Embraced by the Shadows

by Mayra Calvani

  All of a sudden Alana grabbed her by the back of the neck and, mafia style, roughly, cruelly kissed her on the lips. Then she pushed her away and whispered, “There's your pact."

  Valeria brought a hand to her bruised lips, stunned.

  Then Alana disappeared down the hall and into the elevator, her long red hair flaring behind her like a cape.

  * * * *

  During the next few weeks Alana kept away from her.

  She did come to her apartment one more time, long after midnight and not knowing exactly why she had come, only to find Valeria wrapped inside Humberto's arms. Naked, profoundly asleep, their heavy breathing the only sound in the darkness.

  From the balcony, almost hypnotized, Alana had watched them for a long time.

  Their bodies molded into each other in such a human and perfect way ... and the beauty of their limbs and the rise and fall of their chests. She listened to their heartbeats, and smelled their spent passion.

  Alana grimaced, feeling a stab of desire, her malignant teeth lengthening in spite of her own will to repress them. She pressed her open palms against the glass door, the tip of her nose pressed against the glass.

  She instantly knew Humberto had been Valeria's first lover.

  Lies, lies, lies. Why were there so many lies when there was so much love?

  But Alana didn't feel anger nor betrayal. What she felt was ... sadness. And loneliness. She remembered what Sadash had said about loneliness. But already, so fast, after only a few weeks?

  Keep away from them...

  Yes, she would keep away from them. Especially from Valeria, her beloved twin soul, her sister ... so playful and giving, such a slave of the senses....

  ....What would she taste like?

  No, no, no ... Stay away from her!

  Yes, she had to stay away from Valeria.

  Besides, she had other more important matters to think of. Her new powers, for instance. Her wondrous yet maddening, irrepressible vision, which she had to learn to control.

  And then there was her mother...

  Why was she suddenly obsessed by the idea that what the gypsy old woman had told her was true? She would ask Sadash. In a way she was afraid of what his response might be, but she would ask him.

  * * * *

  But when Alana was with Sadash she never felt lonely.

  He was her teacher, her god. To be with him was both wonderful and terrifying. He never stopped amazing her. It was a mystery, how he could be so cruel and merciless with some of his victims yet so gentle and adoring with her. He was the ultimate predator. No scruples, no guilt, no misgivings. He strolled the dark city streets and took his victims in a cold and calculated way.

  And always the cleanest of jobs. Never a trace of blood on his clothes—no need to get attention. Hardly ever did he kill his victims. Again, no need to get attention. As he would tell her again and again and again, there was no such thing as being too cautious, for there existed secret organizations who not only actually believed in the existence of vampires but were also obsessed by the idea of gathering information about them and tracking them down.

  He drank a little bit here, a little bit there. Once in a while he led Alana on a rampage and took little drinks from a dozen in the course of a night, always healing the wound on their necks or wrists afterwards.

  Indeed, if any vampire wished it, not even a slight mark of teeth was left on the victim's skin. This was a power they possessed, the power of healing. Though this power was weak in young vampires it strengthened with time. Alana, for instance, didn't yet have the power of ultimate healing. Little punctured scars were always left on her victims’ flesh. In all the old vampire myths and legends where victims had been found with punctured wounds, it meant that the attacker had been a young vampire. Mature vampires never left even a little scratch. The length of time required to attain Vampiric Maturity—the ability of a vampire to fully understand and control his powers—differed from one vampire to another and was influenced by a number of factors. A vampire created by a young vampire would require a longer time to attain Maturity than a vampire created by a mature vampire, which had been Sadash's case and was now Alana's case. Hence the power was carried in the blood and passed on through the blood. Moreover, this miracle healing worked only on the wounds they themselves inflicted. Alana, for instance, couldn't heal wounds inflicted by Sadash, nor vice versa.

