19/21 (300 Years of Sin)

by Cristina M. Sburlea

  brary

  300 Years Of Sin

  19/21

  Published by M.C. Sburlea

  Amazon Edition

  Copyright M.C. Sburlea 2013

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: First memories, first kill

  Chapter 2: Falling off the wagon

  Chapter 3: Fugitives

  Chapter 4: Time has come

  Chapter 5: Age of extinction

  Other books by Maria Cristina Sburlea

  Where to find the author

  Chapter 1

  First memories, first kill

  Night time, whispers of the wind spread the gentle smell of the cherry blossom. A frail little thing she is, not too tall, but not too short, pale, with hair in long large curls of gold and copper falling to her waist, and dark brown, doe eyes. A white, short fitted dress covered her from neck to half of the thigh, black army boots, black hat, black bag, black trench coat, those were all the things she had with her, no other luggage, no other person, not too much money, barely enough to get her through a day and a night. But she had to run, she had to get away from that house, she had to get away from all the people she knew; they were beginning to notice the changes, the strangeness. Lately it seemed she lost all sense of reality.

  The night before, she struggled to fall asleep, the day before she struggled to distinguish between the faces of her parents and the faces in her mind, between the voices of her friends and the voices in her mind, calling, screaming, burning…

  “No! This is not real, you are not real!”

  “Come to me, come take my hand! I’ll show you the world. Ava, Ava…”

  “I am not Ava, I am not this person” She then paused for a moment and continued in awe “I am Ava…” Another pause followed by a decisive “No! I am Irina. Yes, that is my name, Irina.”

  The girl kept trying to convince herself of the truth. How could it be so difficult to be convinced of the truth? She knew her name was Irina, she was called so all her life. But why did this other name sound so familiar? Who is this Ava, why are the voices in her head calling her so?

  When morning light hit her bedroom window she left the comfort of her home, took a train then headed toward the airport, flew half-way across the continent and ended up in London. It was already 5 pm when she landed. By 9 she was in front of a large shady club in a back alley. She did not seem to fit the scene, between the half-naked girls and the bald shaved men with chains and knuckles she seemed far too innocent. After a long look from the guard outside the bar she went in.

  “A girl like that? Daddy’s little girl I’ll say. They’ll eat her inside!” said the guard, taking a long look at her entering the club.

  The girl went inside. Men and women danced, alcohol was spilled, some pills were lying on the ground and music pumped through the speakers like there was no tomorrow. She walked straight to the bar and asked for apple juice. Apple juice? Surely she does not understand that apple juice is nobody’s drink in here. But she asks and she receives. As she takes a seat, one by one, in the next 15 minutes, two men and two women come and make a pass at her but she politely refuses them all, until one of them, a brute of a man, 2 meters tall, built like a tank of muscle, does not like to hear no. He keeps pressing.

  “Come on doll, give a guy a name. I won’t bite, I promise.”

  “I am kindly asking you to go. Please go and don’t call me doll!” she kept saying with a gentle innocence in her voice.

  But the man liked what he saw and he did not take kindly to hearing “no”.

  He then grabbed her by the arm and said: “Come on doll, tell a lad a name! I don’t do well when someone says ‘no’ to me. I promise I won’t bite!”

  As he pressed his fingers against her skin she jumped out of her chair, but the man stopped her from going away. She then turned to him, grabbed his palm and pulled him toward the hall.

  “Ah, you are in a hurry somewhere doll? I like a woman who takes charge. So you do not want to give me your name, but you take me straight into the bathroom. Innocent looking thing, but you are a devil aren’t ya?”

  As they entered the men’s bathroom she let go of his hand, pushed him to the wall. Then looked to see if someone was in the hall way and closed the door. The guy then pulled her close with lust.

  “Aaah, you crazy bitch!” he said raising his right hand to his neck, but the blood currents kept rushing out of his punctured artery.

  “I told you not to call me doll!”

  She then threw herself over the brute, his body falling to the floor. She was on her knees, draining him of the last ounce of blood he had in him. The desire, the lust, the appetite for the red liquid was stronger than anything she had ever felt. The girl knew she would not be able to resist it so she went to the filthiest corner of London, the place where she knew only the scum of the Earth liked to roll.

  As she dried him of life she raised her head, blood still dripping from her mouth to her neck and her dress. She stood there for a few moments, looking at the corpse. “He deserved it” she said to herself. “He deserved it, I could feel it pulsating, the filth, the crimes, the stench of decay.”

  And then she felt her own heart beat and tears came to her face. “Filth nonetheless but still a being, a human being, and now he is dead. I killed him.” As she was muttering this, she got up, looked in the mirror of the bathroom and saw herself covered in blood. She let the water run, washed her face and neck but the blood was now deep into her dress. And then she noticed the bag and trench coat she had laid on the sink. As she was reaching to them, a man came in and her eyes opened wide. He raised his hand and touched the corner of her mouth.

