Debtor's War Pt. 04

"Come now," Eleanor said more sternly. "Innocent? I never took you for a fool."

"She's never done me any harm. God knows what he made her do for him."

"Ask her, if it pleases you child. Ask her what she thinks of the whores and perverts Enzo strangles. Is it an act of sin, or an act of service? Her pride would sicken you."

"A sin of course, any god fearing christian would say the same," I said without conviction. I'd seen the disgust I provoked in Dara.

"Brother Cosmas is most enchanted with you, Elizabeth. He is a god fearing man. He sees your magnificent mind, not your body, not your sin. All those who truly fear God examine their own sins first."

A lump rose in my throat. For my kindness, for my weakness, the blood of Enzo's victims had been shed. Enzo would never even have met Dara if it wasn't for me.

"I should have just let that bastard bleed out."

"Perhaps," she shrugged. She drew a slender blade from her belt. "Enzo has long outlived his usefulness. I am sure you have some idea of my intentions for you by now."

It was a beautiful weapon. I hadn't seen anything like it in years.

I shook my head as the tears fell.

"Imagine my horror to hear you were on your deathbed. Imagine my disbelief. That having waited too long, fate could snatch you from my hands."

"Oh?" I could have laughed, "I almost starved as well, didn't you know that? And..." and my baby boy. My last one, a weakling. I had smothered him as he slept to spare his suffering.

Eleanor stood and turned the blade almost lovingly. The steel caught the torchlight, like a star in her hands.

"You have thrived, Elizabeth, through the best and the worst of times. Your legacy is marvelous to behold, for such a mean beginning. You have given your surviving children deep roots, and strong ambitions."

I met her eyes, I knew how important that was to her. "Will you let them live in peace?"

She smiled like a cat. "Your interests... have ever been my interests, child. But fate has trampled our plans, so I promise nothing. This time."

I pressed my eyes tight shut in an effort to banish the tears for my first love. There were limits to Eleanor's power, she was a vampire, a killer after all.

But I had asked her for a life with Claudia, and Eleanor had given me all she could. Without the vampire's protection, the pair of us would have been rat food. Somehow for those short months I had believed we were free.

"It wasn't your fault," I said. "It wasn't anybody's fault. It was... it was..." I hadn't thought of Claudia's untimely death in such a long time, what with life's business, and the children, but the pain was still sharp. I couldn't speak anymore.

Dara stirred, put her arms around me without a word. My whole body ached for comfort, but not from this doomed woman I would have to kill.

I drew back.

Dara startled awake, still bleary eyed. She looked at the vampire, and the knife, and then back at me, pleading, hopeful, reaching out, I couldn't stand it.

"Don't touch me."

Dara flinched and drew back her hand.

I stood up and moved away from her, shivering in my underclothes. The terrified woman stayed on her knees, eyes down.

"Still you hesitate," The vampire sneered, "Just look at her!"

I couldn't look. I could hear the wretched woman breathing, whining in terror again, I didn't want to see it.

"She is all that stands between us, a puny relic of what you once stood for Elizabeth. Tear it down and claim your rightful place."

"I thought you were done with me." I crumpled to my knees, clung to the bars, willing Dara to smash my head into painless oblivion but she would not.

Eleanor came to me, and my heart pounded in my throat. She reached into the cell and I pressed my face between the bars, against her body and the cool dark silk of her gown. Her hands rested on my hair. I closed my eyes and sobbed. That blood twisted my heart, but my mind was stronger. She would make a -thing- of me. A creature, hungry for blood, that brought misery wherever it went.

"Oh, child. What purpose does this suffering serve?"

I clung to her, my weakness must have disgusted her but she hid it well enough. As my tears subsided, she pressed the pommel of her weapon into my hand.

"Set aside your pain. Make your peace with this," she said. "For me."

I breathed my panic away, my mind emptied of everything but grief. The whole world had shrunk into that dingy cell, and there was nothing beyond it.

I took the knife.

"For you?" I sniffed. I wiped my tears away. Oh it cannot be described. It took everything I had to turn my back on both of them. To hold that dagger to my throat and fall upon it.

***

**

*

It is dark as pitch and icy cold but the beast doesn't shiver. Skin prickles, tight all over. Animal restlessness crowds out meaningful thought.

It longs for something it cannot name. It longs for heat and life. Muscles are primed to fight or flee as it rocks steadily on its heels, growling softly.

