Summary:
Carlisle, a minister's son in 1664 London, is left dying on the street, his body awash with invisible fire that sears him from within. In desperation, he crawls into a cellar and waits for death to take him.
Or, How Carlisle Learns Being Un-Dead Isn't Necessarily The Worst.
Notes:
Greetings, gentle reader!
A few notes on some of the choices I made writing this. I wound up reading a (short) book about Stuart London while prepping for this. The first thing I was surprised to learn is that there weren't any sewers in 1664 London. (Whoops!) Instead, I've made the London vampires industrious diggers. Also, as religion is a big deal to the average 1664 Londoner, Carlisle is vocally on the God Squad. I've abused google for fitting Bible passages. It is not my intention to make any sort of religious statement through this story. On language, I wanted a style that sort-of evoked 1660s English without the headache of actually trying to write like that. I think I landed somewhere near Regency English. I hope it enhances the story and doesn't distract from it. (Fingers crossed!) I tried to stick to the account Carlisle gives in the books, but I've definitely taken some liberties.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoy! Please leave a comment if you liked it!
Cursed by evil, flame consumed my flesh from within. The searing heat scorched my vital organs as if I had been roped to a pyre.
I lay in the narrow street, surrounded on both sides by overhanging houses and their slumbering occupants, struggling not to scream. I felt as if my very teeth were cracking under the effort. Even in my agony, I knew exactly what foul thing had been done to me. The bite on my shoulder pulsed with every labored beat of my breast.
The creature we'd hunted, that merciless issue of Hell, had passed her curse to me. Within days, dear God, maybe less, I would awaken as one of them: pitiless, soulless, and with only an overpowering thirst to fill the void within.
Dimly, as though from a great distance, I heard voices and footfalls. The flicker of torchlight shone on one of the houses at the end of the row. Vaguely, I realized it was my name the voices called, their tone high and fearful. Samuel and one of the others, Joseph perhaps.
I opened my lips to call to them, but naught but a pained and feeble croak issued out. My voice too was lost to the fire that scorched me.
Their voices faded and the torchlight with it. My eyes watered and I longed desperately for their return. Samuel would help. He would know how to put out the fire in my veins. He would…
A sudden, terrible thought struck me. Samuel may find me, but he would certainly not come to my aid. Samuel would know me for the monster I was becoming. He would put an end to me.
My heart galloped along with my thoughts. If my friends were to find me, death would be my only comfort. I had to flee!
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.
No, no. It would be better for them to find me. Better to die now while I still may enter heaven. I blinked my tears away and tried to call again, but this time my lips would not even part. A cold fear froze them even as unseen fire surely blistered the flesh. Still, I could not call out. Cowardice had stayed me. It was better to die, but I wanted to live.
Fear gave me strength, and even through the flame I rolled myself onto my belly and crawled. Every motion was torment. I felt certain my skin must have blackened and sloughed away from the heat, but when I caught site of my hands, they were unchanged save for streaks of my own blood and the filth of the street.
I pulled myself along, nails digging into cobblestones, desperation nipping my heels. A cellar was my refuge. I scrabbled at the bolt and by some miracle it was poorly made and rusted. It broke away from the wood and I pried the door up.
It was dark inside, but the fire in my core had near taken my sight anyway and I scarcely peered into the darkness before slithering in. The ladder was beyond my ability and I tumbled harshly to the floor. My voice returned, and I screamed at the agony of the impact. By an act of mercy, the cellar door fell into place above me, concealing my entry.
The cellar was impenetrably black. I grasped around in the dark. I needed to hide. Samuel would not be put off by a mere cellar door. I needed to conceal myself.
My hand brushed against a familiar roughness: a hempen sack. I tried to pull it to me, but it was weighed down by its contents. Groaning, I pulled my wretched form over to it and clambered over. I wedged myself between the sacks and the cool earth of the cellar, shifting the fabric as best I could to hide myself.
My work done, I laid my head against the dirt. Though I had been fleeing death, this quite grave had found me none the less. All that was left was to let the fire burn me to ashes.
"What have you there, young Mr. Cullen?"
I'd only managed to get ten steps from my front door. I turned, smiling, though I knew the coming conversation would cause me significant delay.
The familiar, wide face of Mrs. Lowell, known as Patty by most in the parish, watched me keenly from her post at the stoop of her townhouse. She held a broom in one hand, although everyone knew her true purpose was in observing the comings and goings of her neighbors.
"Good morning, Mrs. Lowell. Only breakfast, I'm afraid," I said, holding up the linen bundle. "I'm a bit behind, so I had Cook warp it for me."
"It's not her turkey pie, is it? That won't keep in just a cloth." Patty put aside her broom and moved in, seemingly oblivious to my hint about running late.
"No pie. A bit of bread with cheese." She nodded approvingly, wiping her hands in her apron.
"A thin breakfast, but good for getting along quickly. You'll come by later, and I'll have some of my beef stew for you. Your father, as well, if he's inclined," she said, her wrinkling face shifting into an expression of authority. I nodded, not willing to question one of Patty's orders so early in the day. She seemed pleased, and I knew this was my moment to escape.
"Well, it was—"
"Nan! Nan!" A tiny girl shot from the house, arms outstretched, chased by their playful terrier. Patty spring into action and lifted the child onto her hip. The terrier took to circling her, tail wagging as it gazed up at the child.
"Ms. Hannah!" I said, utterly delighted. The child was Patty's granddaughter and I had never met a babe as sweet and lively as this little girl. Though it would not do to say aloud, I adored her most of all the children in my father's flock. She looked over at me, big green eyes growing even wider.
"Meer Cunnen!" she exclaimed.
"That's right, love! Mr. Cullen," Patty cooed, bouncing the girl on her hip. Wisps of hair escaped her little bonnet and fluttered in the spring breeze. She held her small, chubby arms out for me and I felt charmed by her all over again. "You'll come by later and say a proper hello to Hannah too, Mr. Cullen. When you stop by for your stew."
"That I will, Mrs. Lowell."
