by A. D. Koboah
As he had done the previous night, he pressed images into my mind, spreading them out carefully like cherished keepsakes and I knew they were memories, his and Auria’s weaved together so I saw the events simultaneously from both of their viewpoints. It was clearly a memory he had revisited again and again, and it was rich in detail.
Auria wore an ivory dress, her long, dark hair elaborately coiled atop her head. She was standing in a small house which had only three rooms; she was in the living area, which also served as a kitchen. Twin girls slept in the second room, their mother and father in the third. Auria was looming over the wife, who was covered in blood, but still alive. She was staring at Auria, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth twisted in agony. The woman’s husband came at Auria from behind with a poker. Emory, a skinny, pale child at the time, threw himself at the man in a vain attempt to protect Auria. Emory was eleven, and the family's indentured servant. They had been relatively kind to him, but for some reason he could not bear to see this beautiful, fearsome woman, who must have been some kind of a queen, harmed. He was promptly thrown out of the way by his master as Auria turned around, already aware of the man and what he meant to do. She and Onyx slaughtered the whole family with brute force, Auria’s ivory dress dripping with blood by the time they were finished. The only person she spared was Emory.
She stared down at him for a few moments, the bodies of the husband and wife slowly cooling around them, her expression enigmatic. Then she spun on her heel and disappeared right before his eyes.
Emory ran outside and across the empty plains, searching for them and eventually made his way to the road where they both appeared out of nowhere, lit by silvery wisps of moonlight.
“The silly boy clearly wants me to kill him,” Auria snarled.
Emory’s response was to tentatively close the space between them, grasp Auria’s hand and get to his knees, resting his head against her hand. She sighed softly and dragged him to his feet, holding him aloft by the front of his shirt as she peered at him in the soft glow of the moonlight.
“I should really kill you,” she said, sounding bored. “But I’ll spare you. Go back to the farm and stay there. Someone will find you in the morning.”
The next thing he remembered was sitting in the farmhouse, where he stayed for the remainder of that night, surrounded by corpses. Auria hadn’t erased his memory of them, perhaps because she liked the idea of him worshipping her from afar, and he had held on to it, revisiting what he remembered everyday during the years that passed.
Onyx and Auria passed that way again years later when Emory was sixteen. He was on his way home when he saw them walking out of a tavern, half-carrying an extremely inebriated older man, soon to be one of their victims.
Blinded by his adoration for Auria, he rushed toward them with no thought for his safety. Auria rounded on him, ready to attack, until she searched his mind and saw his memories of her. Although only sixteen, he was a tall, strapping young man and already possessed the good looks she had preserved for an eternity. Looking him over, she reached over and grabbed his crotch, seemingly pleased with what she discovered there.
“Well, you seem determined to die young. Come. You can carry him.”
She placed the drunk in his arms, although she could have carried him much easier than Emory. He followed them without a second thought.
They kept him with them for the next ten years. He watched over them during the day and did whatever they asked of him at night, desperate to be allowed to stay with Auria. He had not known she could change him and make him like them until she surprised him one night. That had been decades ago.
“I will always love her, no matter what she does to me.” His face became sad as he showed me more images. One was of Auria’s expression as she gazed at me the night before.
He showed me countless other images of Auria in different scenarios with other men and women, most of them sexual. The one constant in all those images was Emory watching those couplings, his sorrow and anguish palpable. It was not the physical act that elicited this emotion, because he enjoyed watching her being loved by others; it was the little moments of affection she showed toward them occasionally that fired up his rage and jealousy.
“I love her regardless of her mistakes,” he continued. “She has made many mistakes with you. She should not have made you straight away, or killed your wife. Another approach at times is best in situations like this.”
Like the approach he had chosen, I thought to myself, the pretence of friendship whilst he slowly tried to bend me toward what he wanted of me.
“Yes, that approach. I see that the thought of being with another man is abhorrent to you. But when you have lived for as long as I have, the pursuit of pleasure crosses any boundary you may have set in your mortal life. Flesh is flesh and there are many ways to gain pleasure from it if you are not afraid to experiment. And beauty, even beauty such as yours, can only enchant a person for so long. So do not worry, she will tire of trying to win your affection.”
You hope, I thought again, looking directly at him.
His eyes hardened, almost imperceptibly, but he smiled calmly even though his rage leapt out at me. He averted his gaze and continued in his light-hearted manner.
“Your beauty may have caught her attention. But she turned you into one of us purely on a whim. So do not think you can ever take my place. Besides, making you was a big mistake, and I do not say this out of jealousy. You are young, not merely from my advanced years on this Earth. You are young in mind even among men of your years. You have an innocent, pure spirit and she should have known being turned into a vampire would haunt you.” He smiled wryly. “Or perhaps she did and it is the reason why she chose to do it. But you cannot be made into a vampire without it changing you. How long before you become exactly like us? Years? Decades?”
He directed a level stare at me and, as always, his gaze was a little too intimate. I vowed I would never be like them.
He laughed softly and got to his feet.
