by Ian Hall
“Yes, forgive me, Ducător Ramir, I want to live forever and be the husband of this beautiful woman for hundreds of years.” My words had been practiced, and I’d performed flawlessly.
“You are American?”
“No, Ducător Ramir, I am Polish, born in Kraków.”
“You are an infidel,” Ramir said in perfectly pronounced Polish. “Don’t worry, she does not understand. You are an infidel to us, yet you ask to join the Order for foolish, personal, material reasons.”
Lost for an acceptable answer, I just nodded.
Ramir returned to German. “You will have to perform the rite here, in my house; it is the only safe place.”
My heart raced, he was going to allow it!
“But beware, infidel; ‘tacu-si.’ Be careful what you wish for, it will not always bring you happiness. And remember, even after the transformation, you will always be infidel to me.”
Ramir spent some time alone with Kristina, then they both led me to a sparsely furnished bedroom; a bed, a chest of drawers, and a window, heavily draped.
“I will leave you now, ‘tacu-si.’ I will return when the rite has been completed and you are Vampir.”
I felt all excited, but looked around for all my imagined symbols, scrolls, and magical items. I mean, I was being made immortal, I expected more than just a dingy bedroom.
Kristina began to strip, laying her clothes tidily on the floor. “Come on, Howard. We will make love.”
I glanced at the door, slightly ajar, not knowing if Ramir would be listening, but soon, the sight of my beauty, the sweat on her skin brought me to the bed, and soon had my fingers undoing buttons. Kristina opened the curtain slightly, letting a thick shaft of dusty light into the room.
We kissed and caressed for a while, and I noticed she used her teeth more than normal, biting and teasing me. Then we enjoined, her passion surrounding mine, and we strove for release.
Suddenly, my wrist was at her mouth, and she bared her teeth to bite. I was too impassioned to worry, but her canines had extended to long, cruel points. She sank her teeth into my wrist, and I felt her drink deeply, my blood flowing into her mouth as she gorged herself, sucking loudly.
Despite Kristina biting my wrist, my penis remained inside her, thrusting fervently, then she bit her own wrist, and shoved it across my mouth.
“Drink, my lovely,” she whispered, and I could not help myself. I had no fear, no reticence, no reluctance. I sucked on her veins like my life depended on it. The thick, warm fluid shot into my mouth and I swallowed it down, burning my throat like the strongest whiskey.
Then, as I roared at the pain of the blood, I came inside her with a force like never before. As I did so, I felt both weak and euphoric, still sucking hard on her wrist, until I could stand the pain no more. As I pulled her arm from my mouth, I fainted.
When I awoke, I lay alone in the room, and the shaft of light had dimmed considerably. I felt completely drained, not immortal, and could hardly move my arms to open the curtain wider. The door opened, and Kristina entered, carrying a tray with a teapot and cups.
“You will feel weak, do not worry.” She put the tray on the drawers, and poured a hot liquid into one of the cups. She pushed pillows under my back, lifting me from the bed. “Drink,” she said, putting the rim of the cup at my lips.
It tasted quite horrible, but at Kristina’s insistence, I drank more of the acrid fluid.
“It will help.”
“How long have I been out?” I remembered my wrist, and looked at it. Two circular scars had formed over the wounds. I looked at Kristina’s, and found it completely clear.
“We heal quickly, us Vampir,” she said, anticipating my question.
I must have fallen asleep again, for, as I woke, Kristina lay in bed beside me, huddled close. I could smell the cold tea in the pot, and for some reason, the bed reeked of a musty aroma that I hadn’t noticed before.
In the next day, she taught me to control my lust, which seemed to have found new life in my old body. Her teaching seemed almost a meditation, an internal message to my loins to be still. I drank from her wrist three times, the last much less than before, and with every drink, I gained strength and energy. My sense of smell had grown quite acute, and my hearing had definitely improved.
We both dressed, and Kristina led me to the kitchen, where a young deer had been strapped to the strong wooden table. It kicked and bucked, but it remained securely bound.
