I had the nagging feeling I was running out of time—running out of time to find my answers. Running out of patience to keep trying. If I were to die without seeing my wife one last time, then all of my efforts would have been in vain. I was doing all of this for her. I was figuring out the secrets for her, so one day, we could be together again. Doing this to free her of what was oppressing this grand new world I was discovering.
Magic exists.
Monsters exist.
That discovery alone was priceless. But to save her from an existence of loneliness and imprisonment, and maybe even a fate worse than death, would prove to be worth more than all of the gold in the world.
At any rate, before I finished my studies, I had to find her. I needed her to hear about what I was doing—to know she would be proud of me for doing it.
I squinted down the hollowed, misty entrance of the Occult. The fog was thick and deep enough that it might have had the power to devour a man whole so he would never return. Raven caws echoed across the darkened, tree-covered path. This time, I dared not enter. There was just something about this night that spooked me. Perhaps it was because the sky was moonless. Perhaps the cursed man’s warnings were still trapped tightly inside my thoughts. Something, inevitably, would kill me. And with the prickle of my skin, I stood still as possible and peered over the borders into a world of impossibilities. I couldn’t shake the fear.
I cupped both of my hands in a tubular shape around my mouth and called, “Andela!”
I knew the action was idiotic and foolish. I was aware of the possibility something sinister like a Lycan or an Ogre might come for me instead. A light wind licked across my skin and through my hair, carrying the scent of pine.
“Andela!” I cried out again, though louder this time and with my fists at my sides and my stance firm. I would not leave until she came, or something else took me.
A fiercer wind came and nearly knocked me from my feet. The fog dispersed into waves of lavender and gray. A darkened silhouette appeared in the center of the path. I blinked through the darkness at the shape of her claws near her hips. Her long blonde hair billowing behind her. She slowly approached me. I watched, holding my breath.
“What are you doing here?” Her bell-toned voice circled me gently and I sighed with the ecstasy of the sound. She was really there before me, for the first time in a long time.
“Are you going to kill me?” I asked. I had to. A voice lived in the back of my head, begging for an answer.
“No,” she answered with the tone of a new question in her voice. “Why do you look so thin and scraped up? As though you haven’t slept in months….”
I could finally see the details of her face, then. The crystalline color of her eyes. The angles of her cheekbones like rolling hills of pearl. Her lips full and parted. I could breathe her scent—gardenia. Or jasmine. Or some haunting combination of the two. It made me dizzy. She was only inches from my face, and though I knew she was a deadly and dangerous predator. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed her with my fingers knotting in the locks of her alabaster hair. I crushed my mortal lips to her dead ones, but they were intoxicating and inviting all the same. They moved against mine. In fact, the feel of their chill caused an arousal within me that felt dastardly and brand new, and I reveled in it for its wrongness. My hands trailed over the dip of her waist and her breasts and her shoulders.
Before I gasped at the feeling of her icy fangs piercing my throat.
I cried out with the immense pressure of my blood being pulled from me, my knees buckling beneath my weight, but somehow this frail woman held me up. Her mouth locked to my flesh, suckling at my life, which poured from me. I groaned, and something within me spoke and told me to relinquish myself to her completely—to just give in.
I wasn’t quite sure of what happened then. There was only the feeling of my back hitting the ground, and the gelatinous feeling of my limbs. I sighed with both exhaustion and elation. Who knew being fed on would be such a glorious feeling? Sensual. Sexual. Lethal. Gritty. Nasty. Lovely. My eyes fluttered, my vision weak and hazy until I could only see the sprinkled stars scattered along the black blanket above twinkling at me. I heard a roaring and a gnashing and what sounded like the scrape of a fang through the trunk of a tree. I gasped, realizing we were no longer alone. There was a brawl, and my Andela was most certainly involved.
Even leaning up on my elbows proved to be difficult, and I fought my way to see what was happening in the dirt and the mist before me. “Andela,” I groaned, my voice nothing more than a feeble murmur.
Her back was turned to me, her claws tearing deep into the fur of something jet black and shadow-like, but I could not quite tell what it was. It was not wolf-shaped. In fact, I did not at all recognize the sort of animal it might have been. It made a fearsome and lowly sound that I suspected was a growl.
“Stay down!” She ordered, throwing the creature high over her head.
I gasped. Did she always have these abilities? Super-human strength? I watched in awe and disbelief as she dug her claws deep within the creature’s flesh. Hideous wails and cries permeated the forest, paired with the sounds of bones breaking and flesh tearing until I saw my wife rip the thing clear in half. The blood and carnage rained down over her head, soaking her hair and dress in wine-colored ichor. I covered my mouth, biting down lightly over my flesh to keep from screaming. She turned slowly to face me.
“Sorry, my love,” she whispered in the night, dropping the two heaps of body next to her with a resounding thump in the dirt. “You should leave.”
