Vampirony

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The Truth Will Out

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags pike place, sherry, vampire on April 18, 2011 by vampirony

What should have been a beautiful warm Seattle night to enjoy a breathtaking view of the Sound from the park across from Pike Place Market wound up being more an education in how public places could hide anyone. Vagrant, socialite, drunkard, hipster, tourist, mystic, killer…the naïve masses crushing themselves through the night, walking the harbor steps for a view of the pier, lights from ships bouncing across the water.

When I found the totem pole that Skovajsa had arranged as our meeting place, I found myself facing a fifty foot log of cedar rising up into the dark sky. At eye level, some sort of bird, talons up and raised, staring at me. It made me think of Lucy and her flock ability, power of transfiguration that I had never seen. Of course, in the here and now, with the memories of Valerian coming back to me, I realized that I was not fully back into myself yet. The nightmares that haunted me were images from my past that I fought to keep hidden.

I seldom thought back on how I’d become aware in this lifetime. It was still too painful to remember all of it beyond what Skovajsa’s attack had forced me to relive. But my crisis in this life had connected me back with lives that had come before. But still, mostly snippets and fragments had emerged over the last two years. Even now I had to admit how little I knew of the Memento itself, how it had come into my possession, how its magic had been forged.

Had I invented a reality to cover over those gaps, much like Skovajsa had? Were our struggles so very different, trying to understand what we were and how to become that next thing, the next step in our evolution? Looking up at the pole, towering over me in the dark, I realized that the dance was over. I needed to push Skovajsa, challenge him to know what he was really about, whether I could really help him.

I turned away from the totem pole and felt Skovajsa near. He kept his distance, observing me from across the street. He still wore his dark long jacket and once he could tell I’d seen him, he strode over. Interesting. He seemed intent on not frightening me.

I met him halfway, where we’d be full under street lights.

“Thank you for meeting me here,” he said, voice even and calm.

I simply nodded.

He reached out a hand to touch my cheek and I stepped away. Flashbacks of that hand wrapped around my throat were all too recent. He dropped it, immediately stuffing both of his hands in his pockets.

“Shall we walk?” he offered.

“Ok,” I said. As long as it’s within full view of everyone else in the whole of Seattle. And maybe even a few spy satellites. I wasn’t going to take the lead on this. He’d called this meeting. He needed to explain what he wanted.

It took him awhile to get going. In fact, we’d reached to the end of this stretch of safe walkway before I halted us. “Look, Skovajsa, you called this meeting.”

“Yes, I thought we might talk.”

Um, right. It was talking to a brick wall, all six plus feet of it. The tension was getting to me, especially since I was getting his back currently as he looked around. But I needed to give this one more chance. I needed to be sure. It was for a life’s work undone.

“I’m listening,” I said, my tone blank.

He turned toward me, a look of compassion and regret on his face. “I have committed an offense. I have not treated you with due respect and I apologize for my short sightedness. You are a woman of great worth and understanding. I see that now.”

O-K. If the hairs on my arms would just sit down, maybe this wasn’t going to be too bad.

“You see, I do not trust easily. My life has been full of strife and death. I have been hunted, even by own kind. And humans,” he paused, looking away, suddenly pensive. “Well, they seem to stick around for more than they are wanted, for their own ends. It is why I have had so few servants.” He looked down at me again. “Finding a companion, it is difficult for one such as me.”

Lost, misunderstood, confused?

“Someone of talent, knowledge, and strength of character and purpose to match my own power and resources is…rare indeed.”

Oh, sorry, egotistical, maniacal, sociopathic.

He reached a hand into his coat and thirteen lifetimes stood up in me, ready to scream in one voice for help. But instead, he retrieved a velvet rectangular box, holding it out to me. “Please. A token of my apology.”

I was about to halt him with my hand but one of those voices, a young bride from Darjeeling, bade me give in for a moment, to not tempt the beast when it was most contrite. I took the box and opened it. Even under the dim glow of street lamps, the diamond necklace glittered shamefully. Oh, shit.

“Skovajsa–.”

“Please, you must hear me. I feel if you give me the chance, you may come to see that our lives might be bond together in perfect circumstance. If I might just be allowed to give you the stars, you might yet bring me the sun.”

My eyes darted up. The sun. My blood ran cold. What possible reason could a vampire like him want with the sun? He had learned to speak in metaphor. My talent and knowledge, his search for a companion. This was something I never expected. Skovajsa didn’t want to kill me. Far from it. He wanted to bind me to him, to use my knowledge for his own purposes. Perhaps to hunt down other vampires.

The Sun. Jesper. Somehow, my instincts told me, he knew about Jesper. I didn’t know how or for how long. Had he read my thoughts? Was that yet another talent vampires of which I had been unaware?

He put his hands over mine to close the box, pushing it gently to me. I blinked very slowly up at him. My mind ground to a complete halt and the very worst that could possibly be had come to fruition.

“Skovajsa, you are not the vampire you say you are. I do not know how you were truly made but your life story seems a contrivance to make up for being abandoned by your maker.”

This made a dent in his temperate manner. His eyebrow twitched but he slowly smiled to cover it.

“I can try to help you, help you try to recover your story, your memory…as your psychologist.” Then, I pushed the box back into his chest. He let me draw one hand back, but he gripped my left before I could get it back safely. He stared down at the box.

“What do you mean, you think my story is a lie? That my struggle…that it has been a lie?”

He let go of my hand as if I’d hit him. His words should have been filled with hurt, anger even. But they fell flat and devoid of anything resembling humanity and all the gracelessness of pure, raw emotion. It was as if someone was typing in the words and Skovajsa the mannequin spoke. He was either buried so deep underneath the lies he’d told himself or the man he’d once been no longer existed at all.

“I have no doubt you have struggled. But I can only help you if you want to know the truth. If you really want to know yourself.”

He held out the box again, as if diamonds really were a girl’s BFF. I stepped away.

It was heartbreaking, in a way. He wasn’t Valerian. He wasn’t fighting to maintain himself while I tilted the world on him. I could see he just didn’t understand this rejection. It didn’t fit. But nothing showed in his face. But the gears must have been turning.

“You will…try to help me.”

“As your psychologist.”

He gazed into my face again, his impassive. “You’ll help me…uncover my story.”

Something felt off, like he was backing me into some corner that I couldn’t see. “You wanted to know yourself.”

He looked down, dropping his arms to his sides. “Yes. I said that.” He straightened up to full height. “I have many holdings, pretty houses, stores, nice things. Cars, furs, jewels. You would not be wanting for anything. Perhaps in time, when you know me better, you will change your mind.”

Damn, if he wasn’t persistent.

“No. I won’t. I want to help you. But not like that.”

His body relaxed all of a sudden, as if I’d given him exactly what he wanted. “Well, I will just have to find some other way to convince you. While we continue our treatments, of course.”

Not only was he not listening, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He’d made up his mind. I hesitated. It might make more sense to stall him into thinking we were good until I could figure out what to do next. But he was Vampire; he had it in his head that I would make a great addition to his many holdings. Being used for my knowledge was something that Valerian had once warned me about.

If you are not protected, you will become a pawn.

I nodded. “Right. I’ll contact you for your next appointment time. In a few days. Good night.” I began to walk away.

“Sophie.”

It was the first time I remember him using my name. It chilled me. I wanted to scour my ears. Was there just a little Vox in there?

“You turn down the finest jewels. What gift would be more appropriate for my…psychologist friend?”

I’d turned down the nearest thing a vampire gave to a marriage proposal and realized that this was by far one of the most dangerous and unhinged vampires I’d ever met. There was no doubt now. Skovajsa was the Vampire Cannibal I feared. I was stalling for a plan, for something brilliant to come to mind.

“Don’t suppose you have any fine wine?” I quipped.

“Certainly.” He smiled. “Something just perfect for the occasion. A very rare old vintage Sherry. I just recently got it for a steal from a collector in Seville.”

Remember what I said about fearing a smiling vampire?

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DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: The Look of Things

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags argentine, jaguar, taint, vampire on April 17, 2011 by vampirony

“Sure,” was the length and breadth of her response to my text.

It didn’t leave me much to go on, which troubled me some. I scratched at my chest, my scars prickling under my shirt. It took me a while to notice that Conclave had gone suddenly quiet, as if the conference call had been dropped.

I pitched forward at my desk, realizing that I was no longer actively projecting into the room where the others had gathered. Someone had called this emergency session to talk about some slight somewhere or something. I had to admit a failing on my part as Conclave scribe that I hadn’t been paying much attention.

As I peered into the room, trying to re-establish what was happening, I saw a form move in front of the camera. A laptop was usually setup on the far side of the room where I could see everyone assembled and easily project myself without getting in anyone’s way. It tended to unnerve some of the others when my projected self interfered in their space.

The form was Valerian, clearly seated in his chair on the dais. He raised an eyebrow at me and blocked the entire room from my view as I heard the heated conversation continue in the background. But before I could grasp the thread, Valerian spoke, his voice low, just for me.

