Blood

by K. J. Wignall

  There was no romance, though the brief moments in her company warmed and restored me. I knew enough to know that I would have loved her if I had been able, if part of my curse had not been the loss of that physical emotion.

  And the real curse was that I had not lost the memory of love, not lost my longing for things I’d once known. So in the year that Arabella was seventeen, I waited in vain through the warm nights like any lovesick youth would have done, but she never appeared again.

  I wondered if she’d been struck down by some illness or other in the previous months, or if she had been married off and sent away. For several years I drifted around the city in the hope of seeing her, drawing as close to the lit world of affluent houses as I dared.

  And it was not until the winter of 1742, long after hope had gone, that I saw her again. There was some entertainment in the city’s recently constructed hall, drawing the coaches of society families from all around.

  I was observing from the shadows, as I’ve observed so much of the history and life of this city, and then I saw her. Arabella descended from a coach, and apart from the evening clothes she wore, she had changed little more than I had in the intervening years.

  I was so transfixed to see her again, and so unexpectedly, that I took several paces towards her, my mind spinning with thoughts, clinging to the impossible hope that she had somehow become like me.

  I was only a few meters away when the woman who accompanied her turned and fixed me with a stare, at first hostile, then puzzled. This woman was clearly the younger girl’s mother, a woman of forty-two, much older then than it is now.

  It was as her puzzled expression briefly appeared troubled by some distant recollection, as if she was remembering a recurring dream from her childhood, that I realized my mistake. For it was the older woman who was Arabella and as the recollection finally knitted itself together in her mind, I doubt she could have looked more horrified if death himself had confronted her.

  I think she fainted, though I couldn’t be sure. I heard the commotion only as I fled from the scene. And as I thought back to the way age had played itself out upon her face, I think I felt more alone than I have done at any other time over these seven and a half centuries.

  That is why I tried to destroy myself because I realized at that moment that my life was nothing but a cruel trick played on me by fate. Just as the gods of Ancient Greece devised cruel and eternal punishments for those who had offended them, so I had been forced to live a half-life for eternity, with a withered heart and no hope of escape.

  At least, almost no hope. Several years earlier, I had acquired a rare and unusual book—and, for all its faults, I still have it in my collection—which included the first account I’d ever read of creatures that shared most of the traits of my sickness.

  Using the information gleaned from that book, I returned to my lair on the night I saw Arabella again, I fashioned a wooden stake, lay on my daybed, and plunged it with all my might into my heart.

  The result was instantaneous, my strength falling away from me. I was immediately so physically weakened that my hands fell to my sides and I could no longer lift them. For the briefest moment, I was happy, sensing that death was upon me.

  But death did not come. I screamed, not in pain, but in the agony of frustration, but I couldn’t move myself. I was doubly imprisoned, firstly by my sickness and then by the stake I’d driven through my own heart.

  It’s impossible to describe the time I spent in that purgatory, pinned and helpless, yet fully conscious of my condition, hour after hour, day after day, year after year. I had thought that my condition could be no worse than it already was, but I was wrong.

  The sleep of hibernation finally overtook me. When I awoke, the stake was gone from my heart and the wound had already greatly healed. I wish I could say that I felt joy, but I felt only as a criminal must when he is released from prison, but sent into exile.

  I found the stake on the floor nearby. The wood had started to crack and I could only assume that this had reduced its hold on me, that I had somehow managed to tear it free in my sleeping state, just as the sleepwalking Arabella might once have removed a thorn from her hand or foot.

  And yes, even freshly delivered from those decades of torment, I still thought of Arabella in the first days after my recovery. But a new world awaited me in the city above. Arabella was dead, so was the daughter with whom I had last seen her and everyone else arriving for that distant night’s entertainment.

  The year was 1813 and, though it had taken the best part of a century, I had learned a valuable lesson, that death wanted me no more than life did. I was forever suspended between those two states and I believed it would always be so.

  16

  Will sat watching Eloise as she lounged on the daybed with Jex’s notebook, another notebook of her own, and an array of pens, copying various things from one book into the other, engrossed in her research. She looked quite at home sitting there, as if this was the most comfortable apartment in the world.

  He was glad of one thing—that she didn’t seem upset at all by what had happened between them. It was as if it had slipped from her mind entirely, but Will couldn’t shake it loose quite so easily, the touch of her lips, that briefest moment of pleasure before the torment and pain.

  He made an effort to clear his thoughts and within moments he was dreaming again, seeing that same blue sky, even as he heard the sound of her pen skating across the paper. That he should have dreamt twice like this in so short a time was strange, but he hardly wanted to question it.

  Eloise was there with him again. She said something, though he heard no words, and she smiled and moved closer and kissed him. Even as a part of his brain reasoned that he was merely revisiting the thwarted kiss in the church above, he knew this was different.

  He felt the softness of her lips, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the other warmth of her body against his. There was no pain this time, but even beyond the pleasure there was something else, a sense of completeness, as if he’d been journeying towards this kiss for seven centuries …

  “I’ve finished.”

