During the time I was with Vyktor the nightly visits from the Priest stopped and were replaced by his own. Whenever we could, we would spend the night together in my cage making love or simply lying in each other’s arms. Our existence was delicate and fragile and we were very aware of the dangerous situation we were placing ourselves in. Often, simply the fact that we sat together on the dirt in my cage there for each other gave us the strength to go on. There weren’t many sweet words, and only a few promises, but instead we were held together by a loving bond of understanding and solidarity. Perhaps if we had been free things would’ve been different, perhaps we would have never been together and we probably would have never known such powerful emotions.
Of course the daily drudge of work, pain and hunger would continue but it no longer mattered to me as long as I got to see Vyktor every night. And then one night he didn’t come, which was followed by another and then another. Worried sick I asked the others discreetly if they knew what had happened but no one seemed to know. On the fifth day of no visit from Vyktor I heard some old familiar footsteps in the gravel. My teeth instinctively showed themselves as my nose caught the smell of cloves that always foretold his arrival. This visit, however, was not from Father Eusebios but from the Father Superior himself.
“Hello Theodora,” he said standing just outside my cage.
“To what do I owe this visit, Father?” I tried little to disguise the contempt in my voice.
“I know it is not me you expected.”
I gave no answer.
“Come now, don’t be coy. I know you have been making close friends in recent months.”
I continued to gaze angrily at him through the bars and I swear I could hear the beating of his heart and the blood coursing through his veins, reminding me of my fantasy.
“We have been watching you and your friend Vyktor closely.”
My breath stalled and my eyes widened without realizing.
“Yes, you weren’t aware of the fact that you were being monitored, were you?”
“What have you done to him, you vile priest?” I spat, my blood boiling.
“Careful child, you don’t want to anger me tonight. Your dear friend is being held in his cage. It’ll be a long time before he can roam free like he used to round here. Sadly, you creatures can never appreciate the liberties we give you. You always have to take it that step further. We select the Keepers judiciously and even then we still watch their movements. Not even the best trained dog will remain obedient if you put a juicy bone in front of him.”
Approaching my cage a little more, he produced a silver cross from inside the folds of his sleeves and gestured me to step back, away from the bars. He proceeded to unlock the gate and secured my wrists to the wall in that familiar way Father Eusebios used to do. He stood looking at me and I hissed showing him my fangs. His contempt for me was obvious but he continued to look. I dreaded to think what he was about to do. In a swift gesture he removed my garment and I braced myself for his approach. He rolled back his sleeve to reveal an old hand and I wondered what his method would be. My skin crawled at the renewed fear of being raped by these men, and my stomach jumped to my throat in disgust. At least the other one had been fast. This one seemed to want to prolong the ordeal. He proceeded to touch my body tentatively, but scientifically too. At first he felt my thighs, and then my buttocks, followed by my stomach and my breasts, which he continued to fondle for a long while. Finally he inserted his fingers into my vagina and prodded for several minutes while I squirmed. Removing his fingers he passed them under his nose and smelled them with concentration. Eventually he stepped back and lowered his sleeve. I hung there naked and prostrate.
“Wonderful! Just as I had suspected! You, my dear, are carrying a child.” Suddenly my heart sank and I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Don’t look so amazed, it does happen to you creatures from time to time. Over the years we toiled in trying to breed you. Initially by allowing the priests to impregnate the slaves, but cross fertilization never seemed to work. We realized it was ungodly to propagate demons with holy human seed and concluded that your curse also rendered you infertile. Then by some stroke of luck two salacious slaves came together and in time the female presented the signs of being with child. The fruit of their amorous behavior came to term after several months but was born sickly and deformed. We were amazed by this turn of events, however, as it meant that the option of breeding did not need to be completely abandoned and thus we proceeded to inseminate the females with male seed; that too, however, yielded no results. Our next thought was to segregate some male and female slaves together and let things happen naturally, as it were. True to form and their insatiable makeup the slaves were soon mating and producing young, not as effectively or uniformly as humans but some encouraging results were achieved to make the effort worthwhile. Your offspring, it turns out, are further proof of your ungodly constitution as they are all born feeble, monstrous and deformed but they are moldable and have highly acute senses and can be used for a series of tasks, particularly hunting slaves. Isn’t it poetic that the products of your loins are created to capture their own? These aberrations which are produced in a delicate distillation process are then fine-tuned to seek and locate others of their species in order to help us fulfill God's divine orders.”
Oh how Father Superior loved his monologues; he could preach for hours on the benefits of his toil, so devoted was he to his work, and yet after a while all I could hear was simply the hum of his words.
The heavy slap to my face was unexpected. The tears dislodged from my eyes and fell to the ground in big drops.
