The Progeny

by Shelley Crowley

  “Hey!” said Alexander in protest.

  Varsee arched her perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Your last progeny was a prostitute.”

  “Yeah, but she was really fun.” He beamed at Evie. “She could do this thing where she could put her leg right over her head and-”

  “Alex,” Varsee cut through tersely. “This is not the time or the place for your weird sex stories.”

  Alexander huffed and straightened. “It never is, is it?”

  Varsee turned back to Evie with an encouraging smile. “So, do you remember what happened to you?”

  Evie shuddered with a nod. Like she could forget?

  “Can you tell us?”

  She chewed her lip and nodded. “I-I was attacked by vampires. They came out of nowhere. I think they must have smelled the blood bags I had. They spilled in my handbag.”

  “What was a human doing with blood bags?” asked Alexander, looking down at her with his arms crossed over his thin chest.

  She looked up at him warily. “I was with a vampire.”

  Alexander arched his eyebrow.

  “You were alone when we found you,” said Varsee.

  “He left me. His Maker called him and so obviously, he couldn’t ignore her.”

  Alexander let out a low whistle “Talk about bad timing.”

  “What were you doing with a vampire anyway?” pressed Varsee, now looking a little suspicious.

  “He was my Maker.”

  A silence fell over them. Varsee and Alexander shared a look. “Your Maker? You were human when we found you,” said Alexander finally.

  Evie nodded. “I know. I was Turned in 1934 then I got taken by this scientist man and was experimented on. He had loads of vampires down in his basement. One was my Maker.” The two vampires were looking at her as if she was crazy but Evie tried to ignore them and carried on. She explained everything. About Nico, the cure, the trail of dead bodies behind her – everything she could think of. It all came tumbling out of her mouth as hot tears ran down her cheeks.

  The vampires stared at her wide-eyed for a moment as if lost for words. But then Alexander spoke up. “There’s a cure for vampirism?”

  “Sort of,” Evie replied. “It only worked on me for some reason.”

  “How have we not heard about this?” asked Varsee.

  “He’s working with the government, I think. They’re funding his project. I’m guessing it’s all top secret.”

  “I would have thought that the Vampire Court would have heard something and done something.”

  “The Vampire Court?” asked Evie as a chill ran up her spine.

  “Well, they have been slacking lately,” said Alexander.

  “What do you mean?” Evie looked up at him, rubbing her tears away.

  “Those vampires that attacked you,” said Varsee, making Evie look back. “They must have been part of the Nest that has been bothering us for a good few months now.”

  “A Nest? I thought there weren’t any more of those.”

  Varsee shrugged. “Yeah, we thought so, too. The Vampire Court was apparently responsible for eradicating them. Obviously, we don’t know for sure. We don’t even know where the Vampire Court are, who they are, if they even exist. But there is no other explanation.”

  They do exist, Evie shrugged, remembering the graveyard.

  “Anyway, we figured they are slacking because this Nest doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. They are situated in a hollowed-out barn about a mile away.” Varsee let out a bitter hiss. “How they think they can survive consuming their own blood is beyond me. As soon as they smell human blood, they become psychotic. It’s like voluntary Rage. They’ve even attacked us a few times, too. That’s why we’ve placed sheep carcasses outside the house, covers up our smell.”

  “Plus, it’s all the range this year,” said Alexander, draping himself over the arms of a high back armchair in front of the gas fire.

  Evie studied him. He completely clashed with the furniture. They both did. Alexander looked like a rock star and Varsee looked like someone who frequented decadent bar to sip at a glass of champagne with her pinkie sticking up, whereas the décor made Evie feel like she had gone back in time. China plates with cat patterns were hung all over the walls, covering up some but not nearly enough of the gaudy pink flowery wallpaper. More plates and porcelain figures of different breeds of dogs filled a large glass fronted cabinet by her side and the armchair Alexander had flopped himself down on looked stiff and uncomfortable, fit for a pensioner with back problems. Even the sofa behind her didn’t look appealing as she studied it from her place on the floor.

