by Ian Hall
“I’ve travelled extensively in the last few years. I have met a few who needed bringing to heel.”
“Yes, as the Order has advanced, certain reprobate elements have formed that hold no ties to the old Order. They are too new to care, and they are too distant from the original homeland.”
“It is a natural process,” I said. “We spread around the world at the speed of mankind’s advance; it would be difficult to keep the ties as close as the old times.”
Chin Loo smiled. “Well, there exists a partnership of two men of the Christian God, both from differing sects, one catholic, one protestant. They hunt the more roguish element of the Order, and they do it well. The Order only exists by permission of mankind’s ignorance of it. The two clerics cut off the heads of those that seek to rise above the parapet; a cleansing, so to speak.”
“And how does this affect me?”
“We would seek an alliance with the pair rather than war with them. They have certain attributes which we would learn more of. They have been turned, yet to our knowledge do not partake of blood.”
I frowned. “No blood at all? Surely they would atrophy?”
“Not enough is known for conclusions to be drawn. But no account has reached the ears of the Order of them taking blood, even that of their victims.”
I considered Chin Loo’s words. If the clerics had indeed found a way to exist without blood, perhaps a ‘cure’ for the condition could be found.
“And where can I find these gentlemen?” I asked, my curiosity piqued to a high degree.
“From my latest information, they attend Saint Francis College in Loretto, Pennsylvania. I believe it is an Irish college, but there my own knowledge runs scant, I’m afraid.”
Pennsylvania. I knew it lay on the other side of this vast continent, but not how to get there. “Do I go over land?”
“Ah, you are in luck, there is now a railroad, built by my own people, which will traverse this country in mere days.”
I thanked Chin Loo and left the acupuncturist in better spirits than I had arrived. I now had a goal, and some direction, rather than the meanderings I’d endured these last few years.
When I enquired at the railroad offices of passage across to Pennsylvania, it transpired that the time of crossing the country had fallen to under a week. I quickly purchased my ticket, and a gentleman at the counter told me to bring my own food. I smiled inwardly at the prospect of having a whole trainload of ‘food’, just waiting for my sharp canines.
While sometimes boring in the extreme, the crossing both displayed the diversity of the continent, and the vastness of it. Changing at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and at Chicago, I arrived in Pittsburgh after ten days travelling by train.
Established 1847.
An already faded, engraved wooded sign bespoke the small college’s short lifespan. As I watched from a clump of trees near the main building, I wondered how I would tell the ‘two clerics’ from the rest of the staff. Brown robed figures mixed with all ages of students, finding them by observation proved simply an impossible task, so I did the obvious; I walked up to the largest building and entered.
Inside, a main desk sat dwarfed by high wooden walls, crosses, and heraldic wooden shields. I crossed the small tiled floor.
“Excuse me?” I looked over the desk at a robed man. “How would one enroll here?”
The man behind the desk looked up at me with an enquiring stare. “With an application form, two sponsors, and two letters of recommendation.”
The man’s Irish lilt fell out of his mouth like song lyrics.
“I see. Could I sit in on some classes to see if they are for me?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, the classes are fully subscribed, and in any case, skimming is not allowed.”
“I see,” I said, turning to leave. “Thank you for your time.”
“What is it you really came for?”
I turned back to the man. His expression had not changed. “I mean, you didn’t come out here to Loretto just to ask a question that could have been done by missive.”
“Fair enough.” It seemed to be time for the truth. “I seek a pair of clerics, one Catholic, one Protestant. I believe they reside or teach here.”
He reached behind him and pulled on a long, thick, tasseled cord. A distant bell rang.
Within moments a smallish boy appeared at a run. “Father Jacob?”
“William, go fetch either Father Patrick or Father Andrew.”
“Yes, sir.”
He set off, again at a run.
“You can wait over there.” Jacob pointed to a long wooden pew against the wall by the door.
After my long journey across the country, an hour’s wait seemed hardly to matter.
The man at the desk remained quiet, then the boy returned, and they held a whispered conversation.
The robed man stood up. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Father Patrick will see you now, he is in the small chapel.” He waved at the boy. “William will show you the way.”
“Thank you, you’ve been so kind.”
But the man did not smile.
The ‘small’ chapel needed little guiding to. The small building stood apart from the main college, with a large cross above the door. Thin, stained-glass windows ran down both sides. The boy stopped at the three steps and ushered me past.
Inside, two rows of pews ran forward to a small Dias where a black figure stood. Mid-thirties, maybe older, short, cropped, dark brown hair, dog collar, one of the two drop variety.
“My name is Andrew Robertson,” his accent sounded well defined Scottish, even in such a short phrase. “What do you want from me?”
I walked up the aisle, then stood maybe twenty feet away. “I have been sent by the Order. For some reason they want me to meet you and your companion.”
“The Order?”
“The ancient Order of the Strogoi.”
He sneered at me, his lips curling up into an unwelcoming grin. “You are a vampire.”
“I don’t wish to be confused with the more prevalent modern version. I am of the Order.”
“So you’re an old vampire. Is this meant to impress me?”
