It was the height of the Roman Empire. The great Roman Coliseum was five years away from being completed. The burning of Rome was a long history to be told many different ways and we were only a few years away from the total destruction of Pompeii. Do you remember it?
Vespasian is an old man and his son Titus is just a boy. A little boy, not the ruler his father wishes him to be.
Fabiana could now visualize the house as clearly as she had seen it all those years ago in Pompeii. She relived in her mind those summer nights when she went out to call on the stranger she referred to only as The Pimp. The house had stunning crape myrtles pressed against its stone walls, and two marvelous cypress trees with their erupting roots beneath cobbled streets and broken flagstones stood guard in front of it.
White columns ran upstairs and down next to a side hall door. A long, open balcony porch with wooden carved railings formed the foundation for a climbing swathe of flowering vines that seemed to hold the building in place more every year. Then there was the secret door which every seedy person in the darkened streets of the city knew was there. A hidden door that looked into the darkness of an alleyway of Pompeii. It was strange how many bodies had turned up in the blackness of that alleyway over the years… Well, maybe not so strange.
It was in that little Italian hillside of Rome much later where Fabiana would take her first vampire victim and turn her back on her family and her immortal lover Cerci. Some ghosts just never give up.
Fabiana spied the sparkle of the waters of her mind as once again her story of Pompeii was pulled from the dark recesses of her subconscious. Some things are better left alone and Fabiana knew this was one of them, but she seemed to have no will of her own at that moment. She sat back and watched as her own life was played out before her.
* * *
A man walked out and leaned on the stone balustrade, transfixed by the view. The moon was full and bright over the tall volcano. The city’s night sky twinkled above. Feeling her presence, the man turned suddenly and saw her standing close behind him. The night breeze of the Italian wind was toying gently with the long curls of her silky black hair as Fabiana leaned against the railing of the open balcony of her room. Her mesmerizing auburn eyes were the color of autumn and looked right into his soul.
“Did I startle you?” Fabiana asked playfully.
“I was miles away from here, I’m afraid. Just looking.”
She walked up close to him and ran her fingers along the lean shape of his back as he bent forward on the balcony. He was broad and strong. She could smell his skin and his hair, just like she could when she had first encountered him out on the street an hour ago. Fabiana knew she wanted this one. His blood would warm her cold body on this chilly night.
Giaus looked at her warmly. His heart stumbled in his chest. He wondered if it would always be like this whenever he saw her. It was a stunning thing for a man to see a woman as remarkable and breathtaking as Fabiana. He had gone most of his life without feeling more than a passing interest in a woman. And now, to know he was about to have this one…
The wanting was there—a churning deep that made him long to touch and taste and take. He thought he could, with a careful and patient approach. For she wasn’t indifferent to him. She had responded to his touch. He had felt her pulse leap and had seen the change that was desire slip onto her lips.
He should never have walked into that room.
Giaus cringed as she leaned over him. Fabiana was beautiful, one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Even then, as she leaned close to take his life, he thought he loved her.
Fabiana pushed her soft lips to his neck and sunk her sharp teeth into his skin. His life slowly began to leave his body. She held him close as the liquid of his life bled from him. Within moments, his body fell limp and she knew he was dead. Fabiana let Giaus slip from her hands and fall to the straw-covered stone floor of the small room above the tavern on the north side of Pompeii. She stood up and closed her robe as she walked out of the room, leaving her latest meal dead on the floor.
A grizzled, older man with a permanent sneer, the owner the establishment, gave Fabiana a smile as she descended the wooden staircase and emerged into a room lit with small burning candles as a thick, grey haze danced about the ceiling. She moved effortlessly about the darkened, smelly brothel, unnoticed by all around her all except for The Pimp, who had not for a moment taken his eyes off of her. Fabiana passed several people silently as they talked together, unaware she was there. She held her head up and produced a gold coin with the mark of Emperor Nero on it. She was prepared to pay this pimp as if she really was his prostitute.
She tossed the piece of gold to him at the front door, her payment for the room and their agreement to preserve secrecy.
“Good evening, Mr. Claudius,” she said to him seductively.
The Pimp watched closely as she made her way through the door and down the street, disappearing into the darkness of the city. He loved to watch her work her wiles on the men of Pompeii, but he knew better than to ever ask anything of that woman. He had already learned his lesson.
Fabiana walked silently, almost without effort. She glided into the gloom of Pompeii, her skin now warmed with the blood of the man she left cold on the stone floor in that little room above the brothel. As she vanished into the night for another kill, she could feel The Pimp’s mind at work. He was recalling their arrangement and wondering if it was all worth it for him. Fabiana knew one day she would kill him and move on. But not now.
She could see The Pimp in her mind. He was leaning his shoulder against the wooden framework of the doorway as he began to remember the first time he had ever laid his eyes on the sultry vampire known as Fabiana. The half-Hispanic, half-Roman woman he now had this arrangement with was the key figure in one of the scariest moments of Claudius’ life. Fabiana had him and she knew it.