  “Where am I anyway?” she asked.

  “Mrs Braverman’s house,” replied Alexander, watching his fiddling fingers on his lap.

  Evie looked to Varsee, confused.

  “She’s dead,” Varsee explained.

  “I didn’t kill her,” added Alexander quickly.

  Varsee threw him a look. “I never said you did.”

  In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Evie gasped with realisation. “Caius. How will he find me?”

  “Who’s Caius?” asked Varsee.

  “My Maker.”

  The blonde vampire’s chin lifted a little indignantly and her eyes held the sharp edge of cut jewels. “I’m your Maker.”

  Suddenly feeling three inches tall, Evie mumbled, “My old Maker.”

  “Well, you can wave bye-bye to him. Don’t even need him anymore anyway,” said Alexander, stretching his arms over his head, an act that made him look oddly feline.

  “But… I love him,” she said awkwardly.

  Alexander’s head pricked up and he cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re in love with your ex-Maker? Well, that-” He shuddered, “-interesting.”

  Varsee’s stormy eyes were inspecting Evie’s face intently. “So, you were planning on running away together? A vampire and a human?”

  “You don’t have to tell me how stupid it was. I wasn’t really thinking. It seemed like the only option.”

  “But then he left you,” said Alexander.

  Evie’s jaw clenched. “He didn’t have a choice. He said he’d come back for me.” She blinked and a warm blood tear ran down her cheek. She looked down and it dropped onto the pastel coloured paisley carpet. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “He promised.”

  Alexander huffed out an overdramatic sigh. “Well, this has all become super depressing. Hey, Varsee, I bet you didn’t expect this when you Turned her, aye? You say you have a sixth sense about choosing good progenies and yet you chose one that already belongs to someone else. Face it, sis, Godfrey did not pass that talent down to you.”

  “But she doesn’t belong to someone else,” Varsee hissed back, whipping her head round so her blonde hair swooped over her shoulder. “She belongs to me.”

  Evie stayed silent, the tension in the room felt like a physical entity. But then her insides started feeling strange, like there was something inside her tugging at her organs. A growl ripped through her stomach and her fangs pressed hard against her sealed gums. Pain lanced through her entire skull making her hold her head in her hands and tuck her knees to her chest.

  “You’re hungry,” observed Varsee, and she got to her feet. “You still haven’t transitioned fully. Hang on.”

  Evie clenched her eyes shut but heard Varsee’s soft footfalls on the carpet as she left the room.

  “Y’know, if you really don’t want to be with us, you could just not drink and then your mind will catch up to your body and you’ll just waste away like a human. No exploding.”

  Evie peered at Alexander through her fingers. He was staring at the cold gas fire, his soft blue eyes wide and vacant. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  He sucked in a breath through his teeth, clearly for dramatic purposes. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s just, you sound difficult. Your background isn’t exactly simple. Although, you have already been a vampire so I guess that’s a plus.”

  “I’
m not going to just give up and die. I’ve been through too much to do that,” she spat.

  “And it’ll mean letting go of this Caius dude?” He glanced over his shoulder at her, his gaze lazy.

  She gulped and shifted uncomfortably, feeling dread knot in her stomach. Dread or hunger, she wasn’t sure. What was she doing sat on the floor anyway when there was a free armchair available? She got up with a groan and inspected herself for the first time since she’d woken up. The bottom half of her jumper was in tatters, revealing most of her stomach, and the material was crisp with dried blood. Her exposed skin was clear of old blood along with her neck. She figured the two vampires must have cleaned her up a little yet she could still feel it matted in her hair. She crossed the room and sank down onto the armchair beside the one Alexander was lay across.

  She had been right. It was stiff and uncomfortable. She might as well have stayed on the floor.