“Doesn’t impress me either.” A sudden introduction of a voice behind me. I tried not to turn round, but my self-preservation kicked in and I glanced back down the aisle. A second man, very much like the first, but his accent differed slightly. “Patrick Watson, from Moycullen, County Galway.”
“So I have met the ‘two clerics’.”
Patrick walked up the aisle past me, and I tried with all my senses to get an imprint from him, but failed miserably.
“Your vampire tricks won’t work on us, Strogoi, we’ve been at the game far too long.” He joined Andrew, moving to the other side of the Dias.
The men were almost twins, not identical in feature, but alike in everything else, stance demeanor, speech.
“So, your Order has sent you to see us,” Andrew began. “For what purpose?”
I shook my head and walked to the front pew, sitting down on the hard, polished maple. “I have no idea. I was given a letter of instruction, and directions here. That’s all I know. I actually hoped that you’d know all the details.”
Suddenly, without any signals, the men shimmered slightly, and I knew they’d swapped positions.
“An interesting way to indicate that you are also vampires.” I nodded, looking at the complete lack of humor in their faces.
“Your name?”
“Ivan Vyhovski, from Lviv, in Poland.”
Patrick bowed. “Welcome, Ivan Vyhovsky, to the college of Saint Francis. We rest here between travels. We catch up on our prayer and repent to the Lord for our sins.”
“Are you a religious man, Ivan?” Andrew asked.
I nodded. “I was once. I studied at the Jesuit Collegium in Lviv, founded by the Greek Roman Catholic Church.”
Patrick looked impressed, the first time he’d changed expression. “Perh
aps you’d like to pray with us?”
I immediately baulked against the idea, but nodded my head slowly. “It’s been a while.”
Andrew vanished, reappearing at my side. “We are all sinners, Ivan.”
It felt incredible that the man would take such an attitude. I followed him to his knees, and felt Patrick join me on my other side. I still feared attack, but for some reason, their presence comforted me. As they began the old words, so often spoken by me in Polish, the words came slowly. When they shifted to Latin, I surged in remembrance of my earlier days, and tears coursed down my face as I joined the litany.
Regardless of the initial reason for my mission in meeting these men, I now had a powerful urge to stay and become friends with these strange religious vampires.
They handed me a prayer book in English, and we began again, this time my words were strong, powerful, rising in the small church with enough force to blow the roof off.
Then they closed their books.
The next prayer was of their own writing, and I listened and learned their story.
“Father in the heavens, forgive us our sins. We take souls from the wretched, and we release them to you. Father in the heavens, forgive us our sins. We take lives from the lost, and we honor you with their spirits. Father in the heavens, keep us strong in the faith. We take strength from your love and we resist all temptation. Father in the heavens, we rebuke the curse inside us, and we strive for release from our bondage. Father in the heavens, we accept the blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and abhor all other forms. Father in the heavens, we ask forgiveness in our earthly bodies, in the hope of resurrection with you at the end of all days. Amen.”
By the third repetition, I had caught most of the words, and mouthed the prayer along with them. By the sixth, I spoke the words in unison, and meant every one of them.
My life changed that day, given both a comradeship and a solitude that I’d never embraced so fully before.
I learned their new ‘tricks’, taken from the eastern European vampire hunters of old, and they learned mine. Together we formed a bond I considered unbreakable.
Their story inspired me, making the process easier.
These old vampires, turned in the process of hunting other vampires, had never tasted human blood. Their prayer alone kept the urges at bay. They ‘pushed’ their hunger down, and prayed harder when the need arose.
Initially, I felt reticent in joining their enforced restriction, but as the days passed, I felt stronger against my instinctual perceptions.
Days spread to weeks, and then, to my joy, I woke one morning, over two months from my last feeding, and felt no hunger at all. The prayers that day sounded more vibrant. The hymns from the choir made the stained-glass of the large chapel sparkle with color.
Despite my vampire roots, my life felt complete.
Behind The Masque
By Ian Hall & April L. Miller
“Mother! Don’t say it!” the voice in my head screamed to be heard.
There seemed to be the slightest hesitation, and for an instant, I coddled the notion that she’d actually taken my telepathic advice.
“I do,” she smiled behind her gossamer white veil.
I swear that my already-atrophied left side withered another degree at that moment. I cursed the childhood malady that had left me handicapped and disfigured for so many years. Had fate been kinder to me earlier, I might have married well and saved my mother from the burden of growing debt.
“And do you, William Roxburgh,” the minister continued, seemingly ignoring my protests, “take Isabella Hughes to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.” Roxburgh’s smarmy voice held so much emotion in those two simple words. Calm, conniving, yet confident, his words reverberated off every wall in the small kirk, echoing off the tan, sandstone walls into my ears.
My fate was sealed as rings were placed on fingers, and my mother became a Roxburgh. Damn me if I hadn’t seen it coming a year ago when they met at Haddington Market.
“Then by the power invested in me, and the Church of Scotland, I pronounce you man and wife.”
