Written in Blood

Once she swallowed the blood, wiped the residue from her teeth, she rolled back her eyes, and, leaning back her head, Valarie let a gratified moan escape her lips.

"So, very, sweet, succulent, full of life, inside of you. Standing on my portico, you understood the danger. I had willed you across my threshold. But I didn't jerk you into my home. No, this wasn't hard. Only a gentle nudge inside your lustful mind was all I needed to pull you into my nest. The wave of my hand and your yearning for a fuller life pushed you to rush headlong ... to me."

"Yes," I said, admitting the awful truth.

"You wanted this," she said. "Soon, I depart for America. New York City, Boston, and all your astonishing continent swarms with such hospitable, fresh life to refresh my own. I will feed for centuries, millennium and not drain all the oh, so, many sweet men and women. Those wonderful souls, so full of the vigor of free lives. They will, so willingly, mollify my pangs of hunger. They are ripe with savory, rich blood for me to feast upon. The blood here has become bland and puny. Your fiancé will be my first, I think, or conceivably, I'll save him for you. Though his best friend is one, whom I shall take particular pleasure in turning to one of us."

"How do you know of Clifford?"

She laughed, gazed into me, a burning filled me, "I'm aware of many things. Clifford Hobson is my vengeance. I'll use him, and he shall destroy his entire family for me. Leaving his father for last, for the fulfillment of my craving for revenge."

I stood, rushed at her, my hands flying. I proposed to batter her, she held her hand out, and my feet flew from under me. I landed on the hard, stone floor knocking the wind from myself. Valerie Drago hadn't touched me. With some unseen force, she slammed me to the floor. She knelt and pressed her hand to my chest. The pain subsided; my breathing eased.

"Like the peasants' religion hasn't saved them, neither has your faith in science saved you. Your reason and science are futile when confronted by one such as I. My powers are beyond nature, more potent than science, and rooted in the supernatural.

"I'm far more powerful than you can imagine, do not test me, child. If you set yourself against me, your death will be slow, agonizing, I promise you. But needed needn't be an ending. In fact, after death, you can be Nosferatu ... forever alive, forever young, feeding on the inferiors around you. Will you join me?"

Looking at her, I realized how much she had changed. She appeared younger than me, decades younger than when my eyes first set eyes on her. Her eyes were brighter than before, her body tightened and toned. Her hair, once streaked with gray, shined jet black and smooth as silk. The furrowed lines in her face were gone. In only a few short days of feeding on sips of my blood and the carnality of my flesh, she had grown a lustrum younger than I.

"No," I said. I wanted so desperately everything Valarie offered, yet I refused her. My reason reeled at all the happenings. The information proved, too, much to process.

"Your decision saddens me," Valerie Drago said. "It is rash and impulsive." She helped me to my feet. Looking at the window, she dipped her head. "Sunrise and time for me to rest."

"You must not be in sunlight?" I asked, remembering something I had read.

"Sunlight does not harm me. The brilliant light of day weakens me, but daylight doesn't hurt me. Think, child, have you not seen me in the brightest light of day?"

Of course, I had seen her in daylight.

"You cast no reflection in the mirror," I said, remembering the incident from my first morning.

"Child, I do cast a reflection in mirrors, poppycock to believe otherwise. My reflection isn't a delightful image for me to examine," the Countess said. "The mirror reflects something of the effects which others don't see. It was not that my reflection wasn't visible. But rather, the image staring back at me was no longer I, but a conglomeration of those innocent lives I had brought over, only to have to murder them, for they were ill-suited to existence as Nosferatu," again tears ran down her face.

"The whole can never be threatened by any single member. We have all mistakes. Every child of Lilith's undoubtedly made this mistake. In caring for a mortal, no, it's deeper than caring for, in falling madly in love with a temporal, clouded our vision, and unwisely we gave a gift to them, which they ought not have.

"Mayhap, I have made this error of judgment more frequently than others, for I have fallen in love often, and with such passion, I forget the consequences. Notwithstanding, no Nosferatu can stomach their own reflection once they have murdered another of their kind.

