by Jamie Ott
Like Sibiu, the fortified city was nearly perfectly preserved, and even the more rotted parts of the city were beautiful and enchanting. Just looking at the stone roads reminded her of how old the place, she stood on, was.
As she entered the infamous Clock Tower, which was built in the 13th century, she felt truly overcome by the realization that the clock was probably older than her own family line. It must have been a significant advance in technology to the common people of the middle ages.
By early evening, Starr returned to Sibiu where she wandered about for hours.
The town was known for having two levels of division. For the earlier part of the evening, she walked the upper level which was a business district. There she felt compelled to touch all the walls. To her, touching them was like touching a person’s essence, a person that lived centuries before.
Except for the garish paint, and occasional dry wall, many of the towers were so excellently preserved that Starr could immediately see, in her mind, what life might have been like there: the Harquebusier, home to medieval infantry; the Carpenter Towers, fortified with a beautiful octagonal shape; Tanning Towers, and the Gunpowder Towers. People worked themselves to death, in those places.
To think that, in a mild way, she was connected, being what she was, to the town was a thrilling thought. After all it was mythology that Vlad, himself, was a vampire. The fact that an ethical tribe of vampires, who called themselves The Council, ruled and resided there, made the rumor seem possible.
She wondered if vampires were first born, there, in the Transylvania territory, or were they brought from elsewhere? Was Dracula still alive? And, if he were, was he as crazy, now, as he was back then?
When she tired of the upper level, she moved along to the lower level which was comprised of mostly houses that were centuries old, too.
Like the houses she saw from her hotel’s room window, they were all crammed together, making long neat rows of house after house. The doors were small and close to each other, and people touched shoulders as they walked in and out of them. From what she was able to glimpse, from the street, the insides were considerably small, too.
In New York City, homes were also crammed together, though Sibiu’s neighborhoods looked to provide little space or privacy for, and between, families.
The Romanian people stuck out, greatly, in contrast to their medieval surroundings. In fact, they seemed completely out of place, in their modern clothes, carrying their laptops and talking on cell phones.
At the corner of a cobble stone street, she spotted a little pub. Tired of wandering around, she decided to stop.
Inside, the pub was just like most of the other buildings she’d seen that day; although attached to enormous structures, the place, itself, was small and dark like a cave.
Inside, the décor was simple looking with thick whittled wooden tables and chairs crammed together, hardly allowing of patron privacy.
The crowd was mostly middle aged, though a few of them were fairly young. Many of them look well beyond their ages because their skin was already ruined from years of drinking and smoking; a trend that seemed to start early in the towns of Transylvania.
She walked up to the counter and ordered an Ursus, which was a beer from the top brewery in Romania.
The myths would say that her kind could only drink blood, but it just wasn’t true. In fact, Starr really enjoyed the refreshing taste of the spiced ale. The hops made her taste buds come to life.
It was at that moment she noticed the scent of sage, again, but she wasn’t surprised. Eventually, she knew he’d find her, again.
She remained where she was, thoroughly surprised, and enjoying her corba de peste, fish soup which turned out to be very delicious.
Finally, the man must have realized she was onto him, for, instead of trying to blend in with the crowd, he sat right next to her.
“So I figured I’d better just say hi,” he said with a thick Romanian accent.
Starr kept eating as if he didn’t speak.
“Ar-r-ren’t you going to say something?”
He rolled his R, slightly.
“Go away,” she said icily, as she sipped more of her fish broth.
“Well, that’s hardly nice, Madam,” he said, sounding surprised.
She took a sip of her cold brew.
After a moment of silence, the man continued, “You are just as shocking of tongue, as you are of presence: black hair, black eye liner, black leather. What is this? A chain ar-r-round your neck?”
Like an old character in a comic book, Starr liked to fashion a thick chain link around her neck, clasped off with a full sized metal lock; the key was in her pocket at all times.
The man reached out to touch the chain.
“Don’t touch me.”
The man ignored her.
Faster than the human eye could see, Starr put her hand around the man’s neck, and slammed his head onto the counter, pinning him there.
He yelped and groaned as he clawed at her hands, but she was too strong.
Starr, who was a black black belt in Karate, a natural runner, and could bench press like a man when she was alive, was now a real life woman of steel. It was for this reason that The Council and, particularly, Louisa Credenza had taken an interest in her; however, Starr had a deep rooted feeling that their intentions were not wholly pure, and she wouldn’t be forced to do anything she didn’t agree with.
There weren’t many vampires, young or old, who could take Starr on, which is why she flew to Romania to spy on The Council. If she could find out what their plans, for her, were, then she could determine whether, or not, she needed to prepare for the fight of her life.
Personally, thought Starr a few times, she’d rather just fall off the face of the Earth, and if it weren’t for the people in her life that she cared about, she would have.
The problem with hiding from other vampires was some of them had the same natural ability, as Starr, to sense each other’s presence; to pick each other out of a crowd. Worse was the older they got, the stronger their powers became. Hiding from Credenza would be like running from the law with a cell phone in her pocket; she’d always be on satellite and easily located.
