, even magical about what’s happening, she thought.
Morianna placed a small unglazed clay bowl holding six pomegranate seeds before her. “Take. Eat these.” Carol picked them out, one by one, placing the seeds onto her tongue. She bit into the bitter-sweet fruit, crunching the hard centers between her teeth. When she had swallowed all six, Morianna said, “Now you must receive from André.”
Suddenly all her lofty thoughts plummeted to earth. Carol panicked. They had told her what she had to do and, until this moment, she had thought that she could do it.
“Receive,” Morianna said again.
Carol got to her feet. Her legs trembled, partly from fear and partly from kneeling in the same position for so long.
She turned towards André. He was as he had been when she’d entered the room, what seemed like days before. Rene sat very close to him, too close.
As Carol walked towards André, his bright grey eyes fixed on hers, never veering even for a moment. When she was in front of him she knelt down. She tried to convince herself not to be frightened, afraid of showing him her fear. But she could already see he saw it in her eyes. And she was aware of a response—she felt the heat of his anger, intense as the flames that had nearly cooked her.
With Rene so close, Carol felt somehow pressured in a way she could not identify. It was as though her every move was being monitored. The others were watching as closely and yet she did not feel herself straining for them to do this ‘right’. Rene scrutinized her movements, her gestures, and it shook Carol’s confidence, but she didn’t know why.
André’s chest was covered with dried blood that had seeped from the wound in his neck which the others had touched their lips to. He reopened the wound with a fingernail. Rene gasped. Blood so dark it was almost black tracked fresh paths between the dark hairs on his chest. The rivulets ran down past his stomach into the hairs of his genitals. A macabre fascination overwhelmed Carol. It mixed with the terror coursing through her and she felt unable to do what she knew she must.
“Carol,” Rene said, “if you don’t want to do this—”
“Silence!” Julien commanded. His voice rattled the air like a sonic boom, crushing all other sound. Rene fell silent. Carol trembled. André’s face, afraid of what she would see. His hand moved slowly up towards her head. He’s going to force me to drink it! she thought. Suddenly she heard Morianna, the voice strong and clear as a bell, “Avoid the touch!”
Immediately Carol remembered the consequences. Without another thought she moved towards the red river flowing from him. She parted her lips and drank. Cool and thick. Salty. As it warmed a bit, the blood became coppery and sweet. Earthy. Familiar yet unfamiliar. She struggled to keep her mind blank. She held her breath and swallowed down several mouthfuls of the blood that streamed remarkably easily past her lips.
Suddenly the air coming in went to her stomach, the blood to her lungs and she was choking. She pulled back, coughing, gagging. Red sprayed from between her lips and splattered André’s face and chest. She fought to get control of herself, to keep from vomiting. To keep from running screaming out the door. Rene was on her feet. Before she could move, Gerlinde blocked her.
Finally, Carol’s wheezy breath became more rhythmic, her irritated throat not so raw. She heard Morianna say, “Enough!” Carol hurried back to her carpet, her mouth and face streaked with André’s
blood, her body quivering uncontrollably.
She was stunned by what she had done and also by the knowledge that her actions were irrevocable.
As she sat on the carpet, snatches of truths flashed through her mind. ‘Blood of my blood, flesh my flesh.’ ‘For the blood is the life.’ She had no idea whose blood flowed in André’s veins, whose blood she had consumed. She began to grasp the outer edges of understanding, the seriousness of blood rituals and, consequently, the bond that was forming between her and André. The bond, too, seemed irrevocable.
As the sun rose, the group abandoned the room. Rene, chatting non-stop, was taken to the guest room where, presumably, she would be locked in until tomorrow night.
Carol and André went together to the basement. They lay in bed in silence, separate, not touching in the darkness.
The first night was over; aside from one brief trauma, everything seemed to be going well. André wasn’t having any trouble controlling himself, as far as she could tell. And they both had the support of the group to help them through any difficult parts. She was starting to feel pretty good about the whole thing and half looked forward to tomorrow night.
Suddenly, a voice as cold as the grave cut through the black air. “Don’t hesitate like that again!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Carol woke when André snapped on the light. Her eyes opened slowly. Above her face hovered a stark mask with stone grey eyes imbedded in it. His cold stare unnerved her for a moment, until she got a grip.
As different as he looked, that’s how different she felt.
Her flesh rippled with sensuality. She couldn’t tell if this was the result of drinking blood or what—maybe she was imagining it—but the effect produced a confidence she wasn’t used to feeling.
And, being alone with André, the way he looked tonight, she needed all the confidence she could get.
Without a word they left the room together. On the second floor landing, Jeanette motioned her into the guest room again.
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