"Therefore, in time, if you do crossover, you'll ultimately despise your own reflection as much as I do mine. Perhaps, a precious few of my kind don't mind their reflection. For aught one knows, a few of us haven't slain innocent lives. Even Alexandra, the last of the Amazon's, made mistakes in those she loved. And Alexandra is only a little lower than Lilith.

"How heartbreaking, having given them the gift of being mort-vivant, only to have to kill them lest they bring ruination to many. When I gaze at a mirror, only to regard their eyes, their noses, or mouths and not my own, I can't stand the thought of their destruction at my hands. My cruelty is boundless. Still, my empathy and regrets consume me when I view myself and fathom only my destroyed lovers in my hideous reflection."

All at once, something beautiful happened.

A shimmering covered her, and her form swirled and altered. Where once stood a woman, in a moment, hovered an immense bat, whirling about the bat flapped leathery wings, ducked her head, she flew beyond my open window. I walked to the window and gazed at the bat as she coasted around, descending outside the castle walls, spiraling downward, while she glided on some air current. The creature appeared to grow smaller and entered a dinky opening in the wall near the ground. This would be, I supposed a dungeon or perhaps a catacomb.

The sun rose over the mountains to the east. The brilliant light flooded the valley, and the shadow of the castle engulfed the forest to the west of me. Nonetheless, I beheld such brilliance of light over much of the woods, for a moment, the fear fled my heart, and I hatched a plot. I had so much new information to contemplate. I had a location to discover; howbeit I sought to do this, I couldn't tell you.

Nonetheless, I wanted to learn what I might discover. I pushed the fear to the back of my consciousness, girded myself in what courage I found inside me. I dressed and sat out to find where the Countess had gone in the form of a bat.

Making my way, I came first to the Great Hall, where the entry door stood as an impenetrable barrier to my left. I found the door Countess Drago exited the room through the first night, for I had worked out the geometry of the building. I realized my chamber was two stories above whatever lay behind this door. Turning the knob, I yanked on the door, nothing happened, for the thing was locked.

There had to be a way into the room. Going about the room, I scoured the place, looking in drawers, behind curtains, under rugs, trying to find the key. After hours of searching, with no key to be seen, I sat down on the steps of the old staircase, placed my hands to my face, and wept. All the fear, anxiety, disappointment, and shame poured out of me.

It was too much. I hadn't more than a brief respite from terror since my arrival. Layers of myself had been laid bare, and day after day, I had been subjected to new terrors. And the constant, unrelenting probing of body and mind had pushed me to the edge of sanity.

Twelve days of utter fright had taken a toll on my being, my soul. My soul, what a strange, morbid concept, for I have a soul. A part of me would live after death. What punishment had I earned in all this? In the end, I loved all which happened as much as I despised each and every moment.

The thought of being food, of existing to only serve others as a slave, burned in my brain. From the first day, her first kiss in the middle of the night, the Countess had controlled me. Her control grew as she feasted on my blood each night.

The thing demanded I reason out all the possibilities. Some shred of logic to this must exist. Some slender, tenuous, tendril of meaning, which could make sense of this thing for me. The bite must be the source. Logic would dictate the saliva contained something. Yes, the first kiss Countess Drago gave me in the wee hours of the morning after my arrival.

I thought this kiss a dream, it wasn't. I knew better at this point. The kiss had to be the point of some infection. Yes, some pollution passed from Countess Drago to me, giving her control of my will. With each new kiss, more of her contamination entered me, and her power over me grew.

If she sleeps, perhaps the control isn't as strong. Was this a foolish thought on my part? Whilst she slumbers, I have some measure of freedom, for I can search for her and move about freely. I must find her ... my thought was broken. I perceived something which registered in my brain.

What was it? What did I see?

Over next to the door, a little toy house was mounted on the wall. The thing resembled a small tool shed, an ornamental addition to the wall, but more than decoration? Why hadn't I considered this?

I realized the hour had grown late, I had calculated all this out, and my search took many hours. How long until she'd wake? I rose from the step, beholding the thing, my soul clung to possibilities, I ran straight to the box. Grabbing the little door, I yanked, keys hung on a ring.

Taking them, I fiddled with this key, another, until ... at last, one turned in the lock. A satisfying clank sounded, telling me the bolt had withdrawn. I tugged on the door. A weighty arched doorway screeched and creaked as I opened her. The inside of the room was dark, dank, and had a light foulness hanging in the air, a musky odor not unlike what a skunk sprays at his adversaries.