“You look a little different today, my absent-minded friend.”

“Huh?” I was scratching at my chest again. I made myself stop.

He didn’t say more, just slowly sat back out of view.

“That is an insolent allegation–.”

I pushed my awareness back into the room just as Valerian, just behind my left elbow, spoke up.

“Considering that the focus of the allegation has not appeared to this conclave, perhaps it would be better to reserve these proceedings for a better time.”

Across the room from me was a very young looking Latino, wearing chinos and a white sports polo shirt with short cropped sun-streaked brown hair, more modern day soccer player than vampire. But his jaw was set with selfless resolution. And he stood alongside a very old friend to the Conclave, Imperius from the Jaguar clan. Imperius was no vampire, but had been a vampire servant from his Roman days, then traveled as a monk throughout Europe. He’d been a servant for so long and his bonded vampire had been so ancient that when his master had to be killed due to insanity, Imperius had survived on. It was a bit of a miracle that no one could still explain.

Xi, current member of Valerian’s staff although originally from Teng-Wen’s Jiang-shi horror, had stepped down from the dais, as if advancing on the Latino. His long dusty black locks were bristling, the tattoos over his naked torso rippled with magical intensity. It had been his voice that Valerian had forestalled. With his clenched fists and forward posture, he was a hair’s breadth from disobedience.

Imperius set his shrewd eyes to studying Valerian. He’d been old before Valerian had been human born. There wasn’t much that passed his notice or reasoning among vampire affairs and he had very deftly helped the South American contingent carve out equal rights among the vampire Conclave, including this particular privilege of direct access. No other horror would allow anyone but the leader to directly address Conclave. But the South Americans were different in many ways and we’d all chosen to respect that in their one small request for fear of the bloodbath that might follow denial.

“And when might young Bianchi, who’s already traveled quite far in service to the Conclave, get his satisfaction?” Imperius asked, suspicious.

Valerian stood, a signal this Conclave was at an end. “When the vampire in question can be found.”

The Latino Bianchi stepped forward, “I only wish to be heard, Lord Valerian. We in the southern provinces believe in your wisdom handling threats to all vampire society, regardless of their source.”

Xi made the slightest inhalation in temper but before breath escaped his lungs, his lips and jaw clenched shut tight and he began stepping back heavily, up the steps of the dais, behind Valerian. His eyes darted to his master but no other part of his body moved. He became a glorious statue of a warrior, frozen on the precipice of attacking. It was the first time in a long time I’d seen Valerian have to reign in one of his own at Conclave. His kindred were among the most obedient, mainly because they had been hunted the most throughout the ages and relied so heavily on him for their continued existence.

His full expression was hard for me to see from my vantage but his sharp face was dented in a pained smile.

“But of course. We shall adjourn from this larger group to talk it over.”

Valerian stepped down the dais towards the Latino vampire, his robe falling thick and dark around him. When he reached Bianchi, he put an arm around the boy, leading him away, with Imperius hesitating behind. For all his power and darkness, there was something so fatherly about that arm that it beckoned me forward.

“So, scribe, how will you record this session? I fear there was more unsaid than you could hope to surmise.”

I hadn’t realized I had pushed further into the room, some fifty feet from the laptop. Imperius looked at my projected self as if my presence were commonplace. Absent-minded indeed. Valerian was right; I wasn’t quite in control of body or spirit at the moment, both wanting to be elsewhere. But there were too many questions in the here and now that were hinted at, most of them from our appointed leader himself.

“What did the boy mean ‘regardless of the source’?” I asked, still looking after Valerian.

“Hmm, he refers to the Taint.”

I turned my head toward him. I was familiar with the blood cleansing programs. Valerian had just returned from one not long ago and had still deigned to meet with me about Sophie. I now knew he had been drinking pine needle tea as a restorative. I kept away from the cleansings as I had never had the thirst for gorging as some had, even though I understood the necessity of the process. But some programs devised more recently hadn’t always used such a direct approach.

“Yes, what of it?”

All manner of vampire concoctions had once been tried to affect a larger group of people without exposing vampires to direct blood consumption. All attempts had significant side effects moving Valerian to discontinue them and every unintentional spawn had been liberated. He’d had to argue very vigorously with Shadria and Galscythe, ministers of the programs, to revert to vampire individuals doing the direct cleansing, volunteering himself to start. They had not seen a few errant orphans as being statistically significant even after one had murdered a school bus full of children in Argentina.

Horrific as it had been, they had still thought to refine, not end the practice. Valerian wanted it eradicated immediately and every potion, powder, or bottle collected and destroyed. Their disagreement had come to combat in the Conclave chamber, Shadria calling Valerian soft in his concern for the humans and weak for his fear over a few fevered and wild offshoots. Before that day, the list of punishable offenses in vampire society included only two: Endangerment of vampire society and interference in another vampire’s horror or territory.

That day, Valerian in his swift and utter defeat of Shadria, a vampire two hundred years his senior, had added another. Children of any kind were untouchable. Of course, he explained that infanticide was a great threat to our treaties and our secrecy and therefore violated the primary law. But the ferocity with which he had physically mutilated Shadria and mentally wrecked her in unknowable ways gave rise to suspicions of his exact motives.

Imperius chewed the side of his beard, looking much the portly monk, still in his old traveling robes. “Valerian promised Jaguar clan that he would destroy every remnant of Taint from the Earth. It’s rumored a few still elude him, that his agents work even now to recover them. But Jaguar clan remembers how he fought with honor to protect all vampires from ultimate ruin and avenged the defiled children of the Argentines.”

“Yes, he’s become quite the family man.”

“Hmm, “ Imperius scoffed, slapping air where my chest would be. “You might ask Xi how he feels about his adopted father right about now.” He took his leave.

He was right of course but this interaction had revealed something a lot closer at hand. As I looked down at my chest, the V neck shirt hinted at something strange beneath, something Valerian had tried to hint at earlier. I pulled down the fabric at the neck and noticed that my projected self had an unblemished chest, even as I felt my real chest still itching. Somehow, my projected self was the old one, not the one with a few new scars that Valerian had woken from reverie in the laptop conference call.

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NEW MESSAGE: Is this your guy?

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags be italian, House of Vasa, Vampirony on April 4, 2011 by vampirony

From: bruno bonne(brunbon@unilu.ch)
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009
To: vampironyis@live.com
Attachment: BeItalian.jpg

Tried to IM you but you’ve been offline all day. So I put one more try out there in the great wide web to see if I could catch anything on this Skovajsa and came up with this strange thing: a male actor/model in 1930’s Italy named Vasa Skoda. He was of Yugoslavian descent, apparently migrated to Italy to do advertisements for the growing interest in travel to the Mediterranean. Apparently, tans were all the fashion.

Someone at Jagiellonian University is trying to do a new history of the House of Vasa, a Swedish/Polish royal house and, well, she found his info and posted it up, trying to find any descendants.

Trippy note here: apparently, one of his few acting roles was an extra in which famous 1931 film? You guessed it, the classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Bela Lugosi.

I’ve attached the ad picture. Is this him? Get back to me ASAP!

-bb

Bruno Bonne Kasernenplatz 6 Postfach 74553 6999 Luzern 9 Universitat Luzern

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I must not fear

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags fear, prescience, preternatural, vampire on April 3, 2011 by vampirony

I woke early evening after being hunted and tormented in nightmares brought on by too little sleep and too much melatonin. How quickly I had moved from the troubles of the dreaming, sun-endowed vampire Jesper to the more sinister evils of the Carpathian cannibal Skovajsa. Something about it all just seemed so off.

How much of it could be explained by his not having known his maker, not having a mentor to work him through the process, I wasn’t sure. The very survival of a newborn usually demanded a maker, a parent to provide for and protect, especially in the cities. The era of bloodbaths and the countless missing peasants whom no one noticed was over. Even if a newly made hunted the homeless, someone would take note.

And then there was Skovajsa’s textbook story that seemed all too…textbook. But he seemed so proud of it, so caught up in it. Never mind his aggression; he’d already shown him himself perfectly capable of violence with little regard to the fact that it was uncivilized.

No maker, a back story that reeked of a Bela Lugosi film, the emotional depth of a teaspoon, and the vanity of male model…it went without saying. I was afraid to see him. Afraid for my life. I was ashamed of it. I’d lived lifetime after lifetime, becoming acquainted the my many selves, knowing that because I fell so far from perfection, so far from being able to give up that which might free me from mortal concerns that I was doomed to be reincarnated again.

But it wasn’t the life that I feared losing…it was what was left behind. The mystery of a dreaming vampire and his glowing eyes. Just the thought that my going out to meet Skovajsa tonight might mean that last night would be the last time I saw Jesper curdled the blood in my veins. I’d lived so many time that the loss of my own existence no longer phased me. But the loss of his, the sheer impossibility of ever connecting with him again the way he was right now, warm, funny, vulnerable, and so very very intriguing; it terrified me beyond all else. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the thought because my heart finally ached not to be parted from him, not just yet.

