When the first pregnant slaves gave birth, their babies were taken from them and delivered to the nuns who were to care for them and raise them according to what the priests had decreed. Instead of milk they nursed on blood and were closely watched for tangible proof that evil was born with them. Unfortunately quite early on, many began to die. Our offspring are extremely pale, frequently disfigured and some become very sickly. Those that survived grew quickly and began exhibiting hyper-enhanced senses like scent and vision. Though many were flawed and peculiar, enough survived to allow the priests to go ahead with their plan of creating their own pedigree of Afflicted and shape them in the way that they had always wanted.”
“Like Esteban,” I said remembering the ghost responsible for catching and bringing me in.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “As they grew they were housed in improved conditions in a separate section of the caves and treated well. They are not told the truth of their origins but instead they are made to believe they are fallen angels sent to earth to guide the paths of the weak and exterminate the enemies of Christ. They are led to think that the blood they are given is the most sacred there is, as they are too pure to drink anything else. As a result of this they even have their own delegation of Blood Mothers that only they can feed from. Their entire existence is based on a fragile web of dogma and lies, but there is no one to tell them the truth. Even the Blood Mothers don’t really know the truth lest they absorb it from their drinking impressions. Instead they are indoctrinated into thinking that becoming like us is what happens if they stray from the true path and use us as examples to avoid: evil, able bodied slaves that disobeyed the Lord and are now condemned to a near eternity of slavery. Their 'special’ constitutions are a sign that God sent them down as Hunter Angels but their bodies couldn’t take the shock of the physical change due to the purity of their souls. They are also told that if they were to disobey they would take true physical form, a long and painful conversion, and become like us and suffer. Their instruction is so successful that no Afflicted child has ever defected against the priests. They are an elite force created to hunt their own kind and they are unaware of their part in our suffering. The priests call them Ghosts and though they handle them with kid gloves, they too are closely watched for signs of awakening or rebellion. They’re the Order’s most valuable asset.”
Ten
Kati, closed the book urged by the light that was beginning to peek through the window. She realized she had been reading all night long without pause. She was aghast by what she had learned and suddenly felt like a minuscule tick in the coat of this raging behemoth. Here was the Countess, or whoever this woman was, with centuries of history and the most unbelievable back story. The events she had read about revealed a world she would never have imagined. She had heard of priests doing ungodly things but this was beyond any gossip or small town rumor. Constantly, it seemed, she discovered things that made the Countess more fearsome and which worryingly put her in further danger. If Erzsébet Báthory had lived through all these events and had come to own a castle hundreds of miles away from where she had started out, there wasn’t much that could stop her. She was powerful, ruthless and unhinged and these journals were beginning to explain why. Seated on the cold stone floor in the middle of the room Kati suddenly felt the walls close in on her. She saw herself engulfed by so many centuries of awareness, cunning and death and she shivered. Thoughts of escape crossed her mind for the hundredth time but she took a deep breath and remembered the old man’s warning.
That morning she didn’t go to sleep but instead she continued to read.
After the rebellion the situation in the Keep became considerably worse. The guards were doubled in number and virtually all the slaves were closely watched during the daylight hours and locked up securely at night. Even the Keepers found it harder and harder to sneak out unseen and the weeks of slavery crawled before our eyes. We were given the least amount of blood possible to drink, ensuring only that we remained alive and able to work but we were constantly exhausted and had nothing but the slightest will to live. Torture became more prevalent during work hours and was no longer limited to punishment but was randomly dispensed at the whims of the guards who were told that we were to be disciplined whether it was called for or not. They called this punishment for daring to rebel and promised to wipe all memory of freedom from our minds.
As time wore on I learned most aspects of the work in the Keep and my Keeper would become a rarer sight than she had been in the beginning of my incarceration. She would only come escort me to feedings because the guards were not allowed into the Hall. As they were in training, they had yet to take their vows and the Order was extremely strict with what they were exposed to. Ironically the priests were only later allowed to awaken their passions and then only in relation to the slaves. The nuns were pure and had to be protected from the prying eyes of adolescent priests. The possibility of them falling in love or even in lust was too great and put the entire system at risk.
One morning before I’d gotten up from my mattress I heard some unfamiliar footsteps in the gravel. This was not my Keeper and neither was it the Priest. The man who came to my cell was a slave.
He did not look at me but simply opened the door and with his gaze on the ground he announced that it was feeding time. “Where is my Keeper?” I enquired concerned. Continuing to look at the ground he simply said "Shaq’ al is dead.”
