Blood Rhapsody

by Nancy Morse

  Through the fluttering shadows she saw a figure seated at the walnut dressing table that had belonged to her mother. It was Vivienne. But the voice that spoke was not her aunt’s. It spoke in a dialect that seemed to come from another time and place, in soft, mournful tones.

  “Goddess. Mathair. Why have you forsaken me and banished me from the Sacred Isle? Have I not kept the traditions? Lain with lovers to celebrate your union with the Sun God? Honored you in all ways? And still you punish me for one wrong coupling.” The voice hardened, the vehemence in it dripping like blood from an iron blade. “Because I chose a maiden to love at the Beltaine feast I was hunted like a beast and my heart was cut out of my body on the stone altar. I called for you, prayed to you, begged you to save me, but you turned from me. Gods above, I did not make myself into that writhing thing in the bracken. You made me what I was.”

  Her head fell forward and for many long minutes she was silent. When she lifted her face, her mood swung again, this time to haughtiness. “But what I became that night, when they danced around the stone altar to the music that haunts me to this day, was from the spell I wove. I needed no cauldron of smoke and fire around which to weave my spells. I was the daughter and granddaughter of witches. I had only to work powerful earth magic and speak the chant of immortality to cheat you of the death you ordained for me.”

  She threw her head back, whipping her thick hair about her face, and laughed.

  “No one has rule over me. Not you. Not the old ones. I lay with whatever lover I choose and I take whichever body pleases me. What do you think of this one, Mathair?” She ran her hands over the opening of her dressing gown and drew out her breasts. Their fullness spilled over her palms and the nipples strained against the candlelight. “They are beautiful, are they not? And this face.” Her hands reached up to caress her cheeks, and then moved downward to cup the mound between her thighs. “And this.” Her breath quickened. “Welcoming all lovers like an open door. I was fortunate indeed to find this one, don’t you agree, Mathair? She likes her lovers the way I do, many and young. Not like that other one. Gods above, but she was a troublesome one. Where such a willful nature came from, I do not know. It was just as well she threw herself from the bridge.”

  A gasp from the doorway spun her around with alarming suddenness.

  “Prudence! How long have you been standing there?”

  The color had drained from Pru’s face, leaving it a pale oval in the sputtering candlelight. “Wh…who…are…you?”

  She turned back to the dressing table. “Long enough, it would seem,” she muttered to herself, answering her own question. Picking up the hairbrush, she began to run it through her tresses with long, leisurely strokes, deliberately prolonging Pru’s mounting fear. “Don’t stand in the doorway like a timid little mouse. Come in, my dear.”

  Pru took a cautious step into the room. She looked into the mirror and their eyes met. The person seated at the dressing table looked like Aunt Vivienne, with her handsome face glinting in the candles’ glow and resplendent in her flowing silks. But there was a dark aura about her, wrapping a chilly hand around Pru’s heart.

  “Who are you?” she asked again.

  The eyes that stared back at her through the mirror danced with mischief. “Why, who do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know,” Pru answered tremulously.

  “Oh,” that sweet voice crooned, “but I think you do.”

  “Aunt Vivienne?”

  “Well, in a way, yes. And in a way, no.”

  Pru looked at the stranger seated at the dressing table and felt her anger beginning to rise. “I asked you a question.”

  “So you did.” She placed the brush down deliberately and looked her. “Hasn’t your friend told you about me?”

  Somewhere in the darkest part of her soul Pru knew the answer. She groaned aloud. “Lienore.”

  “There, you see? He has told you about me.”

  Pru felt the floor slipping beneath her bare feet. It could not be. Not here, in this very house. She felt suddenly cold to the bone. She raised her eyes to meet the unwavering stare of the creature. “What have you done with my aunt?”

  “She’s right here,” came the chilling reply. “As long as I choose to inhabit her, that is. Of course, when I decide to leave, she will die.”

  “What evil is this?” Pru burst out. “I should have guessed.” Her fingers pulled at her shift. Her eyes were wide, desperate pools of blue. “How could I not have known?”

