“What will you pray for?” asked the man. “You’ve seen her – seen the state she is in. I go to church every Sunday of my life, and this is my reward?”
“I will pray for her soul, and yours,” he replied. In his own mind, he could only do one thing, and pray for a quick death for the woman.
This actual event came to pass. Mariana, frustrated with her daughter’s feelings about the humans, and increasingly frustrated with her entrapment at The Raven, assumed the bird’s shape one night, and attempted to enter the woman’s bedroom, and give her a final, absolute death.
The priest had left an array of crucifixes with the husband, but in his disagreement with the priest, he removed them from the bedroom.
“Damn things don’t work anyway. Pray for a job, I cannot get one. Pray for my wife to get better, she gets worse. What is the point?”
The raven, which had circled many a night outside the woman’s bedroom, seized the opportunity, crashing through the window and violently gored the woman’s body. The man came rushing into the room, to be confronted by the horror of his wife being torn apart by the beast, as it fed on her flesh.
This was no ordinary bird; it seemed to grow in size as it gorged on her blood.
Finally it turned to the man and swatted him with its wing, knocking him out cold. The beast thought for a moment to feed on him, but he looked weak and haggard from his life. He could not have been more than twenty-six years old, but looked some thirty years older.
As least his wife had tasted young.
“My son,” said the priest sternly. “The Lord has given you this day. Use it well.”
The man nodded and shook the priest’s hand, but left without saying anything further. A plan was being thought through, even as he left the churchyard.
“It’s time that candle flame became a raging, unstoppable fire.”
***
“Lady G? Lady G? Are you not comfortable? It’s our best coffin, far more grand in style and comfort that my mother and I use. Whatever is the problem?”
A muffled, yet reasonably clear sound emanated from underneath the casket’s heavy lid.
“I cannot get out, damn you!”
Juliana jumped on top of the casket and tapped it with her hands.
“No, you just haven’t tried. You’re still trying to open it like a human. You are no longer a human. You have thrown off the shackles and inadequacies of that life. I had to learn this way too; the hard way. No-one ever showed me how to open my coffin.”
Inside the coffin, the woman knew that things were different. So much time must have passed since she last heard from Juliana. The other vampire, the girl’s mother, she assumed, took no notice of her shouting and banging. It was clear that Juliana had returned to deal with her; or had been sent to deal with her.
“Let me out.”
“If you are going to behave, then I will. First things first. You have to accept what you are. Otherwise, I cannot help you. Agreed?”
“It would seem so,” came the muffled reply.
Juliana jumped down and flipped the lid open with ease.
“You’re a vampire now, which means that the old ways are dead to you. You were trying too hard, just like a human. We are so much more than that.”
The woman, called Lady G by Juliana because of the letter that hung as a pendant from her neck, sprang up from the coffin.
“So I am learning and seeing. I just thought to rise up, so I did.”
“You can do much more than that,” said Juliana excitedly. “Tell me, what is it you want right now?”
“I want to kill someone.”
“Well, that’s a very good start.”
“So take me to them,” said the newly-made vampire. “Last night, there were scores of them in the pub.”
“Not those,” said Juliana. “You cannot kill them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This will be your first evening at The Raven as one of us. You will see things differently, I promise you. Just be patient.”
The new vampire sighed. “I still want to kill someone. How about the priest?”
“Not him,” ordered Juliana. “I have thought such things myself. It is too obvious to go after him. Besides, even if you were to get him out of that cursed building, he wears one of those infernal crosses around his neck.”
“What is the worst that could happen to us, if we were to attack him whilst he is dressed so? It is but a little trinket. I had one myself. When I became like you, I began to see them for what they really are. Trinkets of deceit, making me believe in a false God.”
“I agree with you,” said Juliana, “but this is neither the time nor the place. Besides, I must have an audience with Father WhatsHisName, sooner rather than later. I have different plans for you.”
“So long as it involves me feeding on someone. I feel so weak in body, yet so strong in spirit and desire. I want to kill. Now!”
“Okay, okay,” said Juliana with more than a hint of exasperation in her voice. “I will send you to a place that satisfies your bloodlust.”
With a wave of her hand, the newly made vampire disappeared from view.
Just before the Inn of The Blood and the Raven was set ablaze.
Daughters of the Devil
“Come out and burn, you daughters of the Devil!” shouted the man whose wife had been killed by the Dreymuirs.
“Or stay inside and burn!” laughed another man.
Juliana looked around as the flames climbed up the walls of the old public house all too quickly. Both she and her mother would have to leave.