  “Here you go.” Varsee swooped back into the room with a glass of blood. “We took the blood bags from your car. We were running low. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Evie took the glass and inspected it with a frown. No more beans on toast for her. Back to the boring diet of a vampire. And she had been looking forward to learning how to bake cakes. And eating them. Eating lots of them.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the intoxicatingly delicious scent then jumped back and almost spilled it all over herself when her fangs burst free with that oddly mechanical click. It hurt. Her gums had healed since she had become a human. Human. She had only been awake as a vampire for about half an hour and she was already missing the soft beating within her. Never mind cakes, they were nothing compared to the bigger things she was going to miss out on – yet again. She could say goodbye to having children and growing old. She looked down at the glass of blood. Once she drank this, it’ll be like the cure never existed.

  She flicked her eyes to the two vampires who were both watching her- Alexander with dull indifference and Varsee with the eager and excited look of a mother watching her daughter ride a bike for the first time. Evie smiled weakly and took a sip and groaned, her eyes rolling back.

  Forget beans on toast.

  Forget sticky chocolate pudding.

  This was the stuff.

  The empty, bloodstained glass sat nestled between Evie’s hands on the kitchen table. After her first glass, Varsee had showed her to the bathroom and had given her new clothes to dress into after her shower. Evie had scrubbed her hair aggressively, turning the suds a vibrant red that roused her hunger. She felt sick at the growling in her stomach. That was her own blood. Her own human blood - which was now needed to feed her immortality. The curse of which she had just been freed from. It felt like she had escaped a prison only to be shoved back behind the bars, and this time with two strange vampires and no sign of Caius.

  The jeans Varsee had given her were too long, and the vest was a little baggy but Evie had covered it with her own simple grey canvas jacket. It had been crumbled up in her backpack that her saviours had taken from her car when they had found her.

  Now the two vampires were watching her. Varsee was in front of her, pacing the kitchen while her brother leaned against the wall behind Evie, making a chill crawl up her back. This room was just as sickly floral as the living room. Even the tiles were tinted pink.

  “So, seeing as you’ve already been a vampire. I’m guessing you know the basics,” started Varsee, still pacing. “No walking out in the sun unless you want to burst into flames and become a big pile of goo-”

  “Or as I like to call it, icky sticky.”

  Varsee sent a harsh glare to Alexander over Evie’s head.

  “What? It’s icky and it’s sticky. I once got covered in the stuff from head to toe. Took me like five showers to get it all out of my hair.”

  Evie’s eyebrows furrowed and she turned in her chair. “In what situation would you be covered in vampire goo?”

  “When the woman you’re getting down and dirty with gets killed by a vampire hunter right on top of you,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  Her lips parted, speechless for a moment. “There are vampire hunters?” She spun back to Varsee for clarification. She looked tired, relaxing back against the kitchen counter.

  “Were,” Alexander said, “Were vampire hunters. Back in the 1920’s. They were all killed.”

  Evie shook her head, confused. She had lived half of her human life in that time. “How have I only just heard about this? Vampires were known back then?”

  “Only by a few,” chimed in Varsee.

  “Yeah, a church full. Everyone thought they were loonies. Which they were. When they pissed off a group of ancients- probably members of the Court- they tried to hide out in their church and did all of that ‘the power of Christ compels you’ crap, expecting it to work. Which we all know is a load of bull. And so, yeah-” He shrugged, “they were all savagely slaughtered.”

  “The moral of that story is, nothing good comes from rogue vampires letting humans know we exist,” rounded off Varsee.

  “But now it’s different,” said Evie, looking back at her. “Now they know.”

  “But rogue vampires are still a threat to our existence. Which coincidentally brings me to my next point.” She pushed herself off the counter and started pacing before the fridge again. “No killing humans. Or using your vampire abilities in any way that would affect the Equal Rights Movement.”

  “Or the Vampire Court is going to be on you like a pack of wolves.” When Evie turned around, she wasn’t met with the spark of wicked humour in Alexander’s eyes that she had grown used to, but instead, he actually looked spooked. And that unnerved her even more.

  “Why? What would they do?” She looked back to Varsee. “I didn’t even know the Vampire Court were still around.” She had hoped they were no longer around. She hadn’t heard about them since Guardian had stopped checking up on her and Caius. And that had only been a few months after he had Turned her.

