by Atha, DL
“I didn’t mean it so harshly,” I answered.
“‘Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,’” he responded, quoting the Bible.
“Not this time,” I answered. “I feel for you. I really do, and I wish I could help you. Without dying or unleashing you on the entire island, that is. But you can’t make me come. You tried earlier this evening. It was you that made me think I needed to take a hike. But I resisted. You don’t have the power over me like you did the surgeon.”
“No, you still possess free will. I am too weak to force you to me, but I can give you the revenge you so desperately want.”
“If I let you kill me, that is,” I said angrily.
“The price of revenge is always steep, Tamara.”
“It’s too steep, Adrik. I can’t help you. I won’t help you. Desperation pushed me to believe the impossible, to drink your blood in the hopes I could save myself and avenge my mom. But I am not so desperate that I’m willing to die or free you on the innocent people of this town.”
“Not yet, Tamara, but time is, as always, on my side. We have many nights together ahead of us.”
I could feel the power of his persuasion wash across my senses. Physically, I could feel the tug of the invisible cord binding the two of us together. It was strong but not overwhelming—at least not yet. Still it made me want to go to him, made my heart ache with the desire to help. He smiled at my response to him, his tongue playing across the tips of his fangs, and while my skin should have crawled, it didn’t. Instead, his hunger had an effect on me. It burned in my stomach, stoking the anger and rage that I felt towards Joel until I ached, low in my belly, with desires I hadn’t felt in years.
“Lust and revenge are merely extremes of the same emotion,” Adrik said to my unspoken thoughts.
I swallowed hard, unable to look away from the wicked beauty of his lips. Through the blood bond, I felt his thoughts morph towards the other end of the spectrum, towards lust. I closed my eyes as I felt the brush of his lips across mine and then the light pressure of his mouth, followed by the sweet sting of his fangs at the base of my throat. His hands held my face captive while he traced the contours of my neck with his cool lips. His hands cupped my breasts through my T-shirt before dropping to knead my hips.
“It’s just a dream,” I whispered in his ear.
“Yes, very true, but how much better to lust a woman of real flesh and blood than those I have conjured in my mind all these years. I never had a woman, you know, but I will have you every night. Mark my words, Tamara, there will come an evening when you lose yourself in passion and come to me, and I will have your blood and your life.”
“A virgin accused of rape,” I whispered, dropping my head back to allow him better access to my throat. His lust was affecting me. “What about the night you made Irena? The surgeon said her body was in terrible shape. I just assumed…” I began but didn’t finish.
Adrik pulled slowly away from me, his eyes cold and glacial again.
“That I raped her.”
I nodded, a slight movement, as I drew back from him. If I’d been cold before, now I was frozen by his icy stare.
“I wanted to for what she had done to me. I yearned to abuse her in ways she could understand and appreciate. I craved to hear her screams when I thrust into her. But in the end, I found I could not.”
“You didn’t want to lose all of your humanity,” I said.
A wistful smile touched his lips. “Humanity played no role in my decision. I simply did not want to become the thing of which she had accused me. It was the only remnant of my former self that was mine to control, and I did not want to give her that power.”
His passion had cooled, and I could feel his thoughts roaming into the past.
“What happened, Adrik? Please tell me so I can understand. I know from reading the surgeon’s journal that you, by complete accident, took the life of that native child and that the guilt nearly killed you. And then you were accused of rape. But how that led to excommunication and suicide, I just don’t get.”
“It is a convoluted and twisted tale,” he said.
“It appears we have all night,” I answered sardonically.
He laughed softly. “No, we have every night.”
Chapter 10
Patiently, I waited while he seemed to collect his thoughts, to find the words that would describe what so obviously still affected him. Time had done nothing to dull his memories. In fact, they were sharper, each one an individual barb that he’d cut himself on so many times that I could almost see what his skin would look like if the analogy were real. A tangled mesh of lacerations.