I grabbed a candle from one of the many candelabras, lit the wick in the fireplace's flame, and entered the room.

The words, Abandon all hope, passed through my mind from Dante's work.

The temperature dipped when I passed the threshold; the chill settled into my bones. A maudlin sense filled me. I wanted to weep and run back to my room. No, I had to continue. I had to follow this thing through to the end if this meant the end of me. My shoe heels clicked as I walked, so I kicked them off and moved inside the room further, trying to adjust my eyes to the near twilight conditions.

The light provided by my small candle wasn't enough to illuminate much of my surroundings. Catching my eye, I saw an opening near the outer wall, through which one might view the forest beyond the castle. Making my way, I cautiously turned into a doorway, a tight round corridor, with stairs corkscrewing into the bowels of the structure. This passageway, undoubtedly, led to the room where the bat had flown. Was this unseen room, her place of rest? There was only one way to discover if this were so.

In dread, I took one faltering step downward, my shoeless foot touched the cold stone, and my journey of discovery commenced with my heart pounding inside my chest. In contrast, I perceived my heartbeat as a dreadful, brattling disturbance of a pounding drumbeat in my ears, I pressed on. With each step, slow and plodding, I descended lower into the innards of the Castle Drago. The foul stench strengthened with each step, filling my nostrils, my mouth, with the awful malodor and flavor of death.

The base of the stair opened into a vast, vaulted room strewn with sarcophaguses made of stone. Between the open caskets lay bodies, heaped in piles. The remains of men, women, children, and babies scattered about this cavernous, underground vault.

The babies, oh, my dear God, the young babies. They appeared as though they had been eaten. What little flesh or muscle remained was jagged and gashed. As if pulled from the bones by the teeth of some vicious predator. Rats big as cats stared at me. From their mouths hung bloodless hunks of flesh. They scurried away from the flickering light of the candle in my hand. Scampering up the walls and into holes in the stones. I found the red of their eyes staring out at me most disturbing.

The stench overpowered my senses. Coupled with this ghastly vision, shivers rushed through me. My body tingled, the stink caused me to gag, and I fought the urge to vomit.

I stopped, stifling the desire to run from this place. I girded myself with my inner strength and continued onward. My feet touching the dead bones, flesh, and sinew sent waves of deep, passionate disgust through me. Revulsion inundated me like the waters of a river. Fresh -- kills, I guess you would call them, young women, young men, strewn amongst the longer dead, in various stages of decay. I couldn't step without stepping on someone. Bones crunched under my bare feet, soft flesh crushed and gushed, something which had been flesh oozed around my toes.

In the putrid mess, the young woman from my second night, the one she brought to them in the library, her eyes glassed over in death, stared at me. A young boy lay next to her, a child of hers, possibly. I estimated his age to be 11 or 12. One was as equally dead as the other, not yet rotting. A fresher unpleasant fragrance wafted from their corpses and mingled with all different foul scents.

They had kept the pair of them alive for nearly two weeks, feeding on them and the others she brought to them. I didn't think they were departed more than twelve or fourteen hours, judging from the lightness of their stink compared to the rest of rotting flesh.

A thin shard of light, shown through a small opening in the wall. One couldn't call the space a window. Perhaps the hole was an archer's notch. A light, which barely made ray through a window into the room. Slowly my eyes adjusted to what light was present. This did nothing to allay my fears. Clarity of vision only made the horrible scene sharper.

Stopping, I forced the dread, apprehension, and revulsion down inside me. Pushing those aversions into what the westerners call my sand, or grit, a part of you, which allows you to stand against things that terrify you. My inner strength devoured the fear, or at least held my panic in check, allowing me to continue.

Nonetheless, my heart pounded in my chest, threatening to rupture. My breathing was ragged, my breasts heaved with hard, deep breaths as I struggled to maintain my sanity. For nothing about this place was sane. Most of the stone coffins held skeletal remains.

At last, I found Alexandru, his handsome face bloated, a ruddy reddish hue to his complexion, watching his chest move not, he appeared to me, dead. His bright brown eyes were open.

