by Jamie Ott
She talked at her in Romanian, but Starr only got half of what she said: something about her being a trashy, ignorant American which made her smirk. The woman had, obviously, not looked in a mirror, recently.
Starr could have, easily, walked around the woman but it was common that vampires would walk slowly, so as to blend in better. Humans were often confused and bewildered by the pace, at which, they could move and walk. It was only for this reason that she tried, and failed, to walk around the woman, once more; she was trying to appear normal.
After her third failed attempt to exit, Starr picked her up by the shoulders, like she weighed no more than a large cat, and set her to the side of the door, and walked out.
Dismissing the woman infuriated her, for she went berserk and came at her from behind, swinging her beer mug at the back of her head.
Starr side stepped and made a side kick straight into her gut. The blonde flew into the wall and slid to the ground, unconscious.
Next, her friend came at her, slappity slap, trying to smack her to death, which only made Starr laugh harder.
Were they serious?
She weaved back and to the side a couple times, and then, like slapping a gnat between two palms, fast like, she smacked the woman on both her cheeks.
The pain stunned her, and then she plopped to the ground like fallen a sack of potatoes.
Shaking her head and laughing, she wandered back up the road, toward the bed and breakfast.
Halfway up the road, she knew someone was following her, and whoever it was must have been incredibly filthy, for although he was like Starr, he gave off a foul stench from his pores; almost as though he hadn’t bathed in a century, like he’d rolled in pig slop.
“Now that was hardly fair, was it?” said the foul smelling man.
Starr turned around and saw he was just as foul to look at as he was to smell.
What was it with these crazy Gypsy Romanians?
From what she could tell, the rumors were true: they meant trouble.
She stood there and waited for him to speak again.
“Who are you?” he asked brazenly.
Silence; she wasn’t going to oblige the arrogant piece of filth.
Her resistance angered him.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, as he walked up to her; the smell of dirty diapers emanating from him; his eyes dark and full of crazy. “What are you, deaf?” he asked irritably, but she simply stood there.
“What? You think you’re tough?” and he made to spit in her face, but Starr jammed the palm of her hand into his nose, causing it to break and spray blood.
The man called her an evil name and tried to take a swipe at her, but failed. Next moment, out of the shadows, came a gang of them: filthy, rot smelling vampires.
Starr was shocked. Were they really going to gang up on her? Even the gang back in NYC was hesitant to gang up on a woman, but, then again, she’d always heard that Gypsies did everything, including fighting, dirty.
Suddenly, it was like a Kung Fu movie, and Starr was the star as she whipped out her ruby studded sickles that Lucenzo, an old vampire, gave her.
They were the worst fighters she’d ever engaged, even the gangsters, back home, had better moves.
One guy, behind her, moved toward Starr. The one with the broken nose told him to hold Starr, in Romanian.
Starr made two elegant steps, completing a full 360 degree circle. Next second, both their heads lay severed, on the ground.
Four more came at her; she spun like elegantly, like she was turning for the ballet, and four more heads rolled.
Starr was extremely disappointed. For a moment, she even wished they were still alive, and that she didn’t use her knives.
The downside to being as strong as she was, was never, quite, meeting her match. In fact, it was downright depressing, for the only person she ever could practice martial arts with, anymore, was herself.
A high pitch, cross between a squeal and scream, emitted from her throat as she looked down at her blood spattered leather pants and vest.
She could have cried! Her Jones New York lambskin would be destroyed if she didn’t wash and oil them, immediately! But her stuff was at home, in the city!
Awakening Starr from her moment of shallowness, she heard a woman scream Bloody Mary.
She’d forgotten about the two women, passed out, in front of the little pub!
Starr didn’t waste time; she took off running.
Great! There goes my fact finding mission!
Now she needed to worry about getting back to her hotel, and on the next flight out of Romania.
But as she approached Castel de Negru, she sensed the inhabitants were anticipating her approach.
She wasn’t mistaken, either, for as she got closer, three of the people she’d seen in her mind were standing in the road.
Starr stopped running, pulled out her sickles and raised them high to sky, then back down so that they gleamed under the light of the moon: a grand gesture, letting them know she was ready to fight.
There were three of them standing elbow-to-elbow: the dark haired man with the red bow tie, a Botticelli blonde in a white goddess-like dress, and a scrawny blond guy.
Strangely, they didn’t attack, like she thought they would, but they beckoned to her, waving their hands in the air.
One of them spoke into her mind; it was the lady, she said:
If you put away your knives, we’ll help you.
Starr said nothing but stood where she was. She tried to take in their essence but got nothing; they were old, that was all she could tell.
We’re sorry you ran into those ghastly fledglings. We don’t blame you for what you did; in fact, we would’ve gotten rid of them ages ago. You’ve saved us the trouble, but we do need to go and get the bodies. The people, around here, are not blind to us, Vampires. All they have to do is report us to The Council, and then we’ll all be in trouble.
It was the mention of The Council that brought Starr’s defenses down.
So they knew about The Council?