“How are you,‘tacu-si’?” Ramir asked, surprising me. His jibe of ‘infidel’ hit me like a small dagger.
“I am well, Ducător Ramir.” I turned to the hallway we’d just walked. My hearing might have been superb, but I hadn’t heard him arrive.
“Let us have our first lesson together.” He walked to the struggling deer, and beckoned me over to the table. With one move, he drew a long dagger, and slit the beast’s throat. Blood coursed onto the table and floor.
Unbidden, I dropped to the beast and began to drink. My teeth ached, but I knew I needed the dark red liquid. As I realized what I’d done, I glanced up at Ramir and Kristina, pausing in my consumption, and knew from their faces I’d not passed the test.
“‘Tacu-si’,” Ramir sneered, and left the room. Infidel indeed.
“Don’t worry, Howard.” Kristina pulled on my arm and led me back to the room. “You will learn to ignore blood, just like you learned to ignore your lust.”
On the morning of the second day, I stripped to the waist, and the trial was repeated. With a firm resolve I watched Ramir cut another beast open. This time I refused the urge, and he grabbed me by the hair and held my face in the flow, but I kept my mouth closed, ignoring the blood as it gushed over my lips.
“I have seen enough,” Ramir said. “I think he is ready for the outside world.” He walked to the front door. “You are Vampir, infidel. But you will never be more to me. I do this as a favor to Kristina; she has been a faithful Lorelei-hund.”
He walked away, and we were left to gather our clothes and take the waiting coach back to town.
The next month, we were married in a very small service in the local church. Only the staff of the hotel attended, the manager looking slightly sad that not only had he lost his best-paying guest, but also his prettiest waitress.
I bought a house in the square, where we settled down together.
Our lives took on a different schedule. Once a month she left me, and took new blood to the Elders. I accepted the absence, although it irked me slightly; it remained a side to her that I never saw. Perhaps I felt secretly grateful for that.
Once a month we’d race through the woods at breakneck speeds, chasing deer to satisfy my craving. Many times each month, we’d intertwine our bodies together and drink each other as we made love. Life had never been so wonderful.
I cleared a large room at the back of the house as my laboratory, and filled it with superb German-made equipment. With my chemistry background, I read papers on blood composition, and looked exhaustively through my microscopes at my new field of learning.
It came as some surprise, when Kristina announced that our third anniversary lay just days away. I stood in shock, the time had passed so quickly.
The anniversary made me think of home; New York home. And I began to talk more and more of going back for a while, seeing old friends, and old colleagues. The conversation usually didn’t end well, but I did it anyway. I wasn’t growing bored with the company, but the town seemed to get smaller each year, and apart from Kristina and my research, there remained little else to do.
During one of Kristina’s absences, I sought out Ramir, the first time I’d been at his house since my transformation.
He didn’t invite me inside. “Hello, infidel.” His lips were tightly pursed, and he wore the sneer on every part of his face.
“Pardon my intrusion, Ducător Ramir. I am here to ask permission…”
He cut my words with a wave of his hand, and he readied himself to close the door. “You a
sk to take Kristina away. I refuse.”
He went to close the door, but I stopped it with my hand. “Ducător Ramir!” I tried to keep my temper in check.
Suddenly, I felt his hand hit my chest, and I flew across the driveway. I landed in a heap, thirty feet away.
A terrible snarl engulfed his face, then, suddenly it dimmed, and I saw his demeanor change. “Come and see me tomorrow, infidel. Eight o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.” His rage had tempered to a distinctly spine-chilling grin.
“I’ll be there, Ducător Ramir.” I got to my feet and brushed the gravel off my trousers. “Will you have a decision then?”
He grinned wider. “Oh, I’ll let you make your own decisions.”
And he shut the door.
All day long I debated his last cryptic remark, and the possibilities that entered my mind were both diverse and perverse.
