I didn’t answer because I was surprised at how he looked. For now, he seemed different; his ears no longer looked pointed. Nor did his fingernails seem long. He was quite handsome!
He smiled. “Perhaps you would prefer some wine. Actually, it is wine mixed with herbs, a tonic of sorts...”
He handed it to me. It smelled strange, yet I felt I had little power to refuse. And so I drank. My eyelids grew heavy and though I tried to see my host, I could not.
“My vision...”
“There now,” he said. “Just rest forget all worries.... there is joy here and a world you cannot imagine.”
I heard the words, but it was as if they came from far away.
“I don’t want to sleep...”
“Yes, little one. You must sleep, and you shall. And you will dream...”
And so I did. I dreamt I heard whispers, soft murmurs all around me. It was not unpleasant, for I was reminded of fairy tales and legends. There began to be singing too; the sound of sirens, perhaps. The songs were hauntingly sad and beautiful all at once.
I saw three figures in the shadows. I reached out to touch them in my dream. And they came forward. “Sister!” they called.
Something touched my lips, something cool yet comforting. I opened my eyes and saw a graceful hand lingering there. A woman was smiling at me. She leaned over and kissed me on the lips. And although her lips were icy, it was pleasing.
“Am I dreaming?”
She smiled. “Yes, some of it.”
“Who are you?”
She didn’t reply; she only took my hand in her cold one and kissed it. “Dia....”
“How do you know my name?”
“The master told us.”
I was suddenly aware of other voices. Voices that answered in perfect unison. “The master,” they repeated until it sounded like a chant.
There, in the soft glow of candlelight, I saw three female spirits. They were strangely beautiful, garbed in long, flowing white gowns. Suddenly, they began to float up toward the bed ever so slowly, their fingers reaching out toward me as they called, “Sister.”
Were they ghosts or spirits from another world?
Before I could ponder that question any longer, they began sweeping over me. I was frightened but thrilled at the same time, for there seemed about them the promise of joy and untold pleasure.
Their icy hands sought the top of my nightgown and they peeled it away; it was drawn further down until I was naked. First, one reached over and then the other two, each of them touching me.
“Mmmm.”
A sound in my ears as cool lips touched my neck.
“Beautiful.”
I moaned as the hands continued to sweep over me. Gentle yet persistent fingers probed my secret places – places previously unexplored – caressing and invading my body.
Lips replaced fingers. Cool lips, lips blue with death but soon to be reddened with life, my life – but I did not know that then; that would be one of my very first lessons.
I felt two at my neck and one at my breast. Then I felt something sharp stab into my neck and my breasts and I nearly cried out. I was silenced. For there by the fire stood a man. I could only make out that he was tall and slender. He moved toward the bed. Not to help me, but to watch....
At last, I knew I was not dreaming. There were three women touching me and whispering as they did.
“Yes, now,” the man said.
Once again, I felt their teeth upon my flesh. “We drink you and love you...”
It was only painful for a moment, for when one bit me, another caressed me. And so it went on like that for an eternity, it seemed.
I drifted away then, retreating into a dark and warm place; a place full of shadows, a nether world so near the living one. How I wished to remain there.
In my mind, I saw myself covered by three female figures and a male as well. It was then that I knew. This was no dream.
I opened my eyes to see Dracula’s eyes burning like two red coals. I saw in their depths a new world – one I would soon be entering.
He bent his head to feed and, when he did, the others stepped away. I watched as his mouth sought my neck and then my breasts. I felt the sting, but I didn’t care. In fact, I am certain that I moaned with pleasure.
He raised his head and smiled, although his lips dripped with blood. “Dia, you are mine...”
Before I could reply, the women spoke. “Sister,” they said. First one and then another.
I watched as they bent over me, each one taking another part of me as though I were a feast set before them.
“They drink from your fountain, for you are the new covenant. You are ours now and forever.”
He moved down my body, and as he did, I felt the sharp sting of his bite. I felt it all over and I was glad!
And then, in the midst of the pleasure and the pain, he slit open his own chest and pressed my lips to it. “Drink, wife,” he said. “Drink and you shall never know death.”
And so I did.
The night was endless, it seemed, and if there was pain, that pain would soon disappear to have pleasure replace it. Fathomless pleasure, the joy unending, for it was the beginning of the ritual of the blood.
“Love the blood,” he whispered. “The joy is in the blood... the passion is in the blood....endless life is in the blood....!”
I felt him mount me then. His eyes swept over my body before he took me, in the sight of the sisters; those I would soon call “the brides.”
It was some time later that I heard them whisper. “Dawn is breaking; let us take her to the crypt to sleep...”
~ ~ * ~ ~
I slept the first sleep of the vampire. I would soon know it to be that. When I awoke, I was in the dark, but I was unafraid. Something slid open and a face peered into my mine. “Come sister.”
Hands reached out, for there were other faces, three in fact--all female, one more beautiful than the other; the brides.
