by Sloan Archer
“That’s so . . . Bleh! Unromantic. And awful.”
Sebastian looked over. “You’d be surprised how many cultures still employ this tradition.”
“No, Grandfather, I really wouldn’t. After everything I’ve seen since getting mixed up in vampire business, it would take a lot more than that to surprise me.”
“I can believe it,” he said before continuing. “Though Violetta had been promised to another man, she could not help falling in love with Luther. I remember the night he came to our village—and that is only when I saw him, at night. He was very different from local men I’d seen in town. He had a sort of . . . otherness about him, which I attributed to him being from a foreign land. It was understandable how Violetta, a small town girl, could have fallen in love with a man so exotic. He spoke differently, dressed differently, and was extremely sophisticated. The men in our village were . . .”
“Unrefined,” I finished.
“Yes, unrefined is a perfect description, Mercy. This is not to say that the men in my village were bad, but when Luther was around they simply could not compete. This did not make Luther popular. Violetta wasn’t the only girl taken by him. But Violetta was the only girl Luther wanted. And Luther, like Violetta, seemed very kind. He treated both peasants and the ill with deference, which was not common for a man of his wealth.”
The way Sebastian described Luther made me think of Robert. I’d always found that so strange about vampires. Though many vampires came from an age regarded as “savage” by modern society, they, in many respects, had behaved a lot more honorably than many humans in our “civilized” times did.
“The courtship between Luther and Violetta did not remain secret for very long. In a village as tiny as ours, how could it? Violetta’s mother, Caterina, who was not so much an evil woman as she was a shrewd one, vehemently opposed their courtship.”
“Because Violetta had been promised to someone else?” I asked.
“There was that, plus Luther being vampire. Of course, nobody actually referred to Luther as vampire—I’m not sure anyone in our village even knew what a vampire was. But, like most residents of our village, Caterina was superstitious. But perhaps superstitious is the wrong term. Caterina possessed a sort of . . . magic.”
“Like a witch?” I said.
“Yes, witch would be an appropriate term, but we never would have used it back in the day,” Sebastian replied. “But Caterina did do ‘witchy’ things, yes. She was said to be a healer, and she created potions for those who were ailing. And she just knew things. She could sense straightaway that something was off about Luther . . . something unnatural. And many villagers found it peculiar that Luther, a stranger, with equally strange clothes and strange accent, would only come out after the sun had set. They did not trust him to begin with, because of his differentness, and now here he was, trying to steal the heart of a young village girl that had already been spoken for by a son of a very prominent family. Despite his kindly ways, Luther was not a welcome man. The villagers wanted him gone.”
“Did Caterina ever confront Luther?”
“I don’t believe she did,” my grandfather replied. “She would have been too afraid. Caterina did like to interfere in Violetta’s life, but you couldn’t begrudge her too much for her meddlesome ways. She was only trying to look out for her daughter.”
I said, “Seems like she was also trying to look out for her family’s property.”
“Undoubtedly,” Sebastian agreed. “Caterina demanded that Violetta stop seeing Luther. But, being a teenaged girl, Violetta denied ever seeing Luther in the first place. She claimed that she hardly knew him.”
“Sounds about right for a seventeen-year-old,” I said.
“Caterina was very wily, however, and she knew better than to believe her daughter’s claim. Unbeknownst to Violetta and Luther, Caterina began to spy on their activities. I suppose her main concern was that Luther was going to deflower Violetta before she had a chance to marry her off. Caterina also worried—and I knew this because I’d overheard her speaking to my mother one day—that Violetta was going to run away due to the increased pressure to marry the other man. Caterina feared for Violetta’s safety, too, since she suspected that Luther was evil.”
“Was Luther evil?” I asked.
“I don’t think anyone is absolutely good or absolutely evil, Mercy,” Sebastian stated. “Everyone has the capacity to commit horrific deeds, when provoked in just the right way.”
“Very philosophical,” I said. “And I agree. Most people probably don’t know the nasty things they’re capable of doing—not until a bad situation arises. They may tell themselves ‘oh, I’d never, ever, ever do X, Y, or Z,’ but you truly don’t know until you’re in the thick of it.”
“True.”
“Look at me, Sebastian. If somebody had told me that I was going to stab a kidnapper in the neck with a broken piece of light bulb, I never would have believed them. But I tell you what: I was prepared to kill Jason if it meant saving my life. He overpowered me, though.” I shuddered. “If you wouldn’t have come along . . .”
Sebastian reached over and patted my hand. “Don’t worry about it, Granddaughter.”
“Please go on with your story,” I said. I really didn’t want to think about Jason ever again. Even saying his name made my stomach do a somersault, though I was curious if he’d escaped the fire.
“Sure thing. The only time Violetta could sneak away from home to see Luther was during the night, when her family was asleep,” Sebastian said. “Well, Violetta assumed she was sneaking away, but her mother was following her in the shadows, spying.”
“Stalker.”