The next evening, I arrived at the prescribed time, and a young lady answered the door. She was pretty, and a thoroughly unexpected alternative to Ramir. I liked her immediately, and sensed some likeness to Kristina in her features. She led me to a large circular room, in the center of which stood a large wooden table. Black curtains surrounded the room’s walls, trailing from the ceiling down to the floor. Large standing candelabras were the only source of light, and I counted six of them, each with many thick, white candles.
The young lady directed me to a chair against the wall, and gave me a large glass of plum brandy, which I sipped with some pleasure; quite beyond my usual standard.
“You will not move,” Ramir suddenly said into my ear. I almost jumped out of my chair, but my limbs were somehow frozen. “Do you understand?”
I went to nod, but found myself unable to. “Yeah,” I managed without moving my lips.
“Tonight you see the Elders drink. I hope you enjoy.” He took my half-empty glass, and disappeared. I was left alone in the room.
The girl who had greeted me at the door entered, leading a man by the hand. Both were naked. She looked a magnificent creature in every way. When reached the table, she whispered in the man’s ear, “Wait here.” The man nodded, and stood where she’d left him. I assumed he’d been duped by the same type of spell as me.
Then Kristina entered the room, also leading a man to the table. I wanted to roar out my objection, but of course, I couldn’t. With a sad heart, I realized that clothes were not part of this ritual. She also told the man to wait, then she left, without giving any of the room a second glance.
Both girls returned, each leading an old man in a long, red robe; one of these, of course, was Ramir. As he passed me, he gave me such a shit-eating grin, that I wanted to take his life there and then. I now had no qualms about the content of the ritual; it would involve sex, and probably with my wife.
I boiled inside, but was forced to watch; my eyes still wouldn’t close.
I cried, my tears at least partly blurring the scenes in front of me
The two naked men were encouraged to erection by the girls’ mouths, a sight which will I will take to my dying bed. Then they copulated with the girls, for so long and in so many different ways, that it proved difficult to bear, then, just as the men reached release, the Elders thrust themselves forward, ripping their throats asunder. Kristina leaned back from her partner, and let the Elder drink. The other girl did likewise.
When the Elders had gorged themselves, they themselves had sex with the girls, while they drank of the men’s necks again and again. I looked on in despair, as Ramir thrust perversely into my wife’s body, smiling in my direction as he did so.
One by one, they filed from the room, the Elders first, then the girls, leaving me to watch the prostrate corpses on the table. It seemed like hours, but soon I heard a whisper.
“You can move now. Go directly home. Never cross my door again.”
I had a lot to think about, but knew that it had been entirely my fault. I had gotten myself into this predicament; my stubbornness, my lust, my own needs had placed me here.
When Kristina returned home two days later, I asked if she remembered anything she’d done.
“I remember getting instructions to find a lonely man, someone who wouldn’t be missed,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s all I ever remember.”
We made love that night, and although the images of Ramir’s room were still fresh in my mind, I found I could put them to one side; this sensual woman still wanted me, and I had no problem accommodating her need.
But I knew I could not let her go next time.
I began to ready my plans for flight.
I packed some clothes and sent the coach to Miercurea, about forty miles south of town, with instructions to await our arrival. I determined to make passage to Bucharest, then south to Constanta on the Black Sea.
I gave the coach two days to get to Miercurea, then told Kristina that I wanted to go hunting. It proved easy to guide her direction to the south, racing towards the coach and my bid for freedom. At the outskirts, I suggested lunch, and we walked into the quiet mountain town.
“I love you,” I said, suddenly drawing her into an embrace as we neared the coach. She felt the stab of the needle, but with my Vampir strength, I held her tight until the chemicals had taken effect. I lifted her to the coach, and ordered the coachman to drive south with every speed available.
My wife would never be used again.
Kristina woke four times in the next few days, and I sedated her confused form each time. By now we were over a hundred miles south of Gheorgheni, and I relaxed, leaving Ramir and his other Elder long behind.
