Written in Blood: A New Adult Vampire Romance Novella, Part Two. (The Unnatural Brethren Book 1)

by Silvana G Sánchez

  By the time I got on my feet, darkness had set in.

  The cool wind was racing and lightning struck in the distance. Soft rustling tree leaves soothed my pain, though very little.

  With a heavy heart, I walked for miles until I reached the cemetery.

  The first raindrops fell as I spotted the grave, freshly covered and lined with white roses. I knelt before it and pondered the dark desire brewing in my corrupted mind. Should I concede to its powerful whims, I feared all shred of humanity would be lost to me forever.

  I needed to see her one more time.

  And what stopped me from fulfilling this unholy wish?

  I gazed upwards, but I couldn’t care less about the clouded evening sky. God—or whatever force ruled the destiny of men—surely had its eternal eye fixed on me this very instant. Would lightning strike me for the deed which now whirred in my plotting mind?

  “Let's find out,” I mused.

  The first layers of earth were easy to remove, but the minute the rainstorm poured harder, the growing swamp inside the gravesite hindered my efforts. Drenched and covered in mud, I clawed my way down, swallowing my tears until I reached the casket.

  Weariness took over me soon. Grief and such an exertion of force combined and took their toll on my immortal body. And although I had fed enough the night before to sustain my vampiric thirst for an entire week, I had no more strength left inside my wretched being. I would need to hunt very soon.

  With the last of my strength, I pulled up the coffin and laid it on the ground beside the pit in which I stood, filthy water rising to my waist. And once achieved, thunder muffled my sobbing cries, and my tears blended with the endless pour of raindrops covering my face.

  Disturbing the dead was a great sin indeed, but my soul was already polluted enough to deter me from my actions' iniquity.

  My hurried fingers unhinged the casket's lid with desperate agony. With slow but firm determination, I opened the coffin.

  The moment I saw her face, my body collapsed beside it.

  “I should have reached you sooner,” my breaking voice cried.

  Pale and peaceful, Mother slept the final dream, and there was nothing that I—the bloody vampire, the immortal devil—could do to bring her back. After years of eluding its loathsome touch, Death's vengeance had caught up with me. And tonight, it had won. Such helplessness infuriated me beyond the bounds of reason!

  “What good is having such unnatural power, when everything I hold dear is doomed to perish?!” I clenched my fists and dropped them on the muddied ground.

  All threads that bound me to my mortal life ruptured before my reddened eyes. In my gain of immortality, I had lost everything that made me human. Everything, but my one true weakness, which now resided trapped within my old home's walls and threatened to disappear from my life when she married.

  I had to see her... to hell with everything else!

  “I will do as you once told me, Mother. I will hold onto this new life with all my strength, and I will always abide by my rules. You will never have to worry about me again...” I sobbed, “I will follow my heart as you taught me.”

  The pit's walls, softened by the flooding rain, crumble over me as I stand in the grave. Another blow of muddied land pours inside and buries my body quick. Immobilized by this horror, I struggle to become free from my earthly prison, but the more I fight, the more it discharges its oppressing weight onto me. It crushes my chest and restricts my breathing.

  This is it. My last breath.

  “I don't want to die!” a voice in my head screams.

  “I don't want to die!”

  My screams woke me up.

  “A bad dream,” I mused.

  It was all a horrible nightmare. Mother's death, the madness that took over me at the cemetery and compelled me to dig out her coffin to fulfill my selfish need of landing eyes upon her candid countenance once more... It had to be a bad dream.

  In one quick glance, I acknowledged my surroundings. The drapes were shut but a faint ray of moonlight filtered into the room. This was the bedroom of the house I had leased and taken as my lair for what few evenings lay ahead of me in this town.

  The hair on my nape bristled with horror as my eyes landed on the muddied boots beside the bed, and next to them, the pile of useless drenched clothes.

  It was not a bad dream but the most hideous, dreadful reality.