They sat me up and dressed me, for I was naked. They giggled too. “These are your wedding clothes, for now you are his forever as we are...”
I was happy, really joyful, for they were my family. I wanted no other. In time, I would know this was part of my eternal damnation, but I did not know it then.
I had entered the world of the undead. The world of endless existence where creatures live forever and there is no death.
He was waiting for me. “Come and feed,” he said. I followed them outside into my new world. Our world was the night and our sun was the moon. “We will go into the night.”
Dracula’s words. And I obeyed. I saw him glide toward something lying near a tree. In the moonlight, I could see it was a man. He was not fully conscious. “I have half strangled him,” Dracula said as he knelt down and began feeding. At last, he glanced up. “He still lives; you may only feed on the living. Come, child.”
I did not hesitate; any sense of decency was gone. I was a wanton thing; a creature of the night in search of blood and little else.
He took my hand to guide it toward my lips. “Feel them.”
I felt my teeth and I gasped, for they were long and pointed as were his.
He dipped his finger in the man’s blood. “Taste it.”
And so I did. It was good and I smiled. Then, with joyful abandon, I bent down to feed. I fed voraciously too, for I was hungry.
As I sucked forth the man’s blood, I saw his life. I saw the simple cottage of a peasant and a woman and children – his family. Yet though I saw these things, I didn’t care. It meant nothing to me. Only the blood and my beastly satisfaction were important.
I continued to feed and began to see different scenes, all having to do with the dying man’s life. When he shuddered, Dracula touched me. “You can take no more.”
I realized the man was dead, for the shuddering had stopped. And I cried, for I wished for more! Dracula shook his head. “You must never weaken, never sup on the blood of the dead, for if you do, your fate will be mor
e horrible than you can imagine.”
I feared his anger and his wrath, so I agreed. “I would never do that.”
“Others have,” he said. “Come, I will show you.” But first, he smiled. “Let us go to finish our feeding.”
The cottage was not far, the dead man’s dwelling where he lived with his wife and three children. The sisters were already there, feeding on his loved ones who lay bleeding. They were crying out, for they were not yet close to death.
The sisters did not look up to greet me, for they were too engrossed in their feasting. We joined them, although Dracula did not feed as long as his brides did.
My world, and yes, I was one of them. For if we were sisters as well as lovers, we were also his brides.
As I fed on one of the three children, I saw her life, short as it was, flash through my mind. There was little to see for she had only reached a few years of life.
The mother held more interest for me. And although she was fading fast, I fed upon her and saw her childhood and her maidenhood. I saw her wedding and her passion. I saw the love there too.
But because I was already a blood beast, I had no feelings of remorse nor did I recall my own recent marriage, short though it was – cut even shorter by Dracula’s will.
We fed until they were no longer food, but merely dead things, white and bloodless.
We then returned to the castle, where I was to have my first lesson.
“Come,” he said as he led me past our crypts – into a dank, dark antechamber. “I told you that you must never feed upon the dead, for to drink a corpse’s blood is to invoke my fury!”
The timbre of his voice shook me and I trembled. “There, look upon that!”
He pointed to something in the corner. There were massive chains attached to the ceiling from which hung a cage. He ordered me to look inside.
I gasped, for I saw the mutilated corpse of a woman. “I have preserved her so that others might learn.”
There wasn’t one part of her that was not mutilated. Her eyes were gone, as were her features.
“That was not the work of rats.”
My reaction was to cry. I buried my face in my hands and wept. Not only was I frightened of him, but I felt desolate. “I do not wish to anger you, master.”
He swept me into his arms and took me upstairs, past my sisters, to a vast chamber. “This was a ballroom once. There was music and laughter, days long ago; the days of my living life....”
He sounded sad yet proud of those days. “Do you miss it?”
He looked surprised and stared at me for so long that I feared asking him what I had and worried at his reaction. But he sighed. “That which has gone before in a vampire’s existence must not be recalled, but must be banished from all thought. That is the price of endless existence.”
“I promise never to remember!”
He kissed my forehead and then my lips. And then he took me there, and I gave myself up to him over and over. This was my world and I cared not for anything that had gone before. Nor would I change, of that I was certain.
He was my master and I was his devoted wife, his bride, his lover, and slave, and I would be for as long as I existed.
I would kill for him and die for him. I was his fourth bride.
The Blackstone Vampires Series
Book 1 The House on Blackstone Moor
Book 2 Unholy Testament - The Beginnings
Book 3 Unholy Testament - Full Circle
The Series, books 1-3 here:
The Blackstone Vampire Series on Amazon
About The Author
I've always written but life, as it often does, got in the way and I turned back to writing some years ago. In 2000 I was selected by North West Playwrights of England for further development but found I preferred writing fiction (novels and short stories).
I write dark gothic horror with romantic elements. I want to put the bite in gothic romance and knock the starch out it.
