Lilah (20 page)

I sat down next to him and he made no move to
go instead, looking at me through widened eyes as if I were an apparition. He
did not know what to make of me but I saw stories of wild magical beasts fill
his head along with a mixture of relief for the warmth.

I dug my hand deep in the ground. When I pulled
it out there were some roots. I pulled a small branch from the tree to roast
them, and watched the skin blacken.
After a time I handed him
the stick.
He nibbled at the vegetables still eyeing me cautiously, as
if I might disappear as quickly as I had appeared.

‘That’s a nice stick,’ he said eyeing my silver
cane enviously.

I handed it to him and he rubbed his hardened
little hands along its smoothness.

‘Do you want to return home to your mother?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t ‘til it’s dark.’

‘Do you want it so that you don’t have to leave
your home again to sit in the cold?’

‘Yes,’ he said directly, his interest piqued.

*

When the boy knocked on his door,
the mother opened it to collect her son but the father pushed her aside. He
stood in a rage, his fists clenching.

‘There is a man who wants to talk to you.’ the
young boy said, pointing toward the forest.

‘What does he want?’ he asked gruffly.

‘He says he needs somewhere to sleep, and he is
hurt.’

‘Tell him to find a whorehouse!’

He was about to shut the door but noticed the
boy held something of value. The man grabbed at my walking stick and weighed it
in his hand.

‘He says he has plenty of coin to pay you,’
said the boy.

The father opened the door again and squinted
in my direction. He could not make me out clearly for I was leaning against a
tree, separated by a wall of fine mist.

‘Get inside,’ the man ordered the boy and took
off in my direction.

I was still shirtless, the sleet falling
gloriously on my bare shoulders as I turned to walk deeper between the narrow
tree walls.

‘Where are you going? Wait up you moron.’

I put on a fake gait so that my pace was slow
and he easily caught up. I mumbled something as if in high fever and then fell
to the ground. It was just the right bait. He bent down to feel inside my
trouser for money and when he couldn’t find any, he kicked me hard in the
stomach.

‘Die in the
snow
,
you lying dog.’

There was the dilemma. I was about to kill the
man who tormented his family, yet without them they may starve for he was no
doubt a hunter and provided them with the necessities of life. How many times
had I questioned this type of kill yet always came upon the same answer. It was
best that they had half a chance than none at all.

I sat up as he walked away. ‘You forgot this?’

He turned surprised at my clear speech. I held
up a bag of gold in my hand.

‘Give me that you bastard.’

‘Why? Are you planning to lend me a feathered
bed to sleep?’

‘Not fucking likely but I will happily take
your money.’ He pulled out a blunt knife and stepped towards me.

As he went for my heart I grabbed him by his
collar and flipped him to the ground. He looked surprised at my strength. For
Arianne was right. I had grown bony these past weeks and looked an easy mark
for those not seeking a challenging fight.

My teeth were instinctively drawn to the
greasy, wrinkled flesh of his neck and one puncture from my incisors and blood
poured into my mouth so quickly it dribbled from the corners. It tasted
blissfully good and I did not realise how hungry I had grown. Like a ravenous
beast I ate ferociously until the man went light and limp.  There was no
question that I would take his soul. It had been months since I had taken one
but perhaps in my delirious greedy state I wanted to take everything I could
from this man. At his final breath I placed my lips just near his and inhaled.
Vapours burnt the sides of my throat and into my lungs but the feeling was so
invigorating I felt as if time had stood still long enough for me to float to
the sky and back.

I lay down for a period, I do not know for how
long, savouring the experience. Could I ever stop taking a soul? Was I fooling
myself that one day I would give up this drug? I had lied to Lilah. This
unlawful act made hunting so much more enjoyable.  I was indeed a
hypocrite, pretending that it didn’t matter, and annoyed that Lewis had ruled
out the practice. It did not worry me that we needed to sleep more because of
it. In fact sleeping for a decade every so often was better than one hundred
years.

I buried his husk deeply covering any trace of
me then returned to the boy’s house and knocked once. By the time they had answered
and discovered the bag of gold on the doorstep, I was half a mile gone.

I wandered in the direction of my home still
with an emptiness not unlike a human has for hunger and found an old Romani
woman lying in a tent made from doe skin, which barely covered the length of
her; her feet buried in snowfall.
She had been abandoned by
her family of drifters
perhaps because she was gravely ill. I bent near
her to listen to the strength of her heart and she smiled a toothless smile,
her long grey hair pulled back into a tail tied with leather. She was still
wrapped in furs. The family was not completely heartless and perhaps she had
volunteered to stay so that the younger ones could be fed her portions.

‘I knew you would come.’

Gypsies knew we existed and appeared to know
many of our secrets. They were the ones to tell the stories of us around their
campfires to keep their children close, and we left them alone for the most
part. Perhaps one of their stories told why they kept their distance
;
their suspicions being justified that we would come for
them if they did not look after their own.

I bent down towards her neck for there was
nothing left but to die of cold hunger and disease. As my mouth found her neck
she whispered ‘thank you’. I drained her blood and saw the generations who went
before her travelling in summer, the colour of the clothes, the jingling of
their earring and bags of trinkets that they sold. I saw her as a small child
dancing in long floating skirts around the fire, her parents and relatives
clapping on. I heard the sounds of her screaming as she lay in a thicket
watching the sun lowering behind the trees, while her baby was placed into her
arms, covered in blood and mucus and laid on her chest.