I could smell the earth. Rich and deep, like soil after it's just been tilled. Earthworms and rain. The ground was dry against my cheek, a thick layer of dust and dirt, but not an unpleasant sensation. I could hear sounds of the street. So clear, it seemed like the footsteps must just be missing my head.
I blinked my eyes open, reaching up from custom to rub the grit from them, but finding nothing but dirt clinging to my lashes. I looked around. The room was peculiarly lit, as if the sun shone upon it through clouds, though no window or opening existed to let light issue through.
I saw now that I was surrounded by sacks of potatoes and had managed to pull one over top of my body. Reaching out, I pushed at the sack intending to roll it from me. Instead, the whole parcel flew into the air and across the cellar as easily as a maid might throw a pillow. I sat frozen, dumbstruck by this unprecedented happening.
Slowly, creeping awareness stole over me and I remembered with horror the reason for my sudden strength. I shot to my feet, almost unsteady with my swiftness.
It was then I first felt the thirst.
It started like a scratch at the back of my throat that fanned into an ember. It was still nowhere the excruciating agony of the past days' fire, but it simmered away as a constant ill presence.
I moved to the cellar door, finding myself there faster than thought or time, and peered up through a slivered gap where the boards did not sit flush. Bright orange light, the brilliance of a sunset, spilled across the distant sky. I jerked back in fear, feeling the wall of the cellar against my back before I was conscious of having moved at all.
Curiously, my eye did not burn or sting the way I'd expected. Every good account said the vampire was a night-dwelling devil, so foul that the pure rays of the sun would reduce such a fiend to ash upon the slightest brush. Perhaps greater exposure to the sun was needed for such an effect. I was unwilling to try again to find out for certain and instead huddled myself into the corner and watched as the little strip of light faded from orange to blue and then finally to black.
The noise from the street had long faded, as had that faint and utterly maddening odor which had on several occasions nearly driven me from my seclusion with its succulent allure. I had to bury my face in the earthen wall and bite down on the sleeve of my coat until the delicious perfume had passed. By the end of the evening, my coat sleeve was reduced to tattered strips of wool.
As night at last came, I crept – still startling in my swiftness—to the door and eased it gradually open, being careful of my monstrous strength. The street was blessedly empty. With alarm, I realized I could hear people going about their nights inside their homes from my position.
Out in the open it was easier to smell the city, and I had never been thankful for the reek of London streets before, but in that instant, they were a gift from Almighty God. The stench of rotting rubbish and waste –provided in such copious measure by emptied chamber pots, un-tended cesspits, and the cities plentitude of horses— was so overpowering that it masked any wayward hints of the distracting, tantalizing smell that sought to lure me into sleeping homes.
I came to an intersection and wavered there under the flickering streetlight, unsure of my next course. I didn't dare return home. My father, aged as he was, would know me instantly to be an agent of Satan and would do his best to dispatch me. Samuel, Joseph, and the others would likewise do the same. I was not fit for people anyway. I was less than an animal now, and I needed to get far from good folk before I gave over to evil and devoured them.
My father's men and I had found the coven of vampires in a system of tunnels that ran beneath the city. We had been hopelessly outmatched, and the devils had torn the unlucky ones to shreds. Although, given my current condition, I began to think that perhaps even those poor souls had been more fortunate than I. They, at least, were with God.
I could run from cellar to cellar until I reached the woods. Or perhaps dig tunnels of my own the way the coven had. Yet, what kind of existence would that be? Running from man and God, hiding until morality abandoned me and I killed to slake my burning throat. It was a cursed existence. I could not think what to do next and hopelessness overwhelmed me.
At that moment, a night-soil man turned the corner with his cart. He trundled along toward me, and I was too overcome with surprise and indecision to flee. He noticed me, and I saw his eyes go wide and his mouth drop open, an expression resembling awe passing over his work-stained face.
I could smell him. Even through the refuse that coated his gloves and piled high in his cart, I could smell him. It was mouth-watering. Like a Christmas roast, no, far more delectable than any food could possibly hope to be. Savory and rich, promising a taste beyond mortal description.
The hellfire returned, and I realized it had never left me at all, merely concentrated itself in my throat, scorching me with the intensity of my thirst.
"Ah- ah- ah…" The man was stuttering, gaping at me like a fish on a line. I took a step toward him. There was a hint of sweet to the smell that I hadn't caught at first. Chocolate? Or cinnamon? My teeth ached.
"An angel," the man whispered.
I flinched. Then, aware of the horror I had nearly wrought, I turned and fled blindly, passing so fast that I was nearly too far to hear him when he called after me. I held my breath and ran, feeling every inch of the wretched curse pounding through my very being. I ran and ran, faster than any horse, the speed of an unnatural spirit, until I collapsed against stone, not from physical exhaustion for I felt not even a little winded, but from emotional anguish. I sank against the stone, letting sobs wrack me.
Misery was my only future now. I had been rent from God's grace, and but a moment ago had nearly slain an innocent man. I curled up like a child, the way I had not done since my youth, and cried.
Some time must have passed with me insensate to the world beyond my own despair. When I came to my senses, it was apparent that in my blind panic I had run to the one place I felt safest: my father's church. I was curled against the back wall, having apparently jumped the fence in my flight, nestled between the two bedraggled boxwood shrubs.
My instincts had served me well. No one would be here at this time, and I had unwittingly delivered myself to a perfect solution to my untenable problem. For no creature of Satan could safely tread upon God's own ground and as soon as I set foot into the church, I was sure to be struck dead. It seemed an obvious answer now that I had come upon it. To avoid an eternity of spreading evil over the earth, I would simply correct what I had been too cowardly to do before: I would seek my death.
Rising to my feet, I moved round towards that church doors, forcing myself to step with an exaggerated slowness matching what best I could remember as my former pace. I would die as close to a man as I could.
The doors were locked, but it was a mere flick of the wrist to break the bar and set it aside. I had a thought that thieves might get in, but it was better my father suffer a robbery in the night than I bring harm to another living creature by delaying. I pulled the door out and saw, for the last time, my little London church.
From just outside the threshold, I took in the neat wooden pews, silver in the moonlight. The alter stood a little above them at the far end, and behind it the large wooden cross we'd commissioned just two years ago.
