Beautiful Freaks (27 page)

Eve’s father crawled towards her, groaning in agony. A garden stake had been run through his stomach.  The coppery stench of blood was everywhere.

“Evangeline, I’m sorry,” he said.

Eve looked at him and shook her head before passing out.

*

When she woke it was to discover that she had been placed back in the four-poster bed at the inn. Part of her wondered if she hadn’t been here all along, if the events of the last few weeks had been nothing more than an intricate dream. The innkeeper’s wife was in the corner of the room, pouring medicinal herbs into a weak broth.

“Hello,” Evangeline croaked.

The wife jumped, causing the spoon to clatter into the bowl and to eject some of the broth onto her skirt. She tutted irritably, swiping at her skirt before turning to Evangeline and smiling. It was a fixed smile, the smile of unwilling servitude.

“Morning, Mistress.”

Evangeline felt too exhausted to make conversation and only muttered, “My Father?”

“He’s okay. The doctor has been this morning and dressed his wounds. He’s weak but he’ll survive with proper care. A nurse has been called for. She’ll be here by nightfall.”

Eve was not certain that this was what she’d wanted to hear. She pulled herself up against the pillows, looked out of the window and asked, “And Eli?”

“Count Astarot?”

Eve nodded. The wife looked uneasy, clearly unsure as to what she should be saying.

“Please,” Eve pleaded, “I need to know what happened.”

“Count Astarot is dead ma’am”

Eve let out a small sob before cramming her fist in her mouth. She knew that if she started crying now, then she might never stop.

The wife continued, “They’ve seen to the body this morning.”

Eve flashed her a look to show she didn’t understand exactly what the innkeeper’s wife meant.

“The village men went up there this morning and they’ve spread the demon’s body out across the forest, just like they did with his forefathers before him. There’s no need to fear him any more, Mistress.”

“Fear him? No! I loved him! He loved me!” Eve’s screamed.

“They had to do it ma’am. The boy was a …” she took a deep breath and drew the sign of the crucifix over her chest, “ … a vampire.”

Eve shook her head violently, refusing to believe it. She stumbled out of bed and made for the door.

“Please get back into bed ma’am. You’re not well.”

“I need to see my father. I need to see the man who killed Eli.”

The innkeeper’s wife took Eve by the arm and led her along the hall to her father’s room. Doctor Valentine lay in the bed, his body wrapped tightly in bandages. His hair was damp with sweat.

“The Physician gave him an opiate to dull the pain,” the wife explained. Doctor Valentine’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of their voices. His eyes focused on Evangeline and he let out a small feeble moan and an attempt to smile. She did not smile back. He patted the bed for Eve to take a seat but rage made her strong and she insisted on standing. The innkeeper’s wife showed no sign of leaving, clearly curious about what would unfold. Evangeline dismissed the wife away, knowing that she was the type to most likely press her ear against the door and listen in.  

Evangeline leant in and whispered, “Why did you do it, father?”

“Evangeline, he was killing you.”

Evangeline shook his head. “That’s not true.”

“The boy was feeding off your spirit, he was drinking in your spirit and soul.”

“I loved him. He loved me,” Evangeline cried.

“Yes he loved you, Eve. He loved you in a way most men can only imagine. But his love was destroying you. I’m sure that he didn’t mean it to, but it was his nature.”

Eve shook her head, refusing to believe what her father was saying. “You murdered him!”

“I did what needed to be done in order to save you.”

“Save me?”

“I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I need you to understand me. There are four graves in the churchyard, each marking the ground where a dead woman lies. If I hadn’t acted when I did, there would now be five. Five stone angels looking down on five red roses.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“There will come a time when you will.”

“She told me how they have desecrated his body. You even refused him a Christian burial!”

“Evangeline, the boy was not one of God’s creatures. He belonged to Lucifer.”

She looked at her father and where there had once been love, now there was only a burning hatred. “I can’t forgive you for this – I never will. And when I am strong enough, I will kill you.”

Evangeline turned and as she left, she heard her father weeping.

By the next morning her father was dead. 

Once her father’s funeral was over, Evangeline ordered the carriage to take her up to Castle Astarot.

Eve found the few staff that had stayed on
were
in the process of packing their meagre belongings. On seeing Eve they unpacked, and offering her smiles of sympathy, they accepted her as their rightful mistress.

The villagers never knew that Castle Astarot remained inhabited. They avoided the place as if it were cursed ground. Their superstition gave Eve her freedom. She spent her days in Eli’s study, reading his books on necromancy and alchemy. She found companionship with the old woman who lived just inside the woods. She’d been outcast by the
villagers
decades ago. They’d accused her of witchcraft and had taken refuge under the protection of the Astarot’s house. Eli had been very fond of her and had told Eve many happy stories of visits to her house as a child. She was now the only one apart from Eve who had any personal memories of Eli.

When the sorceress heard what they had done to Eli’s body, she’d set off with her
blood-hound
to find his body parts. When all of them were recovered, she dug a grave in the middle of the rose garden, Eli’s favourite place. She didn’t tell Eve what she’d done until the first spring blooms opened. Then she presented Eve with a bouquet of the sweetest, darkest red roses Eve had ever seen.

As the sorceress handed them over, she instructed Eve to, “Press these roses and distil their essence. When you’ve done this, use a silver spoon to drink it.” She reached out and touched Eve’s arm tenderly. “It will not give you a life lived with Eli, but it will give you many lives so that you may have a chance to find love and happiness. It’s what Eli would have wanted. He loved you more than you can know.”

