by Mason Sabre
“Why?” Yvette asked bewilderedly. “Look at you.”
“It is written. It needs to be finished,” he replied impassively.
“Who is going to know? Let her go,” she begged. “You’re healed.”
The man rose from the stone in the corner of the room, pulling himself up to his full height. He was even taller than she had realised, his shoulders square and strong, making him even more striking in appearance. It was only then that she realised he had placed the jars on the floor around him.
“It is not for you to question. I still want the girl’s life.”
“The sun will be up soon. There is no time to go for her. She is too far away.”
The man smiled and crossed the room. “The sun does not stop me. There is naught that will stop me.”
Yvette frowned. What did he mean by that? Was he invincible to the sun’s rays? Did he not burn to ashes like the rest of them?
He traced his fingers around the alcoves. Running them along the indentations where the jars had stood. “Does my home still stand?”
She froze. “It does. I live there. We … live there.”
He cocked his head to one side, glancing over his shoulder. “We?”
“Others. Vampires in your line. My husband.”
They had taken his home long before Yvette was turned. But vampires needed nests—places to be together. Usually, in other towns, vampires lived with their masters. It was a way to feed on their life and to be in contact with them. Not just outside, but the parts of them inside that heard the call of the moon every night and the whisper of dawn lulling them to sleep every morning.
“Take me there.”
“I …” This was beyond Yvette’s knowledge of what to do. It was his house. It belonged to him, and he had every right to be there—more than any of them. But it was the only home she had right now. It was the place where the aging vampires sought refuge from the world that just wanted them dead. “Right now?”
“Aye.”
“And the girl?”
“I wish to go home first.” He pulled his archaic, very worn-out shirt tighter around himself, still much too big for him. This would have been in fashion in his time, but was prehistoric by today’s standards. “My name is Henry,” he said suddenly, catching Yvette off guard.
Henry … Such an old name. She had known his name, of course. They all did. Henry, the man who had got himself turned so that he could seek revenge on those who had slaughtered his wife. He was the legend of ghost stories, the kind that Humans told their children to keep them away from the Hill. They spoke of a vampire who had killed and turned many in his day, until he had been captured. The town had sentenced him for his crimes and disembowelled him so that he may never rise again.
“Henry,” Yvette said, saying his name out loud for the first time in a while. She had never dreamed that one day she would meet the man that had started this all. “I can take you home.”
And then she could at long last get him to go and turn the girl, instead of killing her. He’d see that there was no danger, and no need to kill an innocent young girl.
Chapter Five
Henry stopped at the gate leading to the Hill, forcing Yvette to stand still. His hand curled around one of the bars of the gate, though it was not for support. Henry’s footing was strong and secure and there was nothing that betrayed how very weak he had looked a mere short while ago. Maybe he couldn’t leave, she thought with a grimace, just like ghouls. They couldn’t leave the cemeteries they inhabited. What if it were the same for Henry? Yvette hadn’t contemplated that part of the process.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him as he stood there staring out into the night.
He frowned, turning that penetrating gaze back onto her. Everything about his face was fully formed now. His jet black hair only seemed to emphasise the blue in his eyes, which made her even more uncomfortable under his stare.
“What?” She patted herself down, searching for whatever it was that was clearly offending him. “What is it?”
He let go of the gate and strode past her and out into the road, stopping just short of her car. “What manner of contraption lies here?”
Yvette’s eyes went from Henry to her car, then back again. “You mean my car?” She sniggered, unable to help herself. She had forgotten that they wouldn’t have had many modern day facilities and ‘contraptions’ back in his day. He was in for many surprises. “It’s just a car.”
“A car?” He circled it, his hand touching the metal cautiously at first, then sliding it over the sleek bodywork with a look of bewilderment on his face. Yvette bit her lip as she pressed the button on her keys and the lights flashed and the doors unlocked.
Henry leapt back, hissing, hands out in front of him, fangs protruding from his mouth.
“It’s okay,” she reassured him. “It’s artificial light. It’s not real. It can’t harm you.”
He lowered his arms slowly, still looking mistrustful. “What sorcery is this?” He took a wide berth of the car as he came to stand by Yvette. “You ...” He narrowed his eyes at her—so blue, so bright. “You are a witch?”
"Witch? No," she spluttered, shaking her head. "Watch." She held out the key and pressed the button. The car lights blinked again with a beep, and the locks sank into place. “See?”
With deep consternation on his forehead, he took the key from her and turned it over to examine it.
“What is it?”
“It’s a key.” She pointed to the button on it. “Here. Press this.”
He pressed the button and jumped half a mile back again. She stifled a laugh and watched as he pressed it again, and then again. and several more times until Yvette snatched it off him.
“It unlocks the doors.” She clicked it once more to make them open and then went to the driver’s side and opened the door. Henry took hesitant steps closer, his eyes trained on this unknown object. He leaned in to take a look, but not too close.
“What does it do?”
It transports us to where we want to go,” she said lightly. His brows shot up at that and he glanced around. “Where are your horses?” He peered over the top of the car. “Where is the driver?”