“I fear you have lost your focus, pay attention! As I was saying, after my close examination you too are now with child after your tryst with Vyktor. We have been watching you closely and now that I have examined you for the signs, I have confirmed that your term has started and you will be moved to the breeding area for close observation so that you do not attempt to rid yourself of the child."
“What will happen to Vyktor?”
“Only for the fact that extreme sorrow has proven non-beneficial to expectant slaves, I shall inform you that he will remain alive, in strict isolation, punished for his insolence in permitting himself to come into contact with one of his wards.”
“But you said that is the only way for the slaves to become pregnant? You are punishing him for something you are essentially encouraging?”
“It is indeed, but we expect obedience before anything else.”
His answer did not particularly astound me; it was just like these people to expect everything to be done their way which included punishing us for something they covertly encouraged.
***
I was brought to the breeding sector under extreme secrecy and with my eyes blindfolded so that I could not deduce where it was in comparison to the rest of the Keep. Unfortunately for them, the priests always underestimated how much was given away by the smell of the place, probably because their senses were not as developed as our own. By the quality of the air and the reduction in dampness and humidity it struck me as if the Breedery, as it was called, was either above ground or quite near the top of the cave system. It was significantly cleaner, warmer and more welcoming than the rest of the Keep. There were some windows on the upper walls but they were kept sealed during the day, to keep most of the light out and opened at night to let in the fresh air. There was a fireplace in every room and wooden bunks in the dormitory on which the expectant slaves slept. In all, this was the highest level of comfort I had experienced in over two centuries. The smell that wafted from the back implied that there was a separate cooking facility up here but other than the half dozen expectant mothers I could see no new-borns and no nursery. The guard walked me to my bunk and proceeded to attach an additional silver cuff to my ankle, causing the familiar singe to be sensed anew. I looked at him in wonderment but he felt no obligation to explain himself. I stood and pulled at the chain and realized that it just
about gave me the option to get on or off the bed but little else. Eventually I was approached by a nun in the usual red livery who had a permanent smile on her face. She must have been about forty five in human years (augmented, I assumed, by our blood) and extremely small in stature.
“Welcome to the Breedery, my dear,” she said looking up with some effort. She appeared controlled and stiff and tightly packed inside her skin.
“I don't think I'm supposed to be here.”
“Nonsense! Father Superior is never wrong in his diagnoses. He’s yet to send me a girl who wasn't pregnant.”
She patted my skinny belly in a pseudo-tender gesture and gazed at it with the forced affection demanded of her position.
“How long do I have to be here?”
“Are you in rush, dear? Or have you somewhere better to be? Most of the girls are relieved when they come here. They no longer have to work and they receive a daily meal as well as improved bedding. What more could you ask for?” Inadvertently I looked at the chain on my foot.
“That’s so you don't wander off,” she’d cocked her head to the side as if talking to a child.
“You haven't answered my question.”
She shot me a glance that implied I’d overstepped my mark and took a step closer as she looked up at me. “The truth is we don't really know. Your kind is unpredictable that way; however the least amount of time you can expect to spend in here is a year. No one has ever given birth before an annual gestation, some have even gone as far as two and a half. We have found, however, that the better care a girl receives the earlier she gives birth, so I don't want you worrying about anything other than resting and growing that little one.”
Her ‘pleasant’ demeanor returned in a flash and covered her face like a mask.
“And what happens if I want to relieve myself?” I said defiantly tugging at the chain on my foot knowing full well that the silver would burn my skin once more.
“We take you to the privy area every few hours, so no need to worry.”
“And at night?”
“At night you get a bucket or you just hold it, the choice is yours.”
“No different than my cage.”
“You'll feel right at home then,” she announced without a trace of irony.
After she left I sat on the bed taking in my new surroundings. In the one next to mine lay a young girl with an enormous belly.
“Don't worry,” she said, “it's really quite pleasant here once you get used to it.”
I looked at her but said nothing.
“It might be restricted, but you won't be as hungry and you won't miss the back breaking work, trust me.”
“How many of these nuns are there here?”
“The nurses? About three.”
“And slaves?”
“Five at the moment. Just the two of us here, and another three in a different section of the Breedery.”
“Is that all?”
“I'm sure you were told about the difficulties in conceiving by the Father Superior were you not?”
“So there’re three of them for five of us?”
“Yes, and the likelihood of escape is even harder here than it is in the rest of the Keep so you might as well forget about it.”
Oblivious to her words I pressed on. “Do they sleep here at night?”
“No, they have their own dormitory like the rest of the clergy, but there’s an armed guard here instead. You’re better off behaving anyway. They seem to take it easy on you if you obey.”
