Hope
The truth shined through so many of my words often enough that I believed my own lies. “I work at my uncle’s estate. He died a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tommy said, looking sincere.
We sat across from each other on our seventh date in so many weeks at a hole in the wall late night diner. Things between us were settling into a comfortable routine.
“He was ill for years,” I said, for there was truth in that. There were many times I’d come upon Rory in the corner of the bedroom at dawn, hugging his knees to his chest and rocking. I used to help him into our bed and hold his head to my chest while he cried or muttered nonsense. I wondered if I would be reduced to such ramblings in my future.
“You’ve lost a lot.”
I shrugged. He was right. I had. But that’s how life is. “I have you now.”
He smiled.
I did too, and a strange sound tickled my senses. Over the usual beat of Tommy’s heart, a sound I knew well, I heard a second thrumming, faster, fainter. We ate our meal, and all the while, I tried to pinpoint the noise. A few patrons chattered in the front of the restaurant. Two waitresses stood behind the bar cleaning up. Nothing else ought to be giving off such a slight pulse.
My food seemed dull to me. The flavors were there, but they mulled around in my mouth as if ash tainted them. I imagine my tastes were like that of a heavy smoker’s, spiced up only by that which they crave—the inhalation of tobacco, the high of the hit—for me, the roll of blood down my throat.
“What did your uncle do to amass an estate in need of a caretaker?” He sipped his soda and watched me, intent.
“Rory collected art.”
“Mmm.” Tommy nodded. “I failed my art history class in college. Never could keep all the names straight. It was boring.”
“Yeah.” I laughed. That was all well and good. There’d be no question about Rory Archibald and the odd things he hunted down to keep in his extravagant home. I glanced out the tinted glass window to check the bloody progress of the sky. Just outside a pair of dark eyes caught mine, the woman’s face narrow and smooth, her smile wicked. She tapped on the glass.
I swallowed wrong and choked.
“Are you okay?” Tommy jumped up and patted me on the back until I caught my breath. When I turned to face the window again, Karada wasn’t there. Did I imagine her? Was my mind already slipping away?
The smaller pulse thump-bumped in my consciousness.
I drank down a glass of soda, amazed at how tasteless it was. “I hate when that happens,” I told him.
Back at his place, we cuddled on the couch and watched TV. I listened to his heart beneath my ear and the smaller sound echoing it. His hand trailed to my abdomen. I sucked in a startled breath. Could it be? His palm ran back and forth. I didn’t think my belly looked any different than it had before, but if what I thought might have occurred was even possible, it might not have changed yet.
How could I tell him? What would he say? Already he accepted that I slept during the daylight hours and went about at night. We met always in the middle of light and day by evening just after sunset.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I whispered.
His hand stopped.
The beatings of the two hearts—one tiny and insignificant and one strong—were my hope. Tommy kissed the top of my head and hugged me. “Are you scared?”
I thought it over. Scared? Of a child half-human, of our child growing inside me? Yes, I was scared, but in a different way. What would this baby’s life be like? Would it be a vampire? Would it die in the light of the sun? Would its father find out what I was now and hate me for it?
“No, I’m not scared. I have you.”
He smiled. A tear fell from his face and onto my forehead. “Let’s get married, Angela. Tomorrow night. Let’s just do it. We can go down to City Hall and sign the papers. I know a priest who will do it outside his church when we’re ready to have a real ceremony.”
“All right.” I placed my hand over his on my belly and listened to my family, to the small sounds of change and growth inside me and the eventual soft snores of the man who would be my husband come tomorrow night. I didn’t know how I could work out going down to sign for the marriage license, but I’d find a way.
Three hours before sunrise, I scribbled a note for him to find when he woke. I wanted to go back to the mansion, to pick out a dress and gather my things. It wouldn’t be much, a suitcase of clothes, a few trinkets, and the easel and paints. I wanted to try and paint again now that no one was there to force me to try.
Climbing the stairs to the roof of Tommy’s apartment, I thought over this new turn of events. Scared. Yes, I was frightened of the unknown and what it would bring to us—us, not just me anymore.
The sky bled only faintly for me in that remainder of darkness. I tugged off my blouse, spread my wings and leapt out into the air. Flying brought me a joy humbled only by the happiness I felt. My life was looking better at last. I had a future no matter how unusual or impossible. Someone loved me and I loved him back.
The city dwindled beneath me, giving way to thick trees and the cooler drafts of the wilds. Rory’s mansion beckoned me to my second home. I landed in the backyard. The little heartbeat inside me stayed steady. The French doors were open, giving me pause. Karada’s voice echoed from within, singing in a lilting voice with foreign words.
“Look who has returned.”
“I’ve only come for my things,” I shouted, hoping she’d let me alone long enough to take what I wanted and leave.