  “I must see her.” I rose from the bed. But a sudden spell of dizziness compelled me to rephrase. “I must feed first.”

  Finding a decent victim that would satisfy my dark needs caused me no hardship. After all, I knew every alehouse, brothel, and gambling house in town. And once that was taken care of, my body returned to its immortal integrity, all but my grieving heart.

  However, a force unlike any other I had met made this burden lighter than I ever would have expected. It was hope. Though frail and pending from a single thread, it kept my heart pumping its vicious blood.

  My one hope was setting eyes on Alisa again. It coursed through my veins after passing the house's shrubbery, while I gazed at her bedroom's window.

  With devilish speed, I climbed the stone wall. My body was light as a feather. The unnatural strength streaming through my every limb overwhelmed me; it seemed to increase each passing day whether I fed or not.

  I peered through the window, biting my lower lip enough to burst it open. My tongue tingled as I licked the pouring blood.

  As my eyes met her, time stopped; it was as if I was seeing her for the first time.

  Dressed in a sober gown of black taffeta, Alisa sat before the looking glass. The parlor maid finished arranging her hair before supper. Her pallid face and sullen expression spoke of the many troubles anchored in her heart—our mother's death was but one of them.

  Was I another of those troubling thoughts disturbing her mind? Was it wrong that I relished in thinking that I was?

  “Will that be all, Miss?” the parlor maid said.

  “Yes, Lizzie. You may leave.”

  She took one hard look at her reflection and then left the room.

  I slipped inside.

  With stealthy steps, I pried about the bedroom. A small red box sitting on the night table caught my eye. Driven by my hungry curiosity, I held it in my hands and opened its lid.

  Inside was a rectangular cut emerald, half an inch wide, mounted on a golden ring. Engraved on the stone was a name.

  Pritchard

  This was an engagement ring. Her engagement ring. How strange that she did not wear it.

  “Nothing would please me more than to discover which one you would prefer,” I whispered as I drew the black velvet purse from my pocket and poured the sapphire necklace into my hand.

  Footsteps approached in the hall. With all my vampiric speed, I stormed out through the window and sank my claws in the wall. Why had she returned?

  Once inside, Alisa rummaged through the dresser’s drawers. She stopped the minute she found an embroidered shawl which she then placed over her arm.

  “I could have sworn I closed this window,” she mused, moving closer.

  Then it hit me. My hands, both held fast onto the stone masonry—they were empty.

  The necklace. It must have fallen from my hands at some point.

  She leaned against the windowsill and reached for the sash fastener, but then, she stepped back.

  Her lips parted in shock. Seconds later, Alisa knelt on the Kashan rug.

  I struggled to breathe.

  “This...” she whispered. “This is not possible.”

  As she stood, Alisa’s hands held the necklace with great fondness. The added inscription caught her attention, it was on the brooch’s mounting.

  “Love is too young to know what conscience is.”

  A. Lockhart. 1671.

  Had I not the certainty of already being a member of the Undead, I would have thought I would die right then.

  “Alisa…” He peered through the door and knocked afterward.


  With a thief’s skill, she quickly clasped the necklace and hid it behind her. “William,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Dinner is about to be served. Are you coming, dear?”

  “I will be there in a minute.”

  “You seem quite flustered. Are you all right, darling?”

  “I am well, William. I thank you.” She lied so well. “Please, go ahead. I will be down shortly.”

  “As you wish, dear.”

  At last, Pritchard went away.

  Tightening her grip on the necklace, Alisa scrutinized the room with a quick glance. But with little time to waste, she put the choker aside in the dressing table’s drawer, concealed beneath her gloves and shawls.

  The minute she stepped out of the room, I reentered. Pacing in endless circles, I ran my fingers over my lips again and again as my mind raced.

  What should be my next move?

  The necklace had been a fortunate incident, though it did not feel much like it at the time, but it forced me to face her and for that much, I was happy.

