Lilah (23 page)

‘Please help!’  But Gabriel stood there
unmoving.

‘Out of the way!’ said Lewis, pushing Gabriel
aside.

It is still a mystery why Lewis helped but he
did, perhaps to prove his power
;
perhaps to win my
favour. What I cannot deny is that the healing he performed that night sealed
Lewis’s own fate; something he did not foresee. His incantation brought back a
small vapour that streamed into Claude’s mouth.

‘He is no longer human, just remember that,’ he
said. ‘Next time you call us disgusting look upon this boy’s face.’

Gabriel had left the room. I did not see him
go.

Lewis clapped his hand and several servants
appeared from the darkness. ‘Bring one of the animals.’

‘Do not judge Gabriel too harshly,’ said Lewis
calmly, devoid of any feeling. ‘It is not our rights as strigoi to heal a sick
human, even a child. It is for the best that this relationship never change,
that we do not weaken with empathy for those lesser born.’

‘Then why convert a human if you ‘do not want
to interfere with the natural order of things.’

‘When it is for our continuation…well, that is
another matter. For the good of our future these experiments will give us more
knowledge.’

I held Claude’s hand for he was whimpering and
holding his stomach. I did not need to ask but knew that these were the most
severe hunger pains.

‘But you told me they rarely succeed,’ I said,
defeated now by what was done, and which I could not undo.

‘This one perhaps was special. It was for
Gabriel alone so that he can learn from his mistake.’

I wanted to ask why Gabriel was being punished
but the servant returned with the lamb.

I noticed with horror that Claude now had
incisors. Lewis bit down on the neck releasing the blood and then the boy
seemed to instinctively know what to do. He sucked at the neck of the lamb
until, with legs buckled, it fell to one side. Then he slumped to the floor, in
wonder and horror at what he’d become.

Gabriel

I tracked her through the forest
listening to her growl like an animal.

When I had taken her blood I had seen things
from her past that I did not like. I saw what her father did to her, how he
beat her and made her do things that not even a wife should endure. I saw her
time at the monastery and images of little Lilah always in her wake. I was
exposed to her innermost thoughts and these disturbed me. There was blackness
there: a dark muddy infection inside her that had been distant and hidden deep
within her. I could see when I drank her blood that this sickness was unlike the
physical kind
;
not apparent even to herself.

I also saw her need for greatness. I saw
possession
towards me and jealousy of Lilah
. In the
early days there had been a strong desire to parent the small child but this
had been replaced by rivalry. I feared for Lewis’s young protégé.

I followed the tracks. She had already torn
apart a small rodent, the remains of which were scattered across the forest
floor. She was faster than normal for someone new to the craft. Had I made a
mistake? Could she have been touched by something out of my control? And in the
back of my mind I wondered whether I could really kill her if it came to it. I
had never killed another of my own kind before, witch or otherwise. Such tasks
were left to others.

She led me to a stream where ice had begun to
form along its rim. An
ear piercing
cry cut through
the still air and I ran along the bank of the creek towards the sound. Arianne
was bent over a man while his wife and baby stood helplessly by. She was
draining every vestige of life from the man and, by the time I had reached her,
leaving just an empty shell. She still held tight to him as if I might take him
away.

‘Enough,’ I commanded, and as I approached she
crouched like a wild beast, her fangs exposed.

Never in my two hundred years had I seen such
an instinctive violent response from my own kind, much less my beloved. Most
started with animals, tentatively adjusting to the new hunger in their
bodies.  She tossed the remains aside and turned towards the woman who
stood in the shallow part of the creek, her skirts drenched. The woman had
thought to cross the creek to run but could not find it in her heart to leave
her husband.

Arianne was about to step into the water when
she suddenly collapsed onto the ground in a still heap. Believing me to be an
accomplice, the woman turned her attention to me and screamed in terror, this
time attempting to cross to the other side of the creek. The child in her arms
made it difficult and she fell forward into the water. Torn from her arms, the
baby was cast further along in the freezing rapids. It took only moments for me
to swim and collect the drowning child. Still petrified with fear, the woman,
with arms outstretched, beseeched me to give back her baby. Clutching its
sodden form, she trembled badly as I helped her from the water. She held the
child away from me as far as she could, never once taking her eyes from my hand
on her arm to steady her.

Once back on land I knew what had to be done.
This was not a mess that Lewis would have condoned. Everything we did must be
concealed. It must appear that we have never been anywhere.

I touched the woman’s temples and she instantly
fell asleep with her baby supported in my arms. With the magical heat from my
hand I erased all that she had witnessed in these moments. I carried her then
to a cottage nearby, placing her limp form on a cot, to dry near the hearth,
with the baby beside her.

She would wake, with only the memory of the
previous night believing that her husband – whose bones had been buried
deep in the ground – had left early, to never return.

Arianne was nowhere to be seen. I suspected, or
rather hoped that she had returned to our house for it was clear what I must
do. A huge sadness overcame me. We would never be together and the power had
made her mad as Lewis suspected. There were two choices. I could hand the rabid
creature over to Lewis or I could kill her myself.

I thought of Lilah’s face. Perhaps Lewis was
right. I made spontaneous decisions that were not always the best for our kind.
How would I face Lilah knowing what I had agreed to?

Returning to our house, I sensed that Arianne
had already returned. Inside our bedroom, she was reclined in a bath, the water
a faint pink from her kills. Her teeth had returned to normal and she smiled
serenely as if all that had happened had been imaginings only. I walked toward
her cautiously watching her lather her shoulders with soap.