She appeared in the doorway to the bedroom in a green silk gown, her hair over her shoulders and tied by red beads. “Will you be staying here long?”
“No. It’s all yours now. I won’t come back again.”
“Ah.” She returned to the bedroom, her bare feet soundless on the rug. I followed after her, a twinge of warning in the pit of my stomach. When I entered the room, I found Karada seated at a lacquered table before a mirror. She kept her eyes wide while she applied eyeliner beneath each one, extending it far outside her eyelid on each side.
“Are you from Egypt?” I asked, dragging a suitcase from the back of the closet. I set it atop the bed, zipped it open and gathered my underwear from the bureau drawers.
“I am.” She set the liner pencil down and reached for a tube of lipstick. “I haven’t been back in so long. I’m sure it’s all changed by now.”
I packed in my clothes, not bothering to take out the hangers. I closed the suitcase, zipped it shut, and readied to leave.
“Don’t you have questions for me, little angel?” She stood, brushing her fingers over her hip while she walked toward me to block the way out.
“Only one.” I heaved the suitcase off the bed and pulled out the handle so I could roll it on wheels. I figured I could take one of the cars in the garage. There were five. Karada didn’t need them all. “Did you love Rory?”
Her thin eyebrows tensed. Her lips twisted in a confused expression. “I loved him. Yes.”
“What went wrong?”
“His half-brother cut off my head and drove a stake through my heart. Not a very nice wedding day present.” Her eyes glittered red.
“Oh.” I steered to the right, dragging my suitcase behind me. She stepped in my path, one hand out to snatch my forearm.
“Stay with me,” she said, her voice low, dangerous. “I get lonely. I won’t have the same difficulties with you as I would a male companion.” Her teeth lengthened before she pulled my wrist to her lips. “Let me taste you.”
I struggled against her hold. Fingers twisted into my flesh, claws sank deep. My blood scented the air in the room. The suitcase fell to the floor.
Karada laughed, dragging me along with more strength than I could match. Her mind pushed at mine, but I pushed back. I would not be taken over again. I would not be a slave to her as I had been to Rory. She pulled me through the French doors, across the flagstone path, and out into the gardens. I bit her once, her thick blood painful as it burned my tongue and throat.
“I’m of a different ilk than my offspring,” she explained, her revelation ominous.
With each taste, I felt her soul rooting into mine.
Her memories flooded me. Her hold pushed past my defenses. I failed. I fell. I could not stop when she discarded my will and shoved me full force into the old mausoleum. It reeked of rotting flesh. She cackled and shoved me a second time through the second doorway to where the coffin awaited. I feared she’d place me in there and somehow lock me in that dark, gruesome prison, but she did not. Karada stood in the doorway, her fanged smile vicious as she regarded me.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “I’ve done nothing to harm you.”
“You freed me. For that, I’ll let you live.” She walked out and slammed the door. Locks clicked. Another sound grated, stone over stone. Dust filtered beneath the wooden door. I swallowed the last of her essence, afraid.
“Karada!”
“Do not call for me unless you’re ready to be mine.” Laughter followed her retreat.
There I sat, alone with the small start of life in my womb. Alone with Karada’s memories and bits of Rory’s journal pages. The darkness of the room did not deter my vision. I opened the coffin only to discover my captor’s latest kill. He stared up at the ceiling with his wide, dead eyes, his mouth turned in a state of bliss. Bite marks all over his neck and chest evidenced his untimely end.
“Sloppy work,” I said.
There had to be some way out. Just because she hadn’t found it in all the time she remained imprisoned didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
I closed the coffin. Pacing, the bloodied clawed lines over the walls reminded me escape had to be impossible. I smoothed my fingers over the stone walls. Cold marble gave no clue to a way out. I sat in the corner. A black beetle crawled over the pieces of old paper to vanish beneath the door.
Night slipped away.
To a vampire, time passes differently than to a human. I marked my time by hunger and pain. I needed to feed. I needed blood. It didn’t matter if my body wasted away. My fear was for the small being within me. I could not let my child die. The pulse of the tiny one’s heart egged me on. I scraped at the marble beneath the door with a handle I’d broken off the coffin.
When the baby’s heartbeat waned, I gave in.
My fingers wrinkled, my skin became pasty, and I screamed out with all my might for the creature who had imprisoned me here. I would surrender, let her keep me as her underling, anything as long as the baby survived.
“Karada!” I raged and shouted until my voice went hoarse. For weeks I called to her. I tried to reach her with my mind, desperate now, my stomach a dull ache inside me.
“Karada! Karada!”