Stone cold dead eyes gazed at me without seeing.

A foulness distorted his face, with his mouth married by a thick coating of blood, which trickled down his face in tiny rivulets of deep, congealing red. In his arms lay a girl, her breath rattled in her throat and chest, she was white as the grave, her eyes, open, pleaded with me. Without saying a word, she begged for release.

Perhaps, she only wanted me to free her from living. And death, to her, would be freedom. She tried to speak, not a sound emitted from her mouth, save the rattle of death from deep within the wretched, young woman.

In another box of stone, I found Boian. He, too, had changed, healthier-looking, his flesh plumped, and the muscles defined. The boys were getting stronger, adding to both their supernatural and physical strength. Mostly, I assumed, from the mouthfuls of my blood they consumed.

Cristian, dear sweet Cristian, he too slept as if dead. His face wasn't stained with blood, though I doubted he hadn't fed. He was much more robust. Why had I not spotted the changes as they occurred? I had come to realize his submission was an act. He was the most aggressive of them. He would have devoured me, sexually and as much of my blood as he could stand to consume, without orders from his Mistress.

The hunger burned in him, needing more than he could consume. My blood was too full of life for him, but this would change. There wasn't enough life in the local's blood to satisfy him, and my blood was, too, rich in life for him to take in much quantity. I began to understand this ... disease, for this was a malady passed to others through the contamination of their blood. But how do you cure?

Would curing them cost the immortality they possessed? I understand now the Warrior Princess was none other than her, Countess Valarie Drago. My doubts had passed on this point. For her life was in the blood of others.

Above all, the other sarcophagi elevated on a platform. The elevation showed the high station of the one who rested inside, a leader which her survivors revered. Etched into the stone were the words "Draconus Valeriana" like the Asians, Romanians placed the family name first and the given name afterward. For as the Countess had said, no Drago would ever allow an offspring another name, though apparently, she shortened her name, may chance, to hide from her enemies.

An old shovel stood next to a box near her resting place. Without thought, I picked the tool up, clambered up to the stone elevation of her coffin, placing the candle near her head. Standing above the casket, I gazed at her. One could not help but heed her breathtaking beauty. With all my life in her, she appeared young, full of life, and vivacious.

In death, for she was dead at the moment, still, she appeared alive, healthy, and youthful.

How can this be, for I loved her, I hated her. All was wrapped up in lust, desire, and revulsion. Emotions, conflicted and contrasted, entwined like our bodies when we loved each other. And the truth of the matter was Valeriana, Valerie lay helpless before me. I had a chance to free myself from her, but would her, true death, release me or imprison me in the mundane world I fled to come to her.

The thought sprang to me, kill the bitch, and my heart hardened. Determined to end her, I raised the shovel above my head. Hesitating, I gazed at Countess Drago, resting in her slumber of death, her belly bloated with blood, for my life filled her with youthfulness.

Did she dreamed, were those dreams, of me? Her eyes didn't roll around in her head, but do they move when she's dead? All this passed through my mental calculations in a single, solitary moment. Clearing my head, I started to move forward. Wanting to crash the blade of the shovel down into her lovely neck and chop off her beautiful head. Hesitating, I gazed at her elegant splendor.

Watching the Countess in her motionless slumber, I lost all track of time, her beauty consumed me, and I gawked at her. For she was so inordinately comely, I became bewitched whilst I regarded her. The light streaming through the notch faded as the sun dropped behind the mountains.

Her eyes flung open, her hand raised, I hurled off the platform, crashing into the muck and mire of decomposing bodies. The gelatinous mess clung in clumps to my clothing, soaking through to my skin. Valarie towered over me. Reaching, she snatched the shovel from my grasp, held the weapon over her head. The woman, my mistress, Valarie, would kill me. I identified my death lay in my a few fleeting heartbeats.

The woman's eyes glowered red, her teeth bared, fangs pinkish with the residue of my blood, as she prepared to murder me.

Chapter 7

The Countess held the shovel. Hovering above me, her eyes were enraged, red, and glowing. With a roar, Valarie threw the spade away toward the stairs. The metal blade clattered on the steps. Reaching down, she clutched my neck, lifting me from the ground, and she flung me with the same ease as she tossed the shovel.