“Alright,” said Starr as she put the sickles back inside her jacket pocket. “What do we do?”
In a row they floated toward her, almost too fast for her eyes.
“Grab on,” said the scrawny blond one, as he held out his elbow.
When they got back to the town, the bodies were no longer in the dirt. “Come on,” whispered the blond.
They walked between two buildings, down until they found a handsome dark eyed vampire with shoulder length hair.
He turned around, cigarette in hand, and said with a thick Eastern European accent, “Did you bring the trash bags?”
The scrawny blond pulled plastic bags from his pocket and handed one to each of them.
In a matter of minutes, they’d ripped up the bodies, pulling their legs and arms from their sockets, and put them in the plastic bags and tied them off.
Then they flew back to the Castel de Negru. In the back, a pyre was already going, on which, they tossed the sacks and watched as the bodies succumbed to ashes.
New Fiends
Chapter 3
Though Starr knew she was only protecting herself, she couldn’t help but be overcome with the knowledge that she’d been in Transylvania less than 48 hours and had already managed to kill off half a dozen vampires.
An arm disrupted her view of the pyre; the man in the white suit with a red bow tie was handing her a gold colored byzantine-looking goblet filled with goat blood.
“You mus’ not be too hard on yourself, Starr,” he said. “If it had been me, I would have done the same thing,” he said reassuringly. “Dr-r-rink your blood.”
Starr looked at him and nodded her head, and took a sip.
“My name is Adam, and this,” he gestured toward the blonde in the silk white dress, “is Madam Balaji, and this is Bulgari,” he gestured to the handsom
e smoking demon, “and Mitch,” he waved at the scrawny blond.
After brief acknowledgements, Starr asked, “Will The Council come after me for what I did?”
“Nooo,” said Adam reassuringly.
“This vampire, Levi, said…”
“You know Levi?” he interrupted, eyes wide.
Starr looked at him, hoping Adam wasn’t a friend of his.
Several weeks ago, Starr nearly killed Levi, in an attempt to keep him from killing her friend, Antony. Starr injured him so badly that he sought revenge. He trapped her, and then sought the help of Louisa Credenza as a means to kill her. Instead, she killed Levi, and drafted Starr to work for her, for The Council, whether she wanted to or not.
Adam looked searchingly into her eyes; she knew he was trying to read her mind.
“Were you friends?” she asked.
“No, he was with The Council,” he said harshly. “I don’t like that demon, not at all.”
“I barely knew him. He just told me that I could get into trouble for certain things.”
“Knew him?” he said questioningly, in a higher tone of voice. “Has something happened to him?”
Starr kept silent, not wanting to say anything more.
Adam must have realized she didn’t want to talk about it because he continued, “The Council has no real set rules; the only thing they look out for is evidence of vampires who are out of control,” said Adam informatively. “So, if you kill, you’d better clean up your mess, or leave it so that there is no clue that we exist. If humans found out about us, who knows what they’d do: dominate us, experiment with us, or exterminate us. Some other things: They won’t tolerate vampire-to-human domination, mass murder, or vampires with god complexes, and if you vamp out, they will come for you.”
Starr’s ears perked up when he mentioned vamp out.
Reading her mind, Adam said, “Do not worry, Starr. We all have accidents, once in a while. As long as you are mostly inconspicuous, then they should not bother you.”
The smell of the burning vampires was quite fragrant, kind of like roasting a pig. Starr was sure she would have been repulsed when she was alive, but, as part animal, the scent was as inviting as any other meat.
“What you haven’t told us is why you seek The Council? Why did you come all the way from New York City?” asked Madam Balaji in perfect American English.
Starr really hated these mind readers. Her mission was to be secret!
Stalling, trying to decide how much to say, she took another sip of blood and slowly swallowed.
“I’ve come to find answers,” she said vaguely, hoping they’d buy her reason.
After her ordeal with Antony and Levi, Starr had come to distrust other vampires even less. Not being bound by, or bothered with, law, as humans were, made them dangerous, and she still didn’t yet know if she could trust the people of Negru.
“Of course,” said Madam Balaji. “Others have come before, seeking information. Commonly, people want to know how the vampire came to be, and what our history is.”
“Yes, but that isn’t why Starr is here,” said Bulgari, the smoking vampire, irritably. “V’at do you v’ant with Louisa Credenza?” he asked in a thick Eastern European accent.
Though he was quite rude, Starr was still stuck on what Balaji just said.
“Madam Balaji,” she cut over, ignoring him, “how did we come to be?”
“Well, it was about 60 years ago when The Council hired a team of scientists and historians from all over the world, and who were vampires themselves. Although they failed to find the bones of the person who the demonic virus first afflicted, they managed to find a scroll, dated all the way back to the Iron Age, around 100 A.D.,” she paused, taking a sip of her blood.
“It was in our own Carpathian Mountains that the ancient scrolls were discovered, buried beneath a tomb of, what appeared to be, a Carpathian King. In them was the story of a Dacian Queen who ruled near the Danubius River. Later, like so many rulers did in those times, she sided with the Romans, betraying her High King to death so that she could keep her reign. It was her, the anonymous writer of the scroll, blamed for bringing down the last of the Thracians.