“Time will tell. And you have plenty of that now. So I will wait and look forward to the day you finally yield to me.”
He smiled once more, a leering smile, and then he walked away, leaving me with my thoughts.
I remained in the chapel, trying to come to terms with the devastating events that had taken place since arriving at the plantation. Auria and Onyx returned not long after with some male slaves in tow. I heard Onyx order them to place barrels of whisky they had brought with them at the back of the chapel. She told them they could leave and I listened to their footsteps as they ran all the way back to the relative safety of the slave quarters. When I heard Auria leave again, I ventured outside and just stood in the clearing gazing up at the night sky. The crumpled body of the slave still lay where she fell, and I avoided looking at it, disgusted and ashamed, but also aroused whenever I glanced at it.
I was still getting used to controlling the amount I could hear. I was surprised to discover I could even hear the slaves in the slave quarters talking long into the night about how many of them would die to fulfil Auria’s sacrifice. So at first, I couldn’t be sure the whispering I had been hearing wasn’t part of some unidentifiable sound of the woodland all around us. But it had been getting stronger over the last hour and I could hear it clearly now.
Avery. Avery.
Was I going insane or was someone whispering my name? I looked around me, looking for the source of the sound. Onyx, who was lounging against one of the trees, was gazing into the woodland as if lost in thought. When I turned to Emory, who was sitting at the foot of one of the trees, I found his gaze trained on me, as it had been for most of the night, a mocking smile on his lips.
“What is that? Can you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?” he said.
It seemed as if he was trying not to laugh, although I did not know why.
Onyx only glanced my way briefly before she shrugged and turned away, her expression bored. I gazed at them helples
sly. What was this new thing only I could hear? I was already so weak and vulnerable among them. To lose my sanity would place me in a much worse situation than I was already in. The whispering began again, louder and more insistent than before.
Avery, Avery. Surely you know my voice.
I waited, unsure of what to do.
It is I, your dead wife.
I froze. Knowing the ease with which they could read my thoughts, I moved away from them, trying to hide my emotions.
Julia? I said in my mind, hoping she could hear me.
Yes! I have returned from the dead.
Tears filled my eyes as hope and shame danced mercilessly through my being. I had seen so many extraordinary things over the course of the last twenty-four hours that I was fraught and still coming to terms with what had been done to me. In the maelstrom of my emotional turmoil, I clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, she was still alive in some way and I wasn’t alone among monsters.
But tell me this, Avery. Her tone changed dramatically, becoming thick with anger and despair. Why did you let her kill me? Why, Avery?
I... It... My misery crested like a dark wave, and for a moment, I couldn’t answer her. Forgive me. Forgive me.
Auria’s voice cut through our silent dialogue like a whip slicing through the air.
“Stop it!” she snapped.
I spun around to see her beside Onyx, her hand coming down to slap her. But her hand met only air as Onyx vanished. Emory burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Onyx re-materialised above Auria, hanging upside down with one leg hooked over one of the tree branches. She blew Auria a kiss.
Although Auria was angry, I could see the corners of her mouth tugging into a small smile of her own as she glared up at Onyx.
I stared at them in bewilderment as Auria turned to me.
“I warned you to never mention her name again.”
“But...but...I heard her, she is not dead.”
“She is dead, you fool. It was Onyx you heard whispering. You’re getting stronger now, so you can hear our thoughts. That’s all it was. Soon you will be able to manipulate the minds of humans as we do.”
It felt as if she had ripped out my spine and I was caught in that moment all over again, helpless as Onyx snapped Julia’s neck.
“You...you killed her and now you torment me with my grief!” I let the tears flow freely.
All I got from her was a cold light in her eyes and laughter. Auria was soon before me, doing a very poor job of hiding her own amusement.
“It was a joke, Avery.” She took me by the arm. “Come, let me show you what else you can do now you are one of us.”
As Auria took my hand and led me away, I noticed that Emory’s laughter had faltered away sharply and that anguish, which was all too familiar to me now, was alight in his eyes. But Onyx continued to laugh as she swung down from the tree, landing lightly on her feet. As I walked away, I heard her in my mind again.
Your pretty little wife. Her heart stopped the second she died. But the second heartbeat—it took much longer for that to stop.
I came to a halt.
Second heartbeat? Was she saying Julia had been with child?
I faced her.
I’m going to kill you, I vowed silently. Even if it takes me an eternity, I will find a way to kill you.
She acted as if the threat was the funniest thing she had ever heard and convulsed into giggles. As I followed Auria into the trees, I could still hear her laughter filling my ears.
“Did you hear him?” she chortled to Emory. “Did you hear what he said?”
She disintegrated into another fit of laughter. Emory was silent and I knew all too well why.
I was thankful when Auria took my hand and the woodland around me disappeared, cutting off the sound of Onyx’s laughter.
“Get that nonsense out of your mind,” Auria said when we were miles from the plantation. “She is even older than Emory. She would tear you to shreds. Onyx respects my wishes, thankfully, so she will not harm you. But I gave you a lot of my blood, so I am weak now, and it will be decades before I fully regain my strength. If you try to carry out whatever foolish plan you have, she will kill you and I will be too weak to stop her. So stop your plotting.”