  “Did you hear about that robbery at the bank?” asked Varsee.

  Evie nodded. “When the vampires used compulsions.”

  “The stolen money was returned to the police station a few hours ago. No sign of the vampires.”

  “Our guess is the Court got to them,” said Alexander. Evie was starting to get used to the way they finished each other’s sentences. She found it rather endearing.

  “But what does the Court do to them?”

  Varsee stopped pacing. She folded her arms over her chest and hunched a little, as if feeling sick. “Destroy them.”

  “As in-”

  “Turned them into icky sticky,” Alexander elaborated.

  Evie gulped and shrank back in her chair. “… oh.” She twirled the empty glass on the table, staring at it numbly for a moment but then jerked forwards and sucked in a breath –a breath she forgot she no longer needed- and stared frantically at Varsee. “But Caius-” Her new Maker’s eyes glazed with sullen contempt and her tensed up shoulders relaxed. “He… he killed a bunch of humans. Does that mean-”

  “He’s either dead or on the Court’s radar.”

  Evie clutched her chest and dropped back again, tears burning the backs of her eyes.

  “Hey, maybe that explains why he didn’t come back for you.” Alexander slapped her on the back from behind and then squeezed her shoulder. “He didn’t break your promise. He just didn’t stay alive long enough for fulfil it.”

  Evie growled and winced as her fangs unsheathed and sliced through her tongue. Her grip on her glass tightened until it started to spider-web with cracks. She huffed out a calming puff of air through her nose and relaxed, loosening her hold. “You could be wrong. How do you know so much about the Court anyway?”

  Alexander had moved so he was now resting against the fridge. Evie sheathed her fangs, the click making him smirk. Her eyes shifted to Varsee. She did not dislike Varsee, although that could be the supernatural bond between them talking. On the other hand, she was sure that she
was starting to find her brother rather repulsive with his smug attitude and lack of empathy.

  “Our Maker was part of the Court in the back end of the eighteen-hundreds. He left when he found that he had grown rather immune to the malice of their actions and he began to fear himself.” Varsee’s eyes flitted to the floor. “Godfrey was a good man.”

  Evie’s eyebrow arched. Alexander shuffled awkwardly, folding his arms tighter over his chest. He held Evie’s gaze, strong and dark. “Godfrey’s dead. Are the two things related? We’re pretty certain.”

  She gulped and looked to the table top. “It seems like a lot of people in your life are dead.”

  “Isn’t that true of any vampire?” The gravity in his voice made Evie squeeze her eyes shut. Please don’t be dead. You promised. You promised you’d come back to me.

  “So, what exactly do you know about the Court? We should swap notes. You’ve clearly heard of them,” said Varsee.

  Evie shuddered. Her teeth gritted together and a burning hatred erupted inside her, old and familiar. She might have played jump rope with mortality and immortality, but deep down, she was still the same girl. A girl riddled with nightmares of that gleaming bald head, wrinkled features and dead eyes.

  Her hands slipped under the table and she clasped them tightly together. “I met them once.”

  A gust of air made her hair flip over her shoulder. Both Varsee and Alexander now accompanied her at the table, their eyes wide with rapt interest. Varsee sat straight, her shoulders tense as she gripped the edge of the table so tightly her knuckles looked like they were going to burst out of her skin. Whereas Alexander was crouched on his seat, his bony knees angled outwards. He had the chilling resemblance of a bird of prey.

  “You met them?” Varsee echoed.

  “And you’re still alive?” said Alexander in awe.

  Unable to look at them in the eyes as she unveiled her worst memory, she casted her eyes to the table top. They were wide and empty, looking inwardly at the horror of the night as it played in her mind like hitting play on an old video. “They-” She cleared her throat. “Guardian… the head of the Court… he… he made Caius Turn me.” Her eyes flickered up, just to check if they were still listening. They were. She was also pretty sure that they had leaned into her a little more.