Legacy in Blood (Book 1 of The Begotten of Old Series) (11 page)

Towards morning she awoke and felt that she was completely healthy. She paid no attention to the strange taste, or rather, the strange sensation in her mouth – her joy was too intense. But she was not at all eager to recall last night’s scene. The main thing was that now she had the means to save her family from cholera. She decided to ask that she be left alone with her brother so that no one besides the two of them would know about this new ‘medicine.’ Barely dragging her clothes on, Vasilisa ran to the chamber where Nicholaus lay. Mother and Father were black with grief. Lucinda was crying silently in a corner, wiping away her tears with a kerchief her brother had given her.

“Take courage,” said the healer, catching sight of Vasilisa as she entered.

The girl realized that she had come in time. Everything proceeded as she had planned. She managed to get rid of her family and the intrusive healer. Nicholaus was already unconscious so Vasilisa made a deep incision in her wrist with a knife and then pressed her wrist to his dry lips. Her brother began to writhe in the throes of agony, and the girl, terrified, watched over him, periodically wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. She was astonished at how quickly the cut on her arm started to heal. Vasilisa could do nothing except to thank God for the miracle he had sent in the form of their strange neighbor, who was apparently a remarkable healer. The girl intended to express her gratitude to him as soon as Nicholaus got better.

Soon the agony ceased, and Nicholaus fell into the sound sleep of a convalescing man. Everything, even the color of his face, spoke to the fact that he was on the mend.

“He’s better!” exclaimed the healer when the girl allowed them all to return to the invalid’s bedchamber. “In the name of all that’s holy, he’s better! What miracle did you work upon him, my dear child?” he asked Vasilisa. “You’re a magician!”

Father, Mother and Lucinda embraced and cried happily. Vasilisa snuck a peek at her slashed wrist. The skin was almost completely knitted back together. Mother walked up to her and embraced her.

“My dear child,” she sobbed. “You prayed, I know. We were all praying for our Nicholaus.”

And she cried on her shoulder. Vasilisa smelled a distantly familiar, acutely sweet aroma. The aroma was so thrilling, so appetizing…

“I’m rather…hungry,” said Vasilisa, stepping back from her mother.

And then it seemed to her that everyone around her began talking simultaneously.

“Quieter, I beg you,” she said. “My head is pounding.”

She remembered what happened next in fragments. She recalled how blintzes with caviar and salmon appeared on a plate in front of her, and how she spat out everything that she attempted to choke down, repulsed, and how the events of the night before floated before her eyes – there was the man, slicing through the skin of his arm, and there she was, greedily falling on the wound; warm, viscous liquid poured into her throat, and oh, she would give anything just to repeat that delightful sensation. She recalled how she ran into the stockyard, how she seized a small, bleating lamb and sank her teeth into its neck. Much later, standing over the bloodless corpse of the animal, Vasilisa finally understood the strange sensation in her mouth that had haunted her since early morning. Her bite had changed. It had changed because of the newly formed pair of long, sharp fangs which were so handy for breaking though skin and plunging into warm, full veins.

While her mother and father accompanied the healer out, Vasilisa seized the opportunity and ran straight to the man she guessed could answer all the questions that were swarming and mingling with horrible speculations in her overwrought mind.

“What did you do to me?” she screamed as she burst into the house across the way. The heroic strength in her arms easily allowed her to tear the massive granary lock off the door.

“Come out, pagan! Come out and tell me what you did to me!”

He appeared out of the gloomy depths of the room, dreadful and captivating, attractive and repulsive at the same time. And he began his tale. It was a tale about how the world was made, and about the strange creatures that inhabited it alongside humans, and about how many different kinds of creatures there were, and about the true purpose of each creation…. Vasilisa understood his words, but she had difficulty understanding his entire meaning; she did, however, manage to catch the essence. She began to cry when she realized that she had been turned into a vampire. Swallowing her tears, she insisted that it would have been better to die of cholera. He contended that with time she would come to value life, any life, even the one that he had given her in exchange for the one he took away. Then for the first time she had heard that mysterious and incomprehensible phrase –
Begotten of Old
…

They talked far into the night. When she returned home towards morning, it felt to her that she had lived a whole life, full of sorrow and despair. There was worse to come.