  Dinner carried on downstairs. Meanwhile, I lay on her bed, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Last time I had lain here had been the day when Viktor had drowned. I almost died in this room.

  Although the details of that day still eluded me, brief moments remained engraved in my memory, like the woolen tapestry on the wall, Diana and The Hunt. Diana, the mythical goddess who had vowed never to marry—as Alisa had done many years ago. However, unlike the goddess, she had broken her promise.

  So what if she did not wear Pritchard’s engagement ring? Perhaps it did not fit her delicate fingers, or perhaps it did not suit her evening gown. Maybe, out of grief, she had decided not to wear it… How could I know her reasons without reading her every single thought?

  The mastery of my preternatural abilities was yet far from my reach. Persuasion, compulsion… these tricks came more easily to me; mind reading did not. And deep inside, I was not sure I wanted to learn the secrets that her mind enclosed.

  I was not ready to face her.

  “No,” I mused as I sat on the bed. “Not today.”

  10

  The Physician

  It was a centuries old tradition; June 29 marked the day when merchants and farmers gathered near Saint Michael's Church, where faces old and new navigated in the horde of clothiers and glovers, brewers, and bakers. A certain degree of merriment derived from holding such singular events, but it also bestowed much respectability on our little town.

  The cloudy day allowed me to rise early in the afternoon. It amused me to walk the same narrow streets I used to roam as a boy, when the bustling throngs of merchants lured me to the fair's core.

  Between snorting cows and bleating sheep, the market's trading symphony reached its crescendo as prices were loudly announced in the spring of bartering. The rising melody engulfed and delighted my senses, but I had to move on; more pressing matters required my tending.

  It was not the rekindling of my childhood memories what had driven me here of all places, but the call of the demon bound to my unnatural blood, compelling me to satiate its fiendish desires.

  My aim was set on the hunt. But then, amidst the pleasant cacophony, a distinct voice seized my attention.

  Dressed in black breeches and coat, taut and short of stature, the man's heavy mustache and beard all but buried his face inside his old white ruffled collar. And his sharp blue eyes, though small, gave away a sense of great wit.

  A barrel before him with a wooden board on top set as a table. Displayed on it lay flasks and cases of ointments, all varied in sizing and color.

  “Gentleman and ladies!” he said. “You, who care for your family's health and well-being, gather 'round if you please, and listen to what I have to say.”

  I studied the man from afar, outside the confines of the gathering horde of curious mongers, women, and children encircling him.

  “I stand here before you with nothing but my best intentions to heal you from those distempers and maladies that afflict you and your families. I'll have you know, I am no charlatan who ventures to profit from good-hearted people in need of assistance.

  “Oh, no. I am no mercenary apothecary who deals faulty remedies and mixtures, but a well-known physician, allowed by the King himself to travel the country and help those in need.

  “The name is Giovanni Abbatiello. Come to you, have I, from the proud city of Venice. Today, I bring you hope. Enclosed in a packet much-needed in every home, and costing just thruppence a piece, I bring you the cures for the most common ailments from which you should prepare.

  “Distempers and fevers; jaundice and gripes... tales of astounding recoveries have followed my footsteps through Scotland, Ireland, Italy, and France!”

  Of course they did! The man was a mountebank, a charlatan; he traveled the world, not in search of its healing, but rather fleeing from the hordes of vengeful patients that too late discovered the fraud of his talents.

  I should have moved on then, but I found his speech most entertaining. It even distracted me from my hunting scheme altogether.

  “...and last of all, this packet contains my cordial pills. Known to fortify decaying nature, they lighten the spirits and bring joy to those who take them. Pestilence, pimples, and pains of gout; they cure all curable diseases and align all distempers!” He reached for his coat's pocket and extracted a small golden flask. “But this is the jewel that your eyes want to see...”

  Bravo! Such talent had this fiend that his every move held the crowd entranced and pending on his every word; even a few pickpockets seized the valuable opportunity to collect their evening's wages from the distraught audience.