Juliana remained a touch too human for her mother’s liking, though the senior vampire would admit to being sentimental about Marcus and Rocco, who they hoped to see again at some point. Her brothers had been sent out to spread the word, and the way.
When she had last seen them, she was unsure. She longed to see them again, especially Rocco, who she felt close to, even though he seemed closer to his brother.
There was no time to gather the portraits of her siblings.
“Mother! We have to go!”
But Mariana was reluctant to go.
“If we leave here, they will kill us. If we burn here, we throw off this form, and simply choose another. Isn’t that what Marcus and Rocco have done? Isn’t that the option you gave that young woman?”
“Yes,” said Juliana, “and you know why. They must continue, even if something happens to us.”
“You forget your place, my girl. I have been around longer than Time itself. The only reason God created the Heavens and Earth in seven days is because I taught him to understand the concept of time. So you see, nothing mere men can do, with their hands or weapons, can scare me.”
“Mother, I am scared they would get to me.”
“They won’t, my child. As you sent that young girl away, I must send you on your way.”
“The priest. He is to pay for this. He is the cause of all this.”
“You must away to the castle at once, Juliana.”
“No! We were hunted out of there before. I can’t leave you here at their kind of mercy, Mother. At least send out those who frequent The Raven to save you.”
The group that the woman and her husband had been amongst that night may have been human at one time, but now they were vampires. They sniggered at everything the humans had said, because they had been in their position too at one time.
Somehow, there was always something wrong with the set-up in the surroundings of The Blood and the Raven.
A fallen log. An animal laying on the road, sometimes a deer, often a cow and even an elk. All dead. All a ruse to stop newcomers to the town from ever leaving.
The pub had been burned to the ground more times than Mariana could remember, but Juliana never could. Her mother marvelled at her daughter’s child-like remembrance of things. Her brothers called it selective memory. Juliana had all to often remind them that they too chose to forget their part in the most awful of deeds.
She had hoped to escape the killings for a while, but make-up would only get her so far. She retained the pallor of the undead. Only under the kind of lighting that the pub offered could she manage a normal looking appearance.
If she ever went out in the day, her death-white complexion scared the younger children, and even though she wore the most magnificent of dresses, which were designed to take the eyes of onlookers away from her face, it was a subterfuge that could not last.
She was eighteen years old in this phase of her existence. She thought she had seen it all from her mother, who had taken the guise of a human female in this phase, but also that of a raven, as if being a female vampire was not terrifying enough.
That was not all. Her mother had been a beast, almost too terrible to describe. She had been mist, a vapour, a fog, and each time she smothered the life out of anyone caught in its vicinity. She had even been a man, often a lord, knight, or nobleman with some such title. Men had much power back in those days, and they used that power to control other men, and seduce women into their trust.
Once Mariana tired of them, whatever guise she was in, they died.
People tended to avoid the town now, so Juliana and her mother had to make it difficult for newcomers to leave, once they had entered the place. Of course, The Blood and the Raven was the only pub in town. Juliana had burned down all others within a twenty-mile radius of the place.
Now, the old pub found itself on fire.
“Not for the first time, certainly not for the last,” said Mariana as she morphed into bat form and flew clear of the blaze.
One of the men hurled a hand-sized rock into the air, but it missed the bat by some distance, with a devilish laugh coming from the creature.
The vampire bat beat its wings furiously, and rose clear of the burning public house. Those who frequented the pub, and had never left since being made by Juliana and her mother; chose this moment to exit the burning lounge, and fed on the men, women and children outside. There were just too many of them, and whilst some of the vampires were beaten back, it delayed only the inevitable.
One by one, the people fell.
On this side of the broken road, the human population of the town was now zero. As things stood, it was completely populated by vampires.
***
Unless she had made a miscalculation, one person local to the town was still alive, and very much human.
Juliana knew where that person was too, and made her way directly to the church.
“Come out, dear Father! I come to confess my sins! I hope your God has given you at least ten lifetimes, for I have much to confess!”
The priest stayed hidden, but Juliana knew one thing about these humans.
“You forget I used to be like you, Father. Come out of there, so I can make you like me.”
Candle Flickers
“So ends the tale of The Blood and the Raven,” said Seth, who sat shivering in the cold.
The candle wax oozed onto Daisy’s hand, but she was glad of the heat. “So she kills the priest as well? Except for vampires, there’s no-one left in the town? Well, I’ll admit you had me going there a few times Seth; and it was more gory than I’d have liked. But I enjoyed it. What about you, Anna? Joel?”
