My lips clamped as one morally shocked. It was not that which she sought to hear that prevented my vocalizing, but rather the remnants of propriety that still possessed me. How could I admit the carnal truth to this, Carina’s granddame?
“You are a fool, schoolmaster,” she seethed with a fierceness that startled me. “Did she bite you or not? Do not allow modesty to bar me from possibly saving her!”
I was startled further. But now I had no question that she cared nothing about whether I had had relations with Carina.
“No, madam. She did not bite me.”
Her eyes closed a moment, and when they opened again, tears spilled over her cheeks. “Good. Then she is not willingly aiding them. But still, there had to be a bid of welcome on your part for her to have entered your house.”
“Bid of welcome?”
She smiled sadly. “The foul creatures cannot enter the valley for the wards of the priestesses. But through a priestess taken can their damned souls interfere with us. Carina had to know she was welcome. There could have been no other way for her to enter. Did you call out her name or have some item that belonged to her?”
I nodded uneasily. “I was speaking aloud to myself shortly before . . .” My voice trailed and I remembered something else. “On the nightstand was a snag of Carina’s hair, which I had inadvertently carried back from . . . her funeral.”
Irmhild bit her bottom lip. “Alas, had I foreseen Carina’s passion for you, I would have sent for another with the potential of breaking through their wards.”
My voice sounded distant to my ears, “What are you saying?”
“Their sanctuary can be entered,” she explained, “but only by one educated in the very sorceries on which the blueprints their very lair was designed and constructed by the mortal magicians hired by that long-dead king. Secrets from the realm of chaos these sorceries come; magical incantations, devices, and rituals whispered into the minds of men, recorded by foolish, greedy mortal hands. As all her sisters, Griselda had no patience to learn these secrets that could protect her from the interference of humankind. But they are powerful secrets, the implementing of which can either be the bane or succor of the vampires. My folk discarded most of them as the tools of evil and practiced instead the rites of the good gods. Griselda, obligated to bide her time in her cloistered refuge, awaits a mortal versed in the sorceries, a Nocturne Liaison. Through draining the knowledge of such an educated mortal, Griselda can, in this leeching way, obtain the ancient secrets she seeks.
“Doubtlessly, Griselda sensed your potential the moment you were close enough for her to read your thoughts and heart. And she hungers for more than the blood her sons need, and would prefer to have you with her, to adore and worship her as other men have. Whether just by draining your knowledge or by possessing your body and soul, she will stop at nothing to have at her command the secrets that can free her from need of her monastery. But more important than even that, she wishes to obtain the secret by which to become completely invulnerable to mortal interference.”
I was speechless at this revelation. I could have been angry as well, to understand I had been unwittingly chosen for this fantastic quest of Irmhild’s. This was a story all educated practicality urged to discount. But this was no hysterical peasant sitting beside me, and my prejudices were not so strong as to deny that this woman’s decisions were inspired from reason. She had jeopardized my life and future. Yet, it was for a purpose more precious to her than even the granddaughter she had unknowingly sacrificed.
“But my augury has weakened with age,” she sighed. “I do not believe I shall live to see Griselda defeated. I can only hope to save Carina. Now that the proof they have taken her has been shown, we must act promptly.”
She looked at me calmly. “I am trained in the ancient secret of the only amulet that can save Carina without killing her. You possess the fortitude and passion required for the amulet to work. If you are willing, I will instruct you in what preparations must be carried out for this design. And show you how to construct a weapon of personal protection in case the ravenous predilection of Griselda’s sons complicate her purpose to recruit you for her cause.
“But be assured, Carina will visit you again—not only on their command, but for her desire of you—and the increasing wasting of your body that will result from these visits cannot long be kept secret. As a priestess, I am sworn to speak only the truth. And when our men begin to suspect the reason of your illness, they will come to me to deny or confirm their suspicions. For they, monsieur, are bound to hunt her down and destroy her body. More reason than the rest has Carina’s own father. Her mother was returning from a visit to a friend out in the province when she was attacked and devoured utterly of both flesh and blood by these vampires. My daughter’s widower is a good man and will abide no hesitation to release Carina’s soul from the power that murdered his beloved.
“Of course, it would be wrong for me not to explain that you could just leave the valley now and be done with this. It is my failure of vision that has brought this upon Carina. You will know no blame if you choose to depart now and return to the civilized world.”