Maybe he felt the same, maybe he was just his positive vampire self, taking advantage of the situation to his own ends. I had never cared that my emotions be returned in kind. The fact that I had them for once…finally…after feeling so bereft of emotions for so very long. The emptiness, the void was suddenly bursting with this all-consuming fear and I was shaking in my damp sheets, clutching my arms around me.

He was everything that Skovajsa was not. I knew Skovajsa was bad news. So why would I even consider going to meet him?

There was a Carpathian long ago that I had tried to help. I had been fascinated by him, fallen in love with him, and watched him slip from my grasp as his imbalances had turned his interest in me to obsession, his love into fear, my refusal to be turned into hate, my attempts to minister to him twisted into ridicule of him, contemptible conceit. In the very end, his very love for me had been my undoing. I hadn’t seen how far he’d gone into this madness, hadn’t been aware or prepared.

My failure had cost me my life. It had been the last time I remember feeling anything more than fondness for someone, excepting, of course, my daughter.

One dark night in London in 1883, I met a vampire named Valerian, in the flat of a Mr. Roland Emmerick, during a meeting of the Ghost Club, an organization founded to investigate spiritualism and science in a quest for knowledge. While women were not allowed in the Ghost Club officially, having a strange aptitude for reading people’s past landed me an audience in the club as a medium.

Valerian, who must have been already over 400 years old by this time, was investigating this club for what threat it might have against him and his kind. I suspect he had already started a horror of his own and wanted to see about setting London up as his home. He cut quite an impressive visage; tall, dark, and handsome with angular cheeks and deep set blue eyes.

Whether he was actually attracted to me physically or rather some of my comments had piqued his interest initially, he knew well how to mete control of his abilities to charm and attract. It had caught me off-guard. What was worse was that as we began to talk, the wall between my professionalism and his, well, vampire nature, slipped seamlessly away. He led me to a quiet corner of the room to share a brandy with him. Since most of the assembled might disapprove of such a strong drink for such a gentle lady, I agreed, thinking, mostly, that it would settle my nerves.

It did. It emboldened me, matter-of-fact, into revealing what I suspected of him.

“A vampire? Surely you are letting these zealots of the supernatural influence you,” he joked, but a darkness crept over his face.

“Zealots they may be but the fact remains, you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, testing the shepherd’s flock for your own designs.” I took another sip. “It speaks of your refinement, maturity of one of your kind. The fact that you can meld so well in such animated company further demonstrates your power and capability.”

“If I were sufficiently capable, as you suggest, wouldn’t I be able to charm you into thinking me just a man having an entrancing conversation with a beautiful and yet enigmatic woman?”

“Lord Valerian, as you have already been made aware, I have supernatural tendencies of my own. Though, this brandy helps me to confess, I feel the power of your sway most strongly. I do hope you will not take advantage of a lady who only seeks to offer up her abilities for benefit of others.”

“You can rely upon me, sweet lady, to take the utmost care with your person. Although, I too must confess myself strangely held captive like no time in recent memory. If we were to pretend, for a moment, that I was this, uh, creature of which you speak, what special skills might you lay upon my person?”

Looking at him coyly, drunk off brandy, “I would help you find the balance which you seek.”

He guffawed heartily. But as I remained steadfast in my gaze, he face sobered into incredulity. “Let me make sure I understand you. You believe that I, a stranger that you have just met for all of an hour, am unbalanced?”

As I held his gaze with my own, I watched it sneak under his armor and behind those dark blue eyes, there was a tremor. First, it was a flash of anger and he seemed about to bolt. The room was heading with incense and some other odor. Pipe smoke filling the room and the brandy like liquid courage in my veins, I moved to ease his mind, putting my gloved hand out.

I misjudged my mark, my hand landing not on his arm as intended. Instead, it fell upon his upper thigh.

His eyes flashed and his mouth dropped open just enough that I clearly saw his fangs snap out. It would’ve been quite acceptable, maybe even expected of him, a gentleman, to recognize a lady out of her depth, too much in the drink, and in danger of, perhaps already sullying her reputation.

He was old enough, mature enough, powerful enough that my small slip of propriety should have been nothing to him. Even as Vampire, such a touch, such a conversation, should have done little to move him from his plan. But I got to him that evening, just as he had got to me and we were staring at each other, as if suddenly both naked.

He wasn’t without any subtleties. He leaned forward, letting the fabric of his jacket drape over my arm so that no casual observer might notice where my hand lay. The room was stifling, my head began to swim, and I surmise now that it was in no small measure because he lost control of his abilities. I dropped my brandy glass and put my other hand to my head before fainting away.

The rest I know from Emmerick who told me later how Valerian gathered me up in his arms, declared that I had just had a powerful psychic fit in reading his future and that he would return me home posthaste in his carriage.

When I came to later, my head was resting against his shoulder in the carriage. But contrary to what could have been, he had taken no other liberties, both of his hands rested on his walking stick. As I stirred, opening my eyes, he spoke.

“I must apologize. There must be some truth in your words for only if I were not quite right would I take such a risk and spirit you away from that assembly.” He took a long, slow breath. “But I find I cannot be parted from you just yet.”

I lifted my head, felt his being all throughout me. I put a weak hand to my throat.

He noticed the movement. “No, I have not bitten you…yet.”

“You’ve done far worse.” I spoke softly. Without a bite, it could only mean that his sheer power alone had been brought to hear. He’d charmed me, nay, perhaps even worse than that, he’d entranced me. The pull felt so strong, I had to clench my hands to keep them from him.

He turned to look at me. Instead of a jaunty smile, there was regret and a sheepish look. His fangs peeked from under tightly drawn lips. “I did not intend it.”

I should’ve been fighting with all my remaining strength against him, to get out of his carriage, but I believed him. I read in his eyes the truth of the situation, that it was almost a reflex; he was Vampire and he must keep what was his. And somehow in that drawing room, I had intrigued him enough, shocked him enough, that it had forged some bond.

“Perhaps, my lord, if your mind was put at some ease, you might be able to relinquish your hold.” It was like gasping in air to make any sense, no matter how he was to be believed. I tried not to fight it, that could only led to wrecking of my mind especially if, he had no control over this binding that had happened.

He smiled without mirth, moving a hand to take my chin gently in his grasp. “And what possible ease could I find in your presence, when you look right through all four hundred thirty three of my years and make me feel like a schoolboy scraping my knees at the altar of a divine?”

I couldn’t think past the current moment. The only thoughts that seemed to make any sense were to give in enough that we both might have some ease. With shaky fingers, I undid the top buttons of my collar. His fangs grew involuntarily at revealing my neck to him. I blinked my eyes shut, wanting to dive headlong through this moment so I might find a way back out the other side.

He moved to wrap his arm around me, tilting my chin with his hand. Besides the bumpy nature of the carriage, once I was completely in his hold, I was no longer jostled, his strength so complete that I felt like I was floating.

His thumb moved over my cheek causing me to open my eyes to him again. There was a question in his gaze. “You think this will break my regard for you?”

“Yes,” I breathed. Arrgh, I just wanted him to hurry!

I could feel my veins throbbing in my whole body, heart thumping just for him. If this didn’t work, I’d be lost.

“My lady,” he whispered, eyes still searching mine. “What is your name?”

“Darcie Sherbourne,” I replied simply.

“Darcie Sherbourne,” he tried the name on his tongue, head leaning over me. Then Lord Valerian, loyal lieutenant to Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia, who fought to repel the Ottomans during the Battle of Vaslui in 1475, ancient vampire, gentleman and scholar, professed his own prescience.

“You will be the death of me.”

Then he bit me.

“““““““““““““““““

I was in no way ready to meet Skovajsa. I was too vulnerable. I realized I was still willing to give Skovajsa a chance because of my past with Valerian. But Valerian had killed me. Our bond had been broken in one way in that carriage and forged in another. And it been the undoing of us both.

The twins might be my biggest regret but Valerian had been my ultimate failure.

And here I was, afraid of losing this life more than any other I could recall, stepping into a cab at half past 10PM to meet the vampire fraud in the heart of downtown. As I settled into the seat, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

A text. From Jesper.

Got yur message. See u later?

Nothing in this life was ours to keep. Everything we acquired, every happiness we managed, only moments on loan to us. The trick was to accept those moments as gifts and linger over them only for a moment, not to clasp them tightly until they turned to dust.

Sure, I texted back. I leaned my head back in the cab, watching the water of another lake fill my view. This moment, right now, with my heart beating warmly in my chest with relief, this moment I would savor.

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Relations in Blood

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags relations, Vampirony on March 28, 2011 by vampirony

Years in the Secret Service, hopping around the world to places like Spain, Turkey, and Pakistan to name a few, had taught Morena one valuable lesson: sleep when you can. Which isn’t to say that she didn’t require a little help now and then. But after a string of sleepless nights and equally stressful days, the clock was ticking down on her full system crash. T-Minus…right now.