Through the bond, I could see images forming in his mind’s eye that played like some ancient silent movie. I watched it play out, fascinated by pictures of a time and of a people who now only remained in the blackness of his thoughts.
“It all starts with the child. His death was the crux around which my story revolves.
“I was a young man when I came to Sitka. My mother had born me into serfdom on a rural estate in Russia belonging to a prominent landowner always looking for new opportunities to make money. The economy was hard, and his cash on hand was at an all-time low, so I was his capital investment in the Russian American Trading Company. As such, I was to be sent to Sitka aboard the next ship making its way to Alaska. My labor would be his currency.
“No merchant ships were planned to travel to Alaska at that time, so my master secured passage aboard the Neva, a warship of the Imperial Russian Navy, where I would be the personal serf to one of the bishops until we arrived in Sitka in addition to providing general labor aboard the boat. The Neva had been dispatched by the Tsar to circumvent the world to prove Russia’s superiority at sea. It was a godforsaken trip that seemed at the time to last an eternity.
“Ships are a constant work in progress where no job is ever entirely completed. The chamber pots are always in need of emptying, and every bit of that great boat that touches wind or sea must be constantly scoured so that the timbers underneath your feet do not waste away.
“On the voyage, I had made friends with a peasant named Ivan Korovin. He was poor, but he was free, and in the social structure of the day, our friendship was uncommon. Despite the great gulf of our birthright, we became near inseparable. In reality, his chores were not far removed from my own, and the vast amount of our time was spent together. Without his company, I might have died on the trip over.
“You see, serfs were not a precious resource, and Russia was full of them, so no one was greatly interested in wasting provisions on not only a serf but a sick one at that. My ever-present retching on the ocean crossing did nothing to increase my strength. I believe I survived mainly from sheer prayer and Ivan’s compassion. He gave me portions of his rations nearly every day, and I owed him my life.
“Despite our arriving in the midst of a standoff between Alexander Baranov, the then governor of Alaska, and the Tlingit Indian tribe, it was a relief when we finally reached the coast of Alaska and traced it around to the outpost of New Archangel.
“A contingency of Russian Imperial soldiers, members of an opposing native tribe called the Aleutians, Ivan and myself were dispatched to take the fort from the Tlingit. Theirs was a fierce culture, and when faced with losing their most prized fishing grounds to the Baranov, the Tlingit proved willing and capable fighters.
“A small distance from their village, the Tlingit tribe had constructed quite a foreboding palisade. It was built from green spruce trees so that our cannon fire could not breach the walls. The Baranov tried mind you. He tried with all his might to blast the Tlingit out, and when he failed, he decided to starve them out.
“After many long days of constant cannon attack and lack of provisions, the Tlingit sent word of their surrender, and the Baranov felt confident his plan had succeeded. Their notice of surrender was followed by a litany of chants that we assumed to be part of their ceremonies associated with losing a battle.
&
nbsp; “A few of the soldiers were entranced by the chanting, such guttural sounds put to a lilting tune. But to me, it had an eerie sound that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. The tune took me back to Russia, reminding me of the tales of my mother’s people, the Slavs. We were a people that believed in spirits and demons as much as we believed in the living. I crossed my chest as the music drifted across the ground that lay between us and the fort because I knew that inside those four walls, something frightening and dreadful awaited me.
“Ivan, my companion and not one for superstition, was more concerned of the weather and complained bitterly of the conditions in which we found ourselves. They were abysmal. We slept on the ground when we slept at all. Our skin was constantly moist, as our clothes were poorly suited for the wetness of our environment and we were all soon covered with chaff and rot.
“The chanting droned on for five days, and by this time, anyone who had found any enjoyment in the sounds was now long since tired of it, and nothing remained to take our mind from the rain and fog that continually poured in from the sea. The officers in our group had the good fortune to warm their bones with swigs of whiskey they passed to one another. For the rest of us, there was nothing except the empty promises that the stand-off would soon be over.
