Two months after Airas's second birthday Amkaya and Aven first saw the light of day – actually the light of the moon, because they were born on a full moon night with an incredible number of stars in the sky. First came Aven, with thick, dark hair, and then Amkaya with fuzzy, light hair which shimmered with a slightly reddish tinge. They were both simply beautiful. Although this time I had been even more worried about the birth, everything went fine. God had heard my prayers.
After the birth of the twins, Emilia was completely spent, and went to sleep at some stage with Airas snuggled in by her side.
Ever so gently, I lay Aven and Amkaya down together in the cradle in the nursery, because I had felt the hunger growing constantly and stubbornly within me for hours by then. I only had just under an hour to still it before sunrise.
I couldn't fall back on the two goats in the stable, because Emilia would need their milk to regain her strength. So I decided to leave my family alone a short while so I could go for a quick hunt.
I heard Emilia's blood-curdling screams long before I got back to the hut. When I finally arrived, I found my dearest cowering on the floor, trembling and crying. She held one of the babies pressed tight to her chest, and I could tell by the hair it was Amkaya. Airas was crying too, and clinging fearfully to his mother. The scent of blood lay in the air, and a trail of blood led from the cradle right across the little room to the window, which was wide open. Horrified, I rushed to the empty cradle and stared at the bloodstains in it.
“Did you see who it was?”
Emilia was as white as a ghost and shook her head. You could see she was in shock, because she seemed almost absent, like she was looking straight through me.
I ran out into the night, knowing full well I only had a few minutes left to search for Aven and his abductor. I carried a desperate hope in my heart that I might find my son. But given the considerable amount of blood he had lost, the chances of finding him alive didn't seem very good. I searched feverishly for an explanation for what had happened, and wondered who or what had broken in. Violette's name sprung to mind momentarily, but I pushed the thought aside again. If Violette had had anything to do with it, then no-one would have been left alive.
My search for Aven was fruitless. There were no tracks and not a trace to betray his whereabouts. The rising sun forced me back to the house. Grief-stricken, I examined the nursery again carefully, but the only thing I could find was a white feather in the cradle. It didn't make sense to me, and I took Emilia and the children with me to my refuge down below. Not only that night, but for many nights to follow.
Emilia had great difficulty overcoming the loss and in her grief, often sunk into apathy. I hardly had time to grieve, because I frequently took over the care of our little daughter even in the daytime. In the first two years of life, she was often below the house with me for long periods during the day. With time, this made my relationship with her grow particularly close.
I suggested to Emilia that we go somewhere else and start anew, but in spite of everything she didn't want to leave Poco Cielo.
“I don't want to lose our heaven too,” she whispered, and all I could do was hold her and hope she would someday feel better.
Only for an instant was I tempted to penetrate her mind and release her from the pain, but I knew it was wrong. To take away her pain would also have meant taking her memories of Aven, and I couldn't and wouldn't do that.
With time, Emilia rallied and her joie de vivre gradually returned. But only when she fell pregnant again and our daughter Cassandra was born three years later did she seem to have worked through what had happened.
Cassandra's birth was difficult, even though she came into the world early and was very small and light in comparison to her siblings.
To avoid a further pregnancy, I no longer slept with Emilia when she smelled the most enticing. It wasn't easy. . . in fact sometimes it was damned hard, but the fear of losing her helped me resist many a time.
The bliss in my little family lasted six years more. Memories which are like bittersweet torture, down here in my undersea prison, and I don't even know how long ago they were. It feels like an eternity since time and space dissolved and dispersed.
When Violette turned up on one of my hunting jaunts in September 1891 with Dymar by her side, I knew nothing good was to come.
“How did you find me, after all this time?” I tried not to let my panic show, but even I could hear that my voice betrayed me.
“You fool. Surely you don't think I only just found you now?” Her smile in the moonlight didn't match her words. “Did you really think I wouldn't find you? You carry my blood within you and I have yours in me. We are forever bound to one another. The only reason I didn't chase after you was because I knew the time would come when I would make you pay for your betrayal. Unfortunately, you paid with the life of one of your children.” She feigned an expression of regret and then glared at me angrily. “And it won't be the only one, if you don't join us once more. I'm giving you the opportunity for atonement, and not everyone gets that chance.”
“You killed my son?”
A diabolical smile played around her lips. I lost my head and lunged at her, but she slammed me into a tree with a wave of her hand.
“If you don't want me to feed your whore and your bastards to the V-DOGS, then come with me now. Only then will I spare your sweet, little family.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
Fear and rage gripped me with equal intensity, and I trembled, because it was even harder to control myself now. I scrambled up from the ground and looked her in the eye.
“Just give me a few days to bid my family farewell and I will follow you. You have my word,” I begged her in a quiet but firm voice. I knew I had no other choice but to accept the ultimatum, if I wanted to protect my family. But I couldn't possibly leave Emilia without a word.
“I expect you on our ship on the Almería coast in five days. You know what happens if you don't show.”
“I'll be there,” I said in a strained voice. A sound behind me made me spin around, but when I turned back Violette and Dymar were gone. I stayed a few moments longer to take in what had happened, and then set off home to my family with a heavy heart.