  But, as Sadash explained to her, this urge to lead blood rampages were sporadic, maybe once every few years. Sometimes he would go without a drop for days, or even weeks. He liked big strong men with rape and murder in their past. Yes, Sadash acted especially brutal with these. But his favorites seemed to be young prostitutes. He was gentle with these, even loving, and he never killed them. Alana enjoyed watching him pierce their throats, though almost always it made her jealous.

  After a feed they went to bars, to discos, to casinos, to the movies, to art galleries. Sometimes they strolled on the beach. On Friday nights, when the malls closed at ten o'clock, they went shopping, walking into the most expensive stores and trying on the most sophisticated silks and wools and linens and velvets. They loved sitting down and watching the shoppers stroll by and joked about how this woman or that man would taste. Imagine! Joking about it!

  Once, while they were engaged in this little game, Alana saw for the first time two other vampires. Two lovely women, both in their twenties, elegantly dressed, with shopping bags in their hands. They acknowledged Alana and Sadash with a steady, knowing look in their eyes. Cold acknowledgment. We know what you are, you know what we are. Keep your distance. Alana had looked at Sadash. Maker and Fledgling, he had said, perfectly indifferent. How strange, that these lovely vampire creatures didn't want to have anything to do with them. Had they, in turn, found Alana and Sadash as beautifully indifferent, as cold?

  But sometimes, when they didn't go to malls, Alana and Sadash went flying. Under black velvet skies full of stars and over the shimmering waters of the Caribbean, the salty reek of the wind hitting their faces. Slow, ever so slow ... fast, faster ... higher and higher ... then low, ever so slow again.... ascending and descending with the effortless grace of a feather. Just like Superman and Lois Lane.

  But not even the miracle of flying compared with the mind-shattering ecstasy of the blood draught.

  Other nights they sat in his study, listening to music, or reading, or watching TV or talking. It was during one of these nights that Sadash finally opened up and revealed some of his past. He was stretched out on the sofa and she was sitting in an armchair with her bent legs under her. They had just rented the movie Amadeus, which both of them had already watched a few times in the past. Sadash had a Yamaha home-movie center complete with Bose speakers, and the music had been ecstatic. Sunrise was an hour away. He asked her to close her eyes and order her mind to receive. Alana did as she was told. Then a series of images began to flow into her brain. Overwhelming, the magnitude of this images and their rich detail and color, as if she were in them and part of them. And then she heard Sadash's telepathic voice, that inner voice that so often in the past had invaded her mind and that she had known since she was ten.

  Ours was an age of magnificence, an age of conquerors. An age of battles and victories and savagery and blood. The Ottoman Empire was at the height of its territorial expansion, its borders encompassing all of southeastern Europe, Anatolia, part of the Arab World, and the North African coast as far west as Algeria.

  I was born the third son to the Padisha, spoilt to the point of rottenness but trained relentlessly as a warrior. After I became sixteen, I hardly spent any time in the palace, but instead was constantly sent to battles in what was an aggressive military campaign to expand our boundaries and multiply our riches. By the time I became twenty-three I already was a high commander in the army and was known for my fierce and methodical battles against the armies of the Holy League. I can say with an almost absolute conviction that had I lived longer I would have succeeded my father as the next
Padisha. The dynasty was passed on not necessarily to the oldest son but to the ablest, and my two older brothers were more interested in the pleasures of the harem than in the blood of battle. But destiny always enjoys playing tricks on us, and my future turned out quite differently.

  Marriages were arranged early in those days. I was married when I was seventeen, to a Romanian princess who served to consolidate a friendly pact from her country to our empire. By the time I was twenty-three she had given me a daughter and two sons. Geylan, my daughter, was the firstborn ... and there was nothing on earth I wouldn't do for her. She was so much like you, with her long red hair and brilliant black eyes ... so soft and sweet.

  I didn't feel anything more than respect for my wife. No love was involved. Though it's true I began showing her affection after the birth of my children, especially while she was pregnant. But I really saw little of her, and any sexual desires I might have were satisfied by the women of the harem. Beautiful faces, beautiful bodies. A few hours of pleasure. Nothing more.

