The Vampire and the Goth Ch. 10

Stosh and Elizabeth Ch 10

"You don't have to do this, you know," said Elizabeth as I stood in my kitchen, making her hot chocolate.

"I know," I said, with a smile. "I'm doing it because I want to. Marshmallows?"

"Oh yes!" she said, her eyes shining bright.

"Good. I've got some little ones I thought you'd like," I said, winking at her. I slipped the marshmallows into her mug. Then, I sprinkled some chocolate shavings on top. "Cinnamon?" I said.

"No thank you."

I handed her the mug as we walked into the living room. We sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace, where I had a low fire burning.

Elizabeth sipped her drink. "Thank you, Stosh. For a guy who doesn't eat you sure know how to spoil a girl!" She gently kissed me on the lips and snuggled up under my arm.

I smiled. "I thought you'd appreciate it if I kept some human food around. And the next part of my story isn't going to be easy to listen to."

"Okay," she said, sipping on her hot chocolate. "But I want to hear it anyway."

When we emerged from our wagon, Lasho was already waiting for us. He had a guarded expression on his face, but I could tell he wasn't happy.

"Who is this?" he asked, gesturing toward Janek.

"Lasho, this is my brother, Janek," I said.

Lasho looked closely at him and said, "He's also a vampire."

"He is. He was sired by our sister, Maria. We believe it's Maria who has been killing the children of this village," I said, hoping that he wouldn't ask why my family seemed to have so many vampires in it.

Lasho looked at Vadoma. "You brought him into my camp without telling me."

Vadoma gave him a sad smile and nodded. "Yes, I did."

Lasho sighed, then he nodded to Vadoma and me.

"Please sit down. We have a lot to talk about."

"Did Lasho know your history?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not really. Remember, he was a child when Vadoma sired me. So we had to give him a lot of background information so he could understand what was happening," I said.

I told Lasho about the night I became a vampire. His eyes softened in sympathy when I told him about the horror I felt after I killed my first human, and how that feeling left me with an irresistible urge to see my family.

"I just wanted to go home. I felt like I was in a nightmare and I needed someone to wake me up and make everything okay again. All I could think of were my parents."

"And yet, when you got to your family, you ended up killing them," Lasho said. There was no accusatory tone to his words, but they cut me anyway. It hurt to hear someone say it so baldly, but I couldn't disagree with him. I was out of control that night, driven insane by the bloodlust of a new vampire, and before I could think clearly, I killed my parents and I almost killed my sister.

"Killing that human didn't satisfy your thirst?"

"No. If anything, I wanted to feel that power again," I spoke openly and didn't hold anything back. Lasho's tribe had given so much to me that I felt the need to be honest. "Of course, I didn't understand it at the time. I was confused by what happened to me and what I'd done."

Then Lasho turned to Vadoma. "So how did you find Stosh after he ran from you?"

"The trail that Stanislav left was easy to follow -- he wasn't experienced enough to hide his tracks. And while I was following him, I ran into another vampire, Nicolaus, who agreed to help me with my progeny."

Lasho turned to me. "And he was the one who sired your sister after you drained her blood."

"Yes," I said.

We all remained silent. Vadoma continued, "I didn't know at that time that he had been seeking a new vampire to prostitute to others for torture."

"Would it have made a difference to you?" Janek asked, flatly.

Vadoma's eyes flashed with fury, but that faded quickly. "Yes, Janek. I would not have allowed someone to turn your sister into a whore."

Lasho asked, "Why didn't you sire her as well?"

Vadoma sighed deeply. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I wanted to clean up Stanislav's problem and get back to the camp as quickly as possible. And I didn't think your father would allow me to bring two new vampires into the tribe."

Lasho nodded. "You're right, he wouldn't have. One new vampire can be a handful, two would be almost impossible."

Lasho stared into the fire, lost in thought, then he looked at Janek.

"You said your sister was the one who turned you into a vampire."

Janek nodded. "Yes sir. She sired me and my twin. And then she took us to find Stosh."