I clasped my hands before me and closed my eyes.
"Eternal Lord God, Heavenly Father, I know not if you will hear a prayer from such as I. I only beg for your mercy and forgiveness. If I am still yours, I pray you strike me down and send my spirit to where it is best suited. You are just and powerful. Watch over my father in his remaining years. Defend him and his flock against the unnatural and those that seek to harm them…"
Little Hannah, her wispy yellow hair, reaching her small arms out to me. She was clear to me as if she stood before my very eyes. Though I had no breath left to steal, the sensation of breathlessness gripped me fast. I stuttered and could not continue my prayer. I looked again into the peaceful quiet of the church, a place I had grown up in and spent so much of my time.
"Lord Christ, have mercy upon me. In Your name, Amen." My last desperate entreaty delivered, I stepped over the threshold and onto hallowed ground.
The sole of my boot echoed like a drumbeat, ringing in my ears. I waited, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to move at all, as perfectly still as a statue. Expectant.
Nothing happened. A pig screamed in some distant sty, startling me. I took another step forward, both feet on the stone floor of the church. Bewildered, I gazed helplessly around, completely at a loss. I walked haltingly toward the alter, flinching at every distant sound, still waiting for the Almighty blow that would destroy me. Upon reaching the alter, I stopped again. Spying the bible on the pulpit I rushed –inhumanly fast—over to it and immediately laid my hand upon its cover.
Incomprehensibly, the only burning I experienced came from my parched throat. I started in consternation at the holy book. How was I not being punished for bringing evil into God's house? Like Uzzah touching the Arc of the Covenant with an unclean hand, God should strike me down for my trespass. I was a monster. A creature birthed from fire and death who longed only to drink the nectar of violence. I could never again be clean in God's sight.
I had, once more, not a single idea of what to do. I sat down in the front row pew and stared up at the cross.
Was it even possible I still possessed my soul? The idea was shocking, and I rejected it right away. I had never once heard of a vampire, werewolf, witch, or shapeshifter living by God's law and doing good upon the world. If the creatures had souls, then surely one at least would have come to God's grace.
Then again, I wasn't entirely certain that there wasn't a goodly monster. Such a creature may have been killed by its fellows or may have sought its own destruction before it could bring harm on others. Perhaps there was still a chance. Perhaps turned once-human monsters kept their mortal souls until they committed their first act of evil, as an opportunity for the Godly ones to reprieve themselves. I had kept my soul and God had given me the time to rid creation of the monster I would become.
"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you," I spoke into the quiet. The hot coal in my throat simmered away, a constant reminder. I had only to resist it. Resist it for long enough to find my own destruction.
I couldn't stay in the church. I would run to the cellars again, or perhaps a cesspit, and hide myself until morning. Then, I would meet the sun.
My father looked frail in the morning light. His stern countenance drooped, softened by time and weariness. It startled me, how I could sometimes catch him out of the corner of my eye and mistake him for an enfeebled elder before recognizing him. It was happening more and more where I would look up from a task and be dumbfounded by his diminished vigor. When had he aged so?
"We're closing in on this one, men." He tapped the map sprawled before us with two wrinkled fingers. Even aged, his voice was still whip-crack sharp, demanding attention and respect. "Carlisle, tell them what you told me," he instructed.
I stood up with more haste than was dignified, feeling self-conscious for speaking with authority in my father's presence. I could not help but look to him for approval before addressing the assemblage. He gave a terse nod. I cleared my throat.
"The deaths –Keel, Wilson, Ms. Jones, and Bloom—" I pointed to the places where each body had been found drained of blood with a terrible bite upon the neck, "have little in common. Not age nor sex, wealth nor profession. Only a general proximity to one another. But I noticed they all have one other similarity: a deep cellar that leads directly into the house. I paid a visit to Widow Keel and asked to examine her cellar. It took some effort, but I found beneath a wood crate a hole in the ground leading to a tunnel. I think the vampire has burrowed between the houses."
"What, like a warren?" Samuel interjected, barking a laugh. A few chuckles went around the room.
"Yes." I grinned, a large, fang-toothed hare leaping to mind. "Would that we only sought to catch rabbits. These, however, are far fouler beasts, and immeasurably more lethal."
"We have the justice of God on our side," Father interjected, bringing himself to full height. "Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee."
There was a round of nods from the room. I bowed my head. I yearned for my father's confidence and certainty, but secretly worried the great risk of our work was more dangerous than Father let on.
"Of course." I cleared my throat. "It also seems to me that even an industrious vampire could not have carved so many tunnels so quickly by himself. I think, therefore, that there must be more than one hiding among the cellars."
"Ah, for all you know he could have been at it for years," Samuel said. Some found his directness unpleasantly contrarian, but it was one of the traits I liked best about him. Samuel was never content to be if he thought there was flaw or error to be found in a plan. He had a sharp mind and nipped in the bud ill-considered ideas before they could bloom into disasters.
"Surely, poor Mr. Keel or any other of the victims would have noticed a hole in their cellar at some point in those years of labor. I think it more likely that the tunnels are recent and the work of many rather than one," I replied.
Samuel rolled my words around in that sharp head of his, his thoughts clear as day upon his sun-browned face. He appeared to find no fault with them –or one he was not willing to speak in front of my father, who was the only person who might curb Samuel's tongue—and fell quiescent.
"Fine work, Carlisle," Father said, placing his hand upon my shoulder in uncommon praise. He was smiling at me, a rare site that I greedily took to memory, a small flicker of pride beating in my breast.
The sun was rising. I could see the blue of early morning streaming through the crack in the door.
I'd put as much ground between me and the city's center as I could, getting only so far as Shoreditch before I began to fear meeting people as they set about their early work. I picked a ramshackle shed that faced out to an empty yard where the brush threatened to bump against the houses. I felt reasonably confidant that I at least would not have an audience in my final moments.
The sun's light was upon the earth. There was no point in delay. I took a breath –unneeded but comforting in its familiarity, a last taste of this mortal plane—and pushed open the shed door, stepping out into the gentle morning light.