I saw her dancing naked and comely, ample breasts
swaying with the music, watched by a pleased and lusting husband. All these
passed through me in an instant. The final seconds of her life and many others
were the sweetest and also the saddest for these souls that finished their
lifetimes too early. I would most certainly leave her soul to find a life
everlasting. I had just finished the last of her blood when there was a shriek
that made me jerk my head back in fear, the sudden disconnection from rapture
making me slightly dizzy.

The scream made the back of my neck tingle. It
came from many miles away far beyond the reach of the old lady’s ears, had she
lived.

My feet barely touched the ground as I sped
effortlessly weaving between the trees, not a trace of my footstep to be seen.
In the silence of the forest, I heard the crack of a twig in the distance and
the sense that a creature was in great pain.

I could smell human blood. Something bad had
happened to Arianne. My teeth gritted, dried blood on the sides of my chin from
my last kill had not been wiped away,
so
much was my
haste.

I could see and hear the sounds of movement and
then I was upon it. Two wolves were pulling at her limbs. The crack I had heard
was not a twig but her arm. Arianne groaned; only
breaths
away from death. Her clothes were shredded
;
her body
bleeding from several scratches and bite marks, and a gouge from a claw across
her cheek.

The wolves stood and looked at me a moment. I
could have killed them both for taking something that was mine but it was their
nature as much as it was mine. In this way we were brothers, sharing some
beastly bond in our frenzied lust for blood. It took them seconds to realise
they were now dealing with something they could not fight and they backed away
reluctantly before running deeper into the forest.

I sealed some of Arianne’s wounds, the worst
ones at her neck and torso,
then
carried her nearly
lifeless body back to our house. I laid her on the fur rug in front of the fire
and removed the clothes that had been turned to strips. Pieces of flesh hung from
her body. Her cheek was split and some of the skin was missing, the raw flesh
exposed.

I cried some blood tears, blinding me, before I
gained my control again. Her breath was shallow, her lung punctured.

With my hands I spread the heat into her body
sealing up the tear in her lung. I drew the bones in her arm together fitting
them like pieces of a puzzle. When I had healed her internally I carefully
sealed the lacerated skin on her body and limbs.

Finally, I began the repair of her face. I was
wretched by this stage, barely able to raise my head up. Had I fed regularly I
would not have been so weak. Never again would I wait so long to take
sustenance. Perhaps this painful event would not have happened. In many ways I
blamed myself for the events that lay ahead.

When I had finished working on her body I began
to repair her face. The healing warmth in my hands came from deep within me,
pulling at every muscle, and every last bit of strength to stretch and seal the
skin. With no more left in me I surveyed my work. She was breathing evenly and
I had put her into a restful sleep.

I threw her torn garments into the fire and
bathed her with water scented with crushed roses to remove every trace of blood
so that she would never have to see what had been done to her. There was one
reminder that I could never remove now that the time for healing had past.

As I lifted her onto the bed she spoke softly.

‘I can never be safe unless I am one of you.’

‘No, my darling.
That is not the solution. I will
just have to take you everywhere so that I can keep an eye on you.’

She rolled over and fell deeper into a sleep. I
crawled in next to her and that is all that I remember for several days, for it
had been a long time since I had used my healing skills to such an extent. I
had again broken the strigoi vow to save a human and I would gladly suffer any
punishment to keep Arianne in my life.

When I woke it was afternoon. I still felt weak
and knew I must feed that day to replenish all that I had lost. Sleep was not
enough. The smell of baking bread drew me to the galley in search of Arianne
but there was no sight of her. Outside, beads of ice had again begun to fall. I
stepped out into the grey to search for her but she appeared from the forest
carrying bundles of twigs and branches. Despite her near-death experience she
seemed unaffected. She did not reward me with a smile but stepped around me as
if I was not there. I followed her inside

‘You should not have gone out.’

‘I was bored. You were sleeping and I could not
wake you. What else was I going to do?’

It was a tone from her that I had never heard
before.

‘I was worried.’

She looked at me for the first time and smiled
and I felt relieved, though the smile quickly faded as if she remembered
something. She walked to a long mirror and surveyed her face.

 ‘You didn’t heal it properly.’

It sounded more an accusation than a statement.

‘I’m sorry there were so many… you were in
danger of dying. Your potentially fatal wounds had to be healed to save your life.
You must understand that I tried. I healed for hours until I could do no more.’

‘Can you try again?’

‘I cannot repair the same wound twice, it does
not work.’

‘You should have been feeding more regularly.’

I walked up behind her and put my arms around
her from behind. ‘Like I said, I am sorry.’

But she pulled away from me. It was the first
time she had ever done that and it confused me. Rejection was not something I
had known before.

‘You must consider what I asked you. I want to
become one of you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then this is what might become of me? An ugly
scarred aging woman.’

‘But you are still beautiful to me.’

‘I want more than that.’

‘Beauty was not even a consideration at the
monastery. Why should your vanity be so important to you now?’

‘I am a different person now. I am not that
girl you spied upon in the gardens.’

Something had changed that day. A thread
between us had broken and the fibres within her had begun to fray. Perhaps her
madness was there all along waiting for an event to draw it out. And now my
initial infatuation had been replaced by something else that drove me to grant
her wishes. Guilt.
Guilt that I could not have prevented the
suffering.