The barrister, who was cleaning a glass stopped and stared, as did the other patrons. Normally, people were surprised to see that skinny, beautiful Starr could kick a man’s butt.
He whimpered and clawed at her hand, trying to get her to release her grip.
Finally, she let him up. He looked at her, his face red and angry, and then walked out.
The patrons continued to stare; Starr stared back, defiantly.
“Ce este?” she said loudly and angrily; the patrons turned back to what they were doing, quickly.
Castle De Negru
Chapter 2
The next day, she took the Carpathian Mountains Bonus tour, only it didn’t go high up into the mountains, but, rather, just up into the immediate hills where they viewed the city from on high.
The road was a windy, winding path. Occasionally, Starr wondered if the bus could tip over the side. Judging by scent that other passengers were giving off, many others were a little frightened, too.
When they got to the top of their point, she caught sight of an enormous black- as-coal lake; it was long fished out and dead.
The bus driver continued up several more miles of road, and the further up they got, the more the road diminished; leaving barely enough room for the bus to drive on.
The higher they went, the more nervous the passengers seemed to get.
After a few more miles, the bus turned right onto a rocky road that took them, steadily, down an incline.
As they made their way down, they passed a herd of goats and a couple herdsman.
Crazy as it seemed, to her, and many of the tourists, this was a spectacular site to see; the idea that people still did such things was unimagined.
Further along, Starr saw, ahead, a
dark castle approach: Castel de Negru, the bus driver called it.
As they got closer to the castle, Starr felt a tickle in her ear. She rubbed it, but the tickle turned into a buzz. Curiously, she looked around to see if anyone else noticed the weird noise, but no one appeared to be bothered.
A few hundred more feet and her head started to feel like it was being penetrated by infrasonic sound waves.
Trying to protect her ears, she put her hands to her ears, but it didn’t help. Then, instantly, her mind was flooded with the thoughts of a dozen people, murmuring. It hurt bad, making her eyes water.
Although she was a kind of telepath, her specialty was sensing other people or vampires around her, and seeing pictures in her mind of what they were doing in the present. This was the first time she’d ever been able to hear conversations taking place, too.
Then, like someone put a movie in her mind, she saw that inside they were preparing a blood bath. The sight made her inner animal thirsty, and her fangs protruded forward a bit.
Desperately, she tried to ignore the images and commanded her fangs to recede, but, then, she saw a large stone bath in the center of the room, where a table could have seated 50 people.
A man in a white suit was tying up a goat that cried, loudly, by the feet; he strung him upside down, over the basin and slit its jugular.
The blood poured down in a thick stream. There were six goats, next to it, that were slowly dying, their gurgled cries becoming less and less, as they’d had their veins slit moments before.
Sometimes, when she didn’t get blood, regularly, in her diet, she would ‘turn’ at the sight of it; meaning her vampire would show its self; her fangs would extend and her eyes would change colors. If she was really starved for blood, she could even ‘vamp out.’
To vamp out was a serious thing that could cause Starr to lose human consciousness, turning her into a mindless zombie and killing machine.
Starr fidgeted, uncomfortably, in her seat; she didn’t know if she could stop from turning right there, as the images continued to permeate her mind.
Finally, her skin started to tingle, she felt her fangs extended all the way, and it was too late.
She reached inside her jacket, pulled out her sunglasses and covered her iridescent-kaleidoscope eyes, which was a bizarre sight on anyone.
A low growl came from her throat. She tried to silence it but she felt helpless, like she was losing the fight against her inner demon.
Just when she’d given up, and was about ready to jump out of the window to avoid killing anyone, the feeling lifted.
She looked out of the window; the castle was a hundred feet behind them, and then five hundred, and then a thousand. The further away they got, the calmer Starr became.
The bus continued five more miles down the path, and stopped in an obscured little town.
Still unable to draw back her fangs, she decided to go to the bathroom and splash some water on her face.
After seeing her sweaty, pallid reflection in the bathroom mirror, she decided to stay behind, rather than return to Sibiu, because she didn’t know if she could pass the castle, again. Next time, she would surely vamp out and someone might die.
Maybe she could track one of those goats she’d seen being herded?
Staring at the ground, and covering her mouth so as not to show her fangs to the bus driver, she explained that she would stay the night, at the bed and breakfast, and then take the bus home, the next day.
The driver stared at her and Starr got the sensation that he knew what was really bothering her: that she needed blood. Fortunately, the man just told her to be careful and then gave her a map of the area.
After checking into the town’s bed and breakfast, she paced the room, trying to calm her inner animal which had picked up its growl again, but, like a nicotine addict she was bouncing off the walls. The smartest thing to do would be to go out and get a goat, but she hated hunting when she wasn’t in her right mind.
It’s too late; I need blood, now!
