Distraught at the loss of my family and home, I wandered the forests alone. I embraced all that was beastly about me and I ate whomever I wished whenever I came upon them. All I could feel was my hunger for blood and it was a long and difficult learning period. My victims often fought back and I was frequently hurt as I had not quite mastered the art of a stealthy approach. Hunting with a bow and arrow was much simpler compared to direct contact with one’s victims. After a couple of years of living alone I secretly returned to the camp and would watch over my family who had not moved far. I would climb the trees where they were camped and listen to them talk around the fire. There were a lot of rumors going around of more creatures such as myself in the forest and I heard how they prayed to the Lord to spare them my terrible fate.
I never found out who bit me but I imagine it must have been a lone feral Afflicted like me or a gypsy blood drinker. There were groups of night gypsies just like there are day gypsies and they wandered the forests for victims and secluded spots to set up camp. In those days no one was safe anywhere and in truth we were lucky to have survived as long as we had. The forests were filled with mercenaries, barbarians, beasts, Afflicted and many others looking to make a living, find a place to sleep, a town to pillage or something or someone to eat. Cities were equally deceptive and dangerous with only the illusion of order and protection beyond their walls.
One night after going out to hunt I returned to camp to see my family off for the night but I was faced with a scene of devastation. No one was to be found anywhere. Other than the blood there were no bodies and no one had been left behind. For weeks I searched high and low for them, for a trace or a clue, an inclination of what had happened to them but to no avail. The trail ran cold and I believe they were taken by some passing force in a final attack they were unable to fend off or run from.
For the first time in all my life I felt truly vulnerable. I had nothing and no one to turn to and was alone in this vast and dangerous forest with not even the illusion of a familial nest. For weeks I would continue my life like previously by sleeping in my makeshift light-proof tent in the forest canopy by day and by night I would hunt for animals or people to feed on while always looking out for signs of my family. Perhaps it was this intense search that drove me to continue without thinking too much about anything. I was alive but a shadow of myself…
Unsure of what to make of these stories, Kati looked up from the book to realize she’d been breathing faster and faster. She went back to the beginning and read the words again in case she was mistaken, but the meaning was the same. She ran to her room unconcerned about who might see her and retrieved both the grammar book and the thesaurus and ran back to the binding room. She put them both on the floor and checked on the meanings of sentences she had doubts over but her knowledge had not failed her, her understanding was good.
The girl’s story had affected her deeply and the combination of emotions she was experiencing was difficult to order. What kind of demonic magic was this? Was it real or some work of fantasy like the Aeneid that Oriana had taught her about?
The journal continued in this vein for several more pages, and each and every page captivated her.
The following winter was one of the harshest I had ever experienced in all my years in the forest. The hunting was sparse and the travelers even more so. The forest canopy was dry, coarse and scant providing next to no shelter from the elements or the light. More by necessity than desire I was forced to head further west in search of shelter and food and soon arrived at a small walled town. I managed to make my way in with a group of other travelers.
Once inside I wandered the town as quietly as I could until I found an abandoned home with some odd markings on the door. The house was not new but not too old either and it seemed like everyone who had once lived there had left in a rush. From a quick look around it appeared that this entire section of town had been abandoned and that no one ever came past here unless they really had to. I seized this opportunity and quickly entered. I looked around and was surprised to see that what few belongings these people had had been left right where they were as if frozen in time. The table had a bowl and two ceramic cups on it, the rest were in a cupboard untouched and covered by a thick layer of dust. There was a pig leg hanging from the rafters but it had decayed and gone dry and moldy from the time it lay there untouched. I wondered why no one else had taken over this house after the original lodgers had left but at the time I knew nothing about disease so powerful that it could wipe out half a city and terrify the other half to the point of never approaching the victims’ houses.
Over time I slowly made that space my own. In the day I would sleep in my basement and at night I would venture outside for food. I started with the sick and the homeless. They would hardly notice my attacks as they were always collapsed outside on the ground, and most importantly no one would miss them when they died. The parish would eventually realize they were dead and would collect and bury them without much inquest. When they ran out I moved onto the prostitutes. I had learnt my craft by this time and could approach and silence a woman quite quickly and with little struggle. Like the homeless, they too were somewhat invisible so no alarms were raised. When they ran out I brazenly started moving into people’s homes for my feedings. To my good fortune, a few years after my arrival in this town, I discovered that the king of these lands, Tsar Ivan Asen II had gone to war against Constantinople and Nicaea so all the battle-worthy men in the village were sent to fight, causing a significant drop in the male population and an increase in whispers, rumors and fears. This little blessing allowed me to roam more or less unobstructed amongst the remaining women and children and the fat, infirm and elderly men.
