by Tate Jackson
“I want to live forever,” Pauline answered in a trembling voice.
Coming around the side of the house, Potter said, “Well, you’re not going to. Nobody lives forever, and that includes your master.”
“You can take the blindfold off now,” Richard told her.
She was a mousy, little woman. She was too skinny, with long, greasy, lackluster, brown hair. Her dull blue eyes were set too far apart on her face and teeth were too big for her mouth.
“I can’t believe he made himself a familiar,” Potter said in disbelief.
“He was too much of a coward to come on his own, and he didn’t want to waste any of his vampyres just to deliver a message,” Richard said plainly.
“My master is not a coward!”
She pulled the blindfold from her eyes and spun around, trying to look at everything at once.
“Go ahead, get a good look,” Potter said. “There’s nothing here for you to see that will help your master.”
She spun her head back around and stared at Richard in disbelief. “It is you! How is this possible?!” Pauline demanded.
“That’s of no concern of yours or your masters,” Richard answered.
Beck asked, “How does she know it’s really you?”
“She is connected to Elderson. He sees through her, so he can see me. He knows it’s me, so she does too. It’s a strange connection.”
Potter laughed. “I bet he’s pretty pissed right now.”
“Do not talk about my master!” Pauline snapped.
Potter grabbed her by the throat. “Shut up, you stupid little girl! Do you not understand that he sent you here to die? You are nothing to him but the latest sacrifice to his revenge! Surely your light bulb isn’t so dim that you can’t see that!”
She actually raised her chin in defiance. “My master will make you pay for touching me, hunter.”
“My mistake. Your light bulb has clearly blown out,” Potter said, shaking his head in disbelief.
Richard asked, “What is your message, familiar?”
“You have one week to turn yourself and your time traveling female over to my master,” Pauline stated boldly.
“And why would I do that?”
She continued undaunted. “Because if you don’t, he will unleash his clan on your family and kill them all.”
“Where would I turn myself over?”
“There will be two vampyres at the house where you killed the others, waiting to escort you to him.”
“I’ll have to give that some thought,” Richard replied.
“We know your clan has nine vampyres, and I’ve seen your three hunters. Well, eight vampyres and four hunters now that you’ve found a way to change yourself, but it is of no matter. Our clan is large, and you do not have a chance of defeating us. Turn yourselves over or you will all die.”
“Do you know why he wants this so bad?” Richard asked. “Why he’s so bent on revenge?”
Pauline nodded. “Because you killed his brother.”
“Do you know why I killed his brother?”
“Because you’re an evil man.”
“I’m an evil man? No. I killed his brother because he was attacking a little girl in an alleyway.”
Beck added, “The same way your master murdered women on the streets of London in 1888, slashing their throats and cutting their organs from their bodies. Your ‘master’ was Jack the Ripper. Did he tell you that?”
“No, that’s not true,” Pauline said, turning a light shade of green.
“It is true. I saw it for myself. I stood on a rooftop and watched with my own eyes as your ‘master’ slaughtered Mary Nichols. That’s the kind of shit your ‘master’ likes to do in his spare time,” Potter said. “Your ‘master’ is sick as fuck, and you drank his blood. How do you feel about that now?”
Pauline leaned over and stuck her finger down her throat, spilling blood and vomit onto the ground. “It’s too late for that now. You made your choice when you swallowed his blood,” Richard told her.
Potter stepped forward and grabbed Pauline’s arm. “No! Let me go. You can’t kill me, hunter! I’m a human!” Pauline sobbed.
Potter shook his head. “Always with that misconception. I don’t know who told you that, but it’s not true. I can kill anyone I damn-well please.”
“I don’t want to die,” Pauline whined
“You should have thought of that before,” Richard said.
“Wait. Is there any way that we can reverse what she has done? What if one of our vampyres was to bite her?” Beck asked. “Would that override what she’s done?”
She didn’t like what this woman had done anymore than they did, but she didn’t want to kill her if there was another option.
“It wouldn’t work. She’s a familiar now. She can only be turned by the toxin of her master,” Richard explained. “No other toxin would have an effect on her.”
Beck tried another approach. “Can she be turned into a hunter?”
“Only men can be hunters,” Potter said, shaking his head slightly at Beck. “Even if we could turn her into a hunter, all we would be doing is giving her the strength and speed that she doesn’t have now. It wouldn’t break the connection. As long as she’s alive, Elderson will see and hear everything she does.”
“How about if we plug her ears, blindfold her, and put her in a room under guard until all this is over?” Beck asked.
“There is a reason that wouldn’t work either, but I’ll tell you about it later,” Richard said in a tone that said to leave this alone for now.
Potter said, “There’s really nothing else we can do.”
“Alright then,” Beck conceded.
“Please, I’ll do anything,” Pauline begged. “Don’t kill me.”
“I’m sorry about this, darlin’, I truly am,” Potter said sincerely. He reached up and snapped Pauline’s neck. She was dead before she hit the ground. “What a waste.”