Sebastian chuckled. “On this night in particular—the fateful night that changed everything, as they say—Luther asked Violetta to run away with him. Luther knew that he was asking a lot of Violetta, because she would have to leave behind all that she knew. Violetta had never witnessed life outside our tiny village, and Luther wanted to show her the world. As a token of his love, and to establish mutual trust, I presume, Luther presented Violetta with a box. Inside the box were his fangs.”
“No!” I gasped, breaking out in gooseflesh.
Sebastian’s brow crinkled. “Yes. This astonishes you, I see. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, Mercy, but when somebody possesses a vampire’s fangs—”
“They have the power to control them. Yes, I know,” I said, practically shouting. “I know this too well, and I’m kind of in a pickle over it.”
“How do you know about this practice? It’s very unorthodox for a human to be privy to such information. And how are you in a pickle?”
“I tell you what, Grandpa—I’m loving calling you Grandpa, by the way—once you finish your story, I’ll tell you all about my fang-related pickle. Deal?”
“Deal,” he smiled. “Granddaughter.”
I prompted, “Okay, so Luther offers Violetta his fangs?”
“Yes, he does, which she accepts. He also then tells her about his true nature, that he is vampire.”
“Does she freak?” I asked.
“Not at all.” Sebastian shook his head. “Violetta would have loved Luther no matter what. Caterina, however, was a different story. Had Caterina not been present for the information Luther told Violetta after presenting her with his strange gift . . . Who knows what would have happened?”
I said, “What did happen?”
“Luther told Violetta that she could make him do whatever she wanted, as long as she possessed his fangs. He, of course, was hoping that this would demonstrate to Violetta just how much he loved and trusted her. And it worked . . . I should say that it would have worked, had Caterina not intervened.”
“I’m guessing that this is where things get bad.”
“Oh yes,” Sebastian said. “Very bad. The next night a festival was being held in the town square—it was to celebrate autumn harvest. After receiving the fangs, Violetta told Luther that she was going to announce her departure th
en. Knowing what a stir this would cause, she told Luther that she would meet him at the edge of the forest that marked the border of the village, so that they could make a fast getaway after her festival announcement. Luther agreed and then they both went on their merry way. This was the last they saw of each other.”
“Oh no. What happened?”
“Caterina happened,” Sebastian said with a grim press of his lips. “The following morning at breakfast, Caterina slipped an herb into her daughter’s porridge that would make her sick enough to miss the festival.”
“That’s really nice, Caterina poisoning her own daughter,” I said with nastiness.
Sebastian nodded. “Violetta was so bedridden that she could not make it out to meet Luther in the forest.”
“Oh no.”
“It gets worse,” Sebastian said. “While Violetta was sleeping, Caterina snuck into her daughter’s bedroom and stole the fangs. She then took Luther’s fangs and ground them up into a very fine powder. Caterina mixed the fang powder into the fruit punch she made every year for the celebration, on account of her owning an orchard.”
“Mm-mmm, fang punch,” I joked and Sebastian chuckled.
“Now, it wouldn’t have been so bad if the punch hadn’t been an integral feature of the harvest ceremony. But it was. What happened was this: The entire village gathered around the punch barrel, danced, and then took a sip from the barrel. Those who were too young to reach the barrel were given the drink by their parents.”
“So when you say that the entire village had the drink, you weren’t kidding.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Sebastian said. “The punch was blessed by a priest, so it was believed to contain miracles and protection. It was believed blasphemous to not drink the punch.”
I asked, “Why did Caterina grind up the teeth?”
“She knew that Luther could not rebel against the wishes of those who possessed the fangs. She knew this, of course, because of her eavesdropping the night before. And since everyone in the village but Violetta wanted Luther gone, she knew Luther would be compelled to stay away if the villagers each possessed a fragment of his fangs within themselves.”
“Which they got by drinking the punch.”
“Yes,” Sebastian clarified. “To foolproof her plan, Caterina told a few village elders and her husband what she had done, and they made a conscious and collective effort to ban Luther.”
“They, what, put out a vibe?” I said.
“Yes, something like that. So, Luther was not just banned from our village, but the surrounding villages as well. What Caterina did not realize, however, was that by drinking the spiked punch, the villagers had not only taken in Luther’s fangs but some of his vampire characteristics as well.”
“This is why you can’t age?” I asked, astonished.
“Yes,” Sebastian confirmed. “I don’t drink human blood, like a vampire must, but I will become deathly anemic if I don’t consume rare meat regularly. And if you think I had it bad being ten for sixty years, imagine what it was like for those who remained babies and toddlers for centuries. Many of them went mad.”
“How awful,” I commented. “But it must have been great for those who were adults.”
“No,” Sebastian said slowly. “None of the adults survived the aftermath.”
“What aftermath?”
“The story gets even more depressing from here, I’m afraid,” Sebastian warned. “Poor Violetta waited and waited for Luther to return. Every night she went into the forest and waited. She waited for six months, and he never showed. At first she believed that he was taking care of unfinished business in his homeland. And then she started to suspect that he had changed his mind about wanting to run away with her, especially because his fangs were gone.”
I said, “You mean, she thought that he’d slipped into her house and taken his fangs back?”