I looked around the cozy room and smelled the comforting aroma of the last of my broth. But as I turned to the worn face beside me, not too far beneath the heavy drapes of wrinkles I saw the resemblance between this woman and her granddaughter. Her eyes were bluer than Carina’s, but they implored me now, with a passion alike Carina’s ardent confession that day in the grass—a passion to match my love for my auburn-haired pupil. And I heard again the concern and desperation in Carina’s voice as she had warned me to avoid venturing out at night.
I lowered the bowl to the floor and inhaled deeply. I did not know that my body quaked with anger until Irmhild’s feather-soft fingertips combed soothingly through my hair.
“Whatever must be done,” I told her lowly, “tell me now.”
Irmhild rose, and bolted the door and closed the shutters at the window. Within the following few hours, I learned more magic from the old crone than days spent devouring the pages of one of my arcane manuscripts. If there was a price for sharing her people’s earthly sorceries, and more so, for unveiling the mysteries of their principles, Irmhild never commented. Out of respect, I vowed that afternoon to bide my tongue forevermore pertaining to these pagan mysteries; though even then, I knew it doubtful that any intellectual and haughty soul beyond these remote borders would consider their value worthy of interest.
5
Before a streak of twilight amber even breathed into the sky, I was home again. Irmhild had sent Weistreim along with the crate she’d filled with the items necessary for making the amulet. I carried a basket of preserved meats she had sent along as well. She had reminded me twice to eat this, all of it, before commencing the project, as I needed my strength for the ordeal and it would be the last meal I could eat until the amulet was made. The invocation that would imbue the amulet with its powers rang as fresh in my mind as when she’d shared it. This runic verse was a magical incantation that she had taught me by singing it over and over while she had tattooed the runic symbol for Carina onto the inner flesh of my left thigh.
So, at Weistreim’s departure, I ate, then set the loaded crate beside my desk. Before evening was fully set in, I drew water from the well at the back of the cabin and filled the oaken tub in the house. When it was filled, I bolted the door and undressed. When I was clean, I dried well but did not dress. And starting a fire in the hearth, I fetched a large, clean kettle from the pantry and set this in the center of my desk.
From the crate I took out a pouch of thick muslin. The gold dust that stuffed it was worth a fortune. But this I poured into the kettle, spitting into it to make it mine, as Irmhild had said. Then the kettle I hung from the iron hook in the warming fireplace. Three vials I took from the crate and set these upon the hearth. The last item I fetched was the birch spoon I had cut and whittled to Irmhild’s specifications.
One of the items I had brought home was a small wood hammer I had whittled as the old woman had waited outside. It had been christened with my jism, and this impregnated the hammer amulet, as were the ritual hammers that the Urdhel menfolk wielded when they battled vampires. At Irmhild’s instruction, I had pricked my palm with a needle. With my blood I had drawn upon the hammer head the runes she specified, and with this accomplished, I went on to whittle the handle to a sharp and useful point. But the practical and magical purposes for this weapon awaited the future. So I left it in the crate for the time being while I turned my attention to the pressing matters.
I laid the spoon upon the stones of the hearth as I opened the first vial. A gelatinous liquid it was, the color of cobalt, and before pouring it, I spit into the vial too. As I upturned the vial, the liquid dribbled slowly over the gold and formed glassy teardrops in the dust. Another vial contained seawater, and as water is free and mother of all life, I refrained from claiming it with my spit. When it was added, I uncorked the final vial. My blood was drawn by Irmhild’s leeches, and as such, was already claimed. With it combined, I kneeled, and with my right hand grasped the spoon. And holding this over the mouth of the kettle, I inhaled and uttered the incantation for the first time.
Seventy times I stirred the concoction with my right hand, seventy times I repeated the words. I thought of Carina. Not as the specter as she had come to me the night before; no, but the living girl who had captivated me with that becoming blush, which had so attractively concealed her earthly desires from the world. With the last stir, I laid the spoon atop the kettle again and lay down in my bed.
For some time I reminisced of things I had longed to do with her—and to her—before, that was, bloodless propriety stayed my hand. I envisioned her naked body as it danced on the open grass, and the branding touch of her lips upon my throat as she had pleaded that last day we’d spoken. My desire to take her in living flesh was almost unbearable as my hand sought my manhood. My scrotum was tender from Irmhild’s red-hot needles, but my need was thoughtless to this. It was the calculated, slow strokes that were stressful, the necessity to restrain my mounting pleasure. But I succeeded in building my pleasure to the point of ejaculation and stopping before my passion released.