She understood what he meant. While she wasn’t particularly bothered by this woman’s death, she didn’t like that it had to be done.
“Séamus!” Richard called. Séamus stepped off the roof of the house. Beck hadn’t even known he’d been up there. “Did you get all of that?”
“Aye, I did,” Séamus said in a thick Irish brogue All of the hunters still had their accents. Potter’s was lighter but still prominent. She knew it was from very little contact with the outside world.
Richard told him, “Take this body away and tell the others what her message was.”
“Will do,” Séamus said as he picked up Pauline’s body and headed towards the path.
Beck turned to Potter. “Only men can be hunters?”
“I didn’t want Elderson to know about you and Bev. Plus, he doesn’t know what happened to Richard, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Why couldn’t we have kept Pauline hidden away?”
“It would have been a useless gesture. A familiar’s life is tied to the life of their master. If the master dies, so does the familiar,” Richard explained. “There was no point in trying to save her when we plan to kill Elderson. She would’ve died the moment he does.”
“We could have let her go back to him, but we know he would have killed her,” Potter added. “And judging by his past record, her death at his hand would have been cruel and much more painful than her death at mine.”
She knew he was right. Elderson would have carved Pauline up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait. We have a week, more or less. He’s painted himself into a corner, and he knows it. He has to attack, or he’ll lose his power and control over the clan. When we killed the vampyres that he sent at us through the years, he was able to accept that as a loss.
“We killed one or two at a time, and only when they came at us. He was able to convince his clan that we were no real threat to them. We had never brought the fight to them,” Potter said. “That all changed when we
rescued Crystal and killed seven of their clan.”
Beck was incredulous. “But they kidnapped Bev. They made us attack them.”
“It doesn’t matter why we attacked. We’re a threat now, and his whole clan knows it. Not to attack now would show weakness,” Richard said.
“If he’s sent so many vampyres after you over the years, how does he not have a better idea of how many of you there are?”
“We said he sent them. We never said that any of them made it back,” Richard said. “Everyone that he sent was destroyed.”
“Hunters kill vampyres. Elderson knows that. It probably shocked him that there were even three here, four including Richard. There’s no way he would guess, or even believe, that there are twenty-two hunters here ready to defend our vampyres,” Potter smiled.
Richard smiled too. “And he thinks that there are only eight vampyres here. He won’t be expecting sixteen of them. All in all, I’d have to say we’re good.”
“It’s still forty-five against thirty-eight.”
“Yes, but we’re better,” Richard smiled again. “You made sure of that.”
“Will Elderson even show up for the fight?”
Potter nodded. “He’ll have to. He can’t send his whole clan into battle and stay behind. They would know him for the coward he is and wouldn’t fight for him.”
“So, what do we do for the next week?”
“The same thing we’ve been doing; we live our lives. We’ve always known this was coming. The only thing that has changed is that we now know when,” Richard said.
She wanted to tell them that at least some of their people were going to die, but they knew that. They all knew that. She intended to spend the next week getting to know everyone a little better. If she might lose them, then she wanted to make sure she could truly remember them.
***
“Are you scared?” Richard asked her later that night as they relaxed on their cliff.
“Only about the possibility of losing the people I love.”
“I’m only worried about losing you.”
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. What if he couldn’t save her? What if, after all the years of moving from place to place, of gathering hunters and vampyres to help them was for nothing? What if he failed and she died anyway? The thought even tortured him in his dreams.
“Are you going to ask me not to fight?”
“No,” he said. “As much as I want to put you on a plane to some far distant country, I know you wouldn’t go. I also understand that this is your fight as much as it is ours. I just have to keep reminding myself that you are just as strong and skilled as we are.”
He didn’t like it though. It killed him to think about her being in the thick of the coming battle…to know that she would be out there defending her life and theirs. She could conceivably lose her life in the battle that was being fought to save it.
“We need to do something with Bev, though. I know she is as strong and fast as us, but she doesn’t have the fighting skills I would like her to have.”
“Leso already thought of that,” he smiled. “I think they agreed that she will stay in the basement of the house until the battle is over.”
Worried, she said, “But, what if they win? They’ll find her.”
“They’re not going to win, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
He was rubbing his fingertips up and down her back, distracting her from the issue at hand. He leaned her back into the grass and started nibbling her neck.
“That’s not helping us think,” she said, moaning.
He kissed his way down her collar bone. “I don’t know about that. It’s got me thinking.”
He unbuttoned her shirt and kissed his way down her chest to the waistband of her shorts, only pausing long enough to dip his tongue into her navel. He slid her shorts down her body and removed his own. He knelt on his knees between her open thighs and rubbed his thumb across the nub at the apex of her thighs until he could see the wetness of her glistening in the moonlight and slipped his fingers inside of her.