“How close to the surface are we?”
“I don’t know, quite close if not completely at ground level.”
“Have you ever heard voices from outside?”
“No never. These walls are too thick and the windows too high.”
At that point the head nun walked in and we had to stop talking. She had two young boys with her. They looked no more than twelve years old and were dressed in plain grey clothing. They were not in clerical robes of any kind but appeared to be ‘civilians.’ She said something to them and they sat on the ground in front of us.
“Feed from them,” she commanded. My one smelled of sweat and I could also detect a faint whiff of animal dung and milk on his clothing. They were innocent, greasy and pimply like any young boy would be but they appeared to be cared for. When he loosened his clothing to allow me to bite, I noticed the same scars on his neck as on the nuns from the Feeding Halls.
When I bit into him, for the first time in a long time I received images other than self-loathing, corporeal sacrifice, obedience, prayer and vicarious sexuality. This boy was fresh and as yet untouched by this sect. I sensed carefreeness but also work, flowers, cows, goats and chickens and sunshine and I couldn’t help but smile. Oh how I missed the sunshine; pure warming sunshine in combination with the fresh air on my skin. Utter bliss! When I finished drinking by myself for a change and without being prompted by anyone, I put my hand on the young boy’s head without realizing, perhaps in gratitude for what he had unwittingly just offered me. He gave me a slightly unnatural smile and then he got up and left after the head nun said something to them in a language I didn’t understand.
After feeding time they locked us into the dormitory, presumably to rest, and left for the afternoon.
“How was that for a proper meal in how long?” Asked my bunk mate.
“Better than I have the words to describe,” I said closing my eyes and remembering the relayed images. “I might not be pregnant, but I am enjoying this little gift of chance."
“Don’t be foolish, of course you’re pregnant, if they brought you here then you’re definitely pregnant.”
Why was everyone so convinced I was pregnant? I had abandoned the thought of having children so this was not an option I intended to entertain. Changing the subject I asked, “Why are they feeding us with outside people?”
“They believe that male blood is stronger than female, which supposedly helps our babies.”
“And are they not afraid of us? They do not appear to be indoctrinated in the faith and from my past experiences men are terrified of blood sucking demons.”
“From what I have deduced from the images I get from these outsiders, they are babies who were orphaned or abandoned to the Church because their parents could not afford to raise them, so the nuns and priests do it. They are the closest thing they have to a family so I’m guessing they believe what they are told. They’re slowly brought under the wing of the Priests and gradually introduced to the faith so it doesn’t all come suddenly to them. They’re some of the ones that eventually become guards and low-ranking nuns. I recognize a lot of them from up here when I get back into the Keep.”
“How many times have you been here?” I asked in amazement.
“In the ninety three years I have been in the Keep, I have experienced four pregnancies.”
“But they said we are hard to breed?”
“It would seem my particular skill is to be fruitful.”
“And have all your babies lived?” I continued with some trepidation.
“No, not all,” she said with tension in her voice.
“What happens to them after…?”
“They take them.”
“Where?”
“They have secret nurseries. Not even the regular nuns are allowed in there.”
“What about the father, what happened to him?”
“At first they kept us separate, but after some time they allowed us to meet again. Presumably to see if we would mate again, their word not mine, which inadvertently we did. They felt so accomplished by these games with our lives. They feel like real instruments of God when things go according to their plans. The third time I was returned to the Keep we decided to no longer be intimate so they killed him in front of me as punishment.”
I gasped.
“The fourth pregnancy was when they promised one of the slaves his freedom if he forced himself on me. I don’t know what happened to him and if they kept their word
, but he was successful. I hate myself both for my ‘gift’ and for being responsible for the death of someone I cared for. Presumably I am doomed to perpetual impregnation until such time when I take my life or they do it for me.”
“I can’t say that is particularly surprising,” I said with resignation. “We are perfectly disposable for them. How did you end up here?”
“I was born in Sicily but was Afflicted when I came to the mainland looking for work. Rome is a particularly popular place for our kind and our hunters as a consequence. Some have gone as far as to say that there is a group in operation that provides this sect with the freshly Afflicted for a substantial fee. I suspect that was what happened to me because I was arrested as soon as I approached the city with some feeble excuse of stealing and attacked and Afflicted in one of the cells during the night, before being brought here almost immediately. I don’t recall much of the journey as the condition was taking hold of my body quite violently but this is the only place I have known since I was bitten. Most of my knowledge about the world comes from whatever I've heard from other slaves and I’ve seen little beyond my village. I’m Francesca by the way.”
Bathory's Secret: When All The Time In The World Is Not Enough (Affliction Vampires Book 1) Page 13