  Her words brought him sharply back to the present, a reminder that he could journey for another seven centuries and that happiness would still remain tantalizingly out of reach.

  Eloise looked at him and said, “I startled you—sorry.”

  He smiled.

  “You didn’t. I was dreaming.”

  “You dream while you’re awake?”

  “Not very often, but yes.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Nothing. A summer sky.”

  She smiled and he felt exposed, wondering if she’d seen through his lie. But her mind skipped on and she tapped Jex’s notebook where it lay on the bed next to her, saying, “Wasn’t as difficult as I thought—all the prophecies are in block capitals. The rest is just like a diary or a journal.”

  “That was the impression I got.”

  “So!” She looked at her own notebook as she said, “Okay, there’s nothing about Lorcan Labraid in here, nothing about Wyndham or the ghosts in the mirrors. But there’s a guy called Asmund who gets a couple of mentions. First it says he waits with the sprites.”

  “Spirits.”

  “No, I thought it said that at first, but it’s definitely sprites. Then it says, ‘The church will speak, that lost its people, and Asmund is its voice.’ And then, ‘His maker awaits in the church that lost people and steeple.’ His maker—that has to be a reference to the person who bit you, don’t you think? Asmund’s a vampire, and he’s waiting in a church somewhere, for you, I guess.” She stopped and shuddered slightly, as if hit by a chill, and said, “Didn’t you see all of this when you looked through the book?”

  “There was so much to take in,” Will said, distracted though, because he sensed some shift in the atmosphere of the room, something troubling. Was that why she’d shuddered, because she sensed it, too?

  Eloise looked at her no
tes again as she said, “Who knew? Jex’s notebook is guiding you to the one person you’ve been wanting to meet all this time.”

  And now Will knew what was wrong. Her breath rose up from her lips and hung in the air like mist as she absentmindedly reached for her coat and put it on. The temperature had dropped sharply as she’d unlocked this mystery for him, as if some unnatural presence had come into the room with them, drawn by her words.

  So maybe she was right about the book leading him to the creature’s hiding place. The creature had a name— Asmund—and if Will found Asmund, he would find out why this had been done to him, why he’d been chosen and not another, why he’d been denied his rightful place in history. Above all, he would have the chance to repay Asmund for the curse of this sickness.

  Eloise was shivering slightly now, though she hardly seemed to notice it, even as she pulled her coat tightly around her. And as distorted as the atmosphere was becoming around them, as much as the temperature dropped, as much as this simple conversation seemed to unsettle the underworld, Will wanted to keep going. Worse, as much as he feared this could be dangerous for both of them, he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Then Asmund must serve Lorcan Labraid, and in that one person I’ll have the key to my destiny, and more importantly, vengeance for what he did to me and my family.”

  She nodded, as if for the first time she truly understood his cursed existence, and said, “So we have to find that church.”

  Even as she spoke, Will felt something behind him— not a scent, but a presence, almost as if someone had touched him on the shoulder. It unnerved him enough that he started to turn, but he was still facing Eloise when he heard a harsh, urgent whisper close to his ear.

  “The time comes!”

  He spun around, seeing only the empty chamber, the candles, the openings into the other chambers. But he could hear more whispering now, and he recognized the voices of the spirits they’d seen earlier.

  Behind him, Eloise said, “You can hear it, too, can’t you? Like whispering, like the women in the mirrors?”

  He turned back to her and she looked small and frozen huddled there on the daybed, her skin almost blue with the cold. He nodded and she nodded back at him and said, “Good, it’s not just me. And you probably haven’t noticed, but it’s turned really cold in here.”

  He stood and said, “The whispering, it’s coming from in there.” He pointed to the passageway into the rocky chamber with the pool in it.

  She stood, too, making clear she was going wherever he went. He could hardly blame her. Will was unnerved himself because even Edward’s spirit had struggled to enter these chambers uninvited, and because these spirits had briefly brought him back to his senses.

  They seemed more concerned with Eloise than they did with him and the thought of her being in danger now made him as fearful as it should have done a few minutes before. This was not her battle.

  He walked into the passage, the whispers becoming louder. The voices weren’t speaking in unison, but layered over each other, so that only the occasional word was audible. Even Will could probably only hear what they were saying because he had heard the phrase earlier.

  “When the time comes … Will you … When the time comes … Will you sacrifice her, when the time comes?”

  The question was so insistent that he began to doubt himself. He had no idea what he was leading Eloise into or if he’d be able to protect her. In the heat of the moment, might he be tempted? One more human life in exchange for … ? But he didn’t want to think about it, not least because he knew in his soul that she was not just one more life.

  The chamber was empty, but the whispering seemed all around them now, echoing off the rocky walls of the underground cave it had once been, sometimes sounding so close that Will kept turning, expecting to see one of the spirits behind him.

  Eloise walked over to the pool and placed her candle at the side of it. She stared for a moment at the surface of the water, then said, “Er, you might want to look at this.”