My deepest fears were realized, and though I stood in full sun, my body did not crumble or wither. I had hoped it would be otherwise, convinced myself, but it seemed what had protected me in the church nave kept me also in the light of day. I turned to leave this place, to go further to the woods in hope of finding some other remedy, when the dancing of little lights caught my eye.
The ground around me was near sparkling with tiny fairy lights, twinkling brilliantly in the sun. With every step I took, they shimmered and scattered, following me every which way I moved. A brilliant glittering thing caught the corner of my eye and I recoiled from it before understanding, with incredible astonishment, that it was my own hand.
I held my palms in front of me and gaped at them, twisting them about in the light. My skin, which had appeared normal, if pale and cold, through the night, was sparkling like a fine lady's broach laden with gems. Where at night my hands seemed to be of marble, in the daylight they looked as though they were hewn from diamond.
I stumbled backward, casting about to make sure I hadn't caught the attention of any local taking a shortcut through the brush. No one presented themselves, and not quite knowing what else to do, I dove back into the sanctuary of the shed. Immediately, the glittering stopped, ceasing as soon as the sun left my skin.
I sat down in the back of the shed and contemplated this. We had long thought that vampires hid away from daylight because it damaged them, but if my own experience could be used as an example of the common vampire then they must be hiding from this remarkable condition. There could be no mistaking for human a vampire caught out in sunlight.
Briefly, I contemplated stealing paper and quill and writing this discovery down. I fantasized about somehow getting it to my father, or to Samuel, but such an endeavor would bring me far too close to people I dearly loved, and I could not abide even the slightest chance of bringing them to harm. The coal in my throat still burned with every inhale, and though I had learned to cease breathing –an uncomfortable but useful ability—it still scratched at me, demanding to be sated with blood.
I spent the day there, praying the shed's owner would want nothing from it and thinking about how I could end my cursed existence. I felt that God's dislike for ending one's own life could not apply in my case as I had surely been killed originally by the vampire who bit me. I was now existing between life and death in some unholy state. Always, always, the hellfire crackled in my throat. Even unbreathing, it would only be a matter of time before I succumbed to it. Seeking my end was the only course I had.
I considered my unneeded breath. Perhaps it was not that I didn't need air, but that I was using far less of it and could hold a single breath for days on end before requiring another. I had once seen oyster divers hold their breaths for four, almost five minutes at a time as they worked. Perhaps vampires exhibited an extended version of such a feat, the way they also had the exaggerated use of a man's strength and speed.
I settled on a plan. I would seek the nearest body of water –the Thames was closest, but I would push further East to avoid its most crowded areas—and drown myself there. If I exhaled and took in the water instead, it may be enough.
I meticulously examined my plan. I could not think of any stories of vampires who did not drown –though witches were said to be impervious—and it stood to reason that if they could not drown then they would likely make greater use of the Thames and Fleet River as hiding places. As I'd never seen any indication that they did so in all the years my father and I had hunted them, this appeared to me to be a strong option. I would enact it under nightfall, heading East through the country, overshooting London, and then coming back South to meet the Thames.
I settled in, tracking the slivers of light in their steady journey across the floor, and thought of anything except the burning in my throat, which seemed to grow unendurably hotter with each passing second.
It was a cool autumn day. A bit cold with no coat, and my arm was beginning to strain with the weight of Mrs. Lowell's shopping under it, but I didn't mind. I looked down at the little fist wrapped tight around my finger and couldn't help the fond feeling that overtook me. Hannah, for her part, took no notice of me. She was instead attempting to place the tiny gloved thumb of her free hand into her mouth.
"Now, none of that," Patty corrected, taking the offending hand in her own and breaking off her detailed description of Mr. Smith's surgery practice for the first time in three blocks. Hannah pouted miserably up at me. "Terrible habit. Causes a weak stomach later in life, you know," she told me.
I did not know, but the working's of the human body sometime interested me, and I pondered if such a thing might be true. Patty was a font of homespun knowledge, and though I took much of what she said with a grain of salt, I had come to respect her for her unparalleled success in keeping her family hale and whole.
Of all the women in the parish, Patty had been mother to seven and commendably seen all of them into adulthood. Two of her children had even suffered measles –I'd caught it myself that same year and nearly died from it— and both had come out the other side with no one else in the family taking ill.
Much later, I'd questioned Charlie Lowell, who I'd sometimes played with as a boy, curious as to what cure had been used to save him. My intent had been to compare it to my own painful treatment. Charlie had merely replied that his mother had managed it. To this day, I've never learned how she accomplished such a miracle. On occasion, I wondered if Christ might be working through her to heal the sick.
"Did you see young Mr. Turner's new doublet, Mr. Cullen? It sits on him like a saddle on a sow's back. I must say, you always look very well-appointed. Perhaps you might take him round on his next visit to the tailor and offer a few suggestions," Patty said.
Then again, sometimes I felt she must just be an uncommonly fortunate individual.
I was spared having to make a reply to such a statement by the little angel between us, as Hannah pulled at my hand and then let go to reach up for me. I scooped her up and she shrieked with laughter as I let her bounce high before swinging her down into my arms. She grinned at me, then tilted her chin as if puzzled by something. Her curious eyes regarded me in solemn contemplation, gaze fixed fast on mine. She brought one gloved hand up.
"None of that, now, Hannah," said Mrs. Lowell. "Terrible habit."
I crawled, wretched and sodden like a serpent from the depths, onto the banks of the Thames, coughing water out of my irritated but uninjured lungs. I'd stayed down for an hour, increasingly despairing as the water did nothing but cause an unusual pressure in my chest.
I lay on the bank, my clothes soundly ruined beyond repair by the befouled water. It occurred to me in my depression that perhaps vampires avoided the Thames because of the putrid smell.
My throat felt a thousand times worse than it had before. As I coughed the water out, I could, ever so faintly, catch the smallest whiff of deliciousness wafting from a boathouse across the river.
Before I knew it, I had jumped back into the river to swim to the smell. It was with great effort, and in large part due to the abhorrent stench of the waters, that I managed to turn myself away to swim further East.
I swam for the entire day. I did not tire or yearn for air even once.
