“You surprise me more day by day Lady Ava. Such a good actress, maybe theater would have been good for you.” said Tudor.
But the girl then grabbed his head again and looked at every patch of skin on his face before letting go.
“That is what you meant by using the word ‘us’ instead of only talking about me when we had the discussion about my predicament. You are in the same predicament as I am, you also kill, you are a different kind of animal, but with the same desire for blood.”
Tudor knew his secret was out but he was not angry, he was relieved as she did not seem to be scared of him.
“Why did you risk it? Why did you help me?” asked Ava.
“A gentleman always helps a lady in need.”
“But this was not just need, they could have killed you, they were five. And yet you still risked exposing your true nature to me.”
“Well, I figured you could understand.”
“What are you? Does my face also turn as such when I kill?”
“No, it does not, you are human, you do not change at all. Those big brown eyes of yours stay just as beautiful when they kill.”
The girl felt her cheeks turned red and Tudor realized that he said out loud that last part which was only meant for his mind to know.
“So what are you?”
“I am a draco.”
“I have heard my father speak of such creatures. When I was a child I used to sneak next to the door of his office while he thought I was asleep. Sometimes there would be men there and they would talk of a draco. But when I asked about it, he said I misheard.”
“I am living proof that you did not hear wrong.”
“How does one become a draco or are you born as such?”
“One is not born, but turned. Long ago, I denounced the authority of the Order of Constantine. I did not agree with their plans, nor did I agree with their faith and I was turned into this. I was cursed to feel a hunger more than I could bear, but the hunger was not for food, it was for live animals. They wanted to turn me into a beast who would forsake society and live alone in the wild. I was cursed to walk in the shadows of society till the end of my time. But they had no idea what I would actually turn into. I loved my city and I used to be a very sociable person. I had lots of friends and I was rich as a god. They took away all my fortune as I was forced to hide from every human. But instead of wanting to hunt animals in the wild, as they had thought, I felt the need to hunt humans and the end of my time did not come soon, in fact it did not come at all.”
“How long have you been alive?”
“For over a century. I have moved from country to country, I have gathered a new fortune and I have learned to control my need. You are taking this a lot better than I did, but then I suppose it is a bit different for us. For me it was torture. I wanted to feed, but the blood would not stay in my system and the more I fed the more I wanted it and the more blood I would then throw up. It got to the point I was so weak I could barely move. But then, one night, I fed and the blood stayed in. I drank as much blood as I could and I did not feel hungry anymore.”
“What happened after you gained your strength?”
“I went to the priest who cursed me and asked if I could ever become normal again. After he told me there is not cure, I ripped the throat out of the bastard.”
“What happened to the Order of Constantine?”
“They are thriving. They found me and tried to capture me when they came for the priest. I managed to escape but they sent a whole army after me. I was forced to flee the country. I moved to the New World and I lived a decade or two in many of the colonies. I moved around quite a lot. In the mean time I learned all I could about the Order.”
“So revenge is what you are after. That is why you are here.”
“I found out they have created more dracos after me, they used them to experiment. They hoped they could use them in their armies and they did. They conquered with them, killed with them, used them for their own personal gains. They controlled the dracos with the ash of a white oak. Every day, they would give the dracos water mixed with this powder to drink and they would become submissive. The dracos were allowed to drink the blood of those they killed in their expeditions, but they grew weaker and weaker from the ash. Every time a draco would die, another one would be created. This torturous control over them took its toll and they started to fall like flies. Wesley was one of them. Once he was too weak to go on, n Constantine tried to cut off his head, but I stopped him. We were on a battle field in North America. It was the year 1775 and Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, the British North American commander-in chief, in charge of four regiments of British regulars at his headquarters in Boston, devised a plan to take the countryside which was, at that time, in the hands of the Revolutionaries. His troops, with the exception of a few, were dracos. On the night of the 18th of April he sent 700 dracos to seize ammunition from the colonial militia but they were too weak to succeed. Many of them were killed and the others that survived returned to the Lieutenant General only to be killed by him and other of his men. Then he ordered the retreat of his troops to Boston and I, along with other revolutionary men, attacked them. I wanted to kill him for many years as I knew he was of the Order. Many dracos were released that day, but most of them died on our way to safety. Right before we attacked the British forces, Wesley had fallen on the road from exhaustion and the General wanted to decapitate him, but I attacked him before he could do it.
“That is why he is so loyal to you. He seems to follow you every word. He owes his life to you.”
He survived and I taught him how to live outside of the shackles of the Order. The few other dracos that escaped sought refuge in faraway places, but he had remained by my side most of the time, well… until business sent us in different corners of the world.” continued Tudor.
“How many dracos were created?”
“Thousands…”
“How many died?”
“Thousands…”
“How many have survived?”