“Shaq’ al,” I repeated the name in my head realizing that all this time she had never told me her name and I had never asked. A wave of disbelief gripped my body and a cold shiver passed through me. “What do you mean she’s dead?” I asked the man, grabbing his upper arms demanding further information. Clearly annoyed at the physical contact he looked at me and said that she’d been found dead in her cell. During the riots she had managed to steal a piece of wood and then sharpen it to a point so that she could kill herself with it. I imagined her lying in a pool of blood, and drool gathered at the corners of my mouth before I could censor it.
Upon our arrival at the Feeding Hall we were greeted by a guard who obstructed me from going in with his silver staff and a look of contempt in his eyes.
“Only the male scum get to feed today,” he announced while letting my new Keeper pass through, who seemed a little surprised by this turn of events before disappearing down the long dark corridor.
“What?!” I enquired in a manner that overstepped my station but one which I had been unable to control. We were being kept at near starvation levels and this was a step too far.
“The nuns are fasting this week by order of Father Superior, so the blood they can give is limited to those who do the most manual labor.”
“Then how about I drain you, you prepubescent little boy?” I bluffed showing him my teeth knowing full well that I was causing myself more hassle than my insubordination was worth, but often my rage overpowered me. The blow of his staff to the side of my head was swift and delivered with skilled determination not expected from one so young. The silver bulb at the top burned my skin and was heavy and blunt and caused me to drop to a heap by the side of his feet from where he continued the beating until I was no longer conscious. I awoke to further assault but this time in my cage and from my new Keeper.
“Wake up,” he kept saying, while gently slapping me on my cheeks until I came to.
“You’ve been asleep all day, I was starting to worry.” He looked relieved that I had regained my senses. “You’ve been here long enough to know better than to speak to them like that and not expect to be hurt for it. What on earth were you thinking?”
“I couldn’t help it. Sometimes I’m overcome by this rage and all I want do is kill…”
“That’s just your frustration talking.”
“I take it you don’t feel the same way?”
He was kneeling on the ground in front of me and for the first time I got a proper look at his face. He was tired, thin and his skin was dry and dirty but he was beautiful. He ha
d a short beard like most of the male slaves as they were only allowed to trim it from time to time when the Order arranged baths and haircuts for us, but I could still make out the structure of his face underneath it. He had a strong jawline and a large but not over-imposing nose. His eyes were slightly drawn to the side and unusually one of them was green while the other was blue. Embarrassed by the prolonged eye contact he immediately looked down with a scowl on his face.
“You can drink some of my blood to tide you over until the next time. It’s not advisable but you’ll feel a little better."
I did not need to be told twice and I immediately sank my teeth into his neck. I did not get images like when I normally bit people but rather an overwhelming sense of sadness but also of compassion. At that moment he pushed me away.
“That’s enough,” he said briefly glancing into my eyes and then at the ground again. I placed my fingers over the bite marks and pushed down to stop any more of his precious blood escaping. I could feel his pulse quicken and his skin turn clammy. He raised his eyes from the ground and held my gaze for a few moments before hesitantly leaning in to kiss me. Though I was shocked by the gesture I welcomed the tenderness, which was the first experience of kindness in all my time here. His lips were the first I had willingly kissed and they were so delicious and soft. His beard grazed my skin and tickled my nose and his smell was musty and deep.
Before long he had one hand on my waist and the other behind my head. I instinctively lay back and he quickly followed my body to the ground. We removed our ragged clothes without stopping to kiss and for the first time in my life I was making love as opposed to being the sex slave to some depraved priest.
The experience was tender and moving. While we both felt the pressure of this stolen time and the danger of being caught, we were unwilling to part. The attraction between us was strong but there was also a connection beyond the merely physical. What we were feeling was a bond normally incapable of flourishing in a place such as this. When we were finished he rested his forehead in the space between my neck and shoulder and waited a few moments to catch his breath. His skin was warm and wet against my own and felt so familiar. When he finally pulled back, behind the pain there was a tenderness in his eyes that I had never experienced with anyone. He clumsily grabbed my shirt from the ground and gave it to me making sure to keep his gaze down, and proceeded to pull on his own garment before stepping out of my cage.
“I will come back tomorrow and see if I can get you into the Hall to eat but you have to promise to behave.”
I looked at him without saying anything and watched him disappear into the dark while I longed for more of his touch. I lay there on my dusty mattress going through the evening in my head over and over again trying to sear it into my memory for fear it hadn’t really happened and that it had all been my imagination. The only remainder of the night was the comforting smell of his sweat on my skin which I wished would stay with me forever. This was the first time my body had ever been used with love and tenderness and it made me sick to think of all the times it had been desecrated. This new experience had made me feel valuable again and in a way gave me the urge to keep on living, overcoming my endless rage at these creatures that called themselves human; it was a beautifully fragile bond to my new Keeper whose name I hadn't even asked. All I could see was his beautiful face and his bright eyes staring back into mine.