Misery
Misery engulfed my heart. I curled in the corner, lying on one side. With no energy left, I wept in tearless sobs. She had forgotten me. A gray haze settled over my mind. I imagined if I could see the night sky it would be a dark shade of red too murky to let the stars shine through. My hair had fallen out in clumps which lay mixed on the dust-covered floor with the scraps of paper. My clothes I’d shredded in my boredom and sadness. I could not eat. I could not survive. The corpse accompanying me no longer smelled, and maggots had long since eaten away anything worth taking.
The tiny thump of hope inside my womb stopped in one deafening moment.
Karada had taken everything from me just as Rory had.
Adrift in a black oblivion, far beyond the reach of hunger, I lost myself in the sadness. Time passed and escaped me. My body stiffened, and yet, I did not die. I subsisted on air alone, too weak to move, too starved to think coherent thoughts. As years left me, I envisioned Karada’s face in the doorway before she locked me in this hellish prison. The taste of her blood remained on my tongue in that abysmal eternity.
I will taste it again,
I promised myself.
And I will drink her dry.
Stone grated across stone.
Laughter awakened my consciousness.
My nostrils flared as much as they could in the state of catatonia I’d fallen into. I
smelled
the source of my hatred. I wanted her, to taste her, to bleed her and make her suffer for what she did to me.
“Little angel, I’ve been so busy. Are you ready to come play with me?”
I could not open my eyes.
Cold fingers found purchase beneath my armpits and pulled my emaciated body from its resting place.
Karada carried me from the mausoleum, her words dancing in the night.
“Eat, little one.”
Yes, it was night. I could not see it, but I felt it, cool, crisp, rent with the promise of a second chance. Flesh crushed into my mouth. Blood, thick as tar, entered my throat. I could not swallow, could not suckle. It drained into me, vile and tainted with her memories, her thoughts. I saw her victims, felt her glory in the death she brought about.
The stiffness of my body ebbed, but not enough to allow me movement yet.
My eyelids cracked open, freezing in place. I watched my prey, the wicked thing of a woman who had locked me away and forgotten me, killed my baby, and stolen away my life. A fair glow lingered around her smooth face. She looked like the painting now, surreal in her beauty.
Even as she pulled her wrist from my mouth, I knew I hadn’t the strength to harm her. She knew it too. Once more I was someone’s toy to be played with and discarded on a whim.
“I went to Egypt,” she told me, as if I cared where she had been. “Such a bustling place. I saw the pyramids, the great desert, shopped in the streets like when I was a child.” She sat beside me smoothing her clothes and brushing off dust from carrying me in. “In the museums, I found the most devilish mummies. You look like one now.”
I wanted to slap her.
She giggled and ran cold fingers over my bald scalp. “In time you will look like yourself again. You have only to feed properly. It will take a few months, but don’t worry. You and I have all the time in the world.” She rested her palm on my cheek, patting it with a condescendence that so reminded me of Rory. “You want me to take care of you, don’t you?”
“Yes.” The single word came out slurred, for my lips could not move correctly.
The small lie lit up Karada’s face. She seemed pleased by my assent. Standing, she shook her mane of hair off her shoulders before she went to study herself in the mirror. My eyes rolled to follow her. The mirror showed me what a hideous thing I had become. My skin stretched like a cadaver’s left out to dry in the sun. My eyes were sunken as were my cheeks. Bald and zombie-like, I stared at the reflection of myself and hated Karada more.
My shoulders itched, a faint tickle evidencing my wings. But I had not the strength to call them forth or the energy within to make it so.
She went out.
I remained frozen there on the bed to wait for her return.
On the cusp of dawn twilight, Karada brought me a young boy. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. Already his neck bore marks where she’d drank. Bleary-eyed and dazed, he didn’t struggle when she lifted his body and pressed his skin to my lips. God forgive me, I drank. I sucked and slavered and hated myself for it.
His blood did not even begin to sate the drought my body endured.
She brought me children on purpose. Time and again, she carried them to my bed where I fed and bore my guilt.
Karada enjoyed my suffering.
She starved me, letting me feed only every few days. Helpless and weak, I endured as she dressed me in frumpish clothing and rubbed lotions into my skin. Some nights she painted my face with lipstick and eyeliner so that we matched in a macabre way—me being the dead version and she being the one with life.
During the day, she cuddled next to me and held me against her in the bed I had shared with Rory. She tried to push into my mind on such close times, but I had practiced closing myself off, a task which consisted of having no thoughts at all. Apparently, she needed something to latch onto when she tried to control my mind. Sighing with frustration, she soon gave up.
It took three months before I could stand. Walking proved impossible yet. Karada sat on the edge of the bed or by the mirror talking to me about her history, her silly tales, and of bedding men only to kill them when she tired of their company.