‘Come!’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Sit
with me’

I sat down cautiously on the edge of the bath.

‘Did you think you had come to kill me?’ she
said calmly. ‘Don’t look so surprised. I knew that Lewis planned to kill me if
the
change
did not work.’

I said nothing.

‘It won’t be necessary,’ she said casually.
‘You see it was just a moment of madness. It was like a fire had been lit
within my belly and a heavy cloud had descended on me. I was overcome with a
terrible thirst that had to be quenched and all I could think to do was run
until it passed. Then I smelled blood and was so drawn to it as if there was
nothing else that mattered…’ She frowned remembering. ‘And after I had drained
that man of his blood, it was if the clouds had parted. I have never felt this
good.’

The youthful sweetness in her expression and
her earnest account made her seem blameless and this unexpected change confused
me. Murder was now far from my thoughts replaced by the sudden need to defend
her.

‘We have to be careful…’

‘Yes, I know,’ she interrupted. ‘You’ve told me
the rules. Do not harm the virtuous. Only take from the worst kind of human.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. Arianne had
returned to me.

‘I know I made mistake. I took a life I had no
right to.’

‘And Claude?’

‘Lilah would have made sure he lived. I knew
that. It was why I agreed to have her there.’

Arianne looked at me. I had to believe her for
the sake of us both and for Lilah.

 ‘I always loved that boy. I would have
begged you to heal him if not for what I did. You have to believe that. But it
was my way of staging the event to bring him there since I knew you would not
agree to cure him.’

‘You didn’t tell me he was a friend of yours,
and Lilah’s. You lied about the boy. You could have fed from an animal.’

‘Yes, but you yourself said that to take a
human first is usually best.’

She had told me that she barely knew the boy
who we discovered lying on the side of the road, full of disease. I had not
recognised him from the monastery, so grey was his face, his hair matted with
soil and grease. Arianne had also said that he had left the monastery weeks earlier
of his own free will to run with a group of wild boys who beat old beggars on
the street. The only truth I could confirm was that he was indeed fatally ill
when we found him.

She drew me towards her, and though there was
no resistance on my part, all I could see was Lilah’s face now and the hope
that she would forgive me in time. I did not fail to notice that the scar on
her face may have paled but had not been cured by
the change
.

Lilah

It was months since
the change
.
Each night I lay in fear for Arianne, and Gabriel did not come to the castle
now that the relationship with Lewis was strained. I trusted
no-one
.

Over coming weeks more witches were brought to
the castle. They had each been given rooms in the wing where I stayed; though
none so privileged in a room like mine, with free access to Lewis’s library.
Several communal rooms were open to allow them to dine together and learn about
their history and craft, as I had done, but from only a handful of books
selected by Lewis.

Often I wondered what was to become of us.
Gabriel told me the castle was a place to learn but what then? What followed?
Did I go back to a life before with my newly acquired knowledge? I questioned
whether Gabriel had ever been my friend or simply recruiting all along. And I have
often wondered whether it was Arianne he really wanted; that I had been part of
an elaborate plan to win her favour.

There were whisperings coming from the other
witches in the breakfast room, and they quietened when I entered.  Most of
the witches were amiable, with the exception of one in particular: Neve was a
nasty gossip
who
sought the attentions of many male
strigoi with plans to marry. After an awkward silence during the meal, she then
told me brazenly what the group had just been talking about.

It seemed that Arianne was running wild and
Gabriel was having a hard time taming her. She laughed when I looked openly
shocked.

‘Friendship, my dear, is as thin as ice
especially in our circles.’

I did not dispute that but waited quietly while
Irene served me bread and cheese, and remembered humbly how I had once been on
the other side of the service table in Emil’s house. There were times I wished
for a servant’s simple life without the burden of my craft. Some hope had left
me the night of Arianne’s conversion.

‘Do you want to know what else we heard?’ She
did not wait for my response. ‘That Gabriel is half the man he was. She has
reduced him to her servant.’

The piece of bread I had placed in my mouth
created a large lump in my throat, making it difficult to swallow.

‘What is wrong pretty lady?’ asked Neve, in a
falsely servile manner, and placing extra cheese on my plate. ‘Are you not
hungry?’

‘No,’ I muttered praying that I would hear no
more on the topic of Arianne.

‘It is quite unusual for a strigoi to marry
anyone else than a witch but apparently the man-creature is besotted despite
Arianne’s insatiable appetite for blood.’

I felt my stomach lurch and stood up as
graciously as possible. I heard more twitters and whisperings as I left the
room.

Several strigoi lounged in the foyer and nodded
towards me. They were not like Gabriel who did not conform to ideals that
witches were lesser species, even though we had the same blood. The space
between us was vast, cold and suspicious; our separate wings a clear divide of
our differences. Theirs was a world I would not experience and Gabriel had at
least promised me that.

I slipped into the library and browsed the
ancient bound books, which covered Lewis’s desk, placed there for my studies.
But the books I sought would not be found there that day. I climbed a ladder to
search the writing on the spines of others until I recognised one of the
titles.

So far in my secret studies I had discovered
that witches could be converted to the strigoi by simply drinking human blood.
Though this method was considered laborious, and mostly unsuccessful; due to
the length of time and unnecessary malady the witch endured over several weeks,
it was not favoured over the one I had witnessed performed on Arianne.