“Ivan had just asked again for the fifth time, ‘What the hell do you think they are singing about?’ when the pounding of drums joined the Tlingit’s voices. The slow and steady chant that my heart had been keeping time with began to get louder until it was frenzied and rushed. The beating drums filled my temples. My head ached and my stomach twisted in knots.
“I did not think it could get any louder, sound any more primitive, when suddenly the drums and the chanting ended. It was just after midnight, and an anguished cry, the likes of which I had never heard ripped from the throats of the Tlingit. And then a perfect calm overtook the forest, not a sound stirred upon the air.
“We all watched the fort with trepidation, expecting that so great of a cry could only be followed by some deed of extreme importance. The officers whispered amongst themselves. Ivan shook his head at me. ‘What the hell,’ he mouthed into the darkness, little puffs of fog forming in front of his face.
“If the Aleutians fighting by our sides understood the chants of their fellow natives, they gave no indication. They looked at one another just as questioningly as we did our fellow Russians. No one knew what to do with the silence. Was this the sign of surrender? A few of the men expected the doors to swing open to reveal a messenger with a welcome on his lips and dusting ourselves off, we rose from the ground. Word, sent by the Baranov, traveled through the troop, ‘Stand ready. We take possession now.’
“But the gates did not open, and if the days before had seemed long, the four days that followed that death cry were like nothing we had experienced.
“Stuck in the mist and the rain, tempers flared as we waited for the arrival of more troops. After what seemed like an eternity, the re-enforcements were in place and the decision was resolutely made to take the fort.
“The fog rose from the ocean and followed us as we advanced on the palisade, as if it knew that there were sins within those walls that would need to be covered. Weapons drawn, my fellow soldiers and I approached cautiously and hesitantly. The stake walls of the palisade were intimidating but not nearly so much as the absolute stillness that hovered over the fort.
“As we forced open the palisade doors, I could not calm the foreboding growing in the pit of my stomach. Something was desperately wrong. No voices cried out to meet us, and the odor of death reached me. I gagged on bile before I could swallow it back down.
“The walls of the palisade gave way to reveal a scene that I will never forget if I am to be a millennium upon this earth. Scattered on the ground were the bodies of children. The victims of this war, their small faces contorted in pain and betrayal. Some, partially consumed by the wild animals of the area, lay on the ground while others were left in the makeshift homes, but all were days dead; decay becoming evident despite the cold. Everything rots so much quicker in Alaska, especially the dead.
“Not a man among our group had dry eyes. We were each one appalled by the sight, and every one stood silent, unable to find any words to describe the horror inside the fort. Around me, soldiers forgot to hold their muskets up any longer. The guns dropped uselessly to their sides, metal clinking against coat buttons. The flags of Russia and the trading company fluttered uselessly in the wind behind us.
“Bile rose again in my throat, and this time I was unable to stop the rush of stomach fluids out my nose and mouth. It splattered onto the partially frozen ground beneath me, the only sound in a sea of quiet. I was not alone as I made the symbol of the cross on my chest, whispering prayers up to Heaven for the slain children.
“None of the soldiers or even the officers seemed to know quite what to do next as each one stared silently around; a few began to mill about, turning the bodies over to see if any lived while a few more blessed the ground with their stomach juices. The enemy had gone, leaving only the corpses of dead children and animals behind. Shock had left the Russian army defenseless. If there had been any Tlingit warriors lying in wait inside the palisade walls, their victory would have been an easy one.
“After what seemed like an eternity, the commanding officer wiped the confused expression from his face and waved his hand forward, his movements subdued as if he did not want to disturb the dead lying at our feet.
“Fanning out, we all walked deeper into the abandoned fort, stepping over the sad bodies as we went. Silence hung heavy over the abandoned fort. No birds sang, no squirrels laughed as even nature recognized the slaughter that had taken place inside these walls.