“Only twenty…”
“Where are they now?”
“Some are still hiding; some have come out of hiding and have created a new life for themselves, and some I have never heard from again. The leaders of the Order are here, living in this city now.”
“And you are here to destroy them.”
“I want to destroy their whole network of power, but that is not all. I will kill each and every one of them if necessary.”
“Is my father one of them?” asked the girl with a half-opened mouth.
“He is.”
In the house, morning was approaching and Mark woke Jonathan. The two went to the terrace to talk.
“None of the Constantines deserve to live. They built and empire of lies, they created it with the blood, sweat, and tears of those like us.” said Mark angrily. “I would have hunted them down one by one. I want to do it. In the 1770s I wanted it more than I desired to stay alive.”
“And that desire almost killed you. You need to be calm Mark, remember what happened the last time you let your anger get the best of you.” said Jonathan.
“You think I can ever forget 1773 or 1775?” asked Mark while feeling his blood boil with hatred. “In 1773 I was so blood thirsty I killed, I tortured, I did the exact same thing to people that Constantines did to me. They turned me into a beast and I did not care about the consequences of my actions. I relished in the power I felt once I was finally free from the Order and once I gained my full strength. I did not care about anyone or anything, not until that night. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could trade places with Ava. I wish I could forget what I did.”
“It was not your fault, you were not yourself.” said Jonathan putting his palm on Mark’s back.
“It is the Order’s fault, but it is mine as well, just as much as theirs. The only reason I am alive still is because I swore on their graves that I would destroy the Order.” added Mark, swiftly moving closer
to the window. “In 1775, when I left, when I told you I did not need your protection, I wanted to respect my promise to them. That was all.”
“I know my friend, I know it all too well.” said Jonathan.
“I was still too crushed to care about myself. Every kill feels like someone rips out a part of us. We kill and the blood satisfies our need, but as the life gets out of the body of the victim, we also feel its pain.” continued Mark.
“You killed so much that it almost killed you. You were taking more lives than you could bear and you did not even realize it.”
In 1773, autumn leaves were covering Ireland by the time the ship from the New World reached its shores. It was night and a draco stepped foot, for the first time in years, on this land. When he walked out of the vessel that brought him there, he left behind a pile of dead bodies. Blood covered the walls and floors of the rooms inside of the ship and the corpses were heavily mutilated. A beast had boarded the vessel and no human suspected it. The draco spilled a highly flammable liquid all over the ship and lighted it on fire. The flames engulfed the vessel in a matter of moments and the entire port had more light than during the day.
“It was a tragedy.” said workers in the port.
The draco had finally returned home. He longed for it all the time he was under the control of the Order and now he was finally back. A few hours after he walked off the ship he arrived in front of his old house, but when he entered, there was nobody he remembered inside. There was a different family. He asked where was his own, but the family was perplexed. The father then took a gun and pointed it at the draco, threatening him to get out. The beast got even angrier and quickly took the gun out of the hands of the man and killed the three people that were there. He then rushed out as other people were attracted by the noises inside and came to take a look. When they saw what happened they screamed murderer and pointed toward the creature. More men came and the draco had to run away. He then searched and searched for those he once knew, but the day went by and he found no one.
As evening was approaching, he walked with his head covered and he noticed a woman with a child. He recognized them immediately. The woman was his wife, the child was his son. They were heading out of the market. He did not love the woman, nor did she love him, but the pregnancy forced them into marriage. Still, when the child was born, the two parents became partners. They loved the little creature which they had created and they both had huge respect for the other, so it was not difficult to live together.
When the draco saw them in the market, he tried to get close to them and, right when he was about to touch the woman’s shoulder, a man screamed “There’s the murderer! Catch him! Catch him!”
His wife got scared, she grabbed the seven year old boy and she tried to get out of the crowd that was gathering around her and the man with guns and stones. The draco tried to fight them all. He managed to get his hands on a sword and tried to fight off all those trying to subdue him. They were attacking, from all sides, and his face got completely uncovered. The woman was still in the crowd, and she managed to see his face. She was startled when she recognized who he was, but she knew she had to get the child to safety. And then she got pushed and pulled in the commotion as the crowd kept getting bigger.
The draco continued to hit, to punch, to slice, and kill, but there were too many against him there. He felt someone get close from behind and that was when he turned so, without even looking, he threw his sword through the body only to realize there were 2 bodies there, a woman’s and a boy’s. Seeing blood run out of the child, the crowd finally stopped. They were all standing in disbelief, but no one felt more desolated than the draco. The woman collapsed with the young boy in her arms and a sword through her and his torso. The draco had killed his wife and child. He bled his wrist, he gave them his blood, but the sword had pierced their hearts and they died in an instant. There was nothing he could do. He screamed and his fury made people believe they were seeing the devil so they scattered around.