"Where is your twin now?"

"I don't know. I've been trying to catch up to Maria to find out," Janek said sadly.

Lasho regarded Janek with a sympathetic look.

"Why do you think your sister is killing children?"

Janek looked at me for a moment, and I nodded for him to continue.

"I don't think she wants to kill children, sir. I think she's trying to sire a child so she can create a new family."

"But she can't, can she, Janek? Children are too weak to become vampires. And as many as she's killed, she must know that by now."

"Yes sir."

"So either your sister is cruel, or she's mad. And possibly both."

Janek sighed deeply and looked back at me with regret and guilt.

"Maria was treated very cruelly by her sire. And I believe, after everything that's happened to her, she has been driven insane."

Vadoma, who was sitting next to me while we talked to Lasho, squeezed my hand suddenly. I turned to her in the firelight and saw her eyes fill with tears.

"It's my fault Maria is killing children. If I had kept control of Stanislav, he wouldn't have gone home and none of this would have happened."

"No!" I said, with a vehemence that surprised me. "You didn't do anything wrong, Vadoma. You chose the wrong sire for Maria, but you didn't know what he would do. You tried to fix a mistake that I made, but it was my mistake. I'm the one who killed my parents. I almost killed my sister and I would have killed everyone if you hadn't stopped me."

Suddenly, Elizabeth's arms tightened around me.

"Shh. It's okay, Stosh. You didn't mean for any of it to happen."

I fell into her arms, sobbing, mourning for people who had been dead for hundreds of years. But I was also mourning myself. Since the night I became a vampire, I had felt an enormous weight on my soul, a debt I could never repay.

"Why can't you see that I'm a monster? Why would you ever want to be like me?"

Elizabeth looked deep into my eyes. "Would a monster cry over something that happened six hundred years ago? Would a monster try to talk me out of becoming like him? No, a monster wouldn't. You've made mistakes, awful ones, but they were mistakes. And even though you didn't mean for this to happen, you take responsibility for it all. You're not a monster, Stosh. You're just a man, as flawed and as fucked up as anybody else."

I held Elizabeth for a long time as she gently placed kisses on my face and neck. Her kisses calmed me and made me feel that perhaps I wasn't so awful after all.

Lasho looked at each of us in turn. "Whatever has happened can't be changed. But the situation with your sister is intolerable. She has to be prevented from killing other children," Lasho said. "And you are the only ones who can do that. So how do you want to proceed?" Lasho asked.

We all looked at each other without speaking for a moment. Finally, Vadoma broke the silence.

"Maria is fixated on finding Stanislav. I think he'll be the most effective at reaching her."

"I agree," said Janek. "Stosh, once we find her, you should approach her without letting her know I'm here. If we catch her with her guard down, she may tell us where to find Jadwiga."

I nodded. "That sounds like a good idea."

We were silent, then Vadoma said, "We should find out why she's killing children and what we can do to stop it. I think we should give her a chance to redeem herself rather than immediately destroy her."

"I think that's the right way to approach this. If there is any mercy and reason left in her, we need to try to find it," I said. The thought of simply killing my sister was too horrible to consider for very long.

Janek and Lasho exchanged a dark look. "Maria is not the girl that we knew, Stosh. I don't think she can come back from whatever demons are driving her to kill children," Janek said.

Vadoma squared her shoulders as she said, "Maybe not, Janek, but we have to try. Maybe reconnecting with Stanislav will bring her back,"

"Were you very close before all of this happened?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not particularly. Maria was only a couple of years younger than I was, and I always thought of her as more of a pest than anything else."

Elizabeth laughed. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure my sister would say the same thing about me."

"But you're close now," I said.

"That's only because we had time to grow up and get past the annoying sister stage," she smiled.

I nodded sadly. "We didn't have time to get there."

I was in the woods outside the village. Although I walked alone, I was not by myself -- both Vadoma and Janek were in the woods nearby.

Suddenly, I heard the same Polish lullaby I'd heard the night before.