  “We see what we want to see. Or, in your case, we don’t see what we don’t want to see. You’re not such a clever little girl after all, are you?”

  Rage began to flood through Pru. “Why are you here?”

  “Why should I not be?”

  “Why this house? This family?” Her voice cracked and broke.

  The woman seated at the dressing table offered only a shrug of indifference. “Why not?” She drew in a long breath. “If you must know,” she said at last, “I was wandering through this place you call London and heard the most awful sounds coming from this very house. Laughter. And music. Gods above, the music was unbearable. I had to put an end to it, don’t you see?”

  The sound of her mother’s laughter rang in Pru’s memory, and suddenly, she understood. “You did that to her,” she said accusingly. “You made her sad. Took all the joy out of her life.”

  “Nonsense,” Lienore answered in sharp reproof. “I gave her reason to live. I offered her lovers, but she refused each one, preferring that insipid musician to the beautiful young men I brought to her. I chose her for her beauty. Such a stunning creature she was. But she fought me every step of the way. Willful natures will not do. So I took from her whatever I could, and in the end, when she could not take it any longer, she threw herself from the bridge.”

  Pru closed her eyes in anguish. She would never forget that night the constable came to the door to inform her and Papa that Margaret had been found laying in a heap of broken bones in the river muck. The hurting was more than she could bear. Her mouth twisted painfully and one word emerged as a strangled groan. “Mother!” She would have collapsed had she not been held erect by blinding rage.

  “Imagine my surprise when another one, just as beautiful but much more malleable, arrived from Paris.” The woman, the creature, whatever she was, continued with her evil tale. “I thought at first that I would take you, my little mouse. But this one…” She paused to look again at herself in the mirror. “This one suits me better. In this body I can attract men like flies to honey.”

  “More like flies to dung,” Pru spat.

  Those eyes glowed ominously at her through the mirror. “Take care what you say, little mouse,” she said warningly, “or you will find yourself in the Otherworld.”

  “Or perhaps it will be you who will be sent to the Otherworld.”

  Lienore laughed dismissively. “You cannot kill what is already dead. Surely your vampire told you that. Besides, if you harm me, you harm Vivienne.”

  “I will tell Nicolae about you,” Pru said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “What? That common blood-drinker? He has no power over me. I am a witch of the Sacred Isle. I practiced the healing art in the circle of standing stones before the ancient order of Druids inhabited this land. They turned a place of the living into the domain of the dead. It was Merlin who ordered the stones removed from the Sacred Isle and brought to the plain. Did you know that the dark lord, Uther Pendragon, sire of the king called Arthur, is buried within the ring of stones? No, of course, you could not know. I was there. I witnessed it.”

  She seemed to be talking to no one in particular as she spun her tale of sorcery and ancient kings

  “It has been said that giants moved the stones from the Sacred Isle to Britain,” she went on, as if talking to herself. “But it wasn’t giants at all. They were moved by ancient vampires, each one possessing the strength of a thousand men. When the stones were in place, they turned upon the mortals and killed
them, drinking their blood in a great frenzy until the earth ran red.”

  She shook off the memories like dust and turned her face toward Pru. “Your vampire has no power over me. Now, shoo, before I squash you like a bug.”

  Pru’s face had turned as white as her linen shift. “You are not going to kill me?”

  Lienore gave her a frozen smile. “Why should I, when I have another victim? I will admit that old man clings stubbornly to his miserable existence, but in the end, I will succeed in sucking the life from him. I always do. And then perhaps that infernal music will stop.”

  Realization slammed into Pru. “Stay away from him you bitch!” Without a thought to the consequences, she lunged at the figure seated at the dressing table, fingers like talons aimed at that beautiful face.

  Lienore raised her arm, thwarting the attack, sending Pru flying across the room and crashing against the door with a jolt that rattled her senses.

  Dazed, Pru stumbled to her feet and grasped for the knob in an attempt to flee.