  “You still have some blood there!” he said as his burning blue eyes pierced her gaze. “You are scared, I know, I’ve been there, but I am going to take care of you.” He said as he took the trench coat and wrapped it around her. “Come, let’s get out of here before someone sees you and this corpse and pieces the things together.”

  But she was scared, too scared of the crime she committed. And she did not know him.

  “Don’t be scared. I’ll take you to safety.” He said and then went next to the kill. “Go outside and wait to the door, don’t look in!” he said staunchly.

  The girl went outside, but she peeked back in and saw him touching the corpse and then fire enveloped the dead man, consuming him faster than air. The fire reflected splendidly in her eyes. The blue eyed man noticed her gaze and seemed a bit amused that she did not run screaming as fire came out of his hand and incinerated the corpse. It only took a few seconds for that brute of a man to turn to ash and, next, the blue eyed man grabbed the girl by the arm and pulled her out of the club and into a car. Complete silence was all the way to his hotel room where she immediately ran into the shower. As she finished, a shirt and a pair of socks awaited for her near the bathroom door. She took them inside and, then, came out.

  “I am sorry I have nothing else to give you, I was not expecting to find you in a bar. Tell me, why did you go there out of all places?”

  “Who are you?” asked the girl, drying her hair with a towel.

  “My name now is Jonathan Mill, you can call me Johnny if it pleases you, I don’t really care.”

  “Are you like me?”

  “I am similar to you in some ways, for example in the a
ppetite for blood. Though I have to say, I am quite surprised you drink it. You have a beating heart, I could hear it pump the blood in your veins since you arrived in the club. You were scared even before you… cleaned the city of one scumbag… You are human or so I think.”

  “You said we are similar, but we are not the same, so what are you?”

  “No, no, first thing’s first. Tell me, why did you go there? I can see that you were expecting it to happen, so why choose that place?”

  “Everybody there is either a murderer, either a rapist or a drug dealer so it seems unlikely that society will miss either one… and I don’t want to hurt someone who does not deserve it. I visited this city many times before. I knew about the club from one of my colleagues, since I was in school in this country. I don’t want to hurt anyone at all, but I can’t help this urge.”

  “Maybe I can help you with that.”

  “Can you? How? How can it stop?”

  “I never said anything about stopping the urge, I just said I can help you. I can teach you how to control it.”

  “I don’t want to control this, I want it to stop. I want to not be driven by this lust for something that runs in a person’s veins. And I want these voices in my head to stop. They keep calling me a different name. I can’t go through it another night. I haven’t slept in weeks. I eat food but it does not feed me, I drank blood and it makes me sick.” She was crumbling in despair. Tears were in her eyes, but they were too stubborn to fall on her cheeks.

  The man came close, put his hand on her face and said: “I know it might seem impossible, but tonight you will rest and tomorrow, when you will wake, I will start teaching you how to control your urge and I’ll help you find the answers you’re looking for.” He then took a small knife from the table, cut down to his wrist and faced it toward the girl. “Drink, this will relax you!”

  The girl drank, and her head got close to his chest while she was devouring the blood in his veins. They both felt warm and his other hand gently pushed her head away from his wrist. “Now, you don’t want to drain me of it. You just had all the blood of a man, how can you drink so much?”

  They were both calm. The girl, having fed on his blood, felt like she could trust him and she was not scared even though she witnessed him turn a corpse to ash. They both were animals, but of a different kind, blood thirsty animals.

  The two lay on a bed. The girl finally slept, it was the first time she could rest in weeks. She pushed her head into the white pillow which was completely covered by her locks. The man lay next to her, face up, with questions flooding his thoughts as she feel into a dream.

  She dreamed of a world long gone.

  It was the 5rd of February 1807, two days after the British army captured Montevideo from the Spanish Empire. In the streets of London, a young boy of sixteen was handing newspapers to people, spreading the news that Jack Smith was found guilty of embezzlement and murder and he would be executed in a public hanging on the 23rd of February.

  “Brutes, that is what they are, I am telling you. A public hanging, what are we, beasts? It’s 1807, not the Dark Ages.” said Clara, in a pretentious tone. The brunette was the daughter of Lord Turick, a lawyer who argued the case against the man who was going to be executed.

  “Does seeing a man being killed make you feel uncomfortable Clara? I did not know you to be such an emotional being.”

  “My dear Ava, I am not being emotional, I am simply stating that we have evolved beyond public executions.”

  “I quite enjoy seeing a man pay for his sins. We all have our sins, some more than others, and we all get what’s coming to us.”

  “Let’s forget this! Oh, please tell me you will join me tonight! The ball will be wonderful.”

  “Such trifles do not interest me.”

  “Oh yes I forgot, you prefer to spend your time in that dreadful basement with Professor Gutenberg.”

  “He is not so horrible, you know? And he is one of the only men who think that women can do just as much as men can. And it is not a basement, it is a laboratory.”