"Pod pierzyną czarnej -- "

Janek was right -- I recognized Maria's voice immediately.

I followed the singing until I came upon a small clearing just outside of a house. Maria was sitting on a large tree stump, wearing a white shroud. From a distance, it seemed to almost glow in the dark, but as I walked closer, I could see bloodstains and mud on it.

"Siostra?" I said, using the Polish word for sister.

The voice stopped, and the woods were silent.

"Maria, it's me, Stosh."

I stood frozen in place, afraid to breathe. I couldn't see Vadoma or Janek, but I knew they were there, waiting with me.

Maria turned towards me, her eyes filling with tears.

"Brother?"

I smiled, and suddenly she was standing in front of me, her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh God, Stosh, it's really you!"

I put my arms around her and hugged her tightly.

"My brother... it's been so long..."

"I know, sister. I know,"

She was sobbing against my chest and trembling.

"I've looked for you for so long! Oh, Stosh, so much has happened!"

"I know, sister."

Maria continued to cry quietly for a few moments, then, as she began to calm down, she stepped away from me for a moment, and looked at me.

"There is so much I need to tell you, but I don't know where to start."

"It's been a long time," I said. "What about our family? What happened to Piotr and the twins?"

Suddenly, the farmhouse door opened, and we heard a man's voice. "Who's out there?"

We froze as an older man with a lamp began to step out.

"I said WHO'S OUT THERE?"

We remained silent as the man began to step further out.

"Jens, be careful! You don't know who's out there!"

The older man spoke over his shoulder. "I'll be careful,"

The man raised his lamp higher and peered out into the darkness, making eye contact with us.

"GET AWAY FROM OUR HOUSE! SHOO!" he yelled. "Elskie, get the ax!"

Maria and I took off running in opposite directions. I realized I could hear the sound of others running through the woods as we heard shouts and screams coming from the village. I deliberately did not run for our camp -- I didn't want to send a swarm of angry villagers to our tribe. Instead, I ran in the opposite direction as quickly as I could, jumping over creeks and downed trees along the way. I ran until Vadoma and Janek caught up with me.

"I don't think anyone's following us," Vadoma said.

I looked around and listened carefully. She was right, no one was following us.

nodded. "I think they followed Maria. She was wearing a white dress or something. It was very easy to see in the dark."

"It was a shroud," I said. A detail like that seemed to be important, although I'm not sure why. "We should go back to the camp and make sure the villagers aren't bothering our people."

"That's a good idea, Stanislav, but let's not go through the village. We don't want to attract any attention," said Vadoma, already heading back to the camp.

Janek stopped. "What about Maria? We still need to find out what happened to Jadwiga."

Vadoma sighed. "We'll have to find her, too, but let's make sure that our people aren't in danger while we're looking for her."

So, we slipped through the woods and stayed far away from the village.

I sat on the couch with my head on Elizabeth's lap. She was holding my hand and listening to me.

"It must have felt really weird to see your sister after so long."

"Yeah. I thought I would feel anger at her for hurting children or shame for what I'd done to her, but the minute I laid eyes on her, all of that melted away. I missed my sister, Elizabeth. The only thing I could think about was how much I'd wanted to see her."

Because we didn't go through the village, it took us a long time to get back to camp. And when we got there, Lasho was waiting for us, sitting on the steps of his wagon with his lamp, smoking a pipe.

"You just missed a group of angry villagers," he said, with a laugh.

"What happened?"

"They showed up ready to blame us for killing their children. Then I reminded them that we just got here two or three days ago. THAT took the fight right out of them," he laughed.

I sighed with relief.

"Did you find your sister?"

"Yes, but we were interrupted by some of the villagers," I said.

Vadoma continued, "We've confirmed that she's here, and she knows that Stosh is here. So, we'll try again tomorrow."

"Okay. Maybe you should let her know that," said Lasho, pointing into the dark forest.

Just beyond the light of Lasho's lamp stood a woman dressed in white -- Maria.