Gradually the years passed and I realized I wasn’t aging like I should have been. Children in the street grew up to become fully fledged adults with children and grandchildren of their own and I never looked a day older than sixteen which gave me cause to think about the blessing of my condition and its connection to the magic of blood. Human blood is so addictive. You can go without it for weeks, but when there’s a glut of it you can never have enough. There were nights where I would finish a family of six or seven in their home and then do the same again the following evening. As is wont to happen in cases of mass death, however, the people in the town began to panic. I could hear talk of demons or plagues from outside the taverns and from people talking in the street. They began to heavily barricade their homes and would not stay out late for fear of the curse that was decimating their village. They would search for fearsome beasts and find none as no one dared approach the plagued houses of the past. Then they would blame each other and cast unwelcome folks out of the village, blaming them for this misfortune. Sadly for them the ones that were ostracized were the first to be found dead the next morning with their throats slashed and deprived of every last drop in their veins. The town priest seized upon this chance to condemn the town for their salaciousness and ungodliness so no one was particularly disappointed when his turn also came. Many began abandoning the town to avoid this devilish curse but some held firm and stayed to brave the storm with means of defense ranging from weapons to crosses, prayers and incantations. The last few families to remain in the village were the hardest to reach but eventually they too ended up in my gut. At the end of this feast I was left with a shell of a village so more out of necessity than desire I too was forced to leave for pastures new.
Shortly after leaving Balgadartsi, the town I had made my home for so long, I headed east for the first time in perhaps fifty years. I’d reduced the town to an empty shell and in my mind I was setting off for new adventures. Perhaps if I was fortunate I would stumble upon another little village on which to gorge myself for the next fifty or a hundred years.
One dawn after a quick hunting spree I set up camp in a tall tree. There had been a lot of movement in the forest during that day and I felt particularly tetchy taking a lot longer than usual to fall asleep, unable to shift the feeling of bein
g watched. As a trained predator myself, I hated feeling this way but the sun was bright and I had to regroup and rest. It was summer and the days were stifling. A lot of the trees had dried up during the drought and hiding places were scarce. After sleeping uneasily for what seemed like a few hours I felt my hammock suddenly engulf me and tighten unnaturally around me purposely blocking me from seeing. From one moment to the next I was incapacitated with it. I felt the branches around me move and give way to more weight followed by the sounds of someone beyond my cocoon cutting the ties from the tree after which I quickly hit the ground. I heard voices around me and without being released I was placed on my horse like a sack of wheat. I tried to kick and scream but I was bound too tightly.
I was transported in this fashion for hours and then days, stopping from time to time to make camp and all the while no one loosened my ropes or put me down from my horse. Even he was given water to drink but I did not receive so much as a piece of bread. I could feel the sun rise and set and occasionally I would collapse from exhaustion and wake up unaware of how much time had passed. Eventually the horse was stopped and I was lifted from it and thrown on the ground. My entire body ached from the singular position I had been kept in for the past several days and from the starvation. My captor did not free me but cut a hole in the wrappings to release my head so I could see. I felt like a swaddled baby. It was late afternoon and though it was almost dark my eyes burnt from the little bit of light that remained after having been blindfolded for so long.
My abductor was an unafflicted man who appeared to be in his fourth decade but could have been older. He had long dreadlocked black hair, an equally long and black beard and was dressed in colorful stripy but dirty pantaloons and a loose-fitting shirt. His face was tanned and well worn with deep wrinkles above his cheeks which arched to meet his eyes. He wore a large collection of talismans and coins round his neck and he stank of wine. For a long while he just looked at me without saying anything.
“I’m amazed how you new creatures have no idea how much of a trail you are leaving behind when you eat.” He stressed the word new in a mocking fashion, but I didn’t understand why. “You think you are going to live forever and that no one is ever going to stop you. Your arrogance eventually becomes the key to your undoing. Esteban here and I have been tracking you for years. We did lose you from time to time, but your trail was unmistakable when we came upon it again. He says he could smell the odor of death around you for miles.” His voice was gritty and even though he had a twist of an accent he spoke in the language of Balgadartsi. Over the years I had learned it, partly from the memories of the people I had drunk, and partly from the eavesdropped conversations.
I looked behind him and saw a creature I had not realized had been with us all this time. Esteban was small and slender. He was a child and though his face was malformed I could recognize from his pallor that he was most definitely Afflicted as he was three tones paler than I. He was hunchbacked and this made his arms look longer than average as they neared the ground. He had almost no hair on his head, and quite unusually for his peculiar shape he was a light walker. He stood downwind from people, to ensure that no one caught his scent and was clearly a first class stalker.
“You like Esteban? He’s a hideous little thing but an excellent hunter, I’d be lost without him,” the bearded man continued to talk oblivious to the fact that Esteban might hear him. Possibly registering my curiosity he gestured to his ear, “don’t worry he can’t hear me, he’s deaf as a door.”