  “This I have here, is the rarest of elixirs. Tincture of Gold, the purest your eyes shall ever see...”

  “What's it good for?” a woman shouted with a hoarse voice.

  Giovanni sunk his head between his shoulders as he held the flask to eye level, promising a shocking revelation to come.

  “This, my friends, is the very Fountain of Youth. One single drop and you shall never age, and death will never touch you.”

  Oohs and aahs rose from the crowd. I myself became intrigued.

  That was a serious statement. On behalf of my immortal Kin, I felt compelled to say something.

  “And have you taken it, sir?” I said.

  The mob's faces turned and fixed their gullible eyes upon me.

  Giovanni blushed.

  “No, signore. I have not.” He tilted his head bearing the hint of a smile.

  “And why is that?”

  He pursed his lips.

  “I'm but a humble man, signore. This elixir is only fitting for kings... but even they do not dare to drink from this tincture!” He turned and addressed the crowd. “Its power is so great that terrible things might befall he who drinks it!

  “Thruppence the packet, that's what you need! Take it today, for tomorrow my travels lead me to Portugal!”

  Dozens of hands reached fast over the table. No more than ten minutes passed before the old apothecary sold out his arsenal of miraculous remedies.

  People believed in miracles. And although it was clear to me that this man was a fraud, who was I to denounce him or deny the existence of mysterious events? I, a vampire, was the perfect example of myth tossed into reality.

  “You're a clever man,” a man said in a low voice. The fragrance of leather seeped through his pores. Young, no more than twenty. Dirt clung to his hands. His father sold saddles in town.

  “Am I?” My hand landed on his shoulder. I lured him to the stables.

  Given the chance, I would have spared him from my fangs. But time ran out and the faint signs of impending hunger stirred in my being.

  Bad luck for him.

  On a plush heap of straw, he slept the final dream. I made sure his last thoughts were pleasant. His soft expression and faint smile confirmed it. I slipped in his hand a bottle of wine. There. The perfect picture of blissful drunkenness.


  As gentle as my bite had dropped on his neck, I bit my thumb and healed both punctures with a drop of my preternatural blood, following Dristan's teachings, so that his death would not raise suspicion.

  The moment I moved out of the stables, I took a deep breath and relished in the rush of excitement still coursing through my veins. Each time I killed, the faint sense of guilt lurking in the back of my mind diminished.

  This was my life now, and I embraced it like nothing else because it was all I knew. I could not deny the unparalleled pleasure that came along my murderous skill. Had Nature not intended me to hunt and kill, it would not have granted me such fierce advantages over my prey, like sharpened fangs and psychic abilities beyond all understanding. But Dristan's Gift gave me this, as certainly as it gave me the compelling thirst for human blood.

  Stillness returned to the streets. The market had closed a while ago.

  Darkness prevailed, except for the lighting of taverns and homes in the distance, and faint fluttering candlelight a few feet ahead. It came from inside the apothecary's stationed cartwheel. The small wooden door lay open and I took that as an undeniable invitation.

  With soundless steps, I crept inside the wagon. At the far end, locked in a trance, he devoted himself to the task of organizing balms and electuaries. I studied him for a full ten minutes without him discovering my presence...or so I thought.

  “I know what you are,” he said without turning back. “Have you come to kill me?”

  “What I am?” I said.

  “You're one of them. A vampire.” He piled up some papers and turned. “Do you deny it?”

  I decided to move closer. The minute I gave the first step, he bolted aside.

  “Please, I mean you no harm.” I raised my hands in reassurance. “What makes you say that?”

  I did not want to frighten him. Not yet, anyway.

  Giovanni Abbatiello adjusted his round spectacles and stepped forward with a scrutinizing gaze.

  “Well, the paleness of the skin was quite obvious before,” he mused as he moved around me. “I believe you've gained color in the last few hours.”