As night fell again, I surfaced and took a cautious sniff. I had not seen a boat for leagues. My hopes were well founded, and I could not scent even a hint of the alluring perfume that sang to the evil inside me.
I swam to the shore again and discovered that the thin, rocky beach I'd alighted upon led directly up into imposing cliffs. I'd have to scale them if I wished to exit the river here. I was too nervous to press on or head back, fearful that I'd run across some innocent as they went about their business.
The black cliff must have been hundreds of feet high and I felt sure I'd never be able to climb it, and then I remembered that I'd just swum from sun-up to sun-down with no need for breath. The climb should not be a problem. I walked to the rock and began to scale it.
The climb proved even easier than I'd imagined. Where I could not find a handhold, I merely needed to punch one into the edifice and hoist myself up.
Over half the distance up, I happened to look back on where I'd begun, and had to grip the rock tight as a dizziness nearly took me. It was quite a height. Far higher than I'd ever been before. A fall from such a height would be instantly fatal.
I considered this for a while. Nothing else had worked, but vampires were not creatures beyond vanquishing. My father had told me himself of the three vampires he had slain. They had perished from a blade of silver through the heart. Any creature that could die from the blade would undoubtedly be felled by such a steep fall.
I looked up at the sky, the thick clouds shrouding the stars from view though I saw in perfect detail even without their faint light.
I did not wish to risk the breath to speak, so instead I gave my prayer is silence. Lord God, please grant me peace. Please let this be death I have been seeking.
I closed my eyes and let go of the rock.
I held my torch in one hand, my silver blade in the other. Samuel made grim eye contact with me and we nodded. Easing slowly down, Samuel and Joseph slipped into the Bloom's cellar tunnel.
I crouched by the entrance, listening intently for their voices, for any cry. The sun shone outside, but we'd lose the light in an hour or so. It mattered not though, because we had them.
This was the last of the tunnels. We had gone into each of them, one by one, all through the day while the devils slumbered. Each had given forth only rubbish and empty burrows. This, then, is where the fiends resided. We would take them unawares and put an end to their nightly slaughters.
"Il est pas mal du tout," a voice, low and feminine, cooed. I jumped from my post and as I turned to face her a stone clipped me across the head and I fell to blackness.
When I woke, someone was screaming.
My head ached fiercely, and my ears rung so that even the screams were hard to make out at first. I was lying against something hard and cool. I fought to open my eyes.
"Shh, shh, mon petit oiseau." A band like iron curled around my waist as I struggled to sit up. The voice was the same as before. I hadn't properly noted how beautiful it was the first time. It was full, rich, reminding me of honey and cream in some intangible manner.
The screaming began again. I struggled against the restraints holding me in place, desperately attempting to force my vision back to singular coherence. I blinked hard and the world sunk back into place.
The space was dimly lit, and I had difficulty in making out any details of it all together. I was in a earthen chamber, no doubt part of the tunnels. It looked just tall enough for a man to comfortably stand and many times wider. Trunks and bedding lay scattered about. A torch flickered against the packed-dirt floor where it had been cast aside.
The screaming was coming from a shadowed mass near the back of the cavern. It moved and heaved with a tortuous, frenetic energy. It seemed to have many arms. A piece of it broke off and flew across the room, landing in the torchlight. It was the bloody remains of a human hand.
I screamed. I fought in a mad terror against my bonds, twisting and writhing like a wild animal caught in the hunter's snare. The band around me shifted, and suddenly my arms and throat were pinned so that I could not even thrash about.
"Hush now," the feminine voice came again, heavily accented in her use of English. A cool touch, hard like stone, brushed against my chin. With dawning horror, I realized that there were no bands of iron at all. I was merely being held against this woman –this vampiress—as if I were no more trouble than a recalcitrant child. I froze, too gripped with fear to even move.
"There now," she cooed. "C'est mieux."
I craned my neck to try and see her face and she shifted to allow it. The sight of her left me dumb.
She was radiant. More beautiful even than any painting or statue. Her eyes were red as roses and heavy-lidded, her lashes elegant fans beneath the flawless arch of her brows. Her skin was porcelain, unblemished by time or illness. Her hair fell in heavy dark waves, the only woman I'd ever seen wear it uncovered and loose about her shoulders. She smiled at me, her garnet-red lips full and inviting.
"Bonjour, mon oisillon."
A shrill scream followed by a sickening wet crunch echoed from the mass of shadow. I shivered, and suddenly her beauty seemed sharp and jagged. I longed to be away from her. I struggled again and she laughed and let me go. Stumbling to my feet, I balanced on the brink of flight but was too afraid to run with her dark gaze held upon me.
"Go on then, little birdie," she said with a flick of her hand. "Fly fast so I can chase you down." She flashed a grin, her terrible fangs sparkling white in the flickering light.
I ran.
I had no destination, no idea of where I was, but I could not go towards her and I could not go towards the screaming shadows. There was a single earthen tunnel left and I threw myself into it.
I ran with every ounce of strength in my body. I scrambled over the places where the earth rose up and slid down where it grew steep. At last, I could see light in the distance, and I broke out into a cellar, one I recognized as belonging to the Wilson's, their eldest son the second victim we had found drained of life in the past month. I dashed up the narrow stairs and threw open the cellar doors, launching myself out of the sunken room.
The night had come. Around me, only the streetlamps flickered with their small flames. I heard a voice call me in the distance, one I recognized with gladness.
"Sam—" the breath was snatched out of me. A stone-like hand closed around my throat and bore me to the ground.
Her face –radiant, awful—filled the whole of my vision. Her red eyes twinkled with delight.
"Mon," her ice-like finger stroked my cheek, "petit," then trailed across the other side, "oiseau," she tapped her iron nail to my lips. Her other hand was wrapped tight around my throat so that I could barely sip the air through it.
She grinned at me then. Her eyes were utter pits of swirling red and I knew that I gazed upon the face of evil.
"When you wake up, come and find me. I shall wait in our special place for you." She gave a girlish giggle and sank her fangs into my shoulder.