She’d managed to keep it together a lot longer than what would make sense given her emotional state. But it had been those very emotions that created the need for perpetual awareness. At first, concern for Jesper had fueled the hours. Then jealousy over this crackpot wannabe shrink she’d made the mistake of contacting had become the source. Fear had then begun to creep in after the shop attack and what came after, married up with the sense of betrayal and utter vulnerability. And now, now she was just numb. Spent.

She needed her perspective back. She needed something to get her back to that office tonight for round two. She couldn’t let the errand boy fend for himself. She’d seen the way he fought…nope, couldn’t let him go it alone.

She popped a few melatonin pills, said a mental “F* you!” to the nightmares to come since the herbs gave her nasty-mares, and slipped under the covers. She was snoring within a half hour, never mind the sun streaming in from a gorgeous, not-so-sleepless-in-Seattle summer day.

As day turned to night, the sun slipping beneath the Puget Sound amidst the ferries and cargo ships, the Space Needle pointing up at a moon in first quarter on the rise, Morena’s awareness began to fuse back together, first a sense of the weight of her covers, then the briny smell from the nearby locks, and the far away buzz of traffic as the Ballard crowd began to fester out onto the streets.

So deep had her slumber been, she barely remembered any dreams at all and she stretched her limbs, her hand reaching under her pillow for the comfort of her Glock. Instead, something smooth, cold, and hard nicked her palm and she sat up with a start.

Even in the low light of her apartment, she could see the blood oozing from the gash across her hand. Flipping the pillow up, she found herself staring at a familiar looking slightly bent blade. The kukri. But how…

“Sorry about that.”

Morena started again as Lucy shrugged out of the shadows. She pressed a bandage into Morena’s palm and began wrapping a dressing around it. In an instant, Morena clearly understood Nick’s earlier anger at having his parents’ business and home invaded by her noisiness. It had been with the best of intentions. But what possible intentions could this vampire have with her?

Lucy finished the dressing and met Morena’s gaze with dark eyes that seemed bigger than her face should allow. She’d chopped her hair into a flapper girl bob, looking very much like Clara Bow. The thought almost made Morena smirk. Her ears seemed healed.

“May I sit?” Lucy asked, still holding Morena’s hand.

When Morena said nothing, Lucy took her silence as consent and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment, Morena took back her hand, brought it to her chest, and covered it with her other hand, not wanting a repeat of the previous interaction with Lucy’s brother.

The room fell into an uneasy silence and Morena surmised that Lucy was expecting questions. When Morena couldn’t form any, or at least decide on the first one to flow from her still sleep addled mind, Lucy spoke up.

“I’m sorry about the cut but it’s the safest, best way to form a bonding.”

Morena blinked, “Bonding? What sort of bonding?”

“Between you and the kukri.”

“And why the Hell do I need to bond with a knife?” There. That was better. She was feeling more herself already.

Lucy relaxed back an inch, the corners of her mouth deepening into her cheeks. “It’s not a knife. And it’s not just any bladed weapon.”

Morena made to stand to which Lucy quickly put a hand out.

“I wouldn’t do that just yet.”

Lucy was right. The moment Morena reached full height, the sensation of a disconnection between her body and her mind hit her and she collapsed back onto the bed. Morena managed to stare down at her bandaged hand. There was a warmth trembling through the meat of her hand, moving up her arm. “What…what’s wrong with me?”

“It’s just the blood bond with the kukri. It’ll pass in a moment.”

And so as suddenly as the feeling seemed to be building up to a crescendo that threatened to engulf her arm, it crested and dissipated. “Wha..?” She threw a questioning look to Lucy.

Lucy crossed her legs casually. “Well, you don’t expect to do anything with that silly gun, do you? Just relax for a few moments.” Then she reached around behind her, producing the kukri to show Morena.

“And how is that thing going to help me with vampires?”

Lucy rolled her eyes just as Morena noticed that she was wearing gloves. When she was sure Morena noticed, she nodded. “Now are you getting it?”

“You can’t touch it? What happens if you do?”

“Hard to say, really. I’m allergic to silver, which is folded into the blade. But its effect on other vampires will be more pronounced and will vary. Legend says the kukri, once bonded by blood, protects the bearer by finding its enemy’s weakness and revealing it.”

Morena blinked at her. It was hard to tell what was harder to swallow; that Lucy was giving her a weapon to kill vampires or that this mumbo jumbo was real. But considering Jesper could emit sun beams from his eyes and Lucy here could disappear into a cloud of birds, why shouldn’t the blade work like some magic talking sword?

Lucy held it out to Morena and she took it gingerly. It was heavier than she expected as she held it in right hand, her cut hand. Funny, it didn’t hurt to grip it tight. She hefted it, feeling the weight. While a strange shape, somehow, she knew exactly how it would feel to throw it.

“Good, you’re getting the hang of it. But you’ll probably still need some training, “ Lucy stood.

Morena sneered, looking up at her, “What, from you?”

Lucy threw her a sharp look. When Morena looked back down, Snuffy, her favorite stuffed animal, a pink Easter Bunny, was in her hand. The kukri was on her desk alongside her Glock. With the clip removed. And the bullets moving around the desktop. The thought was utterly sobering. Might as well have been her head.

“Don’t mistake bravada for stupidity. You still haven’t fully seen what your boyfriend’s capable of.”

Morena took in a deep breath. “It’s not like that. Not anymore.”

Lucy relaxed, letting out a breath. “Good. Vampires make terrible boyfriends.”

Morena couldn’t find it in herself to laugh but when she looked at Lucy, she sensed the punch line hadn’t hit yet. “Oh, and why is that?”

“Because they’ll bleed you dry, given half the chance.” Lucy’s lopsided smirk belied a deeper message.

Morena didn’t want to think about that part of her acquaintanceship with Jesper. That had been quite enjoyable, on reflection. And that she did NOT want to reflect on.

“You’ll get over it. I promise you that.”

Morena stood, “Already am.” She shuffled over to her desk, lightly touching the Kukri. She noticed a box sitting on the desk chair seat. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s a box of the modulators. Figured you might want to carry them, just in case. Damn nuisance that I can’t figure out why Sophie’s voice doesn’t come through.”

Morena opened the box, adding idly, “Maybe because she thinks too much like a vampire.”

Lucy shrugged and headed for the door. “Maybe so. In a few days, we should start training with the kukri. With all the activity around, you should be prepared.”

“Is Sophie going to like you training me to hurt vampires?”

Lucy opened the door, tossing a casual look back. “Don’t mistake me, Miss Fourtenay. I’m not going to train you to protect yourself against vampires. I’m going to train you to kill them. Goodnight.” And as if to accentuate her point, she exploded into a murder of crows and flew out the door, the sheer gust of flight sucking the door closed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

But she didn’t go far, up the staircase, through an open window on the landing, out into the sticky night air, to alight on the rooftop. She craned her neck to look down, standing just above Morena’s apartment window. It was risky using her powers so openly but Morena needed to know what she was up against. Her very soul depending on it.

Lucy turned and walked towards the roof’s charming garden, a few rows of raised cedar boxes, with every kind of herb growing. The summer had been hot and sunny in the last few weeks and the plants were taking full advantage. There was a quaint rusty patio set with a rocking chair and a trellis. It would suffice for her first night’s vigil.

As she approached the patio, she noticed a shadow from the trellis lengthened over the gravel rooftop. She started as a figure materialized out of the shadow and grabbed her arm.

“Maurice!”

Her brother’s face bristled with intensity, as if devouring every detail. It had been hours since sundown and she had not checked in with him. She couldn’t be sure if it was concern or anger etched into his countenance.

As he was about to speak, his eyes took in her shorn hair. “What happened to your hair?” his voice trembled in barely controlled emotion.

Her ears had healed sufficiently to all appearances but under the surface, the bruising of rapidly regenerated flesh still lingered and would for some time. With his deep breathing, controlling his anger, anger that had started to turn dark of late, she knew he could smell the blood pooling in her tissues. There was no use in lying to him. He was still her beloved brother, no matter what he was struggling to become.

“I burned my ears. Scorched them doing recon.”

He released her arm, his face falling. It took the breath from her, this sudden shift. The grouchiness she was getting used to, even the anger when it flared. But this, this was something new.

“How have I failed you so completely, dearest sister?”

She shook her head, “I don’t understand what you mean.”

When she thought he might speak, he swallowed his thoughts away. When she reached a hand to him, he turned his shoulder away, staring up at the moon. For many moments, they fell into silence and Lucy tried to reach out her mind to him, to find a shred of the bond they had shared for so long that would unlock the puzzle her brother had become. But all she felt was his deathly silence.

“Did you give her the Kukri?” he asked softly.

“Yes. And I was going to watch over her tonight. Just in case.”

He nodded. “Would that things were different and we had met her under other circumstances.”

“Life proceeds as it does, brother.”

