The land wobbled beneath her feet, the world reeling around her as she tried to find balance in an unstable world. Except that the ground wasn't the thing moving. She almost pitched headfirst into a cart of hay, pulled along a mud-lined street by a large chestnut horse. Her hand reached out and steadied her against the sign that told people that this was the dock. Carmilla couldn't remember in which city. Hunger from the past few days curbed the workings of her mind. It didn't matter. After a while all European cities blurred together. She couldn't say that she was glad to be back on dry land. Usually it meant the end of the brief tenure Mother gave her to travel, to dream, to live. Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye, the days too short, the moments too fleeting, the ache in her chest too constant. The reminder of another foray into the world of vampirism and luring innocent girls to sacrifice always lurking in the back of her mind, a shadow that darkened the joy she might feel in those moments that fled by so fast.
Her shipmates scattered as they disembarked, no doubt to the bars and whorehouses that lurked in every corner of every city they'd ever gone to port in. Carmilla never followed. Cities provided unique opportunities in the way of feasting. Although she fled to a life on the sea at almost every opportunity she had, to stopper the urge to take life, to feed off humans, months of living off the blood of rats that scuttled aboard at every port left her with deep hunger pains in the pit of her stomach. Her revulsion at herself was not enough to quell the urge to feed on warm human blood, sweeter than a rat's. Hunger turned her into a creature of instinct, and that instinct now led her down the cobbled streets that sliced through this city, reeking of damp, of dirty water. Half blinded by dizziness, she stumbled upon a bridge. Below, men with long poles pushed barges across the water.
Venice. Of course. Something of the babbling of her fellow sailors came back to her. Picking up merchandise to transport to other places; books, glass, and other knickknacks the captain of the Demeter decided were worthy enough to earn himself and the crew some money. If all went according to plan the Demeter and her crew would be hitting the high seas again in a day or two. Carmilla wasn't entirely sure she would be joining them again. Her twenty years of furlough were almost at an end. One part of her longed to get back onboard, to turn the sails and ride the wind into the open sea, far from any lands that might smear themselves across the horizon. But the other part of her remained dutiful. A daughter of darkness must return home when called for. She and Mother struck a bargain, and it was Carmilla's duty to fulfill it. She might run for now, but she couldn't run forever.
Carmilla stumbled through the narrow streets, suffocating from the closeness of it all, the buildings that cut off her view of the sky, that clamped her in alleys with only one way out, the people that shouldered past her, heads down, clutching shawls and papers and crosses to their chests. Even the water here had a different smell; it reeked from the hundreds of people who threw their waste into it. Carmilla already missed the salty freshness of the open ocean, the one that waited, just beyond the city. Venice, the gateway to the Mediterranean, couldn't be less like the sea that it claimed to open into.
Carmilla kept wandering, meandering the streets until the crowd thinned and the alleys narrowed. Claustrophobia clawed at her throat, tearing her breath from her lungs, but she didn't stop. Here is where she would find her next meal. Away from the eyes of people who might see. She took a right turn into a short alley that ended abruptly in water, the green-brown canal water lapping at the side of the buildings that stained a similar colour.
A human form lay huddled on the ground, wrapped in threadbare blankets, though the weather had not yet turned cold enough for so many layers. Carmilla's mouth watered, the anticipation burning on her tongue, twisting in her stomach and setting her nerve endings on fire. For a heartbeat she revelled in it, in the thrill that she did not feel often enough. For a heartbeat she allowed the last of her humanity slip away, becoming wholly that thing within, the monster that needed feeding. Even claustrophobia fell away as she bent close to the form. Her breath on its cheek stirred it, and the person opened their eyes, propping themselves up into a sitting position.
"Ah, at last, a customer!" an old woman's voice came from within the pile of blankets. Carmilla took a step back, the anticipation deadening to cold bitterness in her surprise. A pair of filthy hands emerged from the folds, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards.
"Sit. Sit!" the woman insisted, and taken aback, Carmilla obeyed. "I'll read for you. No one comes to me for readings now. It is not fashionable anymore," she hissed through clenched teeth, "but the cards' truths do not fall out of fashion. Let them speak to you."
Carmilla sat silent, her back against the moss ridden wall, legs stretched out in front of her. The alley was narrow enough that her feet almost touched the opposite wall. Disappointed by its lack of nourishment, her stomach fell back into a dull ache that numbed feeling throughout Carmilla's body. She watched through tired eyes as the woman handed her the cards.
"You shuffle."
The cards were warm in Carmilla's hands, and compared to the old woman's hands, clean. She ran her fingers, trembling from hunger, over them. She sorted and shuffled, her hands awkward to the unfamiliar movements. Compared to the old woman, she was inefficient, a rowboat during a storm, where the old woman was a galley.
"When you are ready, choose," came the next command, the woman looking at her through brown eyes that crinkled around the edges, though in a smile, or a knowing, or suspicion, Carmilla didn't know. She shuffled a few more times, then slid a card from the deck, going to place it face up on the ground.
"Ah, ah, no. On here," the woman laid a piece of cloth over the damp ground. Carmilla placed the card on the material. Silk. Too rich for the woman. Carmilla raised an eyebrow, now scrutinising the woman as she had been scrutinised. The lady didn't care, peering down at the card, brows furrowed. It showed a wheel in the centre, surrounded by angels, upside down. The woman peered at the card for a moment, then glanced at Carmilla.
"Take it and shuffle again. Then pick another."
Carmilla did. The card came out the same.
"Again."
Again the result was the same.
The old woman frowned at her, but there was something in her eyes. Pity, Carmilla realised with a jolt. Suddenly her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and all thoughts of tackling the woman and draining her of blood, vanished, lost in that look.
"What?" she spoke for the first time. "What does it say?"