When Nicholaus woke up, Vasilisa was close at hand. To this day she could recall every minute of that hell through which they all had to go. And each of them would have given everything in the world in order to forget, but that was an unrealizable dream. This
hell
came to them in their sleep. It lived inside each vampire. It was an integral part of a vampire’s being.

In the course of the next three months, Vasilisa and Nicholaus decimated the population of cows, horses, sheep, geese and chickens in Suzdal. But pig and cow blood slowly became less capable of allaying the
hunger
that grew with each setting of the sun. Rumors of a bizarre illness striking the livestock flew through the city. The commoners whispered amongst themselves, pointing at their home. The gentlefolk devoutly crossed themselves whenever they passed by. People now kept their distance from the princely residence.

In December they started in upon the servants. Glasha the scullery maid was the first victim of the vampires. Vasilisa still remembered what she was called, but even more than that, she remembered how she keened as Nicholaus and Vasilisa both plunged their fangs into the veins that pulsed in the bends of the elbows of her perfect, white arms…

That night Vasilisa again went to him, to the one who had simultaneously become for her both tormentor and savior. He was a wise tutor and a skillful lover. Vasilisa never knew his real name: she simply called him Mentor. Later, when a brutish crowd chopped him to pieces before her eyes, Vasilisa experienced both relief and grief in equal measure. But before that moment Mentor managed to teach her much, and he gifted her with many a magical night, when the feast of flesh passed into the feast of love and vice versa. He taught her to balance on the boundary between pain and pleasure. He thought that a zest for life could only truly be experienced in the dance of pleasure alternating with pain, and pain passing into pleasure.

Well, if that was so, then Vasilisa had fully experienced that zest. In the spring, after she and Nicholaus had fed on their tenth human victim, the cook, their mother hung herself in the woodshed. A week later their father tried to do the same thing. But Nicholaus had time to pull him out of the noose, whereupon he forcibly poured his own blood into his father’s crushed throat. Nonetheless, many years later their father managed to accomplish his intent.

Lucinda held out until the bitter end. She remained human even while they were fleeing the revolt. The illiterate, superstitious humans first broke into Mentor’s house and ripped him to shreds. He intentionally did not try to run, giving Vasilisa the opportunity to save herself and her family. He knew what awaited him and accepted death with dignity. As a horse carried her speedily away, Vasilisa saw the humans besiege her home, cover it with bunches of garlic and then set it on fire. She watched her family nest burn, the nest whose every corner she knew by heart; she watched it burn and she cried, putting the spurs to her frightened horse. And she realized that her family was now doomed to wandering and vagrancy, that only the Lord God himself knew how long they would last…

Ever since then, in each of their refuges, there was always a secret exit hidden from the uninitiated.

Lucinda lived with them as a human for just shy of ten years. Neither Father, nor Nicholaus, nor Vasilisa ever tried to persuade her. It was her choice, though in the depths of her soul Vasilisa knew that Lucinda came to it neither from fear of old age nor from fear for her own life. None of them would dare harm her. Lucinda eventually became a vampire out of despair, for in the end she had no one left her except her brother, sister and father, who were all vampires.

Many years had passed since then. Now they lived as three, not counting Filip, who had been with them long enough to become part of the family. None of them grew any older, not by a day. Lucinda and Nicholaus looked much the same now as they did then – like humans in their thirties. Vasilisa remained forever young and fresh – half woman, half adolescent girl. Or as it might be put now, a well-developed teenager.

Ah, well, the past…it returned to her every day, every night, accompanied by nightmares. ‘Even in sleep the past, which it is impossible to forget, seeps into the heart drop by drop…’ Vasilisa often recalled these lines, written by the great Aeschylus.