He turned to her, his eyes gone dark. “But we should be its master.”

The shadows around the rooftop began to swirl around Maurice, as he took a single deliberate step towards her. “Come, we have work to do.”

Lucy steeled herself. “Someone should stay behind to protect her.”

“She is a Fourtenay. She can take care of herself. At least, at the moment.” Maurice put his hands gently over Lucy’s shoulders but the effect upset her more than relieved her of worry.

“But Maurice, the Kukri is new to her. What if the wound still bleeds? What if others find her? We must protect her.”

“We must protect our own. And for that, there is work elsewhere needed.” He rubbed her ear, saw her grimace. “I know what you have been stalking. You must come with me now.” The shadows began to inch up their legs as they stood there, uniting them in darkness.

Lucy tried to twist from his grip, resisting. “But Maurice, she—.”

“You WILL obey me!” Vox Compulsum shattered ceramic pots all along the rooftop. And then, the shadows made in his image roared up, consuming them entirely before dispersing into the night, leaving only an echo of Lucy’s scream.

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Something about frying pans

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags gyoza, omurice, vampire on March 21, 2011 by vampirony

Nick arrived home to his parents’ place above their restaurant GoButa in the International District several hours after midnight and sat in bed, reading from the back section of the Memento, what Sophie called the “Vampire Factbook.” The large vellum pages held a small tight script that gave up secrets about familiars, ground tombs that gave birth to newly made vampires, and, most frightening, unbound vampires. Unbound vampires were ones made by mistake and the vampire maker, for whatever reason, was not there to help mentor the newborn into the Vampire world. According to the book, unbound vampires almost always went rabid and wound up causing terror.

Nick shuddered and typed a few more notes into his laptop. The image of the blonde vixen vampire from the bar came into his mind and would not go away. Inspired by that fear, Nick flipped through the pages, looking for hints, tips, tricks, anything on how to actually kill a vampire. Just as he was beginning to get frustrated, he stumbled upon what appeared to be an obituary page. It listed vampires (presumably) and the manner in which they had died.

Beheading, infernos, sunshine, massive blood loss. So the movies are true?

The movies never mentioned vampires with laser beam eyes. Strangely, for as much as gentleman vampire Jesper seemed powerful, he seemed ok. The petite girl Lucy, she was a conundrum. She seemed to not really be one of them. At the same time, the thought of her sucking that blood down creeped him out. He’d never hear that sucking sound and the crinkling of the foil package again without cringing. He wondered where it came from. The blood inside.

Again, the blonde appeared in his mind and he remembered her businessman companion. Nick read the section of Vampire Influence. Twice. Memorized it and then typed it into his laptop. The idea of a vampire “wrecking” his mind, well, he never would have believed it until he’d made eye contact with the blonde vampiress. It was the merest feeling of his body disconnecting from his will and it was scarier than shit. He didn’t want to be a vampire. He was too much the foodie.

Her eyes. Pools of obsidian. And did she make that businessman her food, her slave, one of the unbound? Did she wreck his mind?

By the time the fish monger arrived at the back door of the restaurant, Nick had the kitchen in a frenzy of activity. He stopped kneading yet another batch of soba noodles to sign for the shipment and went back to work, ignoring his elderly parents entering the kitchen and staring at him. His forearms were sore from rolling the dough out over and over but his mind was finally clear.

Cooking calmed him. It was the only thing in this world that he was a natural at, from his earliest years. He first cooked up omurice, an omelette with fried rice, since he’d skipped dinner. Turned out, he wasn’t very hungry. He rolled up his sleeves and got the mill out. He needed to work on something involved, something that wouldn’t go to waste and that would benefit the restaurant.

He started making soba for the next day’s service. After an hour, he felt his worries slip away, if not entirely, at least to the back of his mind. The action of rolling the dough out, folding, and rolling again had a calming repetition that he lost himself in.

Right before the fish monger had shown up, he started working on some sata andagi, Okinawa donuts. The smell of the fryer made him think of all the mornings he’d woken up to that smell, bounding down the stairs to his mother at the stovetop. She would slap his fat fist away from the stove as he tried to sample freshly drained treats.

By the time he’d moved on to pork-filled gyoza, his mother was there, standing just inside the kitchen door, watching. She’d seen him do this before, with a new disappointment, stress, or strife. In the past, a strict word about waste or the mess would be enough to chastise Nick, set him back to rights having exorcised his demons. Her eyes took in the sheer volume of his labor and assessed that no words she knew would quell this, his latest worry. It must be great indeed.

Now she walked over to him as his father started the chores of the morning. She put a hand on his shoulder and handed him an envelope. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel before taking it. He opened it and removed a check from inside. It was made out to him for more money than he’d ever made in such a short stint, barring, of course, that one summer in Alaska. His mother asked him a simple question.

“For school?”

“Yes, Mom.” He stuffed it into his back pocket and rolled out a few more rounds for filling. But the thought was there, niggling at him. If I live that long.

His mom said nothing, just put on her apron beside him and started to package up his excess of energy. When she opened the back door to start with the deliveries, she started to discover a tall, dark haired woman standing there.

“AY!”

Morena grimaced, putting her hands up. “Sorry.”

The sound drew Nick’s attention and he threw a look over his shoulder, rolling pin still working. When he saw Morena, he whirled, angry. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

His mother began to chatter at him in Japanese and he responded back, equally upset. He stormed over, arguing with his mother whose eyes kept darting from Morena to her son. She finally wandered away in a huff, still mumbling, and then sent a final volley back at him as she went through the kitchen door.

Nick threw his head back Morena’s way. The calm he had labored for hours to achieve shattered.

“Didn’t mean to frighten her,” Morena said.

“What is the matter with you people? Don’t you know it’s rude to just show up at someone’s house?”

Morena looked, for a moment, like she was about to get her own dander up but she swallowed it. “I’m sorry. I thought we might talk.” Then, her eyes went past him, assessing the state of the kitchen, before returning to his upset face. “I couldn’t sleep either.”

All anger fled out of him. She was some Amazonian warrior goddess in black heels, battle hardened and able to dispatch a room full of thugs with her pinkie toe and a beer stein. If she, of all people, couldn’t sleep after that night, what nightmare was he really living in?

“Come on in,” he spoke as he turned and went back to the table where gyoza waited to be filled.

Morena stepped gingerly into the room, her heels making no sound on the concrete floor. Her eyes roved what he had done and she watched after he began spooning a ground meat mixture onto round dough, one by one, following up by folding the dough over and sealing them up.

“How did you find me?” Nick asked while he continued his work, as if it were an afterthought.

“Oh, I have some friends still in the force.” She stared at the table, her face impassive but her eyes watching.

“So let me guess, you searched out the Fujiyami’s that own restaurants in International District?”

She looked up at him. “No, I had them run your plate.” She seemed aloof and nonchalant.

He stopped working and looked up at her, his lips pursed against another harsh comment. He struggled with it for a moment and then, thinking of the terrors he’d already witnessed, the danger he’d likely already subjected his family too, he let loose. “This is my home. More importantly, it’s my parents’ home. And their business. Their livelihood. You shouldn’t have invaded their privacy, and mine. It’s…” he struggled for the word. He remembered what the vampire had said about tricking a vampire. “Rude.”

He met her eyes and found a flaw in the impenetrable nature of her gaze.

“I was worried about you.”

Nick, caught off guard, took up a towel and began to wipe his hands. He let his mind think all sorts of things about trickery, deceit, wrecking. But he couldn’t hear it in her tone. He looked up at her again as she sighed, her gaze falling to the floor.

“I’m worried about both of us,” she said. “I haven’t slept well in days.”

“Well, he’s your boyfriend; surely you knew all of that stuff already.”

Her face went all quiet. “No.”

Nick considered her for a moment and then took up a pan of the gyoza. He walked over to the large refrigerator, opened it up, and slid the gyoza pan on one of the open racks.

“And he’s not my boyfriend. That’s…over.”

He turned back to her, closing the fridge. Did she look forlorn? Afraid? Regretful? Fooled?

“Well, in that case, I recommend we both have plenty of questions to ask him tonight when we go back. After, of course, we both get some rest.”

She lifted her gaze to him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking except to guess that neither one of them could step out of this now if they tried. He might be a coward and inept at fighting and, well, just an overall nice guy in a wicked world, but if he needed to interview a vampire in order to learn how to protect himself, then that what was what he’d do.

She nodded, with a half smile on her lips after a moment and began walking to the back door.

“I do have a question for you.”

Morena stopped her exit, turned back to him. He looked sheepishly around the kitchen, the piles of gyoza, the oodles of noodles, and a huge pot of soup stewing.

“Do you suppose Vampires eat real food? I expect we’ll have extras for tonight.”

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The Fetching of Far Flung Familiars

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags cannibals, familiars, hunters, Seville, vampire on March 7, 2011 by vampirony

I’d been scribbling down notes for what seemed like hours last night, in between drafting text messages to Jesper to check in on him after he went radio silent. I should have been focusing on eye beams that torch vampires. Or vampires that curl up in your lap like kittens. Ok, scratch that, I won’t think about that. But every time I tried to focus on what happened, I had one thought:

He took the lemons.