I hurled myself against the rocks. The stone split and shattered where I dashed my head against it. I yanked at my hair and rent my clothes to tatters. Standing under the cloud-covered night I screamed into the dark. I screamed and screamed, thinking my voice must give out, but it never did.
The fall hadn't worked. Nothing had worked. I was chained to this world, shackled in a cursed body, incapable of doing this one last good deed.
I collapsed into a pile of torn linen and rock rubble and buried my face in my hands. What more could I do?
"Help me, Father," I muttered into my hands. Over and over I spoke the words. "Help me. Help me."
My mind raced in loops, turning back upon itself and I muttered. I must look the consummate mad man, sitting in rock and cloth, skin bared, muttering to myself, trapped in my own twisted thoughts.
What should I do now?
All my knowledge of vampires had proven wrong in the past few days. In my giddy state, I began to fear that my father had never slain any vampires at all, but some common murderer instead. Or a mistaken innocent! Maybe my father was a liar and had made the whole tale up.
Whatever the truth, the result was that I had not even the faintest idea as to how I might find my death. The knowledge may be entirely unknown to mankind. The only beings that would know were the ones that…
The only beings that would know.
The vampiress's last words haunted me then. Was it even something I dared to attempt? I'd have to go back to London, to start; a proposition I loathed with every fiber of my being. My throat blistered with heat and I could not conscience how I was to make it into the city without attacking some poor soul.
Once there, what did I intend to do? Ask her for the secret to slaying her kind? She'd hardly be well inclined to give it to me, if her prior demeanor was any evidence of her character.
Perhaps I could bait her into a fight, so she might dispatch me herself. If not her, then one of her coven-mates may do it, if such a thing were even possible. I had to believe there was some way death could take me. There must be some weakness the vampire race possessed that I could make use of.
A dark notion whispered to me. What if I killed her instead? What if I went back and proved stronger than her, as men of the mortal variety often did when compared to the fairer sex? I could do what I had been unable to do before, what men in my father's confidence had died trying to do less than a week ago. I could have vengeance.
Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee.
I frowned at my odd, smooth hands. It would be a sin to go with vengeance in my heart, and yet I could not stop the feeling from bubbling inside me. I should seek the vampires' death in service of justice. Justice for the humans they had killed. Protection for the one's they would kill. I could learn their weakness by destroying them and then I could turn the knowledge on myself. That would be justice.
It would all be moot, however, unless I resolved to return to the city. Only by going back to find the coven would I have any chance of meeting my swift end.
I stripped away the ruined remains of my coat, vest, and shirt. In only my breeches and boots, I felt like a wild beast of the wood. The sky opened, and rain began to fall as I waded into the water and started my long swim back to London.
Like I was an honored guest of the finest breeding, Patty insisted on serving my generous portion of stew in her best china bowl. My father was already tucking into his portion. Hannah, set on the other side of the table, happily smeared mashed peas across her face. Patty had tucked a large bib into the girl's collar, and it was already catching spots of green as they fell from Hannah's chubby fist. How unusual, I thought, for Patty to serve the babe a pauper's food like peas.
There were peas in the stew as well. I saw my father discreetly pick them out when he thought Patty wasn't looking. The little terrier snapped them up as they fell off the table. I thought of Patty's seven children and multitude of grandchildren. Hannah's mother had been lost to a kick from a horse but had been the picture of health every day before. I dipped my spoon into the beef stew and made sure to scoop some of the peas in as well.
The sun rose and set as I swam. In twilight, I reached my destination and lurked there under the busy docks as the boats came in. Night fell, and I was free to creep about the city.
I took pains to not breathe even a sip of London's air. My hearing made me an excellent sneak, and I avoided those who worked nights with effortless ease. Would that the same ease could be obtained in avoiding my thirst.
Though I could not smell, the burning in my throat grew to an agonizing magnitude. Apparently, the mere thought of being near humans was enough to set it ablaze. It suddenly occurred to me that I had not eaten anything in the past week. The only drink I'd taken had been during my repellant attempt to drown myself. This lightened my already feather-soft step. With a little good fortune, I might starve to death.
I wanted to laugh. My death had become an event whose mere idle contemplation brought good cheer.
Moving as swiftly as my unnatural powers made possible, I found myself at the place of my mortal death in no time at all. The blood, if there had been any, had been scrubbed from the cobble stones. Even with my excellent eyes, I could see no trace of it left.
"Mon oisillon." My head snapped in her direction fast as light. I had not heard her at all, and even as she approached, I could only hear the faint pad of her footfall if I focused all my attention upon it.
She was as lovely as I remembered but with more detail to her, as if I had only seen a painted likeness before and I now beheld the actual woman. She had no lines or defects, but her face developed a texture that had been missing when I looked on her with human eyes.
Her beauty was flawless, but without mortal terror blinding me I could see that her dress was anything but. Like myself, her clothing seemed to have been woefully mistreated. Her gown, which may have been quite fine at one point, was ripped and tattered at the hem. Her bodice was laced with leather laces from a set of boots and one of the sleeves of her gown had been torn away at the elbow.
We must have looked a pair. Me, half-naked for all God and creation to see, her in her stained and battered gown unsuitable even for rags. This was the life of a vampire, I thought. They live like rats beneath the earth, slowly losing everything about themselves that was once human. Death would be a mercy for us both.
She was close enough to reach if I decided to lunge for her. She stopped and tilted her head to one side, a silken fountain of brown waves spilling over one shoulder.
"Or is it mon faucon now that you have talons of your own?" She smiled at me, attempting a guise of compassion but with little success. "How very scared you must have been. You look quite wild." She looked me up and down, then frowned. "Have you not been feeding often?" Though nominally addressed to me, she appeared to be speaking mostly for her own benefit.
She began to circle me, and I turned as well to keep her always in my sight. I thought of what I should say first to her.
A fatal flaw in my plan made itself known at that point. It was so baldly obvious that Samuel would have caught it in seconds and then laughed at me if he'd been able to consult.
If I wanted to talk to her, I'd have to take a breath.
The depth of my short-sightedness was mortifying. I couldn't risk a breath in the middle of London, but I had no means of communicating with her otherwise unless I planned on resorting to pantomime or written notes. I doubted she'd have the patience for either.