  But my daughter.... She was my first love. It's strange, and I don't understand it myself, but my daughter was the biggest reason I always came back to the palace. She was my jewel, so loving, so full of that sweet childish enthusiasm. It was delicious and surprising, the way I became clay in her hands, succumbing to her most ridiculous little wish. The fervent way she wrapped her little white arms around my neck, begging me to dress her up as a boy soldier and take her with me into the battlefield ... The first female to make me realize that I had not a heart of steel, that I was vulnerable...

  Geylan died when she was ten, fallen to a strange disease we didn't know anything about in those days. I can only say that my only escape was war. Kill the enemy, spill blood—this was the only way I knew how to fight my pain.

  In 1683, two months after her death, I was sent to Vienna on a grand second attempt to seize this city, which we had failed to capture years before.

  But on the long journey across the Balkans I began to have a series of strange dreams ... a woman. There was always the same woman in my dreams. A beautiful middle-aged woman with long curly black hair and dark blue eyes. I had seen this woman before. I remembered her face perfectly well. There had been a grand banquet at the palace a few months back, and she had been there. At one instant during the dinner she had smiled at me from across the long table, but there had been more than a hundred guests that night, and I had not seen her again after this. She had the looks of a noble, wrapped in silks and velvets, her neck and wrists and fingers lavishly adorned with jewels.

  The only thing in my dreams was her face. Understanding, smiling, beckoning. But it was this simplicity what made them disturbing. I couldn't understand it. Why was I dreaming again and again of a woman I had only seen once at a banquet that had taken place months ago? It is true that I was in an awfully depressed state of mind because of Geylan's death, but I couldn't find any connection between this woman and what had happened to my daughter. So I tried to ignore these dreams and toss them out of my mind. I had been sent to Vienna on a grand mission, I had a whole army behind me to lead and protect. I couldn't allow myself to be distracted by any kind of irrational dreams.

  Weeks passed, and many more dreams. And it was then, on the eve of our attack to the Austrian city, that I was turned into a vampire.

  It was so ridiculously simple ... I was alone in my tent, going over some maps and charts of our battle strategy when she appeared in the tent. You can imagine my shock. Impossible to think what she was doing there or how she had gotten there in the first place, for there were six guards outside to protect my tent. I stood frozen under the power of her gaze. She only spoke a few words, her voice like satin ... I was the chosen one, I was the one to receive her precious gift of immortality ... and she desired so to heal my wounds, to soothe my pain...

  I didn't have the power to resist or make a choice. I was taken ... lovingly, yes, but taken nonetheless.

  Together we were for more than a century, traveling incessantly across Europe and Asia. We visited all the most important cities and all of the not so important ones, raiding the streets of London and Paris and Amsterdam and all the rest of them, learning new languages, reading tons of books by the week, mingling with the best of human and vampiric crowds. She was an old vampire, a lot older than I am now, and a patient teacher. I had been right about her. She was a Hungarian duchess, forty-two years old when given the Immortal Blood, and rich, very rich.

  During the first hundred years I did many crazy things, making Fledglings of my own out of first impulses, leaving trails of blood wherever I went.... extremely dangerous for a vampire in those dark and superstitious days. Indeed, in those days there were places in Europe were vampires weren't only the hunters but also the hunted. We're immortal, yes, but as I explained you before we can be burned, we can suffer unbearable pain until our bodies crumble into ashes, and some of our kind were actually captured and thrown into pyres. Their ignorance—they believed we could be eternally destroyed in this way! Most of the victims were innocent, of course, wrongly accused, just as most of the women during the witch hysteria were innocent and wrongly accused. Dark, dark times, especially in the Slavic lands.

  But as I was saying, I was embittered. I resented her. As much as I came to adore her, I resented her. I was immortal. I killed people and drank their blood. I loathed what I was ... and loved it. And it was this contradiction of feelings what made me act in an irrational way. Sometimes, overcome with guilt, I cried after a feast. And yet sometimes I enjoyed torturing my victims before the kill. I killed and I killed, but it was so different than in the battlefield.