Yvette laughed then. She couldn't help it. "We don't use horses anymore. Come, I’ll show you." She led him around to the other side of the car and opened that door to the passenger side. "Get in. Sit down."
The bemused look on his face wasn’t helping Yvette, though. It was making her forget about the girl and the urgency of getting him to turn her. It was making her forget how he had just savagely slaughtered three Human kids. He pressed a hand to the leather seat, and gave it a few hard shoves. “It is useless. What is the point of sitting?”
“Just trust me. Okay?”
Henry rested a hand on the roof of the car and another on the top of the door and placed his foot inside.
“Don’t worry. It’s safe.” She pushed a gentle hand against his shoulder and immediately snatched it back, gasping. Electricity had shot through her at the contact. Energy pulsed through her, every cell in her body seeming to throb with life. It had not been this way when she had touched her maker.
Henry didn’t seem to notice. He got into the car, and she closed the door, causing a look of horror to spread across his face.
That was real neat, Yvette. Trap a guy in a box after he has just spent countless years in one. She hastily opened the door again. “See this?” She grabbed the handle and showed him how it opened. “You pull this and the door opens again. You can get out at any time.”
He seemed to mull over that bit of information before finally saying, “It is such a tiny lever.”
“It is called a handle.”
Henry pulled at it and scowled. “Everything is so different. You all clothe yourselves in a peculiar fashion, too." She stared at him, then decided she would not even start to get onto that topic at all. She pushed his door closed once more and moved around to the driver’s side of the car.
&
nbsp; Yvette got in behind the wheel, noticing Henry’s eyes taking in every single gadget and gimmick in the car. It hadn’t occurred to her that these simple things, things that she took for granted, would be so much different to what someone like Henry would know. “What year were you …”
“Betrayed and thrust in a tomb so that I may die of thirst or madness?” he said, watching with acute interest as she pulled the seat belt around herself and clicked it into place.
“Well, I might not have put it quite like that, but …”
“1696.” He leaned forward and pulled the handle to the glovebox, making the lid fall down and the entire contents spill out. Yvette’s hand flew across to catch it all and stuff it back in before closing the lid once more. “What is this?”
“The glove box,” Yvette said.
He looked perplexed. "You do not have any gloves in there."
“I …” Yvette wasn’t exactly sure what to say. Why did they call it a glove box? She hadn’t a bloody clue. It was just what it was. “You might want to buckle up,” she said, changing the subject. When he frowned at her, she gestured towards his own seat belt. “You know … like I just did … just loop it around you and click it in place.”
His expression turned hard, as did his tone. Obviously, he wasn’t too keen on that idea at all. “You ask me to restrain myself? Intentionally?”
“Err … it’s just for safety reasons … in case …” Oh, hell, what did it matter. He was a freaking vampire. It’s not like he could get hurt in a car crash or anything. “It doesn’t matter,” she finally muttered. She had to get a move on. She had to get him home and then to the girl as fast as possible.
Yvette put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car roared to life, and Henry slapped his hands against the dashboard, his eyes going wide.
"It's just the car," she shouted over the roar of the engine. She put the car into first, released the brake and pressed down on the accelerator. Henry watched every little thing she did with great fascination. "See," she said as the car rolled forward. "No horses needed."
Henry leaned to look closer out of the window. “Incredible …”
She drove along the quieter roads, cautious not to overwhelm him with everything they would pass. He wouldn’t know any of it. He sat with his hand pressed to the glass—a child watching the world go by as they headed on a day trip.
“They are rather peculiar candles,” he commented, shifting in his seat to get a better view. “How do they reach so high to light them?”
Yvette slowed so that she could see what he was looking at. "The street lights? They don't light them. They just come on. We light our homes and the streets with electricity now. It is much faster and much easier."
Henry slumped back in his seat. “The world has indeed become overrun by witches since I have been gone.”
“Witches? No. The world has advanced, discovered new and better things.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and went back to looking out of the window. He frowned at everything. When she reached the lane that led to his house, he sat upright. "I know this place. My house is on these lands." He followed the road with his eyes. "What has been strewn on the ground?"
“Tarmac.”
"Tar … mac …" He tried the word out on his tongue, his strong, sixteenth century accent prominent and peculiar to her ears. She carried on along the lane and Henry sighed. "Many things have changed, but my home appears to have stayed in the past."
Yvette’s cheeks flushed with heat. The house was in a bad state of repair. Windows were missing and covered with boards, while the front door no longer opened. “We meant to get it all fixed up. It’s just …”
Henry’s eyes stayed on the building that had once been majestic to behold. Disappointment was etched on his features now at the sight of it all. When she pulled the car to a stop, he pulled the handle and got out immediately, not bothering with closing the door behind him.
She watched him from her seat for a moment. What must it be like to literally have come from a few hundred years back to today, and it’s all so different. Your house filled with people you didn’t know. Things, inventions that made no sense.