“What's the matter?” Emilia noticed something wasn't right as soon as I stepped foot in the house, and I told her about the ominous encounter.
“We'll run away, we'll hide somewhere. She won't find us.” With a shaky voice, she rebelled against what my eyes were already telling her.
“She will find us. I have to agree to it, or we're all dead.”
“No,” she cried out. “No, no, no!” She jumped up and threw herself into my arms, completely beside herself.
“You have to go too. Far from here. I don't know what else Violette has planned for the future and it's not safe here anymore. Maybe I can arrange for a boat to take you on board and carry you north.”
“We'll lose each other, Ramon.” Emilia wept quietly in my arms, and it was so infinitely painful that I could hardly suppress a sob myself.
“We'll never lose each other. Never,” I whispered in her ear, and kissed her tenderly on the temple.
***
With three stolen horses and only our most important possessions, we set off for Almería as the next night began. It wasn't easy, because at first the horses kept shying away and were terribly frightened of us, like almost all animals. But after a few hours, when they realized nothing was happening to them, they became noticeably calmer.
We rode almost non-stop for two and a half nights, and slept during the day in places hidden from light. It was laborious and exhausting, but none of us complained, perhaps because we all realized these were the last days we would spend together for who knew how long.
In the harbor at Almería, I was able to convince the captain of a ship which was heading northward to Germany to take Emilia and the children along. I gave Emilia the money I had been putting aside for the children since Airas was born. It would help
them get by for the first little while, and I hoped fervently I would find a way to follow after. Our farewell was heartbreaking, and yet I often think of those last minutes with my dearest and wonder where she might be now, and what Emilia would say if she knew our son Aven still lived.
***
I had a bad feeling as I stepped onto Violette's new ship. And rightly so, because I was immediately grabbed by two crew members I didn't know and dragged into Violette's cabin.
“Ramon.” She gave me a strained smile and stood up from behind her desk. “How nice to see you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” I grumbled.
“Do you really think that's an appropriate tone to take?” she asked disingenuously, came over to me and quick as a flash tore the skin of my cheek with the side of her ring.
“Mmm, your blood still has a special flavor,” she gushed after licking me on the cheek. “Good that you're back with your real family now. We missed you.”
“Are you joking? You're not my family. I have a family, and I'm only here because you're blackmailing me. I'd rather be anywhere but here.”
“So you're putting your feelings for that whore and your three bastards over the bonds with your true family? Do we mean nothing to you?”
“At the risk of repeating myself: you're not my family, and you really do mean nothing to me. There is only one family that is important to me. You can force me to be here, but you can't force me to deny my love.”
The cocky smile on Violette's lips made me wary.
“You've heard it with your own ears, my son. Go now, and leave me alone with your father.”
She turned to the desk, from underneath which a dark haired young boy now crept out and walked to the door with a stiff expression on his face.
“Stop, wait!” I called out, caught completely by surprise, and wanted to hold him back, but she threw me across the room with a wave of her hand.
“Don't you dare touch him,” she threatened me, as I lay on the floor and the child left the room.
“Aven. . .” I murmured to myself in disbelief, and then I cried out his name, “Aven!”
“Be quiet. He can't hear you anymore. He heard all he needed to hear,” she hissed.
“You devil! What did you do to my son?”
“I made him into our son. He already had my blood in him through you, but by providing him with my pure blood, he is now truly my child.”
“You turned him into a vampire?”
She burst out laughing. She was laughing at me. “As if that were necessary. He was already immortal when he came into this world. Do you really think a normal baby could have lost so much blood and then survived?” Her voice sounded mocking.
“How can you have children and know so little about them? Incidentally, the girl who was in the cradle is only alive now because Dymar wouldn't touch her, for some inexplicable reason. And yet I'd given him leave to eat her heart.”
I had always known my children were strong and their wounds also healed very quickly. Especially since Amkaya had stabbed herself in the stomach with a knife the summer before and was completely unmarred again a few hours later. But the sun couldn't harm them, they didn't have the typical vampire scent and didn't need blood. To me, these had always been signs that they weren't like me.
“Please, let me talk to my son. . .”
“Ramon, Ramon – you still haven't understood, have you?” She shook her head ominously. “I'll give you time to think about it. Enough time to think about your transgressions too. . . and maybe, just maybe, you'll get the chance to share your conclusions with me one day.”
Those were the last words I made out before I found myself here in my prison, deep down in the sea.
I can't escape my thoughts and I'm the helpless vessel for my rage, my fears and also my yearning, which alternate in a cycle.
Nothing has changed about this for what feels like an eternity. Until today. For a few hours now I've been hearing quiet whispers, which seem to be getting louder and louder. Whispers which move me, and tickle my mind as if they want permission to enter.
40
Amkaya
I kick the door to the garden like mad. Actually it should be able to be opened, because the key is in the lock and I've turned it, but all my efforts are in vain. Not even the glass of the little, round window on the upper half breaks through my endeavors. Violette has locked us in.