  In a motion that was not seen, but felt, like a cold, dark wind rushing past, Lienore was at the door, slamming it shut with her palm.

  “Vile little mortal,” she hissed. “You will not keep me from destroying that old man.”

  Hands that were no longer beautiful, but gnarled and rough as tree bark, circled Pru’s throat. The eyes of a demon glowed like fire from a face that had taken on hideous proportions. Gone was the beautiful visage of Vivienne. In its place was a face from hell, a skeletal thing of rotting flesh and sunken eye sockets. A stench of decay issued from its thin, bloodless lips when it spoke in a voice that was no longer recognizable.

  “Now I am going to kill you.”

  The fingers tightened, squeezing the air out of Pru’s lungs. She felt herself growing weaker as she struggled for breath. And then, the thing was lifting her off the floor. Her legs thrashed about, feet searching for purchase. Higher into the air she went. She couldn’t breath. Her vision was fading. The world was growing darker. In a far off corner of her mind one word grew fainter and fainter. Papa. Papa…

  She was flying through the air. For a split second she was able to breathe again. One quick gasp of air was all she got before she crashed through the window.

  Shattered glass.

  Pain.

  Falling. Falling…

  Darkness all around.

  One last moment of paralyzing fear before she hit the ground below.

  CHAPTER 24

  There was a sound in the night sky. Not that of the rain which had begun as a gentle patter and was now a steady downpour, but of a rapid fluttering, as a small nocturnal creature winged its way toward the row of weavers’ houses in Spitalfields.

  When it reached the house in Folgate Street, it glided silently to the ground. For several moments it stood on the cobblestones beneath the glow of an oil lamp, the naked pads on its nose twitching to pick up the scent of blood, its pointy ears straining to detect sounds from within. Using its membraned wings as forelegs, it walked toward the front door, and as it did, a startling transformation began to take place. The wings grew longer, taking on the appearance of arms. The bony membranes stretched into fingers. The hind legs lengthened, forming flesh and bone. With each step it took it became more and more human-like until, at last, a man stood before the door, a man fully clothed and looking like any ordinary caller but for the red glow in his eyes and the lips curled back over sharpened eye teeth.

  There was no time to wait for someone to answer his knock. The door crashed open under the force of his palm. His eyes scanned the receiving room. With its high plaster ceiling, dark painted wood walls and floor and no candles lit, it looked like a great hollow, empty and devoid of life. He sniffed the air. Something treacherous was afoot. He sensed it. He knew it.

  “Prudence!”

  He called her name into the darkness. There was no answer.

  He took the steps of the narow staircase two at a time to the second floor and burst into the music master’s room without ceremony.

  James Hightower lay in his bed, his face as pale as the bed linens, clinging precariously to life.

  Nicolae rushed to the bed and knelt at its side. “Where is she? Where is Prudence?”

  The old man was unable to speak. What life was left in him was fast slipping away.

  “Oh, Lienore,” Nicolae wailed. “What have you done?”

  He should have known. He should at least have suspected. But he’d been so wrapped up in his own little dramas that he had not seen the evil that lurked in this very house. No wonder the doctors could do nothing to help the music master. What was ailing the poor man was far beyond anything their mortal minds could imagine.

  He looked again at the old man laying helpless and dying. This was not what Prudence wanted for her beloved papa. He straightened and turned away. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t. Why should he, after the cruel things she had said to him this evening? Death, no matter how it came, was inevitable for mortals. Why should he interfere? Why should he care? His head began to hurt from all the conflicted thoughts that converged upon him. For the thousandth time he thought of the things she said to him. He was an evil, vile thing. A killer. A loathsome creature that deserved to be alone. He flinched, the words wounding him as much now as they had when she had flung them at him. And yet, they were true. As true as anything he knew to be true.

  He closed his eyes and felt his self slipping away. All the old pain and misery tore at him. Old wounds festering under centuries of aloneness, of existing only for himself, of caring for nothing except where his next blood meal would come from. Oh, how he hated himself for this thing that he was. If only there was a way to redeem himself for the centuries of wrongs he had committed. He turned back toward the bed. Perhaps there was a way.