* * *
On that particular night the moon was hanging low in the sky, and the wind was no longer blowing through the trees and plants around the walls of the city. This made it all the more unbearably quiet. The Pimp walked down a darkened dirt alley that led behind several stone homes. The city was silent as the slumbering residents waited for the call of the morning to quietly push through Pompeii. It was almost market day, which meant a good day for him. When market day came, that always meant coin would somehow find a way into his brothel.
He then passed in silence down a stone street with large marble houses and flowing gardens of wondrous beauty. Fountains of various sizes and shapes spouted cold water high into the night sky as a black cat made its way into the darkness. It chased after a rat and then was gone, vanishing like an apparition.
He walked slowly, half drunk, back to his home next to his brothel. The Pimp looked down. He noticed the carving of a stone phallus in the cobblestone street that he walked on, telling him he was close to his home. He knew, like most residents of Pompeii, that the stone phallus pointed toward his brothel. It was nothing of a secret in the Roman Empire. His was only one of several in the city, but his was not so high-class as some others. Especially in the capital of Roma, there were many such establishments that catered to high class society. But not his. The Pimp of Pompeii welcomed mostly street urchins and soldiers. Anyone who could pay. The doorman’s gold was just as good to him as Nero’s would have been.
As Claudius shuffled closer to his home, he noticed a woman walking down the street toward him.
She is stunning, he thought at once.
She was wearing an elegant blue dress and was wrapped in a silky black shawl that draped off her perfect shoulders.
What is a high-class woman like this doing out in the markets at night? And alone too?
As she passed him she gave him a little wink of her eye and kept moving on down the road. The poise and confidence of this creature was tantalizing to him. And even though she no longer gave him her eyes, he could still feel the brilliance of them.
Claudius turned around, almost stumb
ling over his feet to look at her again. She looked very young, no more than twenty years old. She moved with grace and elegance into the night, her long black hair swaying from one side to the other, sweeping hooks over her soft back to match the alluring movement of her shapely hips. He was immediately entranced by her.
For some reason he could not explain, he completely forgot where he was going and began to follow this strange, highborn woman.
Fabiana walked through the empty area of the market, carefully staying out of the moonlight. Somehow she was always able to keep to the darkness, but as she reached the top of a hill her likeness came flooding back to him in silhouetted moonlit grace. She stood motionless and seemed almost frozen in the still and calm of the evening breeze. She waited in the cusp of the open mouth of a dark walkway between two buildings made of limestone.
Looking all around, Fabiana could see the figure of The Pimp making his way to her in the distance. Of course, this was her intention on this night; she had been slowly calling to his weak mind, bringing him to her. She was reeling him in like the fish soon to be displayed on the wooden tables of the market. She enjoyed this part of the game, her morning hunt. She would seduce the man and drink from him just as she had done every night since the time she was “blood-born,” as she called it.
Fabiana walked to the end of the alleyway and stopped. She stood alone, facing the limestone of a cold wall, and listened for the approaching steps of her prey. The Pimp slowly made his way to her, his feet stumbling and dragging from his drunkenness.
Her skin felt cold and she longed to feed on the man. As the footfalls of The Pimp grew closer to her, she looked back at him, tossed her hair to one side, and stared into his eyes. She faked alertness and a hint of fear. She shifted, but he had moved smoothly to box her in, her back to the wall. Still, all he did was lift his thumb to her waiting lips.
His thumb grazed lightly, seductively, over her bottom lip when she accepted his offer. But she feigned apprehension and modesty by placing a hand over her ample cleavage. She made herself turn to face him until they were eye to eye. He touched his lips to hers and Fabiana could feel the pumping of his blood into his manhood. But his manhood was not what she desired.
She could smell the drink on him—he reeked of it—but soon it was the aroma of his blood that she sensed over all else. His heart was pounding and Fabiana could hear every beat of it. It played its song for her, rhythmically pumping in her ears. She then let her wrap fall off of her shoulders; it landed in a rumpled mess at his feet. And her bare flesh spoke to him. No. It cried out for him to touch her. His lips probed and began to passionately kiss her neckline. She was about to move to take his life when they were interrupted.
Three men emerged from behind them. The stench of them reached Fabiana long before their words did. They stunk of old urine and mold and looked like men that killed for a living. But not on this night. On this night they would merely get some payment from their victims. So they thought, at least.
“Well, what have we here?” one of the men said as he produced a knife from his belt.
“Two lovers, it looks like,” another one added with a sarcastic tone and the slurred speech of one who was happily on his way to drunkenness.
“Alright. You two just give us your coin and you won’t have to die.”
Suddenly, before anyone knew what was happening, Fabiana threw The Pimp against the wall and was on the thieves with just one simple movement. She moved with such speed that the men could not even react to the assault.
Claudius the Pimp sat in a puddle of mud and urine (quite possibly his own) and watched as this small, elegant, highborn Roman woman raged at the three men. She reached out, lazily grabbed two of them by the face as if she wasn’t even trying and, in a mighty gush of blood and brains, crushed their skulls under her fingers. Blood spouted out of their bodies like water escaping from a dam.