In silence it crawls the circumference of the prison. The wall curves overhead to a high dome, and it pictures a way out, above. It tries to climb but the damp plaster comes away in handfuls. It curls up and rests its head on its knees, aching, empty.

Footsteps echo, and something drags steadily above the dank enclosure.

Light flares above... Something large and heavy rattles through a trapdoor. The body lands, and the scent... metallic... irresistible...

Screaming hunger, feral primal, pounces, tearing through cloth and sinking starved fangs into flesh. Heat floods the dead mouth, bounding with a living pulse.

Euphoria. There is nothing but ecstacy flooding the body, eclipsing thought...

Until the pounding slows.

Then flutters.

Then stops.

Drenched in gore, nuzzling the cold meat, whining that there's no blood left, a beast only half sated.

*

**

***

I saw his face, as though waking from a dream. The stillness of death took years off him. My son. My boy.

I screamed and screamed with every ounce of strength, I howled like an animal, I tore at my hair, my face, my eyes. I held him, I rocked him, but he was gone.

There was barely a scrap of me left. Abyssal rage, yawned beneath, threatening to swallow me whole, yet I lingered for days.

As fragments of understanding returned, still I stayed in the ice cellar with the body of my first born son. I clung to his remains, dimly aware that the way above was open, a pillar of light shone down into my hell. It was cold enough to keep corruption at bay, and I, half feral, guarded his body like a dog. Every movement in the world above had me snarling, howling, weeping demonic tears. The smell of my own vitae gnawed at my belly.

"Liar!" I screamed the first word that came back to me. Then the flood gates opened. "I hate you, hate you, HATE YOU!" My voice cracked. A wave of black rage threatened to knock me back into mindless screaming, I held on, by the very tips of my fingers, until the beast backed down. It wanted to eat my bitch sire. I felt that, I could almost taste her heart's blood, It would devour her... and everyone else that dared to cross my path until there was nothing... nothing left of me.

A ladder uncoiled from the opening above. I chose to climb. Not every fledgling does.

Oh. And blood bonds rarely survive the embrace.

Seeing the hatred in my eyes, Eleanor wasted no time putting me in my place. I didn't get the chance to raise a fist before she was on me. If you've ever seen a cat pin down a rat, that describes it. My bones wrenched out of place, my chest cracked beneath her knee.

"A liar is it? Is that what you called me?" she spat. Her own infernal rage would gladly have torn me limb from limb.

My mind was dislocated, so I couldn't answer her. The pain was outside me, my body could have been made of straw. My broken heart burned worse than anything else she could do to me. I wheezed as her weight bore down on my breast bone, and those awful red tears blurred my vision. The beast she had made of me simmered down, its outrage steadily subsumed by terror.

"I would never, lie to you," she said.

An honest devil. She began to drag my broken body by the hair. Some instinct drove my misshapen joints to knit themselves back together, until I could crawl hurriedly at her heel.

"Hark, if you ever lie to me this will seem like a high holiday next to what you will suffer. Walk, you ungrateful cur."

I stumbled to my feet, marching in step with my head bent forward, for she kept a firm hold of my ragged locks.

"You surprise me," she said grimly, "this self destructive stubborn streak I had not accounted for. It suits you ill."

The longer we walked, the more self conscious I became of my middle aged nakedness, but I refused to dwell on it. I earned every imperfection, the price of a life hard lived.

"If it's not a lie? What kind of protection do you call this!" I said bitterly.

"I warned you not to disappoint me, child."

My misery grew more complete as I pictured my son's wife and children in Tuln, destitute without him to provide. What would become of them? And a chill stole my breath as I thought of my pregnant daughter. My youngest son, with luck, was beyond this vampire's influence, but my daughter certainly was not. What madness had come upon me that I had forgotte my own and put them in danger for the sake of wretched Dara? For some despairing notion? It was on my own head, all of it.

We came to an open space with a vaulted ceiling and a tiled floor. She released her hold on me and I stumbled forward. I hugged myself, shifting restless from one foot to another.

"What have you done? Why can't I remember..."

"My embrace burned away your weakness. It was an ugly agony, without dignity, like any birth. Now the work begins."

