The Stuart Vampire

by Andrea Zuvich

“Good morrow, villagers of Coffin’s Bishop! I have been reborn this day, but where you will be going, there can be no return.” Some villagers fainted and others began crying.

  “Winthrop,” Henry said, his voice loud and clear. “Since we are in a church, I have a confession to make unto you all. ‘Twas I who killed Peter, Mark, and Geoffrey, and now, we will destroy you, too.”

  Many began to protest against this.

  “Villainous monsters are you both!” Winthrop cried. “May you burn in hell for eternity, thou fiendish murderers, thou!”

  “Monsters and murderers are we, Winthrop?” Susanna said in a mocking tone. She tutted. “I wonder if the villagers know that you accused my mother of witchcraft merely because she denied you her bed! I also wonder if they know that you tried to do to me in my cell what your son and the two others did to me. Do you know what you deserve? Do you?”

  Winthrop looked up at her in dread disbelief and screamed, “Away with thee, foul temptress, and trouble us no more.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she ripped off his breeches with her razor-sharp nails, and, finding his puny little member, tore it out. Winthrop doubled over, roaring in pain, blood spurting out between his legs. Susanna threw his flesh upon the floor as everyone screamed in horror.

  “You really are a witch!” cried Thomas the baker.

  “Never! There is no such thing as a witch, you fools,” shouted Susanna, as she walked from one pew to the next. “My mother was no witch, either! Nay, a woman that you find different or strange, or whom you may envy or covet is deemed by you all to be a witch! Anything that you do not understand, you deem witchcraft! None of you — not a single one of you here said a word to save me. Not one of you tried to help me. There was not one ounce of pity, of human kindness in your hearts. You, all of you, danced with glee as the rope slowly stole my life from me. I made a vow upon the scaffold, and now I will have my revenge!”

  The screams then began in earnest, and panic rippled throughout the room.

  “God save us!” exclaimed Honour Forester, bolting towards the door as well. Susanna appeared before her and dug her nails into the woman’s arms.

  “God is the one who sent me hither, you fool. Today is your Judgement Day,” Susanna snarled. “For your many sins, you shall be punished. And as you showed me no mercy, I shall repay in kind!”

  Henry and Susanna then began to feed, and the frenzy of her first kill began to surge throughout her body. Susanna tore into her second victim, and then the third, and it continued thus, again, and again. Arterial blood squirted onto the walls and floor, heads were torn off bodies. Limbs dismembered and throats ripped out from those who had spread rumours about Susanna in the past. The shrieks began to die down as the number of living villagers dwindled.

  Within but a few minutes, it was over.

  Susanna turned to Henry, and both of them were covered in blood. She beheld the utter carnage about her, and then looked back to her husband.

  “Now, then, let us find your Begetter.”

  ***

  First, they torched every last building in Coffin’s Bishop and, as the smoke and ash rose into the mid-morning sky, they flew, hand in hand, over Sanguinem Wood. They landed gently upon the ground of the castle ward. Henry knew Griselda would be there, waiting for him to return to her, believing Susanna gone forever. Griselda could barely believe her eyes when she saw Susanna, strong and beautiful, and very much alive.

  “What is she doing here?” she roared, leaping from atop the castle battlements and landing in front of them.

  Griselda saw with dread that Susanna’s eyes were of the Other.

  “You! You are of the Other!” she spoke with fear and anger as she pointed at Susanna. Suddenly, she leapt through the air and kicked Susanna, sending the latter hurtling through the air and on to the ground with a thunderous crash. The two women grappled, kicking, hissing and clawing each other with fury. Henry could only pick Susanna up from her falls, for as he was still bound to Griselda, he could not join in the melee. No matter how much he wished to, he simply could not attack her. And so he looked on as Susanna, only a new vampiress, fought against Griselda’s venomous and knowledgeable attacks.