"Brocie?" she said, using the Polish word for brother.

"Siosta," I responded, walking toward her.

Maria stood, smiling at me. "I thought I lost you again, brother, but I found you, and I found Janek. Our family is almost together again!"

I put my arms out to her and hugged her.

"This is a nice reunion, but what about Jadwiga? Where's my sister?" Janek said angrily.

Maria ignored him and instead melted into my arms. She said softly, "I have something to show you, brother. Come with me."

Maria pulled me by the hand and started to run as we raced through the woods, sprinting up a large hill and then down into a steep ravine with a wide creek running through it.

We slowed down to cross the creek, picking our way among the rocks and through the water. We finally stopped after we climbed the bank on the other side.

We sat in the dark for a moment, still holding hands. I knew that Vadoma and Janek were following us, and I looked out into the woods to see if they'd gotten close yet.

Suddenly Maria grabbed my hair and pulled me down to her face and kissed me -- not like a sister, but like a woman.

I was shocked and horrified. I shoved Maria away from me.

"What are you doing?"

Maria smiled at me.

"I want to rebuild our family. I have you and Janek. We can retrieve Jadwiga and then we can make more children... You can be the father and I can be the mother. Now that we're vampires, we can make a family that will never die! Stosh, imagine, a family that lives forever!"

I felt sick to my stomach.

"Maria... you don't know what you're saying. You can't sire children, they die."

Maria giggled, then she started to laugh.

"Sure, they die. But their blood tastes so good!"

Maria's eyes shone brightly with her madness, and I stared at her, dumbfounded.

She laughed again, seeing the anguished look on my face.

"Oh, don't look so sad. I'll share their blood with you. It's only right that their father should enjoy them."

"Maria, that doesn't make any sense."

Maria gave me a big smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Oh, silly man!"

Maria stood up and grabbed my hand.

"Come on, Stosh, it's time to meet my children."

Maria smiled at me and pulled me up. We walked away from the creek and over to a cave so small, I had to duck as I entered.

In the darkness, there were six tiny bodies, the children of Salaspils, all in various stages of decay.

"Maria, what is this?"

Maria flashed a proud smile. "These are my progeny."

"They're dead. Literally. They're rotting."

Maria frowned at me. "They're going to wake up any day now. We just have to be patient."

I looked at Maria long and hard, then I stepped back out of the cave and walked down to the creek bed, near where we'd been sitting before. She followed me, pleading her case.

"Now that I've found you, we can create our own progeny. I can drain them, and you can sire them, just like a father is supposed to. Once you do that, we can be a family."

Maria was slowly inching toward me again.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just trying to be closer to you, my love."

I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

"Please don't call me that, Maria."

"Why not?"

"Because that's not who I am. I'm your brother. And I love you, but I love you as my sister, not as a woman and certainly not as a lover."

Maria smiled at me in the dark.

"Oh, Stosh, you were my brother originally, but now you're so much more. You're going to be father to our progeny," Maria said, as she moved to kiss me again.

I jumped up. "Maria, no. This is wrong. I know you've been through a lot but..."

Maria's face darkened instantly, moving from lust to fury.

"What do you think I've been through, bracie?"

Maria's voice was dripping with sarcasm. She was demanding an answer, but I hesitated.

"Uhm... well... Uhm..."

"Answer me -- what do you think happened to me?" Her face was twisted in fury and she was nearly shouting.

"I know what Nicolaus did to you."

Maria stood up and jumped at me with her fangs and claws extended, knocking me on my back and putting her hands around my throat.

"WHO...TOLD...YOU...WHAT...HAPPENED...TO...ME?!?"

With every word, she bounced my head off a large rock. She looked at me for a moment, then she snapped each of my arms, and thrust her claws into my stomach.

"TELL ME, BROTHER MINE!"

I lay under her, afraid to move because I didn't want her to disembowel me. I thought of Piotr and Magda, and I realized I was going to die just like they did.

Maria gave me a sick, twisted smile as she slowly drove her claws deeper into my stomach.