But this morning when she awoke in a vicious mood it was not at all because of dreams. The nightmares had long ago become commonplace, and Vasilisa had long ago forgotten the dreams that had come to her during her human life. But she remembered quite well the raid on
Wing
and still more her first rejection in a long time. The bitch! But the worst thing was that she had rejected Vasilisa twice. First when she ridiculed her business proposition and then when she had refused her body. Vasilisa was indignant. Who the hell did she think she was? Begotten of Old… You’d think Vasilisa didn’t understand who she was really dealing with. She called herself such pretty names, acting all high and mighty. But she was really just a thief and assassin.

Vasilisa turned on the television in the hope of relaxing. Flipping through the numerous channels she decided in favor of the one which was showing
Mary Poppins, Goodbye
. In a trice the aggrieved, mature woman in her gave way to the mischievous seventeen year old girl.

“Who from pin to breastpin, pa-bam,” Vasilisa gamely began to sing along with the heroine.

She never once wondered how much detritus the human memory could store. For if one is a transformed vampire almost eight centuries from one’s birth, then one remembers both the name of one’s first victim and the words of a silly film with equal accuracy.

By the end of the song her mood had somewhat improved. Vasilisa showered and wandered down to the first floor. She found Lucinda in the kitchen: she was carving up a pink filet of smoked salmon that rested on china plate, stabbing the pieces with her fork and sending them into her mouth. Then she monotonously and carefully chewed, and, finally, she swallowed.

Vasilisa’s mood instantly returned to below freezing.

“How many years have you put food on a plate, sat at a table and pretended you were human? Tell me, aren’t you bored?”

“There are many things you don’t understand, Vasilisa,” Lucinda replied calmly, catching the next slice of fish with her fork.

“I’m seven hundred fifty-four years old,” Vasilisa practically shouted. “According to you, I’m not grown up enough to understand why you need to play at being a human when you are a vampire?”

“Unfortunately,” began Lucinda dispassionately, “I didn’t get to hang myself the way mama did. I did not have enough strength to follow papa’s lead either. So I get by how I can – I try not to kill, not to drink directly from the vein, and I try to make use of human food. I deceive myself, if you will. That is my right. And don’t worry, please – if we fall on hard times I will turn to potatoes and cucumbers.”

“You want to be clean as a new button, don’t you,” spat Vasilisa, leaning towards her sister. “Pure and white, right? But in what way are you better than me and Nickolaus? Or Filip? We’re the ones who feed you; we murder for you. And you drink human blood just the same as we do but you pour it into a beautiful little bottle.”

Lucinda jumped up off her chair and bared her fangs with a snarl.

Are you in a rage because she put you in your place?
In telepathic speech the caustic tone could be felt even more palpably.
I guess you were not to her taste. Perhaps she likes redheads?

And what would you know about that?
Vasilisa laughed in answer.
You’ve never even had anyone! Old maid! If it weren’t for Nicholaus and me looking out for you, you’d have been dead from abstinence by the age of forty!

Vasilisa was prepared to receive the answering blow, but Lucinda, instead of lashing out at her sister, suddenly sat back down at the table, covered her face with her palms and burst into bitter tears. In the next moment Vasilisa felt like she was the most repulsive viper in the entire world.

“My God, forgive me, please,” she said aloud. “Forgive me, Lucinda.”

Are you afraid that I’ll tell Nicholaus about the drugs?
Lucinda took her hands away from her tear-stained face.
I keep trying to be your nanny. I forget that you grew up a long time ago.

“Yes indeed,” grumbled Vasilisa. “But the coke isn’t important. I’m really sorry that I hurt you. I really am a spoiled bitch,” Vasilisa faltered but then continued after a second, “But I love you very much.”

Lucinda had wiped away her tears just as Nicholaus appeared in the kitchen.

“What’s all the noise about?” he asked sullenly. “Fighting again early in the morning?”

“For starters, hi,” said Vasilisa. “And by the way it’s eleven o’clock already.”

“How you both aggravate me,” huffed Nicholaus.

“You’re in a bad mood.” Vasilisa was once again gaining steam. “Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? Yes, dear brother, it’s been quite some time since a beautiful woman blew you off. Well, don’t worry about it: there’s a first time for everything.”