My lips quivered. My whole body quivered. But I shook my head and tried my best to stand over my shivering knees. “No. I won’t leave you again.”
“You must,” she began tearfully. Her chest expanded and she withdrew a tall breath and held it. I suspected she was fighting not to cry. “You cannot stay. It is far too dangerous.”
“But…you….”
“We live in different worlds now, Alistair,” she said. Her voice broke, finally revealing her true emotions. “It’s time to say good-bye.”
I blinked back the memories of a time not so long ago. A time when we were young and wildly in love. A time when I had no idea these things could possibly exist.
“Andela, one last thing.” I took a step toward her, reaching out for her to keep her from disintegrating in the shadows—to keep her from leaving me forever.
“Your entrapment will not be in vain. You will be free again. I have been—”
“I know what you have been doing,” she interjected. “So many of us know. It is very valiant of you, but amazingly dangerous.” A drop of anger colored her tone. “I don’t want you putting yourself in danger for me.”
“But I could make an enormous difference in your world and in mine,” I argued. “No.” I shook my head. “I won’t stop. These secrets must be revealed.” I reached into my coat pocket and held out the parchment letter, which was still sealed. “And I have this now.”
Her phantasmal gaze flickered down to the document and then fiercely back up to my face. “Where did you get that?”
“It was given to me. In London. By a strange man who didn’t reveal his name.”
Her mouth fell open and took a step back. “You must heed everything in this letter. You must devour every word. Do you understand?”
I nodded. Her words weighed a ton, and so I stuffed the document back into my coat.
“Something to ponder for your studies,” she began again. “I have never felt more powerful until I drank from you. I have experienced amazing abilities, but never were they as potent before tonight.”
I nodded, but remained silent.
“Something to consider.”
“I will.” And it was true. I found it very interesting.
“I love you forever.”
“Always,” I said.
And with another gust of wind, she was gone. Disappeared into the night, back to a world where I would never belong. But she bestowed u
pon me a gift that would live within me forever. And I had no idea what was coming for me.
I didn’t know it then, but the scar she’d left at my throat was the best clue she could have given me. After that night, I encountered many more Vampires who wanted to speak with me—to divulge information for my effort. They wished to discuss many things. Mostly the Regime, and their personal stories of their deaths by sunrise, members of their covens being captured for crossing borders, and attacks by Lycans and various followers of the light.
I understood the Elves and, most importantly, the Wizards of the Regime were the Vampires’ natural enemies. I understood their leader, Vladislov, was hell-bent on the destruction of the night—suffocating the Vampires by keeping them locked in their secret cities. Starving them. Banishing them. Misunderstanding them. Perhaps he was afraid. Perhaps it was because he knew of a secret I’d only just discovered….
It was very rare I came across a Vampire who shared a relationship with a mortal. Most of them felt very differently—we are just livestock and our only purpose is for feeding. But those who lived more open-mindedly knew different. There was more to the living than just keeping the dead alive. The Witch was right. There was something special about the single line running through my right palm. I guess I’d never noticed the matching line living in my wife’s palm as well. We were eternally linked to one another. “Fate lines,” they were called. And even though we could not be together, our fate would never truly separate. And there was comfort in knowing that.
But something even more curious, was what the other cursed people expressed to me; the same notion of feeling more powerful once they’d fed from their mortal counterpart—the one they were eternally linked to. It was the same idea expressed to me by my wife. What could it have been? Was it something living within the blood? Was it something Vladislov feared most entirely—the Vampires would be unbeatable if they discovered this? Was that why he kept them so far away from what they needed most? Mortal blood. Interaction with people. Perhaps there was something special about a Vampire who learned to love their prey. Or something else.
Perhaps…there was something special about a human being who could learn to love a monster….
Part Three
Chapter Seven
Dark History
“When one sun sets, a new one is reborn. And so the reign of perpetual day illuminates our world of magic, intrigue, and knowledge….”
~Valdiver of Russia: the first ruler of the Regime
It took a long while to return to my studies after leaving Andela forever. It took a long while to regain the passion and the gumption to pursue anything. I knew she’d become the undead, but saying good-bye one final time was all too finite for me to deal with, and it left me with a heavy amount of grieving. But the things she said, and the things I’d noticed and seen, left me with more questions I often pondered late into the night. I lay in the bed of the inn where I stayed, tossing over the biggest question that gestated in my mind until I was ready to pop.
Who was responsible for all of this?
Certainly, it wasn’t God. Or was it? Who had placed all of this magic and complete and utter secrecy here among us? Perhaps it was the devil, or some other divine source also existing in secret. Whatever or whoever it was, was the reason my life had been turned on its head. It was the reason that now, in all ways but one, my wife was dead to me.
It was the question of the origin of the Occult, which inspired me to reach the first theological library I could find. It would be a mortal establishment, but it was the only place where I knew to begin. And just like any little dingy town with a whorehouse and a tavern, there would inevitably be a church just down the street.