  The noonday sun soon began to shine brightly, and Griselda, weakened by its power, began to slow down. Susanna was immune from the sun’s power, and she She fell over and reached out for Henry, who would not go to her. Susanna, ripping her dress up to her thigh, revealed a stake carved from the femur of Cain, which she had strapped on around her leg. This stake had been a gift from the blue angels. Griselda was quivering as she had not had such exposure to the sun before, and it fell upon her uncovered flesh and burned her. Griselda’s once fair skin began to singe, and she felt physical pain for the first time since she had been Begotten, and this is when Susanna made her final move.

  Deftly, she thrust the stake cleanly through the vulnerable spot and into Griselda’s heart. Griselda froze, her face locked in a terrible expression for what seemed like a small eternity. Suddenly, the Renaissance vampiress shrieked as hellish flame and sulphurous smoke formed around her. She was burning, and in these flames her true appearance was revealed — a haggard, decrepit woman, full of sagging skin, and wrinkled flesh. The Devil’s gift had now left her.

  As the flames entered her body through the gaping wound, she exploded with such violence that she sent Susanna and Henry hurtling through the air and against a wall. The powerful ripple effect from the blast toppled the whole of the castle, and a great cloud of dust was expelled into the air. The potent stench of sulphur soon dissipated, and there was nothing left of Griselda but a patch of ashes fluttering about in the wind.

  The pink and golden rays of dawn trickled through the black dust and warmed them as they lay upon the rubble of Sanguinem Castle. Henry’s long black hair had entwined with the red-gold of Susanna’s tresses, and they opened their eyes and, seeing they were both well, they smiled to each other. They had survived; they had defeated Griselda and razed Coffin’s Bishop to the ground.

  Despite this, Susanna felt the pangs of guilt, just as Henry had after the eating-house massacre. The faces of those she had butchered with her new powers were etched into her mind. They had been people she had known all of her life. She had suffered incredibly at their hands, but still she regretted the carnage.

  She sat up and said, “I never thought I was capable of doing such abominable things, but when I died, I spoke to my mother, to Samuel, and my father. I saw them, Henry! I spoke with them! They were happy and together. They told me everything. They told me all about what you had done. They told me of Griselda’s past, and of the vampire Adolphe. They said I could return to you, and in exchange, I had to do all of this to show my loyalty.” The honey of her new voice captivated him, but it was imbued with great sadness. “But I am left wondering… am I an evil being now?”

  A single crystal clear tear rolled down her porcelain cheek. Henry sat up immediately and took her face between his hands, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. They neither of them would ever again weep the blood tears of the Devil.

  “You can never be evil,” he whispered, tenderly. “In my eyes, you have ever been good and true. You have suffered more than anyone I’ve ever known, but you stayed warm, you stayed alive. You did not let their wrongdoing make you hard and bitter.”

  “This is a new dawn,” she stated, her white-blue irises taking in the increasing light of day. “I used to think that only man was capable of cruelty, but now I see that it exists in everything.” Susanna would never know the adverse effects of sunlight, for she had been born to the Light. Henry relished the feeling of the sunshine upon his skin; he felt stronger, not weaker, now. “I hope I never have to do such a thing again. I never even knew that all the stories were true, and we are all pawns in their game.”

  Henry nodded in agreement. “It is an ancient battle between those two powerful creatures, and we were pawns for them in their never-ending war. Griselda was just Satan’s pawn. He use
d her to spread his evil, and she did so willingly, just for the sake of a pretty face.” Had she been mortal and refused the Devil that night so long ago, Griselda would still have met Adolphe. His love, his devotion could have been the tonic her jaded spirit needed to become a good woman. But she had given herself to the darkness, where love could not flourish. And what could have been was lost.

  “One could almost pity her,” Susanna replied. “She thought you were a reincarnation of her Adolphe, but you were and would always be Henry. You did not love her, and loved me instead.” She paused, taking in the beauty of the gold in the trees as it shimmered across the land, bringing light to the darkness. “Do you think it will ever end? The battle between good and evil?” she asked.