“Yes,” Sebastian confirmed. “People will believe all sorts of things when they’re heartbroken, right?”
I thought of my own situation with Robert. “Sure.”
“Finally, Violetta convinced herself that Luther was dead. She accused her family of murder, and then the townspeople as a whole, which you can expect didn’t go over well.”
“Wasn’t she married off?”
“No, the man Violetta was offered to no longer wanted her after she fell apart,” Sebastian said. “And it didn’t take long for that to happen. Violetta’s looks were first to go; her skin lost its happy glow. She became . . . washed-out. Her hair lost its shine. She stopped going outdoors—stopped all activities, really—so her physique was like that of a prisoner’s. She was essentially catatonic. Violetta only snapped out of her daze long enough to go into the forest each night to wait for Luther. Her sanity went last, around the time she started accusing the town of murder.”
“Bet Caterina felt pretty damn bad,” I quipped.
“Oh, she was beside herself. The whole family was. Their orchard stopped yielding fruit due to a bug infestation that later led to tree rot. It was like a black cloud had settled over their house on the night of the festival. And it never cleared.”
I was inexplicably angry—it wasn’t like I had known these people. “Caterina should have just let Violetta leave with Luther.”
“Yes, well . . .” Sebastian raised his palms. What can you do? “Luther had been gone for six months to the day when Violetta threw herself off a cliff. She left a short note behind for her family to find: May death join us.”
“So sad,” I said, breaking out in gooseflesh.
“Violetta’s father went mad with grief. He was already starting to go mad, anyhow, because they had run out of money and were going to lose their land. Caterina went mad with something else: vengeance. She believed that it had been Luther, not her own actions, that had prompted the suicide. She blamed Luther for everything.
“On the night of the funeral, Caterina and the whole town summoned Luther. He was very fortunate that the funeral was being held at night, or else he would have burned to death in the sun. Luther had to obey the townspeople’s wishes, even at his own detriment.”
I said, “Because they had swallowed his fangs, thus ‘possessing’ him.”
“Precisely. Caterina’s plan was to murder Luther the instant he saw Violetta’s body. She knew that Luther would suffer, seeing Violetta dead, so some part of her must have grasped that Luther truly did love her daughter.”
“That’s so crazy. And awful.”
“Yes, but Caterina’s plan backfired in the worst way,” Sebastian said. “The townspeople had naively underestimated Luther’s strength. The average vampire is incalculably stronger than a human, Mercy, which you must know after spending so much time with them. But an enraged vampire . . . Nothing compares to it.” Sebastian’s voice trailed off. “I saw the massacre with my own two eyes. I’ve witnessed many appalling acts in all my years, but what happened in our village that night was the absolute worst thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.”
I opened my mouth to comment and then closed it. What could I say?
“Luther’s torment was as ghastly as his anger. He’d been under the impression that Violetta had been the one keeping him away, so when he travelled to the village that night, he anticipated seeing Violetta and working things out—having a talk with her. Luther had also been suffering from a broken heart. Just like what Violetta had assumed, Luther thought that his love had changed her mind about running away with him. He’d assumed that he’d repulsed her with his vampirism.”
I shivered. “He must have lost his mind when he saw that Violetta had killed herself so that she could be with him in death.”
“Absolutely,” Sebastian said. “And after realizing that it had been the townspeople keeping him away—not Violetta—Luther’s rage intensified. He wiped out the whole village within minutes, including my parents, who would technically be your great-grandparents. He spared only the children because he felt that we were innocent in his betrayal.”
�
��Lucky for you that Luther was sensible enough to do that.”
Sebastian said, “He saved Caterina for last so that she would witness the destruction. The final words Caterina spoke were a hex on Luther: ‘May the village children be a curse to your kind!’ She said this right before he ripped her limb from limb.”
“That was dumb,” I remarked. “What if her curse made Luther change his mind about sparing the children?”
“Maybe that’s what Caterina had hoped for, since all the adults were gone. She perhaps thought that we’d have an easier time if we were deceased, because at least then we wouldn’t suffer. But Luther dismissed Caterina’s curse as the desperate ravings of a superstitious peasant.”
“I didn’t think of the children, as far as them surviving without adults, “ I said. “How did the children survive, if all of you were so young?”
“The fires that Luther had created were so vast that surrounding towns came to our aid. This is one of the reasons why our Partial bloodline dispersed. We all went to different areas.”
“Did you hate Luther for what he did?” I asked.
Sebastian shook his head. “If I hated Luther, I might as well have hated Caterina . . . and maybe the whole village. They were all innocent but all guilty, you know what I mean? Luther only wanted to love Violetta. Caterina only wanted what she believed was best for her daughter and her family. And the village, well, they were only trying to protect their way of life.” Sebastian shrugged. “I’ve been alive for over a thousand years. Can you imagine what that would have done to me, carrying around all that hate for all those years?”
“It would eat you alive mentally,” I said.
“Harboring hatred for those who are in the past gets you nowhere. No, I made peace with my anger very long ago,” Sebastian stated, his voice a million miles away.