Lilah (19 page)

This was clearly untrue, and Lilah saw through
it also.
She had been torn by a forest beast
but that
was not the problem here. There was something dangerous about her for already
she was blocking some of her thoughts to us thanks to Gabriel’s coaching. It
was obvious that she was frivolous and vain, and holding on to Gabriel’s arm as
if she would never let him go. Her thought of me was condescending and perhaps
she had allowed me to read that one.

Gabriel said that he wished to discuss a
serious matter, ‘though it is probably best said in private,’ he said
apologetically to Lilah.

Lilah minded this rejection a great deal,
looking downcast and back at Arianne as she left, searching her thoughts but as
unsuccessfully as I. She was indeed a mystery, this human, either touched with
madness, or extremely clever at keeping most thoughts well buried.

Once departed, Gabriel faced me directly.

‘Arianne wants to become one of us.’

I was not shocked. I had been asked this before
but I was disappointed with Gabriel. It was not like him to dally with the
order of the species, a fact he had taken issue with me on occasion for my past
experiments.

‘Why?’

‘Because I want her to come and go
freely here to the castle with me and it would be safer.
She nearly died.’

‘You should have let her. It is not your right
to interfere.’ His face was passive, a confession of his crime of healing.

‘I could not bear to lose her. Next time I may
not be there in time,’ he said quietly.

 ‘The ritual is unpredictable,’ I said to
Arianne, expecting her to buckle under my scrutiny. ‘And what you are ignoring
is the fact that you have to die first. Your soul must leave your body. I
cannot guarantee it would return the same or altered in some way. Demons have a
habit of hovering around the bodies of humans on the brink of dying. They have
been known to take the opportunity to inhabit a soulless body.’

‘You do this for many others.’

‘I do this for
witches who are born with this rite of passage; their souls already strong, and
their blood filled with memories and knowledge, anticipating the awakening
should they choose immortality.
The change
is easy. What you are asking
me to do is very dangerous.’

‘But it has been done before, you said so!’
said Arianne defiantly to Gabriel.

 ‘Yes,
there
were
strigoi created from humans – a restless new breed,’
said Lewis. ‘We have none here any more. I had to kill them; creatures who
would indiscriminately kill, who would give us all away, who left traces of
themselves. You see a human mind is different from a witch. Human minds are
weak. They are not born for such gifts. These changes were merely experiments.’

I said this directly to Arianne and waited for
these words to reach her but was met with a look of indifference such that I
had never seen in a human. Having Gabriel had given her confidence and I became
unnerved by her unyielding gaze,
then
filled with
calculation and determination.

‘I will be different. I am far stronger than
you think.’

Arianne looked at Gabriel, her eyes softer now,
her
expression ingenuous. I could see for the first
time the effect she was having on him. He had weakened to her wishes for this
was a girl who had broken him in part, though how and why, I could not say. Her
character was intriguing but her charms did not work on me.

‘Lewis,’ said Gabriel. ‘I would not ask if I
did not think she was strong enough. Unlike you, I do not believe in demon
possession. It is a human’s will that determines their tolerance of such a
gift.’

Gabriel was not always intuitive, even intolerant
of many of the ancient teachings, but I could see some benefits with this
conversion. It would be an interesting case to study and record if indeed I did
agree. And if it did work, someone like Arianne may strengthen the coven. But
there was still something that held me back and I needed further persuasion.

I turned to Gabriel. ‘You know the risks are
great. If you care what happens to her then send her back to the monastery.
There are no wolves there!’ I did not need to read her mind to learn that the
scar came from such a beast.

There was a short laugh from the girl and for
the first time I caught a glimpse, so brief I could have missed it, of
something far more reckless and stubborn than I had seen of her before. She was
much like her father, Istavan, with a drive for power and unafraid of anyone
who stood in her way.

‘She can’t go back.’

‘It is where she belongs. Back with her own
kind. ‘

‘I want to make her my wife.’

It was my turn to laugh and I did not stop
quickly. The sound hurt the girl’s ears and she put her hands to them. This
short burst of pain did not deter her though. Instead, she looked angry.

‘You are aware of the fates of others who have
attempted this.’ I falsely hoped that this was how he wished to be rid of her.

‘Have you not always said that the strong ones
survive? Well I believe Arianne has the strength.’

I looked into the girl’s eyes. There was
arrogance in the way she folded her arms and raised her chin as if she already
knew I would do it. I could perhaps intentionally complete the process without
success and send her soul to darkness so that I never had to see her again. But
the experimentalist in me made me curious, combined with her oddness. She was a
challenge, which is why I agreed.

‘Are you aware of the risks?’ I directed at
her.

‘Yes. You both have told me that I could die.’
She did not have the look of someone who had any doubt. Gabriel’s eyes rested
on his seducer. How the tables had turned. There was a mixture of pride and
misgiving. I could see that he was the one with the doubt.

‘Not could, but will die. For your earthly self
has to die before you can be reincarnated.’

She nodded.

‘Very well.’ I said, for her life and death
meant nothing to me. My condition was, however, that Gabriel must remain
responsible for her actions. And I hoped this would deter him somewhat.

He nodded again, though again with a faint
flicker of doubt.

‘It will happen at the next full moon when the
strigoi’s powers are fullest. You are solely responsible for her. If she proves
a liability you must kill her.’

If the experiment did not work, it would be an
easy feat to quash the mistake. I dismissed them both and shot a disappointed
look at Gabriel. And if it didn’t work, then his philandering ways were about
to be tamed.