  He brushed some fiery tendrils of hair away from her face. “No. For as long as man walks this earth, there will be enmity, and war, and horror.”

  She turned to her undead husband. “But there is also love.”

  He nodded. “Aye, and that is the greatest thing worth fighting for.”

  They turned their faces towards the sun, and continued to bask in its warmth, and in the happy knowledge that they could truly now be together, without fear, without the thought of Griselda’s return. He rose to his feet and helped Susanna up as well. They then heard a light barking sound coming from under the debris. Toby was still alive! They shifted fragments of the rubble off and, sure enough, there he was. He yapped again as he saw Susanna. She picked him up and took her into her arms.

  Henry, Susanna, and Toby then left the smoking ruins of Sanguinem Castle and Coffin’s Bishop and never again returned. Coffin’s Bishop and its loathsome inhabitants had been destroyed, and the ghastly events that took place there, forgotten. Nature soon swallowed up the village ruins.

  In time, Henry and Susanna set up their own travelling company of players, and Susanna sang beautifully, like a bird that had finally escaped her cage. And so, with her perfectly cold hand in his, they looked forward to the future, to face the dawning of yet another age of man.

  Epilogue:

  1886

  The journalist scribbled away with a pencil in his reporter’s notepad. Before him were the remnants of the entrée he had eaten during their story, which in truth, had left him with quite a reduced appetite. He realised he should never have consented to a meeting in which food was involved.

  He swallowed the remainder of the cheap red wine in his glass. “So you are good vampires, then?”

  “Yes,” they replied in unison.

  “And then why have you come to me? Why not go to an eminent medical doctor first and then go to the press?”

  “We have been wanting the world to know more about our kind. There has been more interest in vampirism in this century, and we think people might be ready for it now. We have read your work, and think there is a possibility that you could write a fiction. Perhaps a serialisation in the newspaper would do?”

  “I will think on it, but why did you request to meet me in a busy restaurant, if you do not eat?” asked the journalist.

  “It was merely a gesture of goodwill,” Henry replied, “to make you feel more comfortable, less threatened, than you would have, had we invited you into our home.”

  The journalist glanced at the adjacent table, where a ruddy-faced portly man was carving up a rare joint of beef. The blood oozed out into a greasy puddle on the platter below. He felt suddenly queasy.

  “As it happens,” Henry continued, “you wouldn’t be safe in a crowded place such as this, for we could kill every single person in this establishment before anyone could scream.”

  “But I wouldn’t allow that,” Susanna said, her voice soothing the rising fear in the man’s heart.

  “And,” she added, “it’s simply not in our nature. We’re passed all of that. Now we only feed off the criminal element in society or those already dying; and if there are none of those about, then we drink from animals. Of course, not all of us are that way inclined.”

  Her reference to the evil vampires made the journalist’s skin crawl. For those creatures, anyone was fair game. How many innocent people had gone missing, only to now be waiting in some dark, dank cellar, waiting for their vampiric abductor to end their sufferings. How many were here in London? He moved uncomfortably in his wooden chair.

  “But what became of the others — the Council members in Istanbul and you friends here in London?” he asked, a look of concern in his face. “What became of all of them?”

  “We have had some dealings with the Council, for they’ve tried to send assassins after us, particularly during the eighteenth-century. As for our friends, they are mostly still around, and well.”

  Sebastian had continued as a clergyman, moving from one town to the next in order to hide his immortal nature from those in his parish. The others had done much the same, moving from place to place in order to maintain their secret. Not all had survived, however, and in the battles between the two sects of vampires over the past century, Lucy had been killed when they had been in Romania — butchered by Vlad. Ethelred had, in his great despair over losing his mate, wasted away and had become a ghost. His tormented soul continued to walk the earth upon the site where his beloved had been taken from him.

  “I hope you do not mind my saying this, but this Vlad figure you mentioned earlier intrigues me the most. I wonder what so fearsome a creature as he would be like in a city such as this?” He scribbled something down again in his notepad, his imagination running wild with that particular vampire.