  It took only minutes. The frail body in his arms shook violently and then collapsed against the down mattress. When Nicolae lifted his head, the linens were stained red. The music master’s eyes were wide and blank and unseeing. At his throat were two wounds, like gaping little mouths from which no sound emerged. The place on his own wrist, where he had punctured the preternatural flesh, was already beginning to heal. With the back of his sleeve he wiped the blood from his mouth as he watched the music master draw in one final shuddering breath and then fall silent and still and…dead.

  With the tip of his finger he wiped away the drops of blood from the corners of those pale dead lips. Somewhere deep down inside he felt remorse. He stood over him, watching for the telltale signs that would come. Suddenly, the music master’s chest rose convulsively and his eyes opened. The pupils were dilated and as transparent as a pane of glass. The puncture wounds at his neck quivered and gradually closed shut, erasing all trace of the violent act that had led to this.

  It had not pleased him to do this deed, but Prudence had asked it of him, and he hoped now she would be happy.

  His thoughts turned to her, and a feeling of apprehension gripped him anew. Where was she? Had she gone out for the evening, unwittingly leaving her father alone and at the mercy of the evil that was Lienore? He would have to tell her what he knew now to be the true nature of her father’s illness and also about her aunt. He had saved her father for her, but there was no saving the aunt. Once Lienore knew they were on to her, she would abandon Vivienne’s body and steal another. But for now, Prudence was not safe in this house. He had to find her and tell her of the danger she was in.

  He left the music master’s room and was headed toward the staircase when something captured his attention, causing him to pause in the hallway. His head cocked to one side as a familiar scent drifted toward his nostrils. He would recognize that scent anywhere. It was sweet and powerful and infiltrated his senses like no other had ever done. It was the scent of blood, but not just any mortal’s blood. A bolt of alarm shot through him.

  Prudence!

  Lifting his nose to the air, his head whirled in all directions to determine from where the scent was emanating. Th
ere! Beyond that door.

  He rushed into the room, and stopped. A solitary candle flickered faintly from the sconce, casting wavy shadows across the walls. There was a tension in the room, as if the air itself were stretching and straining. The smell of decay lingered in every corner, mingling with the rosemary used in a witch’s brew.

  Like a predator, his sulfurous glare stalked the room. The bed was empty, and yet he felt a distinct presence. He moved slowly to the side of the bed, then to the foot, and finally to the corner around which he could see to the other side.

  A dark form lay crumpled on the floor. He moved swiftly toward it. Bending on one knee, he placed a hand on the soft, round shoulder and turned turned her upright. A breath of sharp relief exploded from his lips. It wasn’t Prudence. It was Vivienne. Placing two fingers to the side of her throat, his touch confirmed what he already knew. She was dead.

  Dear God, what happened in this room to force Lienore to leave Vivienne’s body and disappear? She was out there, somewhere, searching for another hapless victim, if she hadn’t already found one, wrecking vengeful havoc upon the mortal world. And then, another thought, this one almost too horrible to bear, crossed his mind. What if the new body Lienore stole belonged to Prudence? The rest of the world might never know the difference, but he’d be able to tell whether it was actually Prudence or Lienore inhabiting those precious curves. He had to find her. He had to know. Then again, what if Prudence was merely out for the evening? He couldn’t take the chance of her coming home and discovering Vivienne like this.

  He knelt beside the lifeless body of the Englishwoman, contemplating what he would do. He would take her out to the forest and bury her there, and tell Prudence that Lienore had simply run off with Vivienne. Although it would pain Prudence, at least she would be spared the awful truth. He reached forward and was about to lift the body into his arms, when the candle fluttered, as if someone had opened the door. He looked up. No one was there. Yet the flame danced this way and that and the shadows swayed across the walls. A mocking night wind sifted through the window. He turned his head toward it.