My gaze fell upon Roxburgh’s two rather heavy daughters, standing behind the pair, flowers clutched in large, sweaty fingers. Neither of them had been blessed by mother nature in any way, shape or form, and despite my body’s deformity and the asymmetrical wilt to the left side of my face, they could not match my countenance.
But I sat alone on the cold, hard oak, banished to the pews, not allowed to be mother’s flower girl. I sat fuming, my anger overflowing in a myriad of directions, my stare burning into the backs of the three recent interlopers into my life.
“The ceremony will be far too taxing for her.” Mildred, the elder of the two, had beaten mother’s flimsy argument on my behalf down far too easily. The truth stood in the way of their machinations; I did most of the work round the house anyway, mother’s time proved much too valuable for menial work, her embroidery brought what little money there was into the household.
Maigret, the younger, gave me such a sneer that my objection lay silent in my open mouth. I would indeed witness my mother’s wedding from a pew, not actually in the ceremony at all.
Escaping the dreadful scene at the altar, my mind fled back in time to easier days; back before the Hughes’ household became overcome by the illness that claimed my father and brothers, leaving me shriveled, and mother with a household to support and no provider. Like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, she rose to the task and kept the roof from crumbling atop our heads. Most days there seemed at least a small morsel at the table, crumbs to get by on. It felt enough for me and would always have been. Mother dreamed of more; more for both of us.
Now, by her union to Roxburgh, there would be bounty a plenty. In placing her hand into keeping of that dreadful merchant and profiteer, Mother’s struggles were about to come to a sudden end. I feared, however, that mine were about to begin.
As William lifted her veil away, I would swear to you the light in my mother’s eyes died. And then he claimed her with a kiss, sealing fate for her and for me.
I remained in my pew just as any other onlooker as the Roxburgh’s paraded past; Mother and William followed by my new sisters. None spared me a glance; not even my own flesh and blood.
“Arabella,” a velvet voice closed in on me through the fog of my sullen musings, “would you like help?”
My hand flew to my face, hiding the wrinkled left side from view.
“Arabella, you have no need to hide from me.”
I followed the line of a man’s hand, up a well-muscled arm to a pleasant and concerned face. Maxwell Clooney, the only figure in town more off-putting than myself. He always had a certain strangeness about him, and despite my bent shape and crooked limbs, I could not help but notice. Perhaps that made me a hypocrite, but in my moment of spite, I could not have cared less.
Brusquely I denied the helpful hand and took my place in line behind the gay celebrators. With some discomfort, I shuffled after them.
I watched the dances with a gentle smile, all the while fighting the bitterness inside me. I’m not sure if I actually remember dancing before the illness, but that night, it seemed to come back to me. Somewhere, before my illness, I’d whirled like some highland dervish, skirts flying higher than they should, buoyed by the confidence of childhood.
Maxwell floated around me, brought me a filled glass when I had drained the last one.
To be perfectly honest, I am unsure as to when Maxwell arrived in Flemingston. I was perhaps fourteen, so it would be about ten years ago, but indeed he had changed little since that first day. During the years, he always maintained a distance which no one cared to cross, and seemed none the worse for it.
He kept to himself, and despite one rumor of romantic entanglement, had added nothing to the village gossip. Some of the villagers of Flemingston saw him in a somewhat sinister light, but most just considered him contrary. And yet in his kindness, he catered to my ev
ery need as if feeling the ache within my chest and doing all within his power to quell it.
I kept my full eye on Maxwell as the celebration continued long into the night; in turn, his eyes slid to me, almost shyly, at any given opportunity. My body thrilled involuntarily each time I took notice of his sheepish stare.
That night in bed, I dreamt I had a perfect body, the perfect face, and dreamt of strong arms holding me, dreamt of a lover crushing me into submission. In the morning I woke with Maxwell’s name on my lips and sensations rolling over me no dream could account for. I felt intoxicated and had to shake my head to clear it, forcing the dream away and scattering it about the room.
It was a dangerous dream, knowing my crooked form would never allow it to become a reality. And so I threw my covers off and loped to the full-length mirror on the south wall. The reflection assured me nothing had changed and I cursed myself for having hoped, renouncing my newfound admiration for Maxwell Clooney, and all men, for that matter.
Weeks passed, and we settled into the larger Roxburgh house. Though not quite at the social level to afford servants, I had my own room, albeit on the ground floor, next to the kitchen. At first I had railed against the situation, the rest of the family being on the first floor, but once settled in for the night, I heard nothing of the practices upstairs, and considered the arrangement to be to my advantage.
Despite my infirmity, I did more than my fair share of the chores. I washed clothing and kept the range in the kitchen stocked with wood, regardless of the weather.
Though almost twenty-five years old, I settled in for a lifetime of such drudgery, my place in life assured.
My personal contentment got exchanged for peace in the household. Not that I benefited much from this accord.
Despite my inadequate form, the responsibilities of keeping house fell to me alone. If the floor needed scrubbing, socks mending, or curtains dusted, it fell to me. My days were long and arduous, beginning before sunrise and ending long after the sky had gone dark.