“Damn it. Damn it!” I blurt out in desperation. Aven is standing on the narrow edge of the swimming pool and aborts another attempt to break the spell.
“And what do we do now?” I look at him questioningly and walk over to him.
The morning sun which falls through the window onto his face makes his eyes shine almost golden now, and for a moment I'm surprised once more at how much family resemblance I see in his face even now.
“Simply resign yourselves to your fate. Did you have time to say goodbye?”
Violette's smug voice rings out from the other end of the pool, where she is standing in a majestic pose and looking over at us. To her right sits Skin and to her left, Airas, in the form of one of her own creations, the monstrous dog-creature with some frighteningly human features. Such a warped mish-mash that it's even harder for me to bear the thought that Airas really is stuck in that body.
“Stay here, in the sun. Skin won't come here. The sun would burn him,” Aven whispers in my ear.
And sure enough, only the left V-DOG suddenly begins to move. Airas. He walks along the edge of the pool and steers his massive body toward us. Soon he will have passed the corner of the pool and then only a few yards will separate us. Maybe he won't attack me. Possibly he realizes, in spite of the witch's magic, that I'm his sister, who he always protected. This thought is all I cling to now. This and the sparkling surface of the water beside me, which the sunlight is reflecting off in a fascinating way. Only a few yards till he has reached me, because although Aven is standing beside me, he is headed straight for me.
“It's me Airas, Kaya!” I shout out to him, but he is already getting ready to pounce, teeth bared. Suddenly, all I can do is close my eyes. I choose the calming darkness. The darkness which was always closer to me than the light, which with all its sparkling and glinting could never comfort me like darkness could.
I only register the hefty shove to my left side when the water engulfs me. Aven has pushed me into the pool. When I emerge, I see with horror that the body Airas is stuck in lies lifeless on the floor.
“I only broke his neck. It will heal,” Aven tells me and holds his hand out to help me from the water. “Get out, quick,” he urges me with a glance toward the other side of the pool.
I want to do as he says, but at the very moment I reach my hand out to him, a force tears me back into the water. As if by an invisible hand, I'm pushed beneath the surface of the water. Panicked, I try to struggle free and get back up to the top, which for a moment I'm actually able to do. I see the witch and Aven approaching each other along the long side of the pool now. Slowly, and with grim expressions, as if they are about to duel. I don't get the chance to keep watching, because now I'm pushed under even more forcefully. I fight it with all my might, but this time I can't make it back up to the surface. The cold passes through my body and I see a layer of ice forming above me. Ice, which seems to be getting thicker and thicker. The pressure that kept me underwater this whole time suddenly disappears and my body floats up. I press my hands against the ice. I can make out the shadowy outlines of the two, who are now standing right in close to each other. I beat my fists against the ice in desperation, try scratching at it with my fingernails, but it seems hopeless. In spite of the animal within me which is fighting too, I can't free myself from this trap. The cold is immobilizing me markedly and I can feel that the air in my lungs is already running low.
All of a sudden, I stop moving and let myself float face down in the water. A strange feeling spreads through my body, and the bottom of the pool gets darker and darker. Blackness surrounds m
e and I feel like time is standing still and I'm being sucked into a vacuum.
“Amkaya, my girl,” my father's voice appears in my head. Soft and yet powerful at the same time, it penetrates the cold to warm me, so much clearer than in my memories and dreams. And then I suddenly see my father's face appear before me from out of the darkness. Dark eyes, which gaze at me kindly, and a familiar smile from a time long past.
Am I dreaming?
His black hair surrounds his pale face, weightless and fan-like.
“Father!” I shout loudly in my mind and hear my heart beating in my ears. “I miss you so much.”
“I know, my child. There are no words powerful enough to describe the painful yearning inside me.” His words flow softly into my thoughts.
“Why can I see you, hear you? Where are you? I have so much I need to tell you. So much has happened. So many horrible things,” I talk away at him without moving my lips.
“Your two angels told me. They're connected to you and share your knowledge. They're also the reason I'm here, although the witch's spell banished me to the bottom of the ocean. Water, just like dreams, has a strong connective force.”
I nod in silence. Dreams were always my connection to Aven. I just never knew how to interpret them.
”My two angels?” I try to grasp what he means to tell me.
“Yes, your unborn children ask your forgiveness, my dear. The protective spell the white angel cast over them in the night of their creation drove off their father, to protect them. The curse their father bears, his lethal embrace, would bring eternal death to your children. Only now are they far enough along in their development to communicate this themselves.”
I'm confused and try to understand what my father has just told me. It seems so unbelievable, and yet I can feel the puzzle pieces coming together in my head.
Two babies. I'm carrying twins. Babies conceived on the night when I had Noah's blood in me. In my mind's eye, I see the watcher with the white wings before me once more. So thanks to him, I really wasn't temporarily dead that night. Now, finally, my physical aversion toward Noah makes sense for the first time. My contradictory feelings, which I couldn't understand. But there are new questions I'm wondering about too. Why were our babies protected, and why didn't the watcher simply tell me and Noah? And I don't understand why my babies can communicate with my father and not with me.
The Night Within Us: Dark Vampire Romance Page 28