Most crucially of all because I write vampire fiction, I portray my vampires as VAMPIRES, yes they may be capable of love but it is tortured love. They are not happy little fairies prancing about enchanted forests. They do not inhabit a pleasant world, if they are good it is because "they do less evil than themselves."
That quote by the way is from "The House on Blackstone Moor."
The Blackstone Vampires Series comprises four novels. I have just signed with Creativia and they are republishing all of my novels.
Book 1, The House on Blackstone Moor has just been republished by them.
Book 2, Unholy Testament - The Beginnings
Book 3, Unholy Testament - Full Circle
Book 4, The Fourth Bride
Quote about my fiction:
"In the attempt to find the just measure of horror and terror, I came upon the writing of Carole Gill whose work revealed a whole new dimension to me. The figure of the gothic child was there. Stoker's horror was there. Along with the romance! At the heart of her writing one stumbles upon a genuine search for that darkness we lost with the loss of Stoker."
Dr. Margarita Georgieva ~ Gothic Readings in the Dark
I am widely published in horror and sci-fi anthologies:
Fresh Fear: Contemporary Horror, An Anthology
A S Publications: Enter at Your Own Risk: Old Masters New Voices, An Anthology of Gothic Literature
Dark Muses: Spoken Silences, Dr. Alex Scully Publisher
Netbound Spirits of the Night
Netbound Sideshow
Triskaideka Books' Masters of Horror Anthology One,
Triskaideka Books' Masters of Horror Damned If You Don't,
Sonar 4 Publishing's Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror 2010,
SNM's Bonded By Blood3 Languish In Lament,
Sonar 4 Publishing's Whitechapel 13, Anthology,
Rymfire's Undead Tales,
Rymfire's Zombie Winter,
Rymfire's Zombie Writing
Angelic Knight Press' Satan's Toy Box: Demonic Dolls and
Sci Fi Almanac 2009 and 2010 and
Science Fiction Freedom Magazine, issues 1-4,
Sci Fi Talk's Tales of Time and Space.
Amazon Author Page
http://www.amazon.com/Carole-Gill/e/B0032TTVVA/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Carole Gill Author Page Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carole-Gill-Author/120405794703293?fref=ts
Carole Gill Official Author Blog/Website
http://carolegillofficialauthor.blogspot.co.uk/
STILLNESS (THE VAMPIRE’S LAMENT)
By
Audrey A’Cladh
In the soft blanket of dust and cobwebs
In the dim, musty rooms, long empty of echoes
The air has not been stirred for decades.
The whole of the domicile seems to slumber
Settled on the bones of its structure
In a bed of the untended grounds.
Once, behind the iron lace-work, and stone curtain
Once, across the deep carpets and polished wood
There had been music and poetry.
There had been conversation and debate.
The finery of those unmindful of time,
With rustle, thump, and laughter through the night.
To some it would have appeared ironically "lively.”
To some it would seem a "Celebration of Life.”
See how they dance and laugh and carouse,
Hear how they discuss the philosophy of the ages,
The carefree indulgence of those who have nothing but time.
Yet live each moment to its fullest.
Beyond the still solid gate covered in vines,
Beyond the overgrown drive under the cypress canopy,
Up the wide stone steps where the lizards absorb the sun,
Through the great oak panels who have forgotten they are doors,
Down the dusty soft hallways, womb-like and hushed,
In a deep, interior parlor, he sits.
He may have sat there as long as the house itself,
Even he has forgotten how long.
The things around him are cold and inanimate.
The dances, songs, and conversation long died in the air.
In this empty room, he contemplates the still air
And cannot remember why he has existed for so long.
On his right hand rests his head, heavy with a fatal despair.
In his left hand dangles a rich red ruby pendant.
After decades, his memory stirs, the 20-year locust of the soul.
He hears dim echoes of laughter and music,
He recalls the sound and smiles of faces long past,
He remembers the stimulation of friends old and new.
He remembers the one who wore this jewel.
And how she outshone it, a warm flush rises within.
Yes, there were still reasons to live.
About The Author
Audrey A'Cladh is an artist of many media; poetry is often where many ideas begin. She currently lives the nightshift in California, USA with her two partners and many cats. She can be found on Facebook and is the owner of The Temple of Shadows, a spiritual haven for those of dark spirituality online on Facebook as Temple of Shadows and at TempleofShadows.org.
MARKUS
An Excerpt from
CODE BLOOD
By
Kurt Kamm
The dopamine was flowing and Markus felt electrified. He was SOARING. He jumped into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. Behind his oversized dark glasses, he squinted from the glare of the sunlight and creases spread from the corners of his eyes. He held up the plastic take-out bag in one hand and looked underneath to see if it was leaking. The bottom was clean and he placed it on the floor mat between his feet. He opened the glove box of his PT Cruiser, took out a bottle, and squeezed disinfectant gel on his hands.
Vampires Romance to Rippers an Anthology of Tasty Stories Page 4