He moved slowly at first until she started arching against his hand. He moved his fingers faster and harder until she cried out. He moved his hand and thrust himself into her. She was wet and tight around him. He could feel the pulsing heat of her orgasm as her muscles pulsed around him. He pushed deep into her, pulling her against him. Their sweaty bodies slid against each other. With his orgasm crashing over him like waves, he collapsed on top of her.
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you,” she repeated.
“I love you too, Little One…forever.”
He wondered briefly how long of a forever they would be allowed to have.
***
“So, how did the two of you meet?” she asked Gavin and Isiah the next day while they were sitting on the porch.
“We met in Rome in 1863. Gavin was visiting the Coliseum, and I worked in the Vatican.”
She looked closely at them, trying to burn their faces into her memory. Isiah was a short man with medium length, dark hair. Gavin was much taller, very slender, with stick straight, black hair.
“What did you do at the Vatican?”
“I was a priest,” he said.
Shocked, she responded, “No!”
“I was,” he smiled.
“A vampyre priest. I never would have guessed that,” she said, astounded.
“I wasn’t a vampyre yet.”
“I was only there to take in the sites of Rome,” Gavin said. “I fancied myself a historian. My parents were wealthy, so I had the means to travel whenever I wished. I was in the Coliseum when I saw Isiah. When he looked over at me, something just clicked for both of us.”
“Had you always known you were gay?”
Isiah shook his head. “That’s the thing. I wasn’t gay; neither of us were. But when we saw each other, it didn’t matter. It was love at first sight. We talked for a while, and then left the Coliseum together. I never returned to the Vatican.”
“So, Gavin changed you into a vampyre?”
“No,” Gavin said. “I wasn’t a vampyre yet, either. We were walking through the dark streets one night. We thought no one was watching, and we kissed. Suddenly, there was a beautiful woman standing in front of us. She said that she was deeply moved to see two people so obviously in love, and that she wanted to give us a gift.
“She led us to a room and told us that she’d been in love once, but that death had taken him away from her. She said that she couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to us, and then she bit us. When we woke up, she told us what she was, and what we now were.”
“She had two goats in the room for us to feed on. After we fed, she explained that we could feed on humans or animals, that the choice was ours. Shortly after that, she left, and we never saw her again. We chose to feed on animals,” Isiah said. “We left Italy, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“Were you ever mad that she did that to you?”
“I felt like she could have asked us first, but other than that, I’m good with it,” Gavin smiled. “We’ve had some wonderful years together.”
Beck was glad they’d had so many good years together, and hoped that they’d have many more.
***
She talked to Daryl and Rita later that same afternoon. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but can I ask you two a question?”
Rita said, “You can ask us whatever you like, dear.”
“How did you become vampyres? If the question is too personal, feel free not to answer. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Don’t be silly, dear. We don’t mind telling the story. It’s just that no one’s ever asked us before. Most vampyres don’t like to discuss how they were turned, but our story is not a sad one, not the end of the story anyway. Daryl, would you like to tell it?” Rita asked.
Daryl nodded. “Sure. In 1726, Rita and I lived on a small farm on the outskirts of London. We didn�
�t have much, but the farm was ours, and we were content. We’d been married for 45 years, and though the good Lord never blessed us with children, we had each other, and that was enough for us. How much do you know about smallpox, Beck?”
“I know that the onset of it causes fever, chills, nausea, headache, severe muscle pains, and vomiting. After a few days, the fever drops, and the characteristic smallpox rash appears. The spots eventually fill with a clear fluid. After that, the clear liquid turns to pus. Then, the spots turn to scabs and fall off. I know the whole process can take up to a month, and that there are two types.
“Variola major, where the fatality rate was 35 to 50 percent, and then there was Variola minor, where the fatality rate was only 1 to 2 percent. There was also a form of smallpox called Purpura Variolosa. People who contracted this form of smallpox suffered a severe loss of blood to the skin and organs. They would hemorrhage, and usually die before the smallpox rash could appear on the skin, and was nearly always fatal. I had to write a report about smallpox for my 12th grade health class.”
“Well, you did your homework. In any case, I contracted the latter, and Rita contracted Variola major, which could have turned into the same thing I had. We had a family doctor that we’d had for nearly twenty years. I never once suspected him to be anything but human. I’d noticed that he didn’t appear to age, but I figured a lot of people didn’t show their age until later in life, and thought nothing of it.”
“The last night he visited us, we were on our death beds,” Rita said. “He said there was nothing more that medicine could do for us, but that he could heal us and make us better than we were before. He informed us that he was a vampyre, and that he could do the same for us. He said for us to think about it, and that he would return the next morning for our answers. We talked it over and decided to do it. He bit us, and since then, we have spent 283 happy years together.”
“You understand that all of this could end in less than a week, don’t you?”
Daryl nodded. “Our lives should have ended in 1722. All the years we’ve had since then were just a bonus. We’ve had more than our fair share of happiness. So, if we die this week, then that’s just fine. You can’t cheat death forever.”