A noise at the far end of the caves shook me from my drunken state. I felt a shiver run across my skin and feared the worst. If any priest dared visit my cage tonight it would have been his last night on this earth as well as mine. The surge of emotion I had gone through was stronger and more beautiful than anything I had experienced in my life and I felt that nothing or no one could stand in my way. Thankfully the noise turned out to be just another of the sizable rats that ruled the compound and I returned to my haze of emotion. That night I slept better than all the years I had been in the Keep.
The following morning my Keeper came to fetch me. “I have secured a place for you in the feeding line for today, but you better behave! One of the guards owed me a favor and he’s letting me put you in."
“What kind of favor?” I shuddered at the thought that one of our own would be owed a favor by a guard. He stopped walking and gave me a solemn look, as if realizing what I had been thinking.
“I caught him stealing a pair of bracelets once from one of the slaves they had killed for disobedience and managed to convince the Head that she had taken them off and thrown them in the stream herself prior to her death. Those bracelets are extremely valuable and numbered so that they can be accounted for when a slave dies. They are immediately removed upon death and stored in a vault until they are needed again. The priests have a register with each slave’s name and bracelet numbers. I received a serious lashing and time in isolation for the knowledge I had supposedly withheld, but now the guard is indebted to me. Our bracelets are worth a lot of money to these people and to see them clamped on our wrists insults the poorest of their sensibilities. Don't forget that most of these junior priests are here for the job safety and not due to any true religious feelings. Hunger will make one very pious indeed. They may have sworn a vow of poverty, but it’s a guaranteed poverty, with a given daily meal and a drier, warmer bed than your average laborer, who might not get much if there is no work or if the fields do not produce. They’re not stupid, they see the fat priests and their warm clothing and though they hear the stories about self-denial and moderation their eyes tell them that a job in the clergy is auspicious and most importantly satiating.”
“Surely the Head knew that if she had been without her bracelets for long, she would be a danger to the entire compound?”
“The priests underestimate us; they assume that we are defeated. Their biggest weapon is the fact that they break our spirits, not our powers, and our biggest defense is to let them think they have succeeded. Your old Keeper was one of the strongest and most powerful slaves in the Keep but she was broken. She couldn’t take it any longer because she had lost hope in the Uprising. They had well and truly broken her.”
“So what’s stopping the guard from simply killing you?” I was trembling at the thought.
“I’ve made him realize that the slaves are more like a collective, what I know we all know. If I were to die for any reason he would be exposed by someone else. It is in his interest that I remain alive for as long as possible and we have an understanding of mutual wellbeing. He looks out for me, I keep his secret and from time to time I might give him a spool of silver thread or other expensive materials that pass through my hands in this place. It has no value to me but is important to him. In a place of so many dangers and enemies it pays to make some alliances.”
I was disturbed by the fact that one of our own could be in league with them but I understood his reasoning, and I admired him for it.
As we were walking to the Feeding Hall I said, “I don’t even know your name or where you’re from."
He stopped walking and looked at me, “My name is Vyktor, and I’m from the North where we’re used to the cold and the dark."
“How long have you been in here, Vyktor from the North?” I said with a smile.
“Too long.”
“Do you think we’ll ever get out?”
He took my hand and briefly squeezed it, “Have some hope, Theodora, and one day I will get us both out of here.”
Eleven
The years that followed were the happiest of my time in the Keep, if one could call them that. By the time I met Vyktor, from what I could roughly calculate, I had already been there approximately two hundred and forty three years. Two hundred and forty three years was the lifetime of several people and yet it had passed in a monotonous haze. The seventy years or so I had spent in the wild before being caught, though a shorter time period than what I had spent in the Keep, felt much more vivid in my memory. It beggars belief that such an existence of endless work and torture could last for so long. The life of a slav
e often feels stretched, dreary and tortuous and one without a foreseeable end is even more so. I often thought of Shaq’ al and the way she had passed. If it hadn’t been for Vyktor and his endless supply of controlled optimism I would have probably exploded in a fit of rage one day, and that would have been the end of me. I knew what they did to rebels and sometimes my repetitive fantasy of ripping Father Superior’s heart out with my bare hands, drinking the blood from its detached vessels and then being publicly executed in the main hall gave me secret relief. I thought it a fitting ending to such an inglorious existence and at least my pain would cease and I would have wreaked some havoc in this soulless organization.
Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) Page 12