As Irmhild had suggested, I immediately drank a cup of cool water and then relieved myself in the chamber pot. I checked on the kettle before retiring, to find the concoction just beginning to bubble. And throwing on just a small piece of wood to keep the hearth flame alive, I settled back into bed.
I was almost asleep when there sounded a rattling on the shingles. At once I sat up, not daring to let my will slip away into the shadow of dreams where I would be helpless to another attack. Now I recited the second incantation Irmhild had taught me. The command of hindrance, words that would keep Carina from entering the house, without diminishing in the slightest her desire to do so.
The spell of mastery, Irmhild had explained . . . and as I repeated it, my voice grew in boldness and clarity. The rattling turned into an agitated scraping. But as the magical words resounded through the room, the scraping paused a moment or two. Then there came a knock at the door, as clear and familiar as if it were Weistreim come with breakfast. It sounded once, twice, then continuously. A chilly sweat filmed over my flesh and my loins pulsated warmly, yet I ignored these sensations and concentrated on the incantation.
After a time, the knock died away. The words did not falter any less than when Carina had forced the alchemist secret; and this was wise, for soon I heard Carina whimpering from the other side of the door. This sublime note of abandonment and feared rejection in the sound might have at another time swayed my course. Now, instead, I listened raptly only to my own voice and took dispassionate satisfaction in the command projected.
Slowly, her whimper faded away.
6
I opened the classroom the next morning and gave my apologies to the class for my absence. Somehow I managed to take up the recitations in proper feminine and masculine inflections, and resume the lesson on medieval ballads. As they practiced their letter writing, I thought only of what lay ahead that night, and rehearsed the coming incantation in my head until I forgot time itself. Only when the women started to fidget and whisper more than usual was I drawn back into reality. And smiling, I apologized again and sent them home.
The concoction was bubbling steadily in the kettle when I returned to the cabin. I stirred it the appropriate number of times and read until evening set in fully. Then I performed the cleansing rite once more and stirred the concoction again. I went to my bed and performed the heated rite as before. I could almost taste Carina’s skin as I worked myself that night, and feel her beautifully molded limbs and every firm curve. My body pleaded for satisfaction, but again I denied it release. When I was finished this time, my mind was clarified of all else but the single purpose of my design. I could not sleep, yet I felt no need. I read for a time in bed . . . and when later the scraping commenced on the shingles, I knew no desire but to quiet my beloved until I summoned her. The command of hindrance silenced at once, all but her frustrated whimper.
Then, abruptly, the whimper was silenced by another voice outside the door. Like the chords of an iron-strung mandolin it uttered, dismantling my composure and puncturing my focus. The words were alien to me, but the tone of their meaning held undeniable malevolence. At the sound of Carina’s fearful cry, I sat up tensely. The subsequent heavy impact against the house prompted me from the bed. I took the hammer from the crate, and hoisting it over my heart, I opened the front door.
I saw nothing from the threshold, yet the soul-pricking voice grew ever more scathing. Following it to the eastern corner of the house with all the stealth at my disposal, I advanced on. At once my searching eyes found Carina. She wore a flimsy white silk gown, but her lovely knees had fallen to the ground and her arms crossed over her head defensively.
In the shade, beside my Carina, stood her assailant. A towering woman in a clinging gown of purple velvet. Even with the moonlight to her back, her complexion glowed pale and flawless. Her voluptuous ruby lips were drawn back angrily, her dark eyes gleamed like the choker of black diamonds at her throat. Her hands were graceful, her fingernails sensuously long and sharply manicured. Upon one thumb she wore a wide ring with a large carnelian orb. As she continued to browbeat Carina, her voluptuous body shook so hard the moonlight sparkled in her flowing waves of dark hair.
Her tirade stopped with a frightful silence, and as her face turned to me, her hazel eyes shone like two beacons pulling me toward some sensuous realm. Despite the lust that surged spontaneously in my loins, instinct avowed this creature was much more than a drinker of blood and life.
She was an enemy of the living, birthed in chaos far older than tale or legend.
Yet, this enemy possessed a flawless, tempting body, and a face so exquisite, it surely humbled the goddess Aphrodite. She drew herself to her full height, and her confident smile attested that already she had enslaved a legion of mortal men with the faith that evil design was inconsequential beside such beauty.
But my heart was already mastered by my submissive Carina. With a growl, I ran forward and thrust the hammer between her fair head and the vampire.
“Let her be!”