"And why... why..." I was losing it again. The same unbridled need for vengeance that had me smiling as I sawed off Radu's head, not a voice inside, but a lust for violence, that's it, a lust for blood. It was not mine. I never had the drive to seek vengeance on anyone before these monsters gave me their blood.

"Stand fast, child. Keep your eyes on me. Beat it down."

"The curse," I said weakly. "You called it a curse. Before."

"My blood is a curse to weak willed mortal men, is that how you see yourself? I chose you for this, my child, for your strength."

A chill numbed my dead limbs, pulseless, weightless. My body paused between breaths, the rage flew outside me with my grief, my hatred. Stilled. A hollow sensation dragged in the pit of my stomach. It wouldn't do it justice to call it hunger.

"You will not age, you will not sicken. You are beyond humanity already, and soon you shall rise above the beast."

"Why have you..." no. I clenched my fists, then let my arms fall to my sides.

She walked around me, heels clicking on the tiles. She appraised me.

"You know damn well it was your own failure that killed your son. Of course you must falter, creature of lust that you were. You may lack the self control to overcome the beast, or lack the conviction. But every time you fail, you become its instrument, and the beast is a cruel master. It cares nothing for your..."

"It's still hungry," I said coldly.

Her fingers pale and slender came to rest on my shoulder. "Patience."

I glanced from her deceptively gentle hand to her cruel face. Without the feelings her blood had forced, I struggled to accept her touch without pulling away. There was no bounding pulse, no breathless fear, only my mind racing faster than ever.

"My son..." I swallowed hard, "had children. Will they be next?"

"Why, Elizabeth? Do you need another lesson in self control?"

I shook my head. I stopped my breath, I did not sob, but I could not stop the tears.

"You shall master the beast. You must." Her hand tightened on my shoulder. "I should have known the fear of failure would not be enough. Picture instead, the rewards of success."

I remembered the euphoria I'd once felt in battle, the joy of running across rooftops, how alive I had felt knowing I was not going to be demon food after all. It was a lifetime ago.

"What happened to Sister Rosemary?" I asked.

"What a question!" Eleanor's eyes sparkled. "We must come to that. But first I will have your obedience. Object afterward if you must, but if you cannot obey me the beast can have you for all I care."

"I will, truly I will, if you..."

"No, my child. No conditions. No foolishness. Our blood demands it."

Before a drop of her vitae had ever passed my lips, I had known as much. Her strength and her quality demanded no less.

"You are my only progeny, Elizabeth." Her words were gentle but full of menace. "I have committed more than you will ever know to this endeavour, but I will end you should you prove unworthy. And no-one." She carefully brushed a tear from my cheek with her thumb. "No-one will remain that ever witnessed you draw breath."

"I will obey you," I said, weakly, "I promise," and the tension passed.

My maker was a magnificent monster. I had no doubt that if I crossed her then my loved ones would be wiped out, but she wasn't the tyrant I guessed and she did not issue orders to me lightly. Not at first. My foolish attempt to cut my own throat had unnerved her, she kept me within arm's reach and taught me constantly, tested me relentlessly.

I learned of Caine, the first murderer, the first of our kind. I learned of the diaspora of his kindred across the world. Learned my own noble lineage, and the strength of my immortal body. And she seduced me with her total faith that Caine's brood were masters of mankind by divine order.

"There are hundreds of unclean devils that stalk the mortal herd," she said, "you have seen it. How long could the poor cattle survive without us?"

What a temptation it might have been. But I knew her prince. He had used her for pleasure, degraded her, even if she could push it out of her mind. I knew this so-called paragon of kingship could swing a greatsword one handed, but he was no better than a mortal man. And she, for all her conviction, obeyed him in all things.

As for divine order, I knew there was none. I had known it from the minute my mother bled to death on the floor of our hovel, and nothing I've seen since has convinced me otherwise. The traditions Eleanor taught me, the laws of the kindred are nothing sacred. Still I took them to heart, not just to avoid aggravating my sire, but because they made sense. Live respectfully, moderately, dare I say fearfully? How else can we survive?

Our kind die anew each day. Cold and bloodless we lie in coffins, in tombs, in catacombs and sewers all over the world. My sire and I rested among the old bones of kings. Rose again each sunset to silence and darkness.

I had lived ankle deep in water almost every spring, the dryness and comfort of the stone catacombs was strange. There were passageways up into the city, into the cathedral and palace. Most disconcerting of all was a long tunnel that led to a monastery in the wald. You could walk perhaps ten or fifteen minutes from the castle to the cloister, but overground the journey was more than an hour. My confusion amused her.