Fortunately, for her, as soon as she stepped outside, the scent of blood caught her. Tasting the air, she could tell that it came from the town square.
Following the scent with her mind, she saw that there was a little butcher shop. A man was cleaning out a cow he’d only purchased that morning, so the blood, she smelled, was real fresh.
She walked fast through the dirt, for the town had no sidewalks. Just before the front door of the butcher shop’s building, she turned left down a walkway between it, and the building right before.
Twenty feet down, and to her right, was a little clearing where a man was spraying the meat of a cow with a water hose.
In the corner, there was a bucket full of the cow’s blood. From inside the building, a phone rang. He put down the nozzle and disappeared through the door.
Quick as she could, Starr ran up, grabbed the bucket and then disappeared, further, down the walkway.
At the end of the walkway, she turned right and continued down the alley. A moment later, she sat on a trash bin, put the bucket up to her mouth, and poured every drop of the rich red liquid down her throat.
“Ugh!” she blurted out. Cow blood was the worst! It was the sturdier breeds of animal that tasted good: lamb, chicken, goat, and even dogs. But if she had to drink animal blood, her most preferred was chicken.
Despite the foul taste of the blood, she felt relief. She licked her lips and teeth, which retracted, instantly. Then she pulled a mirror from her jacket pocket and took off her sunglasses: her eyes were still glowing. It would be awhile before they’d return to their normal sterling grey.
Not wanting to be found in such a weird position, on a trash bin with a bloody bucket, she got up and walked, further, down the road, taking in the rest of the little town.
There wasn’t much to it. She could count the number of commercial buildings on both hands. It was chilly and dusty, and practically a ghost town.
As she walked, it did occur to her that the Castel de Negru’s inhabitants might have known something about The Council.
Perhaps they could give her some insight about the organization and tell her where it was?
Although the Castel de Negru’s inhabitants might also be Council members, she thought, too.
After contemplating the Negru vampires, she decided to check it out, later.
She spent the rest of the afternoon lying in her bed at the bed and breakfast, as there was nothing else to do in the little town.
When it was dark, she ran out and up the road. Although this task would have been arduous for a mortal, for Starr it took fifteen minutes to run the few miles back up to the castle.
As she got closer, she immediately sensed the dozen, or so, vampires in there, laughing, mingling, and still preparing for whatever was to happen, that night.
She stopped at a tree about fifty yards from the castle and probed the place with her mind.
Just like earlier, she could hear bits and pieces of conversation: a lady in a white dress was ordering the drained goats to be spitted and roasted, a man was sitting in front of a large fireplace, drinking brandy, and someone, whose face she couldn’t see clearly, was setting up silverware in the enormous dining room where the blood bath was.
She looked at her cell phone and saw that it was only 8 p.m.; whatever event they were planning hadn’t begun yet.
From what she saw, she couldn’t conclude if they were good or bad vampires; whether they were in connection with The Council or not.
Then, suddenly, it got quiet inside the castle. She knew that some of them, if not all of them, probably sensed her sensing them.
One of them, whom she’d seen earlier, a man in a white suit with a red bow tie, opened the front door of the castle and was walking toward the gate. Several men and women, from inside, crowded the doorway.
Starr didn’t know if it were wise to meet these vampires. They could kill her, or trick her, make her Credenza’s s
lave. Who knew what kind of laws The Council lived by.
Caution told her to run, immediately, so she hurried back down the road, toward the town.
Briefly, she looked back and saw two red eyes gleaming at her, in the dark.
By the time she made it back to town, her legs felt gummy. Perhaps she was stronger than humans, but she could still exhaust her strength, as she’d learned in previous battles.
She stopped into a little bar, if you could call it that. It was the size of a closet, and all they served was beer and wine.
The place was barely lit by dim gas lamps. There were five tables with chairs, but no bar.
The dozen or so patrons looked surprised by her sudden appearance in the doorway.
Starr observed their ragged clothes and vagrant expressions. Unlike the other Romanians, these people were dark and ethnic looking. Starr wondered if these were some of the infamous gypsies one hears about in ancient lore.
“Assemanator un bere, Ursus,” Starr said uncertainly. She’d only learned that phrase yesterday, and it still wasn’t rolling off her tongue quite right, but they must have understood, for the fattest and ugliest man of the bunch stood up and went behind a counter.
Ignoring the other patrons who continued to stare, Starr watched the man as she walked to a table on the opposite side of the room.
At the table next to the men, there were two women in dirty jeans and tee shirts.
The blonde had hair like a poodle, and her cheap red lipstick was smeared onto her teeth and unevenly around her mouth.
Her dark haired companion looked even worse, with enough blue eye shadow to pass for a smurf. She had a huge rip in the knee of her jeans, and her rotting teeth reminded her of George Washington depictions.
Starr didn’t need her animal senses to know they were threatened by her. She figured she’d better drink her beer and get back to her room because she didn’t want to hurt anyone, but as she finished up and made to leave, the blonde one stepped in front of her.