And I’d wind up smiling like a moron.

Great, what was this helping!

I wrote down phonetically what he had said before going all Cyclops on Lucy. Maybe my downstairs neighbors could translate for me. I didn’t trust my Russian. It was too rusty. So rusty, I couldn’t quite remember how I’d learned it.

And then there was the vamp in a lap. I’d been killed twice giving that reflex test and to have that reaction…with Jesper…well, just having Jesper in my lap. My cheeks started to flush. Embarrassment or something else. Um, yeah, something else.

Snap! Broke my pencil lead. That’s when I noticed I’d been clutching the pages of the Memento so tight, my knuckles had gone white while I was scribing. The page I’d been writing on all these random thoughts turned stormy. That is to say all the graphite from the words I’d written had gather on the page like storm clouds.

I straightened and relinquished my grip on the book and pages flew until it stopped with a loud SLAP! It was that page again. His page. Even the book was aware I was writing about him, thinking about him. I pushed the book aside and grabbed a notepad from my desk, drawing Nick’s attention.

He was milling around, cleaning up the bookshelf. I’d asked him twice to go home. He refused, said he was too unsettled to drive. Which was a truth wrapped in a lie. Morena had had no problem waving a hand in sayonara saying she needed to get some sleep. I’d let Lucy leave, taking the Kukri with her, even though she had seemed hesitant.

But Nick was worried about me. And as the minutes ticked by and I scribbled notes in ink on a legal pad and heard only silence from my cell phone, the earlier elation devolved into worry and then into fear tinged with resentment.

He’s a big vampire; he can take care of himself.

He had curled up in my lap, utterly defenseless.

Whatever this is, I’m sure he’s seen it before and knows how to deal.

He admitted he didn’t know what was happening to him.

Ancient, powerful, seductive vampires like him, their motives are their own, any gentleness or openness is not usually without some aim. Even the slightest gesture, like holding one’s hand, could be for another purpose.

He had begged me to stop, as if he had no control over himself anymore.

Ummm, I got nothing.

Why or how a vampire would respond that way was beyond me. But I needed to track it down. Long, long fangs, longest on record, impervious to silver, super speed, knows Russian. Maybe a Russian strain? Then, there was the searing ray that had coming from his eyes, burning Lucy to a crisp. Coupled with dreams of the Sun…it was hard to know where to start.

I threw a furtive glance at the Memento. It was again keeping its secrets from me. But maybe it had secrets that only its Guardian could tell? I jumped online and found Bruno offline. I typed him a quick note, in the utmost urgency, and then proceeded to start trying to cross reference symptoms on that largest of Vampire encyclopedias: the World Wide Web.

“You know, Fetch is a much better way of doing multi-word searches on a topic.”

I jumped. Nick was looking over my shoulder. “Sorry, “ he apologized and moved away.

I watched as he headed back towards the door. He pulled back the curtain and peered outside. Tonight, he’d been under a cascade of books, stunned by vampire fight club, and witnessed his new employer in a compromising way with an undead client. And had what I was suspecting was a favorite rite of male youth passage stolen by said undead.

And then there was that tousled hair bit, that unguarded moment between Morena, a woman of little affection and much angst, and him. As well as what could only be deemed a stream of playful banter. Hmm.

“You and Morena seem to be getting rather chummy. Want to talk about it?”

He didn’t miss a beat, nor turn from the window as he retorted. “You had J. Crew Vampire in your lap. Wanna talk about that?”

“I suck at this, don’t I?”

He gave a laugh and looked back at me. “Suck? Really?”

I was about to launch into some sort of apology and decided it was too late in the evening to approach anything remotely appropriate. Instead, I said, “Why don’t you go home, Nick? I’m sure you can see to the rest of this in the morning. That is, if you decide to come back.”

He grabbed his bag and just as he was about to pass my desk, he stopped and picked up the Memento. When I said nothing, he slipped it into his backpack and headed for the door. He opened it, threw furtive glances around outside before turning back towards me.

“Are you kidding? After what I know now, I’m thinking this might be the safest place in Seattle. But next time, maybe we can start class with the Cliff Notes version?”

I smiled. “Good night.” And then he left.

The chirp from my laptop woke me several hours later. I started as a single sunbeam fell on me from the curtain Nick had left aside last night. There were no vampires in danger here now. But after a night delving into Russian folklore and Djinni, my dreams had landed on a strange meld of Rasputin and Raskolnikov. And a singing rat.

The chirp was insistent. For the barest of instances, I thought, well, hoped it might be Jesper but then I realized my stupidity. It was full sun up; he would be deep in rigor dormitus (had to keep myself wondering what form he took when in that state.) We also had yet to exchange online personas and I vacillated between thinking having each other’s cell numbers was more or less intimate.

It was Bruno.

U there?
Am now. Questions about the Book.
Got some other news too.
You first.
Ok. Been scouring chat rooms for any word of your Skovajsa.

I shivered at the thought that the Carpathian was mine in any way. At this rate, I probably wouldn’t be hearing from him anytime soon.

Nothing yet although a lot of talk recently about Vampire Cannibals. Some of the more plebian societies are warning members about accepting new members, especially since an incident in Seville.

Along with any subculture of substance came the pretenders. With such myths of immortality and power ascribed to vampires, there have long been societies of humans that would try to claim that birthright, oftentimes in complete ignorance that the creatures actually exist. So they have their dark parties, pass around fake fangs, wear yards of black velvet and, on occasion, drink blood from some utterly benign source. Most Vampires avoided the vampire subculture like the plague; too many fickle fanatics with dreams of power and hunger and glory. They usually turned out to be easily offended or grossed out. I knew of one case where a real Vampire was rejected from entering a vampire club because he wasn’t goth enough.

What happened in Seville?
There were a series of attacks on members of various so-called vampire covens. Many of the groups started to advise members to keep from congregating.

Yet another inaccuracy between the little ‘v’ and big ‘V.’ Vampires do not name their familial groups after witches. They use the term ‘horror’ in part to keep themselves as separated from that human fantasy culture as possible. This isn’t to say that Vampire devotees aren’t frequently found from that group. Like I’ve said before, familiars and companions are a tricky lot. Sometimes, it’s better to just start fresh, with someone who isn’t quite looking. But it doesn’t prevent Vampires from slumming.

Was a profile ever distributed?
Typical Carpathian. What’s interesting is that on a few monster chat rooms, I saw similar posts, seeming to corroborate. Members were disappearing. Then, there’s a series of reposts of the same story: a so-called familiar was going to meet his vampire lord and stumbled upon his lord fighting with another vampire. But by the account, it seems like this familiar’s lord was the real deal.
The Vampire lord was slumming?
Apparently, and fought with this other vampire of Carpathian description. Now here’s the interesting bit: the eyewitness says the Carpathian bested his lord and then ‘feasted’ on him.

I blanched.

You mean to say he really ATE him?
Unclear. But the post was repeated, reposted verbatim so many times in these message boards, blogs, and chatrooms, I’m having a devil of a time hunting down the originating post.
How on Earth did the familiar escape?
He seems to have been saved by a hunter. And now has turned unfriendly now that he’s seen the true nature of the beast.

I sighed. This was so not good news, it undid any success I might have felt from a lemon or two changing hands. Creature hunters, some ordained by various churches, were one of the reasons my job was made more difficult. Instead of trying to help creatures exist alongside humans in managed co-existence, hunters set out to exterminate.

In my experience, they didn’t care who or what got in their way and they had led to as much of the vampire expansion as any other cause. The only reason why Vampires had sought out to create hordes of their own to protect each other is that Hunters usually didn’t last long and where they might be resistant to a particular beast, another would typical come along and resolve them.

A couple of options occurred to me. If I could track down the hunter that had witnessed the fracas, I might be able to figure out whether this Vampire Cannibal was Skovajsa. Conversely, if Skovajsa deigned to meet me again, I might probe his recent history to see if there was any correlation. Neither scenario was particularly safe. I probably had more enemies in the Hunter ranks than in the Vampire ones. It was also possible to try and track down the familiar, perhaps if I could find out which Vampire had been consumed.

Most vampires stayed close to the ground that made them. The process of transformation was slightly different for each vampire but it almost always involved “going to ground,” burying themselves up while their cells converted or whatever other term you wanted to use. The earth became the chrysalis and whether just emotionally or in practicality, Vampires liked to stay close to where they were vampire born.

It had been too many years since my last map of worldwide vampire activity had been updated so it would take some time to try and track the Vampire of Seville.

Anything else there?
Yeah, do I need to cover up my tracks on this? Cannibal vampires creep me out.
No, just don’t do anymore looking. You’ve done enough. Now I have some Book questions for you.
I won’t have to crawl up into the belfry, do I?
Probably not. Ever known the Book to have a connection to anyone other than me?
What, you mean, like the maker or something?