“Rory should have been like that,” she explained with a sudden wistfulness. “He wasn’t like the others who used the women in the slave houses for pleasure. He came down there one night, raving mad and repeating some nonsense over and over. I liked his hair.” She winked at me. “Rory had beautiful hair, don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” I answered, not caring one way or the other. My gums tingled with the need to send forth my fangs. Karada’s neck looked tempting this night. “He was good in bed, too.”
Her expression darkened with jealousy, narrowing her eyes and tensing her eyebrows. I liked to do little things like that, to piss her off and test her. For a being so old, she did not show much complexity. I thought of her as a petulant child given to tantrums and fits of emotional rage.
“He was,” she finally agreed. “Most men aren’t. He knew what I wanted. You can thank me for your nights of pleasure. Everything he learned came from my guidance.”
“I see.”
She combed through her hair in languid strokes as she went on. “I couldn’t quiet him, and I hadn’t disposed of the bodies yet, so I took him to the forest. My belly was full. I didn’t want to feed, so I kissed him to shut him up.” She snorted out a laugh. “He turned bright red. I don’t think anyone had ever kissed him before.”
“What was wrong with him?” I asked, curious now. “What made him feed on people with mental illnesses?”
She tied off a gathering of her hair with a band before she answered. “He sought himself in them, I think. He remembered that part of his life, when he suffered, when he heard the voices. He wanted to end the suffering of those like him.”
“So, he was insane when you turned him?”
“Perhaps.” She tied off another lock of hair.
I reached up and felt the fuzz where my hair had grown in. It would take more time yet to have it all back. “And who turned you, Karada?”
Her lips pursed. She sat there, quiet for a long while as her eyes flickered with red glints. “His name was Charon.” For the first time when she recounted one of her tales, Karada turned away from me to stare at the painting. Her voice no longer carried frivolous emotions. “I had been in the pleasure house for nearly a year then. He took me one night, paid double the price, and returned again a week later. He hurt me,” she whispered. “Beat me.”
“Did you love him?”
Her eyes slipped shut.
I pushed off the bed. My feet felt like two concrete blocks, heavy and useless. I shuffled one forward and almost fell. Determined, I shuffled the other. Shuffle, pause, shuffle, pause, I stood behind her and placed my hand on her shoulder.
She flinched.
I grinned, revealing my fangs.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you, little one?”
“Yes,” I answered, and ran the pad of my thumb along her soft neck. It was too soon, but I didn’t care. I tired of her stories. I wanted this to end...now. “Please, may I drink from you, Mistress?”
She smiled, her own fangs coming down at the thought of feeding. Karada stood to face me and nodded. “You may have a little until I bring you another child. Such sweet blood they have.”
“Not as sweet as yours, mistress.”
Flattery amused her. She pushed away her hair and offered me her neck. This trust surprised me. Before now, it had been her wrist alone. I feathered my fingers along her cheek, brushed my lips over her skin, and kissed her there.
Karada moaned with delight.
In the mirror, I watched myself change into a predator as I bit down. Her blood flowed slow, forcing me to work for it. I drank with greed, with an unkind voraciousness held back until this moment. She gripped my waist, her claws sinking into my flesh. I didn’t care. No pain she inflicted would stop me. No battle would be enough to cause me to let go.
I drank and drained away her soul, its filth melding with me.
I think she realized my intent at the last moments. She screeched in fury and batted at me, raking lines over my back, tearing away cloth and skin. In the end, I lowered her to the floor and reached for her chest, burying my claws within, past ribs, directly to her heart. I crushed it, holding the muscular mass until the last of her blood filled me.
I feared letting go.
What if she was not dead yet?
Her strength pooled inside me. I willed my wings to grow. They appeared, tattered and worn when they spread at my sides. Her throat still clasped in my fangs, I carried Karada outside. On the patio, paces from where Rory had met his end, I tore out her heart and tossed it aside. Next I took her head, wrenching it free of her body the moment my fangs left her flesh. I loathed her and found myself a monster just as she had been, just as Rory had as well.
I dropped her head on the flagstone and took to the air with her body. The memory of Rory sewing her back together in the mausoleum disturbed me. I didn’t want such an atrocity to occur a second time, no matter how unlikely.
The sun rimmed the horizon. Light blinded me. I faltered and fell, a horrible dark angel bearing the corpse of a beast. The body slipped free of my grip. I plummeted through trees and crashed in a pile of brush. Karada’s headless remains landed paces away at the edge of the river. I crawled to the closest darkness, an outcropping of stones near the water. There was no time to return to the mansion. Wedging myself in the crevasse, I watched the sun’s rays reach down into the shadows to banish the night. The light touched her skin, frying it an unpleasant black. She sizzled and smoked for hours until, at last, Karada’s remains turned to ash.
I closed my eyes and slept.