Seth did not acknowledge whether Daisy’s assertion was correct. Instead, he stared as Anna sat, her legs crossed, with a stony expression on her face. Joel, bored of all the non-scary stories, lay on his back, his knees bent, his face barely catching the moonlight.
“Anna? What’s wrong with you?”
When Anna did not reply, nor made any movement, Daisy marched over and shook Anna by her shoulders, only for a strange scent, one of death to fill the air.
Anna grabbed Daisy by her wrists, but this was to be her last action, as the girl’s head loosened, falling backwards, but remained attached at the neck. Daisy screamed silently at first, only for a huge scream to escape from her once she realised her candle flame had flickered out.
Gretchen looked across at Seth, who wore a similar expression to Anna, only he was very much alive.
Seth was still holding his candle, and it illuminated something around her neck. A thin, gold necklace, with a pendant hanging from it in the shape of the letter G.
Daisy screamed again, only to fall over the bent knees of Joel, whose face was turned away from the group for a reason. His expression was of someone who had been in sheer terror in the moments before his life ended.
His eyes had been pulled from their sockets, his teeth smashed, some of them protruding through the skin where his cheekbones were. Two savage bite marks on his neck looked to have been made by some kind of animal. In addition to all this, Joel had been disemboweled, remaining conscious and alive whilst this had been happening to him.
He would have been fully aware, even though his murder would have taken a matter of seconds, he would have felt every cut, tear, and slash of the beast that killed him. His death was made all the worse because he mocked the entities that filled scary stories.
Now, he would forever be a part of one.
“You tell the story so well, Seth, that Daisy held her gaze on you the whole time. Anna and Joel are like so many, they disbelieve. I hate it when they do that. Just wait a second whilst I get Daisy.”
Seth said nothing to Gretchen, but tried hard to remember when he had first come into contact with her. She had said she had been around for two hundred years, but that was impossible, as she looked no older than fifteen years old.
Of course, Gretchen had learned to play her part well. She too was practised in taking many forms, and in this existence, took the part of a teenager in their last year at school.
Whilst he was thinking about this, he was showered with a sticky liquid, too thick to be merely the damp rain in the priory, which had started to seep from the clouds above.
“Sorry about that,” said Gretchen, who had returned with Daisy, half her insides hanging outside of her body. “She’s a strong one, I’ll say that for her.”
Gretchen ripped Daisy’s arm out of her shoulder and tossed it towards Seth, the dismembered limb landing just in front of his crossed legs.
“I don’t want it, but maybe you do,” said Gretchen. “All that story telling must have made you hungry. Her arms are too skinny for me. Good job she has – had, a big chest.”
Seth remained silent, disgusted with himself for being part of these seditious acts.
“You’re not hungry? Or are you sulking, Seth?”
He spoke, but only after he had spoken the question in his head over and over again.
“How many more times do we have to do this?”
“What do you mean?” asked Gretchen, between mouthfuls of Daisy.
“When will this end?”
Gretchen paused her consumption of Daisy.
“It never ends. Never. Since I was made like this, I have always been hungry. Know that it will never end Seth. Your reward for bringing them to me is a good night’s rest.”
Seth stood up, and followed Gretchen out of the priory. The lifting of the curse would simply have to wait for another day.
Gretchen spoke to him just one more time, but it was a line he was familiar with.
“Tomorrow, we’ll find a new group of people to tell your story to.”
Author Reflections
The Blood and the Raven is rather like a ‘story within a story’. You have the legend of the story itself, and Seth is the eyes and mouthpiece of the tale.
His is a tragic story. He is forced by the vampire, ultimately revealed as Gretchen – the woman in the story, and Lady G as she is later referred – to find a succession of people to find, so that she can feed on them.
She won’t kill him – not while he is useful anyway. But can he kill her? What would happen if he does? Will Gretchen, and Juliana – our anti-heroine in Murderous Little Darlings - meet again?
With vampire lore, there is much scope for the author. This is the second of seven short novellas
, that will tie up together at the close of book seven.
I rather doubt that will end my association with vampires. I enjoy these characters. Whilst I am sorry for Daisy’s demise in this story, Gretchen’s ruthless manner of killing, in a way, has to be admired.
Why can’t Gretchen go on her own, and kill without Seth’s help?
Well, it would draw too much attention to her, and she is able to cover her tracks – something that is alluded to in the first Tale of Vampires.
Three Tales of Vampires (The First Three Books in the Tale of Vampires Series) Page 9