It was something I had never considered. Someone had to have made the Book. Nick had claimed the book had flown across the room after Jesper had touched it. Maybe Jesper had a connection to the book’s maker. While that thought certainly might explain the Book’s strange behavior, I tried to wrap my mind around it’s significance. This bond I had with the Book, it was so intimately the home of my deepest thoughts, secrets, years of memories, the thought that someone else might connect with it…should be deeply unsettling. A hundred times more than someone reading your diary, without your knowledge. And yet…

Do you know who made the Book?
I’m sure I could find that out. Seems rather simple.
Ok, do. I suspect I may not be the only one with a connection to the Book. Maybe I’m not the original owner.

Bruno sent a quizzical smiley my way. Yeah, it seemed farfetched but at this point, after a night of sunbeam eyed vampires and flying books, I didn’t have a lot of disbelief left in me. Not where our Vampire Jesper was concerned.

I signed off with Bruno, who was up late himself and grabbed for my phone. There was a single text message and I sting of nervous excitement whizzed through me as I looked it up. But it wasn’t Jesper apologizing for missing my text and confirming that he was retiring in the comforts of his home. It had been sent in the earliest hours of the morning, before sun up.

Meet me this night. We should continue getting to know each other. -S

It was Skovajsa and like it or not, he was willing to meet me again. And it scared me to death.

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DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: Bad Beauty

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags hong kong, jiang shi, memoirs, vampires, Vampirony on February 21, 2011 by vampirony

Folding memories can be taxing in the best of times, depending on the emotions embedded therein. And a split-second of an image, much like a single Chinese character, can hold a multitude of meanings when removed from context. One particular memory refused to be folded. It had always been such even though the memory was over two hundred years old. When I had been human, I had been exceptional only in my ability to be mediocre at everything I tried and in my first decades of being a vampire, I had been equally disappointing.

I hadn’t become a vampire by choice so it wasn’t something I had entered into hoping it would override the days of languishing in stupefying uselessness. However I once I had come to terms with it and learned where my peculiar vampire abilities lie, I had learned to enjoy the results. The more mastery over myself as vampire, the more confident I had become…and the more I wanted to bury the weaker times of my existence.

This memory was of one of those times as a young vampire. And the only way I seemed to be able to deal with it was to pen it back into my last volume of memoirs, in third person narrative. The years had given me perhaps a chance to find something new in my recollection, something that might be useful to the now…

When Dag Jesper Bretton, vampire, had stood upon the docks in Hong Kong, his clothes in tatters and soaked, his face smeared with ash and dirt, all he could think of as the first twinges of dawn began to taint the clouds was that he wanted to get to anywhere else but where he was now. Hong Kong had been a serious miscalculation from the start. His Danish looks made him stand out in any crowd, even at night, and even his maturing cloaking abilities did not shield him here.

The local Jiang-Shi, soul vampires as he had come to know, would never be willing to share their nighttime haunts with a foreign European devil. More than once, he’d been mistaken for German and attacked as the local vampires had a particular dislike for them. He looked nothing like a German but his fair looks still seemed to elicit their strongest ire.

It hadn’t helped things that his female traveling companion had vanished days after they’d arrived. He’d admittedly been a little glamoured by the French vampiress and running away to the Orient with her had seemed ever so romantic. She’d been petite, beautiful with marble for skin and by all accounts had been duly impressed with him being many decades her elder.

It had been a harsh reminder of how horrifyingly bad his love life had always been excepting one bright spot which he even now refused to let himself think on.

The little French vampiress had abandoned him, likely tired of him in favor of some rich, exotic opium dealer. She’d talked of little else on the trek over. But then again, travelling in the night, sometimes nailed into burlap-wrapped boxes, strapped to coaches, in trains, on ships, for hours with nothing to give them peace from each other except the dawn and its insistent comatose sleep, surely that was more time together than a casual affair could bear.

“God kveld!”

Jesper raised his head at the familiar sound. He never forgot a voice anymore. So intrinsic to his survival was it that he knew immediately that it was the big friendly if slightly myopic Norwegian he’d met earlier in a brothel while trying to find his vampiress. The place, more opium den than pleasure house, was trying to cheat the burly but affable sailor. Normally, Jesper stayed clear of entanglements but when thoroughly drunk and trying to make sense of his circumstances the big Norwegian started to curse in Danish as well as Norwegian, the sound of his mother tongue had compelled Jesper to help. It had been a small matter. The Norwegian had been settled with exactly the kind of company he’d wanted.

“God kveld, Gregers.”

A smile of all his crooked and missing teeth split the Norwegian’s face. He extended a hand and slapped Jesper on the shoulder. Had Jesper not his preternatural strength, the blow might’ve landed him in the bay.

While short on conversation, more mutters and grunts, Jesper had been able to surmise that his assistance had been timely: Gregers’ ship was about to sail to the Americas, San Francisco to be exact. Had Jesper believed he had any other luck besides this current string of bad, he might have felt that fortune was finally smiling upon him. Gregers had noted Jesper’s keen eye and they needed a night watch onboard. With very little prodding, Jesper soon found himself onboard, glamouring the captain into strict instructions on how he must never be disturbed during the day so that his sight would be sharply adjusted for the night.

Weeks of searching for his vampiress had netted more than a few scraps with the local Jiang-Shi warlord, Teng-Wen. He’d managed to escape each time but a whisper grew into a rumor of a night banshee that was high on drugged up missionaries.

Jesper had no proof that it was Bellecroix, the French temptress, with her doe like brown eyes. But the Jiang-Shi had started to call this night banshee the Dark Pearl and since Jesper had known her, Bellecroix had never removed the string of pearls from around her neck. Yes, it was time to leave before Teng-Wen and his horror made any connection between Jesper and this Dark Pearl.

Whatever evil she had fallen under (here, the author must remind himself that Vampirism might be considered the ultimate evil incarnate), Bellecroix was beyond his reach.

Within an hour, just as dawn was breaking through, Jesper was buried deep in the bowels of the ship, huddled under tarps, living in those last moments before dawn took all his consciousness. The fear was there again, yet another place to learn, new arrangements to try and make, all on his own again. But there were possibilities too. He’d always wondered about the new world, been curious to see it but like so many vampires, the voyage itself seemed ever so daunting and unbelievably perilous. But as night watch on a boat full of the proverbial drunken sailors, this had to be the golden goose, he’s very best chance of staking a place out for his own.

In some ways, Jesper didn’t really care. The dread he was under had repeated its refrain, over and over, until it drowned out all fear and doubt: Anywhere but here.

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But Sharing is Caring

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags Fiction, vampire on January 26, 2011 by vampirony

Looking like a statue frozen and expressionless, Skovajsa waited across the street from the Deli, hidden within the tree line, for some sort of sign. About an hour after he began his vigil, a young blond man of medium height stepped out the door to the office on the top floor of the building.

“There he is,” Oksana, wearing a very expensive version of her previous garish outfit, stepped forward, purring. She focused on Skovajsa, her face enraptured that she had reason to be this close again, sure that her reward would be great with the information she had revealed to him. She reached out newly painted nails of glossy, glittery red to touch his arm.

While Skovajsa turned to look robotically at Oksana, the man in question disappeared in a streak across the sky. Skovajsa’s complete lack of emotional response to Oksana’s touch forced her to let her hand slide from him and Skovajsa returned his gaze to the building. The doorway was now empty.

“Hmm,” was all he uttered and he breathed in deeply, sensing powerful waves of energy emanating from the building.

Oksana felt cheated that he didn’t offer her praise but when she looked back at the building, she noticed the obvious. “Where did he go?”

“Disappeared. Through shadows. Or stealth.”

There was cunning and conniving in his tone that Oksana readily recognized. Maybe this would lead to reward after all. She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head looking up at him. He was tall, handsome, powerful. Everything she wanted in a man. And he owned property, including that shit hole she knew as her family’s Russian deli. When she had first laid eyes on him several months ago when he’d taken over the loans her family owed, he was, by his very presence, intimidating her grandmother.

That alone would’ve inspired her admiration.

She had tried to talk to him then but her grandmother had forbid her. And then the community Orthodox priest had come to minister to her. It meant this stranger, dark and foreboding, had power that her family feared she might be drawn to. And she was. She had obsessed about him, wondering when he might notice her, intrigued that the few times he did visit, he came in a shiny black Escalade and only at night, when the shop had just closed.

But he never noticed her. So she made her own luck. About a month ago, when he was talking to her grandmother, she had gone outside to his car and left him a note inside the car, in the driver’s controls. It was the business card of a nightclub she liked to visit in Pioneer Square where she had written on the back: “I know who you are. Come at midnight.”

She had gone to the club for three straight nights waiting for him to show, dressed in her best. She ignored all the other men who tried to paw at her, not wanting him to arrive and see her with anyone else. Then early one morning, after the clubs had closed, she was about to board the bus back to Bellevue, disappointed when a voice called to her.