The vampire’s eyes flared. For a moment, I saw the shock and terror in her eyes; the next moment, a force impacted my chest and sent me reeling back against the boards of the house. As I charged a second time, her lips pursed tightly into a crimson bow. With an exhale, she sent me reeling back again, this time so hard my skull thudded against the logs. As she clutched Carina by the roots of her hair, I raised the hammer high with my left fist.
“Let her go, I say!”
I rushed forth and grabbed Carina’s arm with my free hand. Her arm could not have been colder had she been carved of ice, and her tears—like globules of rose glass—confirmed that she was no longer human. But the melancholy and terror in her eyes melted suddenly into the canvas of night. A whirlwind spun me about, knocking me back against the house. I tried to run back to the spot where I had been assaulted, but the whirlwind was as impassable as limestone. My ears perceived no sound but its violent scream. I felt an intelligence from the unnatural zephyr, one that mocked the wrath that pulsed in my veins. The next instant it tore straight through the nearby wood, leveling the copse and cleaving branches as it plunged through.
My sense of impotence was as encompassing as the moments of stoic power known only minutes before. Slowly, the powerlessness bled away, and I grew curious over what I had witnessed. The vampire woman had not attacked me, and with a stunning, but unshakable certainty, I knew that the temptation had not even passed her dark thoughts.
I went back into the house and returned to bed, but wrenching visions of the vampire woman hurting Carina allowed for shallow rest. The she-demon had been furious with my Carina; why, I neither knew nor cared, but my uncertainty as to what she could be doing compelled me to throw off the covers a couple of hours before dawn. I jumped out of the bed and quickly dressed. The hammer I placed under my trousers, with the head hung over the waistband at my hip. I took a lantern and set out of the house once more. The villagers were peaceful as I’d suspected; the only person I met was a constable who patrolled the street. He pulled me aside and asked, in the mildest of tones, where I was off to so early in the morning. I explained that I had forgotten some papers to read over at the schoolhouse and that, without my diligent attention, my pupils would find their expected lesson in romantic ballads unprepared. With a nod, he let me pass and continued on his way. I plodded on in the direction of the schoolhouse but deviated at the crossroads in front of the long lodge house where the councilmen held their meetings. The new path I took led out of the village main and through the woods that ascended up the southern valley side. The path grew very steep within these primitive shades, but it was well cleared by use, so it did not take me long to ascend to the top.
The path ended, or began here, depending on one’s perspective. The fertile countryside lay silent under the heavens before me. With the lantern’s light guiding the way, I strode eastward across the rim of the valley. It was a lengthy walk, and I was panting by the time the lamplight found the fence of blocks I sought.
On the day of my arrival, a fellow passenger aboard my carriage had explained to me what these blocks bordered. As high as my hips and separated each by good yard, these black objects encircled the whole of the monastery parameters. They were uncluttered edifices, without a strand of the dead overgrowth that so heavily carpeted the grounds beyond them.
I placed a hand on the block standing to my left. Smooth as satin was this uncertain stone, and although the morning sun poured down on its surface, the block was colder than steel. With the pads of my fingers, I caressed the sharply hewn edges of the top. After a moment, a leaden vibration began to resonate from within the block. I drew my hand back and heard a crow cackle angrily behind me. Another bird chirped worriedly, and another squawked in warning. In moments, it seemed every tree I had passed on my way resounded with avian discontent.
A banshee-like shriek jarred the pre-dawn air. It was a peafowl’s call, and its foreboding sound silenced the other birds.
I set the lamp on the ground long enough to draw the hammer from my waistband. It looked so unthreatening, this toy-ishly made tool, but I brandished it in front of me as I picked the lantern back up and started across the property. It was only seconds before the lantern light revealed the dour masonry of the monastery. It was the southern transept, with a single portal hewn at the crux. As I contemplated which direction to take, a sulky, fretful cry trailed toward me from the right. Padding quietly, I came upon a passageway of black tile laid between two limestone archways. This passage, I knew, led to the eastern crux of the monastery, and as I drew closer, I saw that the limestone was covered by vines with thorns as large as daggers. The cry sounded again from down the long vista. I breathed deeply and turned the lantern’s oil down to only a hair of a flame. I whispered another charm learned from Irmhild and proceeded between the archways.
It was darker than I had imagined within this intimidating corridor, and the thorns shivered as I passed through. My ears picked up the distinct sound of vines rustling across the stones, but I did not walk into any of them, and to the relief of my suspicion, they did not offer to touch me. Another, more agonized cry hastened my gait, and soon I exited the dreadful passage and stepped onto a courtyard of the same black tile.