It was true that Esteban was quite horrific but there was a loyalty about him and his eyes hid pain under his distorted brow. I wondered what made him so faithful to the man that treated him no better than a dog and who used him to track down people of his own kind. Hideous as he was I was intrigued to see another Afflicted person like me. Other than the one who’d bitten me all those years ago I had never encountered one and often wondered where he had come from and whether I was alone, a natural aberration. It was clear, however, that Esteban would not tell me much.
The bearded one did not wait for me to say anything. He gave me a small flask of blood to drink and covered my head again before returning me to my horse to continue our journey. He seemed to know exactly how many days an Afflicted could safely go without blood, a clear sign of his long hunting experience. After some more days of travel we arrived at a location and I could sense commotion and hear voices. I heard the bearded one speak with someone else in a foreign tongue followed by the clatter of coins. I was picked up and placed flat on the ground alongside other similar shapes all laid out in a row. My head covering which had not been replaced fully after I was fed allowed me few glimpses of my surroundings.
There were five other bodies bundled like me and stacked on a flat surface a bit like flour sacks in a shop and we were lifted up in the air and lowered through an opening into a building or structure of some kind. It smelled damp and dirty and the atmosphere got more dank the further down we moved. I felt as if I was being taken deep underground. When we came to a stop I was picked up by someone and moved again. Eventually my carrier dropped me to the ground and cut my ropes before swiftly leaving. I struggled loose from my bonds and looking around I realized I was in a small cell in what appeared to be a cave system deep underground. The cell was sparse and the iron bars looked ancient and rusty but they were relentless when I shook them. For days no one came and I was given no information as to why I was there or what would happen to me. From what I could see of it, the cave system was older than anything in the world. The ceiling was covered in stalactites which made the languorous effort to connect with their counterparts on the floor. In a few thousand years these salt pillars would eventually meet in a long-desired union.
As the reality of my situation sank in over my first few days in captivity, I began to become angry. I cursed myself for being stupid enough to be caught and realized that my years in Balgadartsi were but a foolish act and a pleasant yet distant memory. In my stupid mind I had ignored what the man had said about sowing death in my wake and kept thinking that if only I had done some things differently I wouldn't have been caught and I might now be in a new small town full of new potential drinking vessels. The fact that he had been tracking my reckless behavior for years escaped me at that moment.
The sound of the small satchel of blood hitting the ground interrupted my thought stream. Before I could see who’d dropped it off, the person had left. I picked it up and stared at it. These people were making sure I remained alive, but with the least amount of sustenance possible. I drank it in the blink of an eye and tossed it beyond the bars. “How dare these people keep me here?” I kept repeating to myself in frustration while grabbing onto the un-giving cage.
In time a woman in a long hemp dress appeared beyond the bars. She picked up the satchel and looked at me initially with contempt but then with concentration. Her eyes were a dark blue color, the same as the ocean just before a storm and they seemed just as deep. It was as if she was seeing through me. Her dress resembled a nun’s habit but unusually for nuns, it was a deep scarlet color. Her hands were folded on the front of her body and they were tucked into the sleeves so that they could not be seen and her head was covered with a hood. She smelled very strongly of church incense and she reminded me of being at Mass. She stared at me for a good while saying nothing at all and when she was done she looked down, closed her eyes and said, “Thank you Lord for helping us remove another one of these parasites from amongst your flock and oblige it in Your service,” in Bulgarian almost as bad as mine. Without thinking I hissed and lunged at her through the bars but she drew back quickly, half expecting it. She swiftly crossed herself several times and walked off without another word.
A few more days of hunger and solitude would pass before two men came to my cell. They were plainly dressed and clearly belonged to some lower working order. We did not have a common language but from their motions I could make out that they wanted me to pass my hands through the gap in the bars
palms facing but I refused to indulge them. Sadly for me they were familiar with un-cooperation and were not averse to using violence to get the job done, so with a few swipes of their silver-tipped whip I relented and allowed them to tie my wrists tightly with rope. The hunger and exhaustion had weakened me and though under normal circumstances I might have been able to fight them, the lack of food and sleep meant that I had barely enough energy to stay upright. Part of my induction involved being kept up at night by being constantly sprayed with silver water and pelted with that despicable whip. The men mumbled in a language I did not understand but made it clear that they wanted me to follow them. They took me up some stairs to another level of the cave into another cell-shaped alcove. This one, however, was different to the one I had been held in. It was richly furnished with upholstered chairs and had a fine carpet on the ground. The walls were fitted with bespoke shelves filled with books. At the end of the room was a massive crucifix and in front of it a wooden desk with papers and writing implements. Seated at the desk was a man in religious garb I did not recognize who looked up the minute I was dropped to the ground.
“Theodora Laskari we have been waiting for you.” He spoke in (strained) Greek, my native language, and knew my name. I hadn’t heard my name in over a century and had nearly forgotten it. No one else who had known it was still alive.
“How do you know my name?” I asked speaking for the first time since my capture.
Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) Page 8