  “It is hell; it smells horrible from the dead bodies and all those substances you use. All your science experiments smell bad. Oh Ava, why did you choose to be such a drag on your friend? We could go and have fun every day, we are filthy rich and we have youth and beauty. Leave science to men, it is boring just as they are boring.”

  In that moment Ava looked at Clara wanting to smack her to the wall, but she kept her composure. How could science be boring? Men were of no interest to her, but science was a very different issue, it was a refuge from a society which put women behind a man. But Ava was not a regular young noble woman in an unequal society. She was the niece of Mary Wollstonecraft, the feminist which used to argue for women’s rights, she was the daughter of Henry Burke, a British duke, 4th in line to the throne, and one of the youngest brothers of the king. But Henry was not interested in being king, why would he need to, when he was the one lending money to the king for wars? His affairs lay in the Indian Ocean as he went with the East India Company to Bengal where he became governor, The riches he gained out of trading spices and pearls from the Eastern part of India, also managed to gain him the seat of governor in Bengal. He was equal in power to the one who held the throne in Britain, but he had more freedom than him, so by no means was he interested in sitting on the British throne, not now, when Britain and Spain were at war again and when American colonies were no longer part of the British Empire. He saw the future in the Indian Ocean, less than he saw it in the Atlantic Ocean. Duke Henry took Ava to the Indies several times since she was a child and she even visited China and the most southern corners of Africa. The world was her playing field as a child and she met many of the thinkers of the time. She received an education that most men of the time would be envious of so no, she was not just an ordinary young girl.

  Ava left Clara in front of her house and she continued walking until she reached the Royal Academy where she was the only female student. She entered and headed toward the basement where a faint putrid smell was floating in the air. A man was dissecting a body, taking a heart out, it was Professor Gutenberg.

  “Ah, Ava, you are here. I am taking this heart and I will show you how Galvani discovered bioelectricity. I promised this and now I am keeping my word seeing as you have managed to keep your grades far above everyone else’s.”

  The girl was fascinated by the professor’s experiment. And as soon as it ended, from next to the door two hands were heard clapping. A blue eyed man with a black hat on his head entered the room saying “Bravo! This is quite the experiment.”

  “Tudor? Is that you? Tudor Emery, how long has it been?”

  “It’s been 10 years since the last time we met, old friend.”

  “Has it been 10 years already? It sure does not look like time has aged you the slightest.”

  “Ah, but it surely looks like it aged you more than it should have.”

  The two men laughed, shook hands, and hugged just like two very good friends would have done. As Ava looked toward the new man in the room, he almost towered over her. The girl was not too tall and not too short, but Tudor seemed a tower over her. His slightly curled hair was a mixture of brown and light. His lips were thin and figure also, and yet he seemed the strongest of men. His face, soft and warm, was very pleasing to the eye and his gestures were more than any aristocrat of the time could imitate. The man had seen it all, had done it all. And, while Ava was intrigued to a high extent, his look was one of mischief, one of a man up to no good, and that did not please her in any way.

  “Tudor, this is Ava, my brightest student.”

  “Pleased to meet you sir.”

  “Ah, the pleasure is all mine” said the man while kissing her hand.”

  “Tudor was my first mentee back when I first started to teach. He lived in the New World since very young, then came here and, when he graduated from the Royal Academy, he went back to the Americas.”

  “You’ve been to
the New World?” asked the girl with excitement in her voice. Her eyes and ears suddenly became more attentive to Tudor. The New World was the one place she had never visited.

  “Yes, I have lived there for the past ten years. I prefer New Hampshire and Washington, but I have been to many other parts. I can tell you quite the stories.”

  The three people kept sharing memories and talked about the philosophy of Locke and Rousseau while imparting ideas about the latest technological developments.

  “You are quite the wonder miss Ava, you know more about philosophy than I do.”

  “You are mocking me, Lord Emery.”

  “Please, call me Tudor, and quite the contrary, I think that women have just as much right as men do to do, work, learn, and believe in whatever they want to believe.”

  “Not all men think like you.”

  “So what? Whenever they tell you otherwise, tell them those two words and they won’t be able to say anything else and they will leave you alone.”

  The three lost track of time discussing matters of society and technology until another man came in and asked Gutenberg if he would close the gates of the Academy.

  “Oh, is it that late? Is it time to close?” replied Gutenberg.

  “I am afraid it is already 8 in the evening. I think we should accompany Miss Ava home, to make sure she arrives there safe.”

  “Thank you, but I can handle myself”

  “Oh, but I insist! We are gentlemen and gentlemen would not let a lady walk all by herself at night.”

  Lord Emery was back in London with business and until the 23rd he did not meet Ava again. On that day, the girl went to the public square to witness the execution. She was among the people in front row and, right next to her, Lord Emery appeared.

  “Lady Ava, I did not know you would be here.”

  “I did not know you would be here.” said the girl while letting a short smile slip. “I am curious to see this. But much more I want to see him pay for his sins. Embezzlement, murder, those are heinous crimes.”