"Faucon…" She cajoled me, her voice lilting in a singsong that was pleasant even to my improved ears. "Have you come to chastise me with your silence? Do not mourn your mortality too much. The memories of it fade easily and soon you will care for them not a whit." She reached out to touch, but I shied away. Should I attack her? Fall back to my plan of having her kill me in combat? She laughed at me, placing her fine-boned hands on her hips.
"What are you…" The mirth bled from her face. Her eyes drew up in a frown that managed to be as equally lovely as every other expression she'd made. She squinted, fluttered her lashes a few times, and then gasped. "You have not fed at all!" She stepped back from me as if I was the one to be feared. Her glare was hot upon me. "You are holding your breath!" Her voice was as accusatory as if she had found me stealing her silver. She rocked back on her heels and shook her head. "If I did not see it, I would say such a thing is impossible."
She was pensive then, statuesque in her contemplation as I stood mutely by. I needed to take the opportunity and attack her, but I still hadn't an idea what her weakness was! What if all we did was make a racket to bring the slumbering neighbors from their homes. How would I protect them from her? How would I protect them from me?
Slowly, a cruel grin spread across her face. She turned to me and gleefully clapped her hands as my stomach started to sink with heavy dread.
"Oh, petit oiseau, what a thought I have had! The most wondrous idea. You will love it, I'm sure." She flashed me a wink. "Now you must keep up, or I shall have all the fun to myself." Like a flash, she was off, a streak of white and brown. I rocked back in surprise before bounding forward to follow. Foreboding fought with the fire in my throat as to which could cause me the greatest anguish.
To my surprise, I caught up to her easily. It was a relief to realize I was faster than her. If she meant to do evil, which I felt sure she did, I would be able to race ahead and warn her victims off. Maybe this meant I was stronger than her too. I might be able to stop her if I put myself to it.
She danced along, slipping through streets and alleys, as adept at avoiding humans as I had been earlier that night, but doing so with incredible haste. I chased her, unsure if I ought to stop her now or at our destination. The neighborhood was my own, but I couldn't guess where she was leading me.
Then, she turned onto my street and I knew her intent. Furious, I lunged for her, but she'd expected this and was darting away before I could wrap my arms around her. She laughed again and I wanted nothing more than to rid the earth of that sound forever.
I swung at her. She ducked swiftly away, nimble as a boxer.
She was at the door to my father and I's townhouse. Blithely ignoring the wooden cross that decorated it, she ripped the wood door from its hinges, the iron shrieking in protest. I swung for her again, but my fist hit the door as she brought it round her as a shield. She shoved me back, then tossed her shield at me and darted in.
I had to warn Father! Did I risk the breath to yell? I raced after her.
She was on her way up the stair, but I caught her this time. I grabbed her round her middle and hurled us both to the floor. We crashed into the parlor table, knocking it over. In the upstairs bedroom, I heard my father wake with a shout. I had to hold her off. I had to get both of us out of here! How had she even known to come here at all?
"Do not be so rough," she laughed, seemingly unfazed by my grip on her. "You will see. What a perfect beginning for your new life this will be! One little smell and you shall rip the old man's throat out yourself." Her voice was rich, soothing to hear even as I fought to keep her on the floor. "Ah, but I only wish I had been able to do the same for my Père."
"Carlisle? It that you?" My father was on the stairs, his silver blade in one hand and a candlestick held high in the other. I turned my face to him on instinct and he saw. His hands shook and the light flickered with the movement. "My son… No, no…"
A deep abiding shame settled in my breast. I had let my father see his only son lost to the devil. His worst fear had been made manifest.
My moment of sorrow cost me dearly. The vampiress threw me off, and I was too clumsy to follow. She caught my father round the throat, as she had held me a week prior. He gasped for air, unable to cry out. He hadn't even had time to raise his blade.
"Mmm. As much as I would like to drink you dry for thinking you could ever harm us, prêtre, that honor instead shall go to your handsome son." She leaned in close to my father's ear. "You do like what I've done with him, don't you?" My father jerked in her grasp.
She laughed, lifted a single finger, and sliced a neat line up my father's neck.
The blood welled up and beaded down.
I feel to my knees under the agony. The coal in my throat had been stoked to a roaring fire, equal to the one that had burned the humanity from me. Tears sprang into my eyes and I clasped a desperate hand over my nose and mouth. She was laughing at me.
I looked up, for what reason I know not, but as soon as I saw the red at my father's throat, I was helpless. The thirst pulled me to my feet. I wavered there, teetering like a dockyard drunk. The red glistened, fragrant and pure. One sip would be the balm to every ailment. A mere taste would take all of the fear I had endured, the pain I had suffered away.
I staggered forward. So fixated was I that I didn't even hear the footsteps outside.
"Rev. Cullen, what in goodness name is going on? You've woke the whole household."
Patty Lowell, my neighbor and devoted busybody, stood in our doorway as witness to my lowest hour. She was in her night cap and gown, a blue wool shawl drawn across her shoulders, amazement writ clear across her wide face.
"Good heavens. Young Carlisle?" She took a step toward me and I flinched. Her greying brows drew together. Then made note of our guest, hand clenched round my father's throat, and recoiled. "You there! Let go of the reverend this instant! I shall call for the constable." Patty began to back away, gazing about as if she expected the constable to present himself forthwith.
Patty had distracted me, but the sound of blood dripping was pulling at my attention with ever strengthening fervor. I looked back to my father.
The vampiress was growing impatient.
"Come along, mon oisillon. If you don't eat him, I shall," she taunted, prodding the wound so it gave forth greater issue. The blood shimmered in the candlelight as my father trembled.
How sweet it would taste. How soothing it would be after the fiery crucible I had endured. An end to my excruciating pain.
"No! What are you doing up? Back in the house with you," Patty shouted.
My head turned, and as surely as I had not been able to divert myself from the dripping blood, I was unable to look away as the smallest Lowell ran to her grandmother's side, clutching her hands into the folds of her nightdress. That little fair head turned and regarded me with interest at first, and then with beaming recognition.