“Why don’t I give you a ride?”

Back at his condo, he had told her he’d watched her, wondered what she meant. She told him she knew he was a man, a big man, a powerful man. He proceeded to show her otherwise.

The fact that he was this powerful creature bothered her little. In fact, it made her love her even more. She worshipped everything about him. How insignificant everyone else in the world seemed when he was this beast, this god. He was Vampire! She loved it when he said it, meant it, and then sunk his teeth into her to prove it. She wanted that power all to herself, wanted to become one with him, wanted to do what he did.

So one night in the throes of sex, she had bit him, hard, drawing blood. He’d thrown her across the room. She begged for forgiveness, groveled that she just wanted more of him. Even how he had thrown her thrilled her. Such strength. And it was all hers now. Well, if not now, it would soon be. He would be all hers. It would only take a little while.

He had seemed perplexed by her devotion. But he was like any other man to her. He had invited her back, the next night and the next. The right amount of flattering and seduction convinced him she was his to enjoy and command. Then, after letting him drink from her until she felt dizzy and empty, she had asked if she could bite him again and he seemed eager to let her try.

The biting had led to bleeding, the bleeding had led to this beautiful, dark place where she could hear his heart beat and imagine she could see the years that folded out behind him in his long unnatural life. Her heart collapsed under the weight of unimaginable and horrific ecstasy.

She had started to convulse and ultimately expired.

She didn’t fault him for disposing of her body. He hadn’t expected her to die. He had been surprised, shocked even, when it had happened and shock must’ve driven his actions. He had been equally shocked this evening to have her call his private line, asking him to meet her back at the deli. Confusion had to have been his primary emotion because he had first hung up on her.

“There are others here like you.”

That had grabbed his attention when she had called him back and had to leave a message.

And now he turned his head to look back down at her. Whatever he wanted was what she wanted. And now she knew that others like him were important to him.

He cupped her cheek in a very practiced way.

“You’ve done well, copil. A very powerful and providential find.”

She lowered her eyes, smiling, swaying in sensuous pride. Yes! A reward was due her. She had struggled the last few weeks, finding substance, fighting the itches under her skin. She had managed a few random feedings but they had been horribly messy. But a few credit card purchases later from that businessman or that geek savant and her clothes were getting more to her liking.

She looked up at him through her lashes. His face was expressionless. It must be hard for him, she thought, to open up again after he had thought she’d been lost to him. He dropped his hand and turned back to the deli building. He considered it for a moment before beginning to walk in the opposite direction.

“What will we do next?”

He paused, as if he’d forgotten she was there. He was such a thoughtful man.

“Come with me, copil. We should finish our relation.”

Back at his place, she found out exactly the nature of his thoughts. He valued her find and not really her. He had summed it up nicely for her right before ripping her throat open.

“I am Vampire. I do not share.”

Bastard, she thought as her life expired yet again.

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DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: Housecleaning

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony with tags book, Fiction, memories, vampire, Vampirony on January 14, 2011 by vampirony

Didn’t know what happened to me, my mind was all a jumble. I had to get out of there, head bursting suddenly with places and faces and none of it made sense as to why. I grabbed the lemons. At the time, didn’t know why, just seemed important.

Grabbed the kid’s jacket and out fell the Book. Old, worn, leather, excellent craftsmanship. Fingers brushed it as if familiar. All went quiet in my mind and I remembered one singular memory: My heart in anguish as I wandered the desert alone at night. Something about blood in the sand. But the memory teased me, wouldn’t come back fully formed and the moment my skin broke contact with the book, the torrent of other lives began knocking around in my head again like so many rubber balls.

I stuffed the lemons in the pockets and I fled. Couldn’t remember how I’d wound up in such a desperate state but my impulse was to go to ground, get to the safety of my lair, try to stop the tempest in the teacup that was my skull.

I flew out of there. I never do that, not with such abandon. One moment I was standing at the doorway, the next I was at my balcony. The speed at which I had traveled only served to create more confusion but I had enough current presence of mind to push the door open and get inside.

I made my way directly to my study, pulling all my books off the shelf, aimlessly. I couldn’t focus on what I wanted but I kept searching. There was an annoying chirping coming from my pocket. I took out this cold piece of black, vibrating plastic, held it out in front of me. I closed my eyes for a moment. The memory of it was there, being pummeled by strange and grandiose vistas, snowy mountains stretching high into the sky, buildings clinging to these pillars. I pushed the mountains away, recoiled from the sands, antlers trimmed in fur and lace, dread and more dread, the smell of jasmine in her hair…

Calm returned. I opened my eyes. “Cell phone,” I spoke out loud.

The words on the screen said Morena. My brain remembered what the phone was and vaguely who Morena was but also did not want to currently pursue it. I finger hit a button to silence the machine and I looked back to the shelves of books. It looked much like the reception area mess.

The sense of now was returning to me. I wanted one of my journals which all seemed to stubbornly remain intact on their shelf. Volume One: mostly my human life and as much as I could remember of how I became Vampire. Volume Two: My wanderings throughout Europe and Asia. Volume Three: My life in the New World. My fingers went between Volumes One and Two. There was a gap of time in my recollections between the first two volumes. It could have been caused by folding memories too deeply or some injury which had taken me some time to recover from while I wandered.

But a new explanation dawned as keenly as the memory of anguish felt so deeply upon touching familiar pages of another book that looked exactly like mine. She laid here, between these volumes, the memory of her so fraught with peril that I had sought to wipe it out of existence. I had folded her away without talisman or gesture so that as I aged and folded more memories on top of her, she would be compressed into nothingness, out of my reach. Or so I had thought.

I had never once considered that the gift of a book of mine long ago would have undone centuries of forgetting. That a simple caress would replace the folding gesture that had become reflex and second nature to me. And that’s why I had run. I was not ready for any of this. The first memory to rise up out of the abyss was that of tormented loss. And with it, an insatiable panic.

Vessels within my chest contracted and when I placed a hand there, I found it covered in blood. Glancing down, I remembered the fight with her Halfling. My flight had exacerbated the injuries to full wounds that now needed attention. I stuffed a hand into my pocket, bringing out the lemon. I let my nails grow to pierce the rind and then stretched back my head, squeezing the juice into my open mouth.

Radiant light roared inside my mind before I blinked into darkness.

When I came to later, I was lying on the floor. As I shifted up to my elbows, I noticed my chest had started to heal. In all my vampire life, I could never remember healing from anything other than blood. I repeated the same with the other lemon, went lights out again.

This time, there was a brief smile of a memory there for me right before I awakened. A curve of skin. A dimple. My chest had completely healed and was now itchy with scar tissue. Scars. It felt so odd to have scars. I scratched and instantly drew blood from the purple skin. The panic began to grow. I had closed off this part of my life long ago; the muscles needed to tend to it had atrophied.

The cell phone chirped again. A message.

R u alright. U left ur shirt.

I laid my head back on the floor. She’d liked that shirt. I’d caught her eying it with keen, unprofessional interest. The panic began to ease, if just enough to let me breathe. I focused on my breath and somewhere, underneath layers of memories, I heard her voice, soft in volume but firm in belief: It’s going to be alright. I’m here to help you.

Hours have passed and I’m scribing again, sorting through the memories that have been unsettled. Some of them force me to reread my journal to fold them back but some, I leave open to me, questions suddenly raised all over again. If I cannot trust my own memories, than what does this immortal life amount to?

One thing is certain: her book is no ordinary tome. It was crafted from the best leather, lovingly made by hand with sycamore maple and vellum, the pages imbued with ink in a special process that allowed the scribe to bring the ink to rise up from the page rather than just adding ink on top of it. There was more than a little magic folded into the making of that book, straddling the edge of alchemy and science. It was intended to hold memories.

And as certain as I am that I crafted that book for her, I am unable to remember who she was to me except to know that her memory is a void in my own history. And whatever ancient science enabled the peculiar abilities of these books of mine, it was past to me from her.

She taught me to read. She taught me to write. She taught me to fold my memories. Something as simple as her mere gesture, one that I had repeated ever since in my own folding process, had broken open a torrent of disconnected memories that had been carefully stored away.

My powers were changing, manifesting in strange ways that threatened everything I had known for years. There was no telling how the Conclave would react to these daylight abilities, usually only reserved for our South American relations. There was heightened Vampire activity in the area that needed to be handled. Valerian and his dealings with the Conclave were becoming ever more complicated and tense.

But this woman held more power over me than I ever allowed anyone anymore and that frightened me more than all the rest.

It sent my pulse hammering. And I think I secretly liked it.

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Archive for the Vampirony Category

The Truth Will Out

DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: The Look of Things

NEW MESSAGE: Is this your guy?

I must not fear

Relations in Blood

Something about frying pans

The Fetching of Far Flung Familiars

DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: Bad Beauty

But Sharing is Caring

DJB: Memoirs, Volume 3: Housecleaning

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