To her surprise, he didn’t go in the direction of the house. Instead, he walked alongside the small wall at the front—that, too, old and crumbling. Yvette often imagined the grounds to this house would have been grand. Great flower beds, gardeners working the land, carriages rolling up and nobles coming to see the man of the house … Henry. He made his way to one of the gardens, and Yvette scrambled out of the car and after him. He stopped at an archway, now hidden by weeds and brambles, and an inscrutable expression flitted over his features. With an abrupt yank, he wrenched the obstructing vegetation away.
Yvette’s eyes widened. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” she said hastily. “They are full of thorns.”
"They will heal," he said dispassionately, ignoring the tiny beads of blood that now dotted the palm of his hand.
Yvette stayed silent. Whatever he was after, he was desperate to get to it. Despite her urgency to get him back to Raven’s bar as soon as possible, she had to admit she was curious; after over two centuries of being buried alive, this was the first place he had wanted to come to. What could be so important? She had never bothered much with the garden—what was the point in flowers and gardens when you couldn’t see them in the sunlight any longer—and had had no idea that there might be something of any value beyond this archway.
Thick brambles entwined around the poles, and Henry pulled them away, ploughing his way through more weeds and tall grass with determination, his mind set on what he was searching for. Yvette had never been this far in before, and none of this had ever been visible from any of the rooms above in the house. The gardens were just masses and masses of unkempt overgrowth that no one bothered with. There was no beauty to see at night.
Henry stopped suddenly, and she was startled to discover another archway, this one made from stone. Hand carved perhaps. The thought crossed her mind that she really ought to find the time to explore the grounds. How many other hidden pathways and concealed treasures were out there? He knelt down, pushing the grass away with his bare hands, his movements careful, almost reverent. Yvette gulped when she glimpsed a smooth, flat stone beneath. This was somebody’s grave.
She watched as Henry’s shoulders stiffened, his eyes glued to the small headstone. There was no name on it, nothing to say who it was. If anyone were to have bothered with the gardens, they could easily have just overlooked this as nothing but a useless rock in the middle of nowhere.
“Mary,” Henry murmured, complete reverence and adulation in that single uttered word. He ran long fingers over the stone lovingly. “It has been so long. Forgive me, my sweet. I did not mean to abandon you.”
Yvette stayed behind him, allowing him his privacy. His words tore through her, the torment in his voice bringing tears to her eyes. She was all too familiar with loss, having lost both her beloved father and sister way too soon. Their deaths were something she feared she would never fully get over. They had each fought their own difficult battle with cancer, like warriors, brave to the end. Her heroes.
Yvette turned and walked back towards the car, giving Henry room and peace. The same kind of peace she would have wanted when she was visiting someone. There was a certain sense of being when sitting at a gravestone alone. It wasn’t her place or her right to take that moment from Henry. It had been a long time since he had been here. And right now, he was not the cruel vampire who had so mercilessly slain three Humans, nor was he the monster who was ruthlessly demanding to do the same to an innocent girl. He was a heartbroken man mourning his loved one’s death.
She sat on the crumbling wall and waited for him, fighting her own sense of bereavement as she got lost in painful memories. Did a person ever really get over a loved one’s death? In her book, it seemed impossible.
It took a while for Henry to come back, but when he did, his face was an impene
trable mask, giving away nothing. Yvette knew she should probably not pry, but subtlety had never been her strong suit. “Mary was your wife?” she asked him softly.
“Aye …” His jaw set in a hard line, the glint in his deep blue eyes as dark as the night. “Mary was my everything.”
“She died before you were turned?” she pushed, curious about this enigmatic vampire standing before her, one who could commit such heinous acts as before while at the same time showing such deep devotion to a wife long gone.
“She is the reason I turned,” he said matter-of-factly. “She was the reason for everything I did.” His eyes were now on the house, his mind off elsewhere.
Yvette had heard the stories about him. But as she was learning, stories were not always true. The fact that he was meant to be dead, yet stood before her right now, was a sure sign of how shit got twisted. But still the tales of the man who had owned this house crept into her mind. Most tales and myths started at truth somewhere. It was just a case of understanding which parts of his story were real. It was said that years ago, the man living here had started out poor. He had worked on the farmland that connected to this house. One day, while Henry was out working in the fields and his wife was tending to their home, she had let in two weary travellers and fed them. They had paid her back by attacking and killing her. It was said that Henry had come home to find his wife barely alive, half eaten by shifters. She had died in his arms, his last promise to her being that he would make them pay for what they had done.
She watched him now and wondered if she could blame him. It was never so easy to judge what one would do in times of such pain. What would she have done if she had come home and found Troy dead? Would she have sought revenge? Everything inside her screamed yes. That was why he had turned vampire. He had needed to be strong so that he could hunt and kill the men who had murdered his wife. But the problem was, or so it was said, that he didn’t stop there. The man—Henry—had gone mad. He had waged war on all shifters, killing all he came across. Women, children, it didn’t matter.
“There is no one in the house?” His words broke into her thoughts and reminded her that she needed them to get going.