"Meer Cunnen!" she exclaimed.
"Ah!" The vampiress gave a delighted sigh. "It looks like I will have a treat of my own as well tonight."
Patty wrapped a quick hand around the child's wrist, but I didn't see any more. I'd turned back and lunged for the vampiress's throat.
She hadn't expected it, but she didn't loose her grip on my father and all three of us went backward into the stairs. I got my hand round her wrist and dug my fingers as strongly into the meat of it as I could. Rather than the snap of bone, the very skin of her wrist began to fracture, broken stone under a chisel. Her free hand slashed across my face, but I ducked away from most of it.
She snarled, and I heard a wrenching crunch. I sunk my fingers further into her stony flesh. Her grip released and my father slid down, lying still at the foot of the stair.
She tried to push me off, but I had the better position and superior strength. I reared up and sank my fangs into her neck. She shrieked at the pain, but I didn't let up. I pulled back, taking a chunk of her throat with me. She floundered in my arms.
A fugue settled upon me and, as if possessed, I set into a course of action I had no conscious memory of choosing. I ripped her limb from limb, there in my father's parlor. When she lay in pieces on the floor, I stood back and admired my work. The marble chunks of her lay scattered around me. The scraps of her dirty dress and swaths of brunette hair were the only evidence that the remains before me did not belong to a decimated statue.
My thoughts turned toward my father and I looked to him.
Patty was kneeling at his side, her hands upon his neck and mouth. I hadn't noted her entrance. Had she put Hannah back to bed and then returned? It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since I started my grim work.
She turned to me with solemn eyes and slowly shook her head.
"He's gone, Carlisle. I'm so sorry," she said. "The demoness broke his neck." She settled him upon his back and gently slid his eyelids closed.
I was shivering, tears escaping down my cheeks even before she spoke. She gazed sorrowfully around the room.
"What dreadful things that have come to pass."
She stood with some difficulty, leaning against the wall. For a moment, I could hear her ageing joints creaking with strain. She gazed down at my father's body for a long moment. He did not look peaceful, but he did not look pained either. He was so still.
"I'll tell the constable there was a break-in. A thief with murder on the mind," she said.
She raised her head and took care so that her eyes caught mine and held them.
"What's transpired here is beyond my understanding, Carlisle. But I do know that one meant us ill. I can see from your eyes that the devil has tried to take you. You're a good man, and he always wants God's best souls, but tonight you resisted him. You saved my Hannah."
Patty walked to the door, and as she passed, she placed her hand upon my shoulder. It lingered there, the heat of her palm bleeding into my coldness.
Without a word more, she left me and exited what had once been my home. I could hear her talking to people on the street. More neighbors who'd been drawn to the racket. I'd have to steal out the back to avoid being seen.
I could not bring myself to flee yet and knelt by my father's body. I placed my shaking hand on his unstirring one, warm with the life that had so recently faded.
I took a breath.
"I'm sorry, father. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." The voices at my back were louder now. Patty could not stall them much longer. I gathered the bits of the vampiress together in a linen sheet and resolved to dump them in any cesspit I happened across.
And, so, I left my father there on the parlor floor and like a thief, I stole from my house and into the night.
I knew now the key to my destruction, but I had yet to make any use of it. Every time I took a mind to tear myself apart, I would think of little Hannah and her small face lighting up as she saw me. I envisioned the way Patty had touched my arm even after she'd seen me enact such terrible violence. I pictured the vampiress, the woman who'd cursed me and whose name I'd never learned, laying in pieces on the floor, her bloody rampage brought at last to an end.
I had been made into an unholy monster, and instead of losing my mind to thirst, I had kept myself. My will had stayed my own in the face of immense temptation. By the grace of God, I had not yet harmed a single human.
I began to believe once more. My soul was still my own. God had not cast me out at all. He'd guided me away from the innocent when I was weak, turned my attention from my father's blood, and given me the strength to protect a grandmother and child from a murderess.
If only it were not for this unquenchable thirst.
In the days after my departure, I had fled to the woods and sought shelter in a cave far from any person or dwelling. I waited with my newfound hope for the thirst to abate, but instead it only grew stronger. Day to day, week to week, the torment of my parched throat steadily increased.
I could not feed, but I likewise could not sate the hunger. In time, I resigned myself again to death. I was fated to starve.
I wasted away in my cave, comforting myself with precious memories. As the vampiress had promised, they grew distressingly dim as time progressed. I clung obsessively to the ones I wished most to keep. Samuel's gruff honesty. My father's rare smile. Hannah's inquisitive stare. Patty's hand on my shoulder.
One day, staring up at the damp ceiling of my cave, I thought of Charlie Lowell telling me his mother had healed him and his brother of measles. How had she done it, I wondered. Had Patty stumbled across some miraculous cure by herself, or purchased one from some knowledgeable but secretive physician? Or did he mean that she had simply been an excellent nurse and God had done the rest?
I wondered what it was that caused the measles in a person. Did the illness float on foul air? Patty had somehow kept herself and her family from its spread. I remembered the physician Father had brought to tend to my own bout had insisted I remain sequestered from others. Was it passed from skin to skin by touch?
I reached my hand up to feel along the smoothness of my cheeks. The pocked scars had been my constant companion and souvenir since I battled the dangerous illness in my youth. The little scars had spotted the right side of my face, down my neck, and across both shoulders. They were all gone now, wiped clean by the curse.
A noise in the underbrush drew my focus and I idly tilted my head to the side, too weary to even lift myself up. A deer raised her head and regarded me with cool caution. I could see her veins beneath her skin, pumping her precious blood throughout her body.
The furnace in my throat roared.
She sensed the danger and turned to bound into the safety of the woods.
But I was faster.
End Note:
One last note on Measles: Patty does not have a miracle cure. She's simply very lucky, observant, and practicing well-balanced nutrition at a time when almost no one else was. However, you, lucky reader, DO have a miracle cure for measles! During 2000-2017, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 21.1 million deaths worldwide. It's a highly contagious, deadly disease. Please consult your Doctor about vaccination for yourself and your children.
Don't forget to leave a comment and kudos. Thanks again for reading!