“Why did you give me so much of your blood?”
“To make you as strong as possible. You’re still weak compared to Emory and will be for a long time. But at least if he tries to kill you, you will have some chance.”
“And you believe he will?”
“Perhaps. He is extremely loyal and fiercely protective of my affections, as you have seen. But he knows not to anger me. Onyx and I have been together for many years. I came across her in Virginia and knew immediately I wanted to make her into a vampire. She had led a pitiful existence up until that point, like so many other slaves, and she knew much pain and suffering. I gave her the strength to avenge her tormentors and she cast away her old life along with her name. She became Onyx from then on. My dark goddess. Now look at her. She is utterly merciless. She is my soul mate and nothing will ever divide us. As for Emory, I am extremely fond of him. I do not want to give him up, but I will if it is necessary.”
She looked pointedly at me and I averted my gaze.
She showed me all of the things that my new body could do and taught me how to read minds and search the memories of my victims. She also instructed me on how to manipulate them into doing, and feeling, what I wanted.
“You have the power to command the world around you. You can move solid objects merely by thinking about it. You can also use its power to travel in the blink of an eye,” she instructed. “Try it. Call the ether to you. Move into it with the image of where you want to be, and you will find yourself there.”
There were limits to what we could do. She showed me by taking me to the slave quarters when we returned to the Foster plantation. “Try and open the door,” she urged.
I hung back, already remembering the intoxicating desire I had felt when I drank the blood of the slave girl. “Go on,” she said.
Hearing a hint of impatience in her tone, I did as she commanded, only to halt at the door.
It felt as if there was something surrounding the cabin, pushing against me, exerting a weight on my mind that made it feel as if it were turning to lead. Intrigued, I brought my hand to the door, and although I was able to touch the door knob, I could not open it, the force gathering around the hand on the door and preventing me from turning the doorknob. The pressure on my mind increased, becoming more disconcerting the longer I stayed at the door with my hand on the door knob. I eventually stepped back.
Auria was smiling when I faced her.
“See. We cannot enter without an invitation. But there are ways around that. We can call them outside, like I showed you. Try and see.”
I backed away from the cabin, something which only made her laugh. “Tomorrow, when the hunger takes you, you will not be so hesitant.”
My only response was to move farther away from the cabin door. But even as I did so, I felt that arousal, that dark call. It was difficult to resist, especially since anger flared whenever I thought of the Fosters and their slaves—all of whom had known of the fate that awaited Julia and me but had said nothing.
“We are nearly indestructible,” Auria continued.
The moonlight bathed her face in an effluence that turned her face to porcelain, her eyes glittering black jewels. “Only certain metals can pierce our flesh. Gold, silver—pure metals. Other than that, only the teeth and nails of another vampire.”
I listened and learned from her, but my thoughts remained on Julia and Onyx’s words: Why did you let them kill me?
We headed back to the chapel in silence. She spoke to me as we materialised in the clearing.
“Stop all that moping. She is dead. It cannot be undone. And there was no second heartbeat.” She wouldn’t look at me. “Do not think of her around the other two. They see it as a weakness and they will hound you for it.�
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She moved toward the chapel. When she realised I wasn’t behind her, she turned and glared at me for a few moments. Then she sighed before disappearing into the chapel where the other two awaited.
I moved to where Julia lay beneath the trees.
I could hear the other three, not just their words, but their thoughts, which were becoming clearer to me as time wore on. I could not escape it. In that moment, the enormity of the situation I was in gripped me with a cold, hard hand. I was trapped. I would never be free of those beasts.
I looked down at Julia. She was almost peaceful in comparison to the other one I had...eaten. Her gaze had been locked on mine right up to the last moment of her life and, as always, her trust and faith in me had shone through her eyes. Eyes that now had flies clustered in a dark pool around them. I hung my head and closed my eyes as bitter tears filled them.
It was a few moments before I was able to open them again, and when I did, I saw I was standing on blackened floor boards bathed by daylight, instead of grass turned a deep sea-green by darkness.
I glanced up with a start.
What new trick was this?
I was standing at the back of the chapel and it was dusk. But the chapel had changed and was scarred by fire. Its walls were blackened and there was a large hole in the roof at the back, exposing a sky tinted blood-red by a setting sun.
I spun around, expecting to see the others and that they would have an explanation for this, but they were gone. Instead I saw a Negro woman kneeling a few feet from me. She wore a faded purple dress and had her head bowed. The unexpected sight pushed all thought of Auria, Onyx and Emory from my mind, and completely forgetting the odd circumstances I found myself in, I took a step toward her, feeling unburdened for the first time since I had stepped into the clearing.
Perhaps my movement alerted her to my presence, because the image of her that I saw seemed to waver and then she looked up at me, seeming to separate from the image I had first seen of her. It stopped me in my tracks when I saw her face fully.