I stood silently, allowing my vision to adjust to the open night air again. A peafowl screeched close to my left, but when the ungodly sound faded, I heard the cry again. My eyes moved to the direction it issued from and alit upon a large object in the center of the courtyard. After a moment or two, my scrutiny clarified so that I knew what I looked upon was a very deep rectangular stone sarcophagus. Its flat, unornamented lid, however, had been edged away slightly. I saw movement suddenly behind it, and raising my eyes, I made out two or three shadowy silhouettes.
Lowering the lantern silently, I took a few steps until I could make out their dimensions clearly: two lean, robed and cowled monks, and between them they held Carina by her wrists. She struggled to release herself from their impassive hold; her flimsy gown was torn, and her hair smudged with mud. The monks ignored her struggle, and when one of them peered suddenly over his shoulder, I saw another monk advance out of the shadows from the far side of the courtyard. The cowl of his robe was pulled back so I had a good look at his sickly white face and pious sneer. He walked up behind Carina and snatched the ends of her hair with one hand. With her head forced back on her neck, she had no choice but to endure his scrutiny. Chiseled, porcelain scorn was the glare that bore down on my Carina.
He tapped her brow with a bony forefinger, making not only Carina jump, but my heart as well. My breath was anxious, but I dared not move, at least not until there was an undeniable indication of violence from the vampire monks.
I listened as the one gripping Carina’s hair spoke (and if disease had a voice, its resonance could have been no unhealthier than the one I heard at that moment): “Your continued effrontery to our mother is unforgivable, Urdhel fräulein. It is time you learn to serve properly, with that simplicity and humility that is our condition and duty. Just as we, you shall not insult the laws of the universe by assuming the passions that our gracious mother has sole prerogative to indulge and the wisdom alone to utilize.”
Carina’s mouth quivered. “Please,” she sobbed, “just let me die!”
“You will be grateful for the state we have offered you, after you have learned to serve properly.”
Carina shook her head. Her tender eyes glistened with contempt. “No, I will not nurse Marcel’s thoughts again—not as a passionless leech as you, or even as a glutton of flesh and blood like your vain and greedy mother! I would rather die than serve her!”
A sharp hiss cut through the night air from beyond them. Before Carina could turn her head, Griselda emerged. As graceful as a gazelle she moved, but she strode up to Carina so quickly that the uncowled vampire jumped timidly and backed away from the other side of the sarcophagus. Griselda grasped Carina’s face between her trembling hands. The other two held on to Carina all the firmer, but their mother’s luminous scowl cowered them visibly.
“You will die, human sow, when I am ready for you to die,” Griselda said. She had spoken in Carina’s own language, but now that I was unaffected by her startling physical allure, I perceived a distinctly coarse but undefined Anglo timbre in her accent.
One of the vampires holding on to Carina made a low and uncertain murmur. At once Griselda snarled at him so savagely that his knees buckled slightly as he cringed.
“She is unworthy, you fool. How dare you voice sympathy for a vile creature, one who would assume those privileges only I can appreciate!”
The vampire’s head shook vigorously. With an indignant grunt, Griselda turned her imperious attention back to Carina.
“You are an ugly insect compared with me! The only reason you have not met death yet is that we need you to guide us past the trifling wards placed in the valley by you and your damnable priestess sisters. Death will come, justly and soon, you ugly, brazen thief!”
Griselda released her and wrapped her arms about herself. She spat on Carina, then glared at her for a time with the pout of a spoiled child. But her next direction came in the voice of the practiced self-victim, “Place her in the sarcophagus. There she may plead with the spiders and other insects until she is persuaded to serve me willingly.”
The uncowled son moved about the sarcophagus eagerly. He untied the hemp cord from his robe, and with a nod to his brothers, the three of them wrested Carina’s struggling arms behind her. While his cowled brothers secured her elbows, the berating vampire tied Carina’s wrists together with the hemp. But when he bowed over and grabbed for Carina’s knees, she shrieked and flailed her legs violently. Pinned by the other two, however, she was no match for his determination, and at last his ashen hands vised about her ankles. Together, the three conveyed her over the rectangular opening of the sarcophagus. As they raised her high over the portal, I caught a glimpse of something dark and hairy scurry down from one corner and into the murky recesses. Carina shrieked again as they dropped her inside, and the thud of her impact upon the cold interior surface stilled the next beat of my heart.