  “I hope to God that vampire never sets foot in England, for should he do so, things could get very bad indeed. The time has come for humankind to know about vampires, and to be vigilant against them. The only way to fight the dark vampires is for humans to acknowledge that such an underworld exists.”

  Henry turned to look at Susanna. The journalist observed the looks the couple exchanged before him. They seemed to have had a long history between them. The beautiful woman, with her full red lips and red-gold hair held out her black fishnet-gloved hand to the tall, strikingly handsome man, who kissed it with reverence. She looked up at Henry with those age-old eyes of hers, with that look that still managed to send him mad with love for her. They had seen so much, gone through so much pain and happiness, that he felt certain that their bond could never be broken.

  The waiter then interrupted their discourse with his steamed treacle pudding.

  “Your dessert, Sir.” He turned to the couple, who had been sitting there and not ordered a single thing for over an hour. Susanna looked up at the young man and gave him an apologetic smile. The waiter gave a curt bow and walked away, tutting with disapproval under his breath as he did so.

  “I believe that we have taken up enough of the gentleman’s time, Henry,” she said to her husband. “And I mustn’t be late for the performance, my darling, and I have a costume fitting to do with my new seamstress.”

  “Yes, you are right, my dear. We shall leave you to enjoy your last course now,” Henry said to the journalist. “We hope, however, that you may think on what we have said this evening.”

  The man replied that he would indeed think on what they had related, yet he was certain the newspaper he worked for would not wish to print an article about it. His creative mind was already spinning all sorts of stories based on what he had heard the couple relate.

  “But, Sir, I wish to ask one thing before you go,” said the journalist, his hand out in order to prevent them from departing. “You are the last of the Stuarts. Your niece, Queen Anne, died in seventeen-fourteen, did she not? What are your thoughts about your family’s dynasty?”

  Henry’s expression grew solemn at this, as his mind’s eye was suddenly flooded once more with memories of people and places that no longer existed.

  “My immediate family is dead and gone, and my brother James died in exile, his throne usurped by his daughter and her husband. It pained me to learn of it, but I could not meddle in such affairs. Oh, who knows? Perhaps everything
happened for a reason — but other than that, I have nothing further to say. It was all so long ago. Thank you for your time, Mister Stoker.”

  With that, they exchanged farewell pleasantries, and the journalist reluctantly shook hands with them both. He still could not tell if they were both mad as he initially thought they were or if their strange tale had indeed happened. He was left completely perplexed.

  The couple left just as they had come: leaving a wake of mesmerised people behind as they stepped into the dark and smoky night. They called for a Hansom cab and drove in the direction of Covent Garden. Susanna was to sing in Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House later that evening, in which she was to perform the lead soprano role of Marguerite. She had played this role in numerous operatic productions throughout the world, from La Scala to the newly opened Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Faust’s story, of course, was of a man who sells his soul to the Devil for youth and the love of Marguerite, only for tragedy to envelop them all.

  Henry, her greatest admirer, was always in one of the boxes. As he watched her dance, and heard her exquisite voice move everyone to tears, he remembered a time when that beautiful flame-haired creature was once abused, ostracised, and terribly unhappy. She, who had once been prohibited from singing, was now Susanna Stewart — an acclaimed opera singer. She was the toast of society, her voice as powerful and mesmerising as the woman herself.

  Back in The Mitre, the journalist, finally alone, shook his head in disbelief at what he had heard. He checked his brass pocket watch and realised his wife would have expected him home at least a couple of hours ago. As he spooned in the last of his pudding into his mouth, a dark shadow fell upon him, blocking out the warm glow from the gaslight in the chandelier above. He looked up from his plate to see a lady standing before him. She wore a deep blue bustled dress, trimmed in black, and a black veil covered her face.

  He quickly wiped his mouth. “May I help you, Madam?” he asked politely, as he rose to his feet.