Gabriel

In my recurrent nightmare, Lilah was
dying and the only one who could save her was Arianne. I did not discount these
dreams for they meant something. There was no doubt that I was under Arianne’s
spell, but it was perhaps this dream that had opened me to her suggestion to
become one of us. It could not have been a coincidence that she asked the very
day after my restless night.

We had been living together for several months
and all the while I had been enjoying her earthly body and her mind, for she
was engaging, intelligent, spoke of subjects beyond her years and philosophised
about the universe. She stayed home while I hunted and had accepted this about
me without ever witnessing what I did. I had told her in detail and she once
asked if she could join me but I forbade it. Lilah was worried she would be
horrified with the reality of my life but all I saw was fascination.

We spent many hours talking, reclined on
lounges, entertaining one another with stories from our past. I liked the way
Arianne changed her voice to mimic some of the sisters or clerics and even her
mother. Sometimes I would take her on the long journey into town for supplies
even though I could get these faster on my own. But she relished the fresh air
nearly as much as me and liked the adventure of booking rooms at inns to spy on
the patrons, pointing at those who took her interest and keen to hear me
reading their thoughts.

In the weeks before I approached Lewis, I had
still not agreed to her suggestion. Then a blizzard came and I was hungry. It
had been days since my last feeding and I felt weakened. I did not like the
idea of leaving Arianne during such a fierce storm but pleased for her sake
that I had boarded up many of the holes in the walls.

That day, the shutters had rattled wildly and the
wind and shook the doors. I had killed a bear and Arianne had fashioned the fur
into a long coat. She wore only this while she stitched clothing by the fire
contentedly. She was extraordinarily appealing in the firelight the night I
left for my hunt. Long curled ribbons of hair hung around her small face and it
was difficult to leave her at such times.

‘Are you ever bored?’ Her days were filled with
domestic chores and decorating and I was remembering how busy she was at the
monastery. She seemed so happy then too. This ability to change and settle so
easily into another role bothered me a little – the fact that she had not
been true to her ideals. Though I could see that I was to blame for that
;
rarely was there a conquest I did not succeed with.

Extraordinarily, I found it more difficult to
read her thoughts, almost as if she could disguise them. Once I would have said
that only those with hysteria could do such a thing but she had changed this
theory for there seemed nothing mad about her except for her voracious appetite
for life.

‘Never,’ she said calmly. ‘This is probably the
life my parents robbed me of in the first place. A life with a man.’

I nodded solemnly. Had she grown up with
nurturing parents she would have perhaps found love easily. Ironically, the
cloister had been her escape.

‘You must go,’ she said. ‘You need to build up
your strength.’

She rubbed her hand across my chest. ‘You are
feeling too bony.’

I pulled her to me and standing before the fire
I reached beneath the coat to feel the warmth of her skin. I kissed her but she
pulled away playfully.

‘Go,’ she said cheekily.
‘If
you don’t leave now another day will go by and you will be even paler and
scrawnier.
You need more colour to your flesh.’

I did as she
wished, reluctantly. I went out into the blizzard. Large flakes of snow whipped
around my body in swirls from various directions, and though it was the middle
of the day, the sky was as dark as evening. I wore a thin silk shirt open at
the neck, loose cloth trouser, and supple leather boots not meant for winter.
Such weather is an ally to the strigoi – our
prey weakened, lethargic, and inactive.

At the edge of a village far away from our
home, doors were closed to the winds. I walked through its centre listening to
the voices within and came across my mark. Inside was the shouting of a man
drunk on beer and the smashing of clay pots. Inside my mind, I brought forth
the image within the hut.

‘Where is another one?’

The wife replied that she didn’t have another
pot of beer, and three small children huddled on a cot in the corner. The woman
had moved in front of them but the man pushed her aside to pick up one of the
children. The mother screamed to let the child go.

‘Go outside,’ he roared to the smaller one. ‘It
is because of you we have no money for beer. Get out brat!’

The child was thrown from the doorway and the
door slammed behind. The woman sobbed inside begging to retrieve the child but
the man paced menacingly. His thoughts said that he was not finished with his
punishments and the beer muddled his reasoning.

The child, a boy, lay face down in freshly
fallen snow. He had a cotton jacket and trousers too small for him and no
shoes, and would surely die if left too long exposed. He stood up, rubbed his
head, and looked around him. There were no tears or wails as he searched the
various doorways wondering which one to go to for warmth but surprised me when
he turned to head into the forest.

I followed him for a while curious to see what
this small human would do. He staggered slightly, his legs too small for the
two foot
blanket of snow. It was then he sat down and lent
against a familiar tree. He closed his eyes to go to sleep, perhaps later he
would return after his father had fallen into another drunken slumber. Perhaps
he was hoping for a more permanent sleep. I became worried that he would die
from the cold so I stepped forward. My boots did not make a sound but as I got
closer he sensed my presence and his eyes flew open. Human children were in
touch with their other senses, which
faded
as they
grew older.

The boy, of about four in
age
,
looked at me deciding whether to run. Then unconcerned he turned his head
waiting for me to go
;
expecting no charity.

‘Are you cold?’

The question threw him and he nodded
cautiously. ‘And I’m hungry. I have not had anything since yesterday.’

I took off my light silk shirt and wrapped it
around him. I waved my hand and several branches broke free from the trees to
knit by magic and form a perfect pyre. I waved my hand over the wood and a
small fire blazed.