"It is the history of this place, sacred to the pagans long before civilization reached it. There are connections to deeper worlds."

I knew better than to scoff, since I had seen the madness with my own eyes. Such a bizarre truth was nothing to my pragmatic sire, nothing but the weather. She was tired of Vienna anyhow, and committed to show me a portion of the greater world.

Our existence as Ventrue kindred was entwined with the lives of kings and clerics. A prince is lord of all he surveys and all within his domain exist at his sufferance. How unusual it was to move between cities, for power and influence echoed the feudal chains to land and liege, oaths of fealty and allegiance. Even at that early stage in my tutelage she trusted me with her secrets. The web of influence between domains was the concern of ancients and elders, and Eleanor was their cat's paw.

Within days of my embrace we traveled south on foreign roads into wild land that held the heat of the day baked into its scorpion laden scrub. She taught me to find strong shelter among graves and tombs, away from the prying eyes of the living.

She chose vessels for me to sate my hunger, thralls and servants with dead eyes that carried our belongings through the day. Some blood sickened me, some made me feel alive for a brief moment.

Among my clan, tastes are unique and refined. I couldn't pin my preference down at first, but I could smell it, just as she could. I was drawn to it, as surely as any predator. A masculine scent, always. A bittersweet edge to the skin, cold sweat, leaving a film like honey glaze. The sweat of regular hard labour. Common men, honest men. The kind of men that had always made my living

Eleanor was drawn to those of Aragonese descent wherever we found ourselves. Merchants, soldiers, servants, nuns (her preferred herd in Vienna was a whole passel of novices at the convent), so long as their ancestry suited her she was satisfied.

When we reached the bay of Naples, she taught me to hunt. I was ready. By then the need for blood gnawed at my belly, burned behind my eyes.

The full moon lit the sandy beach into a ribbon of silver along the strand. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon half a dozen youths a mile out on the beach. They sang songs together, and lamented the loss of their friend who would soon be wed. We sat on the ridge of salt grass above and watched them carouse around their camp fire.

"You could seduce them, you do not need me to teach you that. But there are more direct ways to get what you want, more dignified ways."

"You mean, summon and command them? Like you did the Bürgermeisterin?"

"Why yes, child. Of course you would remember such a trifle, twenty years past." She nudged my arm almost playfully, "Choose one. A Scapegoat, if you will. Better to kill one cleanly between us than weaken half a dozen. I wager you prefer the tall one with the good singing voice? He has the look of that Venetian scoundrel about him, but hark at his Catalonian. He will suit me as well as he suits you."

"Should we?" I baulked, "even before we present ourselves?"

"The prince here is less bellicose than Johannes Paracida." I didn't know what to make of the veiled sarcasm that coloured her words. She caught my uneasy glance and held it. "She was my granddaughter."

"Still, it's against the rules."

"The tradition of hospitality. Once the fifth, now the second, I do not cut corners, dearest. I and my progeny are welcome in this domain. Choose one. Do not test me."

I turned my attention to the doomed youth, plying his fingers on some cheap six stringed instrument, drawing out sounds too beautiful for his own good. He set down the lute with a flourish and took a pull on the flagon his friend passed to him. He had his shirt open to the waist, dark curls and well defined muscles that put Enzo's to shame. I wanted him. I did not want him to die.

Among the others, he had no equal, but they were all well made in their way, strong and firm. The would-be groom was attractive too, mid length hair framing his olive face with ochre ringlets. An older stockier man brought out a little clay pipe to play and the others clapped in time. I would take the lutist. If it would please Eleanor, earn me some respite, even if it cost me half my soul. What could be worse than murdering my own son?

To summon him though? "Is it enough to want him, or is there something I'm missing?"

"The power is in the blood, child. It is no different to throwing a punch, reach for your blood." She set an encouraging hand on my shoulder.

The blood and the beast in me hungered. That base desire sang through my blood, compelling the stranger to find me, touch me. I watched him stand, stumble and walk towards us unwavering, even as the other men whistled and called after him. He made some excuse and waved them away, the further he walked from the firelight, the closer he came to his death. I caught the scent of him and the beast snarled to life, pounced the last yard and floored him with a sharp blow to the head.