  He stepped closer and looked down. Where the candle illuminated the water it had transformed, so that now it appeared as if they were looking down through a rippling, green-tinged window at a room far below. It was almost like the cloister of a convent and down there below walked the women in robes, whispering their constant prayer.

  As with the mirrors in the church above, the moment Will looked down at the women, they seemed to sense his presence and slowly dispersed, walking beyond the edges of the vision till only the stone floor of the phantom cloister remained.

  The water began to darken; the whispers grew more distant, but once again, Will got the unpleasant sensation of someone standing behind him. He turned and this time saw one of the robed figures, life-size and solid, disappearing into the passageway.

  He followed, even though a part of him didn’t want to, and Eloise hurried to pick up the candle and go after him. He caught another glimpse of the spirit ahead as it turned into the more structured passageway to his burial chamber. Even though he knew it had to be a spirit, the woman looked solid.

  She’d gone from the passage by the time he stepped into it, but he knew there was only one place she could go. He stepped through into the burial chamber, Eloise immediately behind him, their candles illuminating the walls, the earth around the lip of the casket, the hooded figure standing with its back to them in the far corner.

  The spirit didn’t move, but stood facing the wall in silence.

  “What do you want of me?” There was no response, and Will took a step forwards, but Eloise put her hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  Eloise looked at the figure and repeated Will’s question, “What do you want of me?”

  This time there was a flicker of movement, as if the spirit responded in some way to her voice, and Eloise started to walk forwards herself. Even as Will admired her bravery, he was full of misgivings, not wanting the spirit to turn, not wanting to see the ghost of a face that Eloise had seen in the mirrors. Nor could he understand what it was that he dreaded so much about this spirit and its purpose here.

  He sensed that Eloise wasn’t in danger from the spirit itself, far from it, and yet he couldn’t stop himself saying, “Eloise, wait.”

  Her hand was poised, ready to reach out and touch the woman, but she hesitated and then backed away as the robe started to crackle with energy, sparks flying off the fibers like so much static electricity. The figure appeared to be merging with the wall, the sparks forming together in ragged lightning patterns across the surface of the robe, becoming more intense.

  The light became so bright that Will had to shield his eyes and when he lowered his hand again, only Eloise was standing there, the last remnants of the crackling lights dying out on the wall of the chamber.

  “What happened?”

  Eloise was still staring into the corner, transfixed, as she said, “She walked right through the wall.” Still she stared for a moment or two, as if hoping the spirit would return, but finally she turned and said, “I’m not imagining it, am I? That spirit, she … she responded to me more than she did to you.”

  Will nodded and said, “For whatever reason, I think they’re trying to protect you, and reminding me of what I should have known from the start, that this is my search and that I should do it alone.”

  Her face changed instantly, a glimpse of the unfriendly girl he’d first encountered by the river, and she sounded determined as she said, “No, I don’t think it’s that at all! You need me. I know you haven’t needed anyone else for hundreds of years, but I think you need me. And you have to admit, even by your standards, there’s some really strange stuff happening to you right now.”

  He felt like telling her that he had always needed someone, that the need had never gone away, but instead, he said, “Eloise, everything about my existence is strange. Is it not strange that I’m standing here talking to you seven hundred years after I should have died an old man? Perhaps you’ll only fully understand how strange th
is is when you’re seventy and I am still the boy you see before you now.”

  “That’s if you’re still alive.” He looked at her questioningly and she said, “It just seems that from the minute you found that notebook, something was set in motion, that you’ll find your destiny …” She waved her hand casually at the buried casket between them. “Or you’ll die trying.”

  Will nodded a little in agreement. He still didn’t want to tell her how appealing that last possibility sounded. Death was as tempting as a warm bed to a sleepy child, but before he surrendered, he had to know the truth. He had to know who had done this to him and why. If Asmund had been responsible, he wanted to know who he was and why he’d done it, whether for Lorcan Labraid or some other thing of evil and, of course, he wanted to repay him.

  “Maybe I do need you to help me find Asmund, but …” He couldn’t think of a way of ending the sentence without revealing what he’d heard the spirits saying, so he shrugged and said, “Let’s go back into the other room.”

  Will stepped aside for her to go first, but stayed close behind her, even though the atmosphere had returned to normal and it was obvious that this visitation had ended.

  Eloise walked back towards the daybed, but stopped short, pointing as she said, “Jex’s notebook.” It lay open on the daybed.

  “What of it?”

  She put the candle down and turned to Will as she said, “It wasn’t open when I left it.”

  She was right. He remembered her tapping the closed book with her finger before she started reading from her own notes. She picked up the book now and looked at the two open pages, trying to find what the spirit had so wanted them to see.

  “The writing’s hard to read—it’s just one of his diary pages.” She scanned it, then stopped and looked at Will, then back at the page, incredulous. “Why didn’t I see this before?”

  “What does it say?”

  Chris and Rachel know the truth. They have seen and they know.

  She pointed to the line in the middle of the dense script that filled both pages and Will nodded, even as he scanned the rest of what he could see, hoping that the spirits had been trying to leave some other message than this.