Eve returned to Eli’s study, crushed and bruised the petals between the heavy granite of the pestle and mortar, before boiling them and condensing them to extract their thick oil-perfume. From the whole bouquet only a spoonful could be made.

The oil was sweet on the tongue, but so intense that it burned. It was a sweet agony and it bit into her internal organs so she thought that she might die. When she recovered from the swoon of pain, Eve had never felt so strong or alive. She also knew that part of Eli now pulsed through her veins.

Eve lived at Castle Astarot for ten years and each summer she harvested the roses that grew over Eli’s grave. As the years went on, the roses grew more and more abundant so that she managed to create a stock of small crystal phials full of the dark and powerful elixir. 

On the eleventh summer, Eve waited for the breaking of the buds with eager anticipation. She was hoping for a large harvest, enough that she might make enough of the elixir to leave the castle for a while and go travelling.

When the first petals unfurled, Eve was surprised to find that they were a milky white, with only the palest flush of pink.

“No!” she cried, throwing herself to her knees and crying over the ground where the bones of Eli lay.

“It is finished,” the sorceress spoke with a sense of knowing. Eve was used to the sorceress appearing as if out of nowhere.

“It can’t be.”

“The flowers have drained him of all the blood he had in him.”

“But what about …”

“You have enough to last you many lifetimes over. Use it sparingly. It is time for you to go now.”

“I don’t want to leave. Eli is here.”

“No,” the old sorceress smiled and placed her hand over Eve’s heart, “he is here. He runs through your veins and feeds your thoughts. He fuels your dreams.”

“I have to leave?” Eve asked.

The sorceress nodded her head. “You need to be careful. You already know that you must only drink one spoonful a year for twenty years, any more will be fatal. When you have consumed all there is, the transformation will be complete, but you will still need to nourish yourself to maintain the state of youth.”

“Will I have to drink blood?”

The sorceress laughed, “No my dear, you’re a little more evolved than those heathens. Eli was a psychic
vampire,
he fed off the energy and emotions of humans. He would become as bewitched by certain individuals as they were of him. It was his nature, not his choice; he was an innocent soul.”

“Now I must face eternity without him – that almost seems like a curse.”

“You will find others along the way. You may not love them as deeply as Eli but they will bring you the sense of satisfaction that you are looking for. You will meet others of your kind and you will find belonging.”

“I should never have let you talk me into this. I was blinded by grief. I would have done anything to feel closer to Eli, but I didn’t realise what this meant, what an eternity without him might feel like.”

“Regret would be foolish. Eli would have wanted this for you. He would have wanted you to stride out into the world, to live and to be happy. It’s what he longed to do. What he planned to do – with you by his side.”

“But it feels like I’ll never get back to him.”

“You were never destined to. There is no place for your kind within the pale and silvery walls of heaven. You are no longer a creature of God, Eve. You have drunk the elixir of life and death.  You would never have been reunited with Eli after death. For our kind – for the supernatural, the only thing we are promised after death is a dark, unending abyss.”

“What shall I do?”

“You will find something.” The sorceress smiled weakly and kissed the well of Eve’s hand. “I must be going now. Remember that you will live forever but if you wish to remain young and beautiful then you must feed. The more extraordinary and beautiful your choice, the more powerful the magic.

“If you wish to be pretty, choose a pretty virgin; more intelligent, an old scholar; more deceitful, a serpent lawyer; more powerful, one of the supernaturals, and so on. The world is full of magical beings but the world is too stupid to see them and they are too clever to be caught.” She fished in the folds of her skirt, pulling out a monocle attached to a black leather strap. I have made it from a slice of The Future Stone. It will allow you to track down whomever you so desire. “Collect well, fill your pantry high. Remember you are what you eat!” she cackled, greatly amused by her own quip. She was still laughing as she stepped into the forest.

*

Eve decided against filling her travelling trunks with the Astarot family heirlooms, choosing to take just one trunk full of family jewellery and a small miniature portrait of Eli, which she had placed on her table next to her bed since the day she had taken residence. The rest of the house she gifted to time and decay. She locked the door, tucked the key under the cracked foot of the stone urn atop the gatepost. Maybe one day she would return, but she doubted it. Part of her believed that as soon as she left, the whole place would dissolve.

Eve spent many years travelling from one continent to another. She did indeed find others of her kind, who taught her some of the rare and delicious advantages of being a vampire. She fell in love many times, but she never loved as she had loved Eli. She dined with princes, danced with Emperors, and drank with Queens -- but the satisfaction the old sorceress had promised her had yet to arrive.

Eventually Eve returned home to London. She visited the family lawyer (now the grandson of her father and aunt’s lawyer) and staked her claim on the family estate. She evicted the tenants from her aunt’s house and employed an architect to completely renovate it. It was a beautiful Georgian mansion in The Haymarket district of London, the very heart of all that was dark and fabulous. The very last thing to be done in the renovation project was for the builders to screw a sign to the left of the door that read ‘No.7’.

Within a month of moving in, Eve enchanted Alicia.

17

DECREASING CIRCLES.

Steptree made his way up the steps of No.7. Even before he rang the bell, Eve knew that he was coming. She made him wait – just long enough that he would turn on the steps, thinking nobody was in. She wanted him facing away from her, vulnerable and caught of guard. He would think it strange that she should open her own door when she had staff. She would enjoy the confusion that it would create. He was bound to read more into it than simple psychology.

“Hello, can I help you?” she asked in her sweetest voice.