“A keening song whispered to me on the wind the farther I walked into the fort. I turned towards the sound and listened. It was the mourning song of a child barely audible over the crunch of soldiers’ boots.
“I found it hard to focus so I closed my eyes, letting every other sound blend into the background. I wound my way through the fort, the song of mourning becoming closer with my every step. It was a native song, and I strained my ears for more sounds that proved someone had survived.
“A breeze blew by me abruptly, reeking of sweat and urine. I jerked my eyes open, startled as the form of a small boy dashed across the threshold of a structure and ran towards the back of the fort. Weakened by injuries and lack of food, the young child did not make it more than a few strides before he stumbled to the ground. Blood stained his leather tunic and crusted the tip of one braid.
“Digging his fingernails into the dirt, the child clawed his way up from the ground, tumbling forward again but managing to stay upright until his worn pants caught on a jagged tree root, bringing him to his knees again. Tears stained his dirty face as he jerked desperately on his pants leg, but the material would not divide in his hands. He cried harder as I approached him.
“I pulled a knife from my waistband as I leaned forward to slice away the imprisoning material. I did not consider how this might look to the child and, frightened by the sight of the knife, the boy lunged forwardly suddenly. His small hands hit me square in the chest, but he was so weakened by the starvation of the last few days that I barely noticed the futile force of his blows.
“It was only as I watched the abject fear on the child’s face convert to pain that I became aware of his blood dripping onto the exposed skin between my glove and coat sleeve. I looked down in surprise, the moment hanging in the balance as I realized the boy was impaled on the sharp point of my knife.
“The child mouthed a word that I could not understand before both air and blood erupted across his young vocal cords and spewed out his mouth, spattering my face and clothes in a frothy spasm of death. So much in shock, I stood unmoving, my arm extended out as the child dangled on my knife, not allowing him to sink down on the ground. I could not look away, and I watched as death overtook the child’s face, his pupils black and glossy at first but fading to d
ull.
“It was Ivan who forcibly pushed my arm down and allowed the child to slip to the ground. Only the light thud of the child’s body collapsing on the wet soil broke my concentration enough that I spared a glance at Ivan’s hand on my arm. I sunk to my knees beside the child and lifted his small frame into my arms.
“Thick black hair lay across the child’s face; I brushed it aside with as gentle a touch as possible, unable to look away from what I had done. He was just a boy; manhood had not even begun to trace lines upon his face. His skin was still smooth, his jaw line soft. Now dead, his body began to cool in my arms; his dark skin began to waxen and pale.
“Ivan was watching me with sympathetic eyes but also with pity. He knew what this would do to me. My only solace in being dispatched to this godforsaken land had been my hope that I could minister to the natives. To bring them into the fold of the Church, and now just such a child lay dead by my hand. ‘It was an accident, Adrik. A tragedy to be certain, but just an accident,’ Ivan was telling me, but I couldn’t listen. I wouldn’t listen.
“Tears brimmed in my eyes, and in spite of the soldiers gathering around me, they slipped out, running down my cheeks to mingle with the child’s blood. For a few short moments, I was no longer part of the world. Time stood still.
“I dared look at no one. I could not face the guilty accusations written on the faces of the soldiers that had gathered around. They were watching me closely. What happens to a serf that kills a child? I knew they were thinking the same question. I did not know the answer; I did not care. A quick death would have been preferable to what was to come.
“The soldiers soon gave me privacy and looked away when I was unable to stop the tears. They bowed their heads when I began to pray and beg the Father for forgiveness. But one pair of eyes remained focused on me. I could feel them boring into the back of my skull. The rage was palpable and the air changed.
“An inner voice whispered for me to look up, to find the source of the rage, to explain the tragic nature of the mistake and to plead for forgiveness. A guilty conscious kept me from doing so, I suppose. Instead, I prayed for a dead child that no longer needed my supplications.