The draco took the two bodies away. He vanished with them far from the city and close to the shore. Then he dug graves next to two trees. He placed the bodies of the woman and child inside and then covered them.
“Your spirits will always survive in these trees.” he said while standing between them, crying.
“I will never forget the night I buried my wife and child.” said Mark. “It was September 28th 1773 and it was the worst night of my life, worse than any of the torture the Order subjected me to. If they would not have turned me into this and if I wasn’t so careless the night before, they would have lived. I then boarded the first ship back to the New World, but I did not touch any of the people on it. I felt the need to drink their blood, but my grief was stronger than that. And I promised on their graves that the next time I would drink blood, was from the neck of a Constantine and I did just that. I found a member of the Order and I attacked him.”
“And that was when you were captured again.” said Jonathan.
“Yes. Not feeding made me weak, I could not escape. I was not thinking right. Grief and hunger are not a good combination. And then in 1775 I did not assess the situation correctly again. With your help I got stronger, that is true, but I was still blinded by grief.” added Mark.
“And you almost paid the ultimate price for it.”
“When I attacked their compound in 1775, I thought I had the situation under control.”
“But other Constantines arrived when you were inside and, even with your strength, they were too many for you to kill.”
“If you hadn’t arrived then, I definitely would’ve been captured again. But this time, they would have finished me off.” said Mark.
“I hope that two centuries and a half of life taught you to be more calculated.”
“I have learned my lesson, do not worry.” added Mark. “We have started talking about the past, but I wanted to tell you something different. My informer in the police notified me that a man named Henry Burke has just arrived in London. The man fits the description of the Henry Burke I last saw in the early nineteenth century. We should have killed that man when we had the chance.” said Mark.
“Maybe we should have killed him, but we didn’t.” added Jonathan, remembering the time he promised Ava he would not murder her father.
“Will you kill him?”
“I do not know. I am not sure of his exact involvement in the Order. I know for a fact that many of the members do not know the full extent of the arm of the Order. When I met him and saved his life, I did not know he was a Constantine. I found out only a year ago. And at this point, it seems that my information about the full extent of his involvement is not accurate. He may very well be an innocent man.”
“But if he is one of those who have been involved in the creation, torture, and killing of so many, you will take his life.”
“Yes!”
Ava turned her back to him and clenched her fists, but then faced him again.
“You can tell me to go if you want to and I promise you will not have to see me again, but that will only happen after you see Amara and find out what you need to do so as to get out of this predicament.”
“I do not want my father dead and I never saw in him the crimes I saw in my mother’s eyes, but that may very well be because of the same reason I did not see it in other people’s eyes before. And if indeed he is guilty of something I do not even know if I would be able to stop from killing him myself, but I can’t have another parent killed by my own hands. Stay, do what you need to do and I will protect your secret, but if you find out something about him or if I see something in his eyes, you can’t hurt him or let me hurt him. If you hurt him or if you let me do it, I will regret it, it will break my heart and you will face my vengeance then.”
“I…”
“Promise me!”
Tudor then found himself promising to do the one thing he never wanted to do: spare the life of one of the Constantines who could be in charge. He also realized that
he craved Ava’s attention and confirmation more than ever. The girl was not a means to an end, nor was she just an acquaintance.
“I told you back in 1807 that the girl will be used against you, if they found out about your… affair.”
“I remember old friend. I knew it then just as I know it now.”
“I never truly understood how you could let it all go, how you could chose to expose yourself for a woman.”
“But now you do.”
“I kept Rene out of the Order’s hands since I found her in the orphanage when she was seven. I found a good family who took care of her, raised her. I went back to see her every year and she has witnessed some of my not so good moments. She has seen the monstrous part of me. Sometimes I think she does not trust me too much, but I would give my life for her.”
“She knows it.”
“She sure doesn’t acknowledge that when I am around.”
“Our lives would probably have been simpler if they would not have crossed our paths.” added Jonathan.
“They would also probably have been more boring. As I understood from you, you did not have a moment of boredom in the past two centuries and I also did not since she told me how she feels.”
“Well you’ve only had five years of this. You have some catching up to do.” laughed Jonathan.
“So what will we do with our Burke situation?”
“Why is he here?” asked Jonathan.
“Apparently on business, but he could very well be here because he suspects Ava is here. We live in the age of technology now. It is much easier to find someone than it used to be. We have been here for over two weeks now, there are cameras everywhere in the city, one of them could have caught her face. If Burke has an old photo of her he could have uploaded it into the system and maybe the alarm went off. He is a powerful man with the necessary means to do it. He could have told someone to hack the London feed.” said Mark.
“Talk to your contact, see if it is the same Henry Burke we know and find out if there is a hidden reason for his reemergence here.”
19/21 (300 Years of Sin) Page 6