The two men fell dead at her feet as the third ran for his life. He took several steps into the light, but in a flash of her blue gown, she was there. Fabiana grabbed his arm, crushing the bones in his wrist with one hand. The man’s screams filled the night air with terror and pain but were suddenly silenced as she pulled him in close to her. She opened her mouth revealing her long white fangs and sunk them into the dirty flesh of his neck. He tasted of dirt and sweat. But as his blood spilled onto her tongue, his life rejuvenated her and she closed her eyes. Fabiana drank and drank.
Claudius sat, horrified, as he watched the color drain from the man’s skin, this woman holding him like a porcelain doll—close and tenderly. Then suddenly she tore his head off of his body. For no other reason than to prove to The Pimp that she could. A proof of power. She held the scraggly, dripping head in her hands for a short while before dropping it to the ground. It sounded like a wet rock as it landed and rolled out of his sight. But the sound of it would not leave his ears. It was a noise Claudius would most likely never forget.
The woman began to walk back into the darkness, her steps soft once more as she came closer and closer to Claudius who was cowering in the shadows like a child. She stood in front of him and stared for a moment before moving in for her last kill of the night.
“What are you?” he asked as he lifted his face to her. She stood over him and gave a slight smile.
“I am the Vampire Fabiana,” she said finally. Then she grabbed the man up in her arms with the intent to kill him. She sunk her fangs into his flesh and at that moment his mind was open to her and his life story was exposed to her consciousness. Fabiana knew he was a pimp and the owner of a brothel. Suddenly she realized that this mortal could help her. She withdrew her teeth from the man’s neck and took a step back. Blackness overcame him and he slid into unconsciousness at her feet.
The next night, Claudius awoke in his bed. The calm of his room looked back at him. There was a lonely candle bouncing its light next to his head. It was a dream, he thought as he sat up in his bed of straw. He brought his hand up to his neck and felt the marks. The marks were there. He really had been bitten.
Fabiana.
The name rang out in his mind once more. His hands began to shake as he sat there. Then words filled his small dark room and seemed to consume everything around him.
“I have spared your life, mortal,” a voice said suddenly. He spun around with such force he fell to the stone floor of his room. Fabiana stood before him just as she had done the night before.
“What?” was all he could get out.
“I have spared you for one reason. I wish to make an agreement with you. You are a pimp and the owner of this brothel. Is that correct?”
“Y…yes, but how did you know that?”
“I read it in your mind. What I want is simple: a place to feed at night and secrecy. I will pay you one piece of gold every night for a room. Of course, you will dispose of the bodies for me. And if you ever speak of our arrangement to anyone, I will kill you.”
Claudius sat there on the floor for a long time before responding
“What if I say ‘no’?”
“Then I will take your life right now and be done with you.”
Self-preservation overcame him and he quickly answered.
“Miss Fabiana, is it? We have a deal.”
Without saying another word she turned and left the man sitting on the cold stone floor of his room. He was thankful to still be alive.
As the vampire Fabiana slipped into the cover of night once again, The Pimp Claudius flipped the gold coin that she had just paid him in his hand. He gave a smile as he returned to the light and noise of his brothel just as he would do every night after she took her leave of him. He knew he could depend on this strange source of income—she would always want to hunt again and would be at his door on a regular basis.
* * *
Fabiana’s thoughts returned to her in her room at the hospital and The Pimp was still standing there before her.
“He’s still out there. You know that, Fabiana.”
The
room rustled as if it was full of ghosts and Fabiana glanced at the phantoms of the truly hateful victims that had come for her. Out the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of The Pimp evaporating. And then there was only his voice.
“Bedros is not still in there, you know,” the snarling voice said. “There in the hills of the mountain. Your tomb protected him for all those years, but now he is out. Too bad for you, Fabiana. You should have killed him when you had a chance.”
“Go away! I don’t want this!” she was screeching and hissing over and over again.
The mirrors of her mind, each multiplying her fear, played the long, shadowy chamber music of her history. Fabiana had no choice; she was no longer a player in this symphony.
Then the name came at her again and she knew what he meant.
Bedros.
If there was one vampire who wanted her destruction it would be Bedros, the vampire from Troy. She had done him great harm once, locking him in a giant tomb at the base of the volcano. And years later when it erupted, he had been buried for what Fabiana thought would be all of time. He was led into the deep chamber of rock and mud by trusting her with a revering smile.
He had sensed at once a tell-tale pulse of love for Cerci coming from Fabiana. The alien species of her heart was betraying her.
It was faint but true, and Bedros could detect it in her. Bedros knew of Cerci and her love for the High Priest of the Origin of Blood. He told her he would kill Cerci if she didn’t start giving Bedros the attention he so desperately wanted from her. Bedros had followed her into that darkness years before the destruction of Pompeii, but it was that day his life nearly ended. That night he was promised passion but received only misery and regret.
Bedros had followed her to that cave at the base of the mountain. The cave that was her secret love spot with Cerci. But on that night there was no Cerci—only Fabiana—and when he was drawn into the far end of that cave and promised a kiss, all he earned was pain. His eyes were closed and he almost didn’t believe that she would do it. But then the pain was so intense as the long blade entered his chest and he fell to his knees. When he looked at her with despair, Fabiana only had rage in her eyes. There was not the passion that he would have sworn led him to that cave, only hatred.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream Page 8