The next time Kristina woke, I let her drift into full consciousness. “Where are we?” she asked groggily.
“Maybe a hundred miles from Bucharest.”
“What?” she shot to her feet in the confines of the coach and hit her head on the roof. “Stop the coach! Stop it at once!” she roared.
She fell back on her seat, panting heavily. “What have you done, Howard?”
“I have escaped your captors, Kristina. No more will you be used for sexual games for those old, perverted bastards.”
She shook her head. “Those are not games, you idiot!” she screamed. “That is my life! It’s what I do to stay alive!”
The coachman had pulled the coach to a halt.
“How long have we been gone?”
“Three days?”
“Oh, no.”
I could see fear all over her face. “It’s going to be fine, my dear. No one could catch us now.” I remained confident in my reassurance.
Suddenly there came a yell from the front of the coach, and a thud of a body being thrown to the ground.
“They are here.” Kristina’s lips quivered.
“Who are?”
“The Elders.”
“They can’t be, Kristina! They’re old men!”
The coach door opened, and the driver’s head tossed inside. I shrank back against my seat as the neck still pumped blood into the dusty foot-well.
“Old men, are they?” she got up and went outside.
I leant out the doorway as she looked back and forth along the road. The coachman’s body lay sprawled out, an almost unrecognizable mass of bloody clothes and broken bones.
To my despair, I heard Ramir’s whisper in my ear. Somehow he must have gotten onto the roof of the coach. “Stand still. You cannot move.”
I cursed silently as I realized the folly of my immature attempt at flight.
The two old men appeared at Kristina’s side. “Do not move, my dear.”
They shuffled away from her, but kept a hold of her hands. Soon her arms were stretched wide, and I could see by the straining of her limbs, she’d be in unbelievable pain.
“Infidel, I see by your refusal to heed my warnings, you have no fear of us.” Ramir looked up at me, standing, frozen at the coach doorway. “You may talk.”
“I don’t want my wife used by you!” I spat at him.
“But she has been used such for a hundred ye
ars.” He shook his head. “We have neither sullied her, nor marked her. She is a Lorelei-hund, and always will be. Why should we stop now?”
“Because I will never rest while you have her.” I managed the inflection of a snarl in my words.
“Then why don’t we just kill you, and take our property back?”
I just gritted my teeth in rage.
“But that, of course, would not teach you a lesson.” He glanced at the other Elder, who nodded. I feared the worst.
“Then if she will not pleasure us, she won’t pleasure anyone.”
“No!”
As one, they ripped her arms from her shoulders, tearing her tunic as they did so. As she stood, deep in the trance they’d installed, she bled copiously onto the grassy roadway. Then the other Elder walked behind her, gripped her head by the chin, and wrenched her head clean off.
I stood openmouthed as she died in front of me, her body falling like a chopped marionette to the ground.
“Catch,” he said, tossing her head to me.
It landed face upwards in my grasp. I swear she blinked, then I knew she’d gone.
“Don’t follow us, infidel,” Ramir said, and they both vanished.
To my disgust, when I looked down at her face, her skin changed before my eyes, aging to her hundred years in mere seconds. Soon her flesh crumbled, falling through the bone to the ground. I pushed it away, recoiling from the touch. Her skinless skull shattered into a million powdery pieces as it hit the ground.
For a long time, I looked at the remains of my wife, so recently alive, now windswept dust on the valley floor. I had nothing left of her to mourn, and merely dust to bury. I only had the tears in my eyes for closure.
I began to walk south.
In time, I picked up my pace to a run, and as grief bore down on me, I raced to Budapest with the speed of the fastest gazelle.
I reached Italy in two weeks; New York five weeks later.
I will admit that I don’t remember much of 1894 at all, the whiskey bottle dimmed my senses enough that the days melted into months, and the lucid periods were few and far between.
By the beginning of spring the next year, I got asked back to the Johns Hopkins University to teach chemical theory, and the strict time regimen stemmed my slipping into constant drunkenness.