The scroll claimed it was the High King’s curse on the Dacian Queen that led to her fits of rage. It was a blood curse, sealed with his last breath. In those days, it was thought that hell was a place where one is always wanting, always, hungry, and always thirsty,” she paused once more. “It was the king’s curse that she should suffer that kind of hell while she lived, and to never be released from her torment.
One day, the curse began to set in.
She became irritable, angry, and was hungry, so hungry, and nothing her servants gave her satisfied her. It wasn’t long after that, driven crazy by her hunger, she’d taken to madness and, after killing several hand maidens and one armored guard, she ran, wild, through the streets, drinking and eating, frightening the people in a one night blood bath, until a soldier cut off her head, but it was too late: the virus was spread.
As we know, now, just the bite from the vampire doesn’t kill; just a bite is enough to turn a human into one of us, for the virus lives in the salivary glands.”
“Madam Balaji,” called a woman in black, “the guests are starting to arrive.”
“Thank you, Nina.”
“What were their names, the king and queen?” asked Starr.
“The scroll claimed the King to be Dapyx Thracius Scorillo Romana, a descendant of several lines of nobility and royalty, but The Council was unable to verify that he was who the scroll said he was, for there are no records of such a king or queen. In those days, it was the ultimate punishment to be wiped out of history, to be forgotten. Back in the fifties, carbon and DNA testing was virtually impossible.”
Silence ensued, a moment. Starr sipped her blood as she watched the last of a torso disintegrate.
“You should stay here, a few days,” said Madam Balaji. “I’ve already told Nina to prepare a room for you.”
“I can’t. I’ve got things to do.”
“Stay a few days,” she insisted. “We’ve got a festive week planned. You will have fun, trust me,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you,” said Starr, still feeling uncertain but not wanting to be rude.
“Great!” she exclaimed. “Now, why don’t you go inside and ask Nina to show you to your room. I’ve had Nina lay out a couple dresses for you to choose from, and then join us for drinks in the Great Hall.”
Starr walked through a large curtained door, and into an originally restored hall. Unlike the townspeople, the Castel de Negru had wood floors and walls that were literally made out of chunks of stone, some of it was round and others were squared off; the way Starr imagined castles should be.
On the walls, various paintings had been drilled into the stones with enormous bolts.
In the center of the hall hung an enormous wooden chandelier with real candles in wrought iron holders.
“Star-r-r,” asked Nina, who appeared in the walkway to her left. “Come,” she motioned.
She followed Nina through the walkway and into a very tight hall.
Every few feet, along the walls, there was a candle in a holder, and not all of them were lit, leaving them in near darkness.
Starr, finally, understood why others had not stuck with the original construction: the castles had many rooms but they were tightly confined. While the castles of kings and higher nobles were spacious, other places, like Castel de Negru, were like caves at the ends of tunnels.
To her left, she saw, through a tiny doorway, a fair sized kitchen. From it, she heard a dozen people rummaging about, and she smelled a dozen different delicious smells.
When they approached a set of stone steps, Starr saw that many of them were carved out of the same large pieces of igneous, and they were shiny and glittery even in the dim light.
Two more flights up and they stepped into a chilly h
all with a ceiling that nearly touched Starr’s head. People must have been shorter back then, as historians say, for Starr was only 5 feet 8 inches.
Nina opened a chunky wood door; Starr followed her through.
“If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs,” she said sweetly.
“Thanks.”
The room was the size of a cupboard. It was about as glamorous as a half empty closet. No pictures on the wall, a couple lit candles hanging in the holders, a tiny little stone fireplace, and a small bed that left barely a foot of space between it and the fireplace.
The only thing modern about the room was someone had put in a glass window.
Starr walked up and peered through. She couldn’t see anything but blackness for miles; that and the stars twinkling in the dark sky.
On the bed, there were three beautiful gowns and, for a moment, she sort of felt like she was in a fairy tale.
The first gown was a full length, sleeveless black silk with built in bustier and matching silk shoes; the second was as golden as the sun with sequins, glittering like canaries, to match; next to it lay an equally as brilliant pink with elegantly stitched flower patterns.
Surprisingly, Starr chose the yellow one which, she thought, brightened her skin. She never knew she could love anything other than her usual black leathers.
Downstairs, in what was called a Great Hall, according to her tour guide who’d explained castle construction the prior day, there were a couple dozen people dipping into the blood bath and sampling goat brains which lay in a pile on a plate in the center.
A little nervously, Starr walked up to the bath, picked up a goblet and scooped some of the ruby red liquid.
“You look beautiful” said Bulgari, eyeballing her as he scooped a slice of brain onto the little bread and put it into his mouth.
Starr accepted the compliment, though she hadn’t quite forgiven him for his earlier behavior.
Again, reading her thoughts, he said, “I’m sorry if I came off harshly, earlier. You must understand that these are tough times, between us and The Council.”