  It was this resentment what finally made me leave her. She accepted it. She knew it would happen. There comes a time when a Fledgling must leave his or her Maker. And my time had come. We will always be bonded, she and I. Our ties can never be broken, the same way ours will never be broken.

  I became a loner, until I decided to make another Fledgling. A young man, this time. It turned out to be a complete disaster—but that is another story.

  After this I decided to move to America and put all my efforts into building up my bank account. The New World. Europe was finished for me. I already had acquired a small fortune—part of it from my own treasures as a mortal, the other part stolen from my wealthy victims—and I invested this into bonds and began to use the profits to buy taverns, clubs, restaurants. I became a businessman, chose my agents with extreme care, giving them lavish salaries not to ask questions and make up for my odd hours and requirements. For a long time I lived in California. Then I moved to New York. Later to Miami. Impossible for me to stay too long in the same place. I get restless and bored.

  Twelve years ago I felt a sudden urge to go back to Istanbul, drawn by an unexplainable belief that I had to go there, that something or someone was waiting for me. When I first lay eyes on you I instantly knew you were the magnet. It was you ... and in a strange way it was also Geylan. I was shocked, that two people could be so physically alike ... and you were ten, as old as she had been when she died. But you were Alana. Restless and rebellious Alana. An innocent child with the strong will and the seductive black eyes of a woman. And I desired you more than I had ever desired another mortal. I had to have you. And I did. And that is that.

  Why do we exist? When did we come to exist? Who or What do we come from? These are questions I cannot answer for you. It seems to me we evolved from something, just as human beings evolved from something, but from what, I do not know. And no vampire I have ever met has even had the slightest answer. Why does life exist? For what purpose? What came first, the chicken or the egg? The same unanswerable questions. And the same mystery applies to us, Alana.

  Writers write about our origins, about our evilness, our pacts with the Devil. And I laugh. What pact? What Devil? Is a fly, which is the cause of so much disease and death in the world, evil? Is a wolf evil, when he crushes the neck of the lamb?

  No, my Alana. We are here, we exist, jus
t as flies and wolves exist. Our being here has nothing to do with evil. We have a nature that drives us, and we cannot fight this nature. In spite of our intellect, we cannot. That is the tragedy of it, our intellect. For it is driven by the lust of the blood. A mature vampire can learn to control this lust. A young vampire cannot. He must kill. His nature forces him to do so. You are living the agony now, are you not ... along with the glorious pleasure? A pleasure you cannot get from jars of blood in a blood bank. Because it is more than the blood itself, is it not? It is not only the nourishment. It is the thrill of the impaling the flesh. It is the mind-shattering intimacy.

  No, my beautiful one, you are not evil. You are beautiful, in flesh and in essence and in heart. Just like the mountain wolf, just like the tiger.

  This is what I believe. But then, you already know I do not believe in the Devil, or in an Absolute Evil.

  * * * *

  Alana opened her eyes as if she had woken from a dark and sumptuous dream. She had seen, heard, smelled every detail. She had felt everything as if she had been part of that ancient and majestic world. More than anything, seeing Sadash as a mortal man had been breathtaking. Even then, he had been magnificent and Alana could easily understand the reason why the woman vampire had chosen him. In battle he had been fierce, merciless, a killing machine with a genius mind for military strategy. And yet in his daughter's arms he had been so tender, so caring.

  Geylan, his daughter...

  But before she could even think of something to say, Sadash began to talk.

  "Yes ... part of what drew me to you was your uncanny resemblance to her. But only for a moment. I am not a psychologist, but I don't need to be one to tell you this is not a case of replacement. You're my immortal lover ... and she was my mortal daughter. Your resemblance to her only makes you a little bit more special to me."

  "Only a little bit?"

  He straightened himself up on the sofa. “Okay. A little bit more than a little bit. But that is all. Take that accusatory expression off your face."