I don’t recall what time of night it was. The only thing I can remember was the overwhelming blanket of clouds completely encasing the moon and stars. There was absolutely no light that night and I didn’t wait, dashing from the inn to the empty streets. It seemed most heathens in this world sought retribution when it was darkest and bleakest—when no one would be watching. I knew the church would have its doors open. I ran, the sound of my soles slapping the wet cobblestones, my briefcase heavy in my hand. I ran until I reached the part of the town center that snaked off into various, outlying alleyways and side streets—where the buildings seemed more crooked and worn and the streetlamp lighting just a little dimmer.
I found the brothel, wedged between a bank and a sterile-looking office building—the church I’d been looking for. There were chinks missing in the stone walls, the steeple needed painting and looked like it might tumble and fall with the next breeze, but it was standing, and the front door was cracked as if the very place awaited my arrival.
I entered quietly, slipping easily through the crack in the door without shifting it, and blessed myself with the pool of holy water waiting in a stone basin just off to the side. After all I’d learned of what truly did exist in the world, it was mostly out of respect and less out of belief.
There were monsters in the world.
Demons were real and they took the life of my beloved and made her what they are. Bloodthirsty things. Things that are wicked and wondrous and crave our flesh in the night. These are the things I believed in now and impassioned me to search for the real truth. And maybe I would find some of those answers inside the decaying walls of Catholicism and ancient spirituality.
The church was modest—only room enough for less than one hundred people in the pews and a choir adorned with the images of Jesus Christ, but not in the opulent, golden way he was depicted in the famous basilicas of London, Paris, or Prague. These were simpler walls, with a few pieces of stained glass, crude murals, and a short nun who emerged to me through another doorway.
I stopped, my briefcase still clutched tightly in my hand, and regarded her with a wide-eyed, childlike question. As I observed her kindly disposition about her cracked spectacles and rosy cheeks, and I knew she would not turn me away. She approached me with both hands folded delicately in front of her, the color of her hair hidden from sight. Her feet were covered in nothing more than white socks and patched-up sandals.
“Good evening, son.” She smiled and nodded, her voice delicate. It reminded me of the twinkling of a wind chime.
“Evening.” I hesitated, flipping through choices in my head of how to word my request. “I’m aware of the late hour, but—”
“I know why you have come,” she nearly whispered.
I snapped my mouth shut and simply frowned at her. Impossible. Was she mistaken? How could she possibly know?
“You do?” I asked and waited for her to say something about repenting for my sins, learning about the trinity, or something similar. But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all. With a twinkle in her eye and a tightly wound grin, she turned.
“Follow me,” she murmured and retreated back in the direction she entered from. I followed. There was something in the way she looked at me that told me she really did have a true understanding about why I was there. It was something which was more present in the words she did not say, rather than in the ones she did.
I had to ask, “How do you know?”
She peered at me whimsically over her round shoulder. “They are watching. There’s not a lot I can say other than you must heed the words concealed in the letter given to you. You must find your answers, word them carefully, and go.”
“Might I remove texts from this library?”
“The volumes on these shelves are sacred and may not pass beyond these doors. You will copy what you need.”
The look in her eye told me there would be no haggling. Those were the last words she uttered before she revealed a thick ring of keys and stopped at a splintered, wooden door to her right. Thumbing through the various keys, she stopped on one larger and more opulent than the others, and then used it to open the lock. With a click, she pulled open the heavy door and gestured for me to enter. I did, but with the sound of the door closing with a heavy thud behind me, I knew I wa
s alone and she did not join me.
What I found before me was a room clearly meant as a library and record room. There was a desk near the back wall littered with parchments, quill pens, and a single, lit lantern. Around me were cases from floor to ceiling, piled high with volumes and alchemies and other documents I was sure were very important, but I was there to search for one topic in particular. How did the Occult and the Vampires come to be? Were they before us? Did they evolve from us? Were they created as punishment for our sins most horrible, to torment our dreams in the night? I dropped my briefcase and nearly ran to the shelf closest to me and began fingering each of the spines. There must have been thousands of books in the room. Torn pages strewn on the floor and wells of ink left drying.
I didn’t know how many hours had gone by. There were no windows to let me know when the sun was rising or setting. A few times, I heard the door hinges behind me creak, and when I looked, I found tea and biscuits waiting for me. I continued my search for the answers through the pages. The nun was kind, but I can tell there were secrets about her beliefs, which were serious and scared her. I could tell she probably knew more about them at this point than I did. I knew if I asked, she would not dare tell me, possibly sworn to secrecy. Nevertheless, I inhaled the provided refreshments and kept on through accounts of disciples, volumes of history, symbolism, and the like, until at last my tired fingers graced the indigo-colored spine of one very particularly large volume leaned up in the darkest corner, nearly alone, on the very farthest shelf.
The Anatomy of Vampires: Volume 1 Page 6