Instead of replying, the woman fished out a crystal ball, placing it on the silk beside the card. The ball was cradled in golden hands, the fingers reflected in the glassy surface. The lady closed her eyes, humming one long note, over and over, renewing the note every time she drew breath. Carmilla's mounting anxiety doubled. Her breathing came hard again. She had to force it past the lump in her throat. Then, without warning, the old woman's eyes flew open, as glassy as the crystal ball, seeing but not seeing. She gazed at the ball, still humming. Not knowing what else to do, Carmilla drew her knees up to her chest and waited.
And waited.
It seemed an eternity before the woman came back to herself, pulled from the depths of wherever she roamed. And though Carmilla gazed into the crystal, she gleaned nothing from its reflective surface. Whatever the woman saw, she would have to choose to impart it to Carmilla. For long moments, Carmilla didn't breathe, forgetting that she didn't have to.
"Oh child. My poor child." Carmilla bristled. She might look twenty-two, but she had lived this woman's entire lifespan, and then some. But the woman was shaking her head, and Carmilla snapped out of her stupid anger.
"Tell me," she said, her voice hoarse from anxiety and from the hunger that had resumed chewing her insides. The woman took a breath and waited a moment before looking Carmilla in the eye.
"You have not been blessed, child. Only darkness, so much darkness lies in your future."
"What did you see?"
"Darkness."
"What else?"
"The red of rage, and a defiance that will trap you further in your hell. And betrayal. Sometimes I see a cat, big and black. It has your eyes. I see sacrifice. And I see love. But not for a long time. A long, long time. By the time it reaches you, you will almost have forgotten it, that last shred of your humanity. That last thing that might save you from leaping off the cliff into an eternity of monstrosity. And it will kill you to taste that love."
Carmilla sat, stunned. In another place, with another person, perhaps she would wave all this away. The predictions were too vague, the things that came and went in everybody's life. But the woman's comment about the cat caught Carmilla off guard. Nobody knew about that except Mother. Others of her kind might transform into bats or wolves or rats. Carmilla's second form was a cat, massive and black, the kind of lethal beast that stalked jungles in the lands people rarely ever returned from. And perhaps if the lady was right about one thing, she was right about them all. She regarded her a moment, wondering.
"Now for payment," the woman announced. Of course. This wouldn't be free. These things never were, and it was not Carmilla's first reading. She knew how the transaction worked. She fumbled at a pocket sewed into the lining of her clothes, seeking the scant few coins that were her payment from the merchant ship. The captain underpaid them, and most sailors grumbled, but at the end of the day they had enough for their drink and their whores. Carmilla didn't care much for the money. The sailing was not a job for her; it was a vacation, a temporary reprieve from her Mother.
"Oh no, child," the woman stopped her. "It won't be that kind of payment." She pushed the blankets and layers of clothing off her, exposing flesh as dirty as her hands, almost grey from the grime that accumulated. "Your payment to me, strigoi, is to take me from this world."
"You know?" Carmilla sat up straighter, her hands clenching into fists. The woman barked a laugh.
"Yes. I knew the moment I felt your breath on my cheek, reeking of death. You starve. I do not know why, but I offer myself to help you. A willing participant. That must be strange for you. This world has been as cruel to me as it has to you. And nobody would miss a stranger lying dead in an alley," she said, and Carmilla started at hearing the words that had flitted through her mind spoken aloud by the woman. "There is potential in your future, child. The ball does not lie. And the cards, well the cards do not either. Here," she shoved the pristine deck of cards at Carmilla, "take them. Read them. One day they will tell you something new. There is nothing good ahead for me. So take me child. Slake your thirst."
Carmilla hesitated, despite the offered flesh. Her tongue ran over the sharp teeth in her mouth, protruding before she allowed herself to make the conscious decision. On her knees now, she was only inches away from the woman. She smelt the salt of the blood, rushing just beneath the surface of the woman's thin skin. It mingled with the dirt and the sewer stink of the canal. So close, all she had to do was lean in.
"Hurry, strigoi!" the woman yelled in Carmilla's ear. Automatically, her head bent and her mouth met the dirty flesh, breaking through it with little resistance. And then the blood was in her mouth, metallic and salty and hot. The spark in Carmilla's chest, long dimmed by starvation, flickered back to life. Carmilla, unthinking, latched on harder, pulling the woman closer to her. Every nerve of her body felt the renewal. Every one. Carmilla felt them, the fire that reminded her that she was not marble, but flesh; a monster, perhaps, but a feeling one. Minutes ticked on while the heart's pumping weakened, the spurts of blood lessening against Carmilla's tongue, until she was sucking, pulling the last drops of the warm liquid from the woman's body. When she was done, she lay the woman gently on her side, closing her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Gently, Carmilla placed the crystal ball in the woman's still warm hand, and then, last of all, pulled the piece of across the woman's face, a fitting death veil for someone who had given Carmilla so much.
"Thank you," she whispered into the woman's hair. She placed a kiss on her temple through the silk, then gathering the cards, she slipped from the alley before anyone noticed that she was there.
Centuries later, in room 307 of Silas University, that ravenous hunger all but forgotten and the scent of the sea long since washed from the crevices of her body, Carmilla pulled out the cards. Stowed away in a safe box, for which no one but she possessed the key, they had aged well. The last of that old woman's legacy. Carmilla shuffled them, thankful that Laura made an effort to go to her classes, and hoping that no one would burst in through the closed door.
In some ways, she was worlds away from who she was that day in Venice, sucking the life from a homeless woman in an alleyway. In some ways, nothing changed. She didn't leave bodies in the streets anymore, but she was a liar if she said that she had never touched another human since. Though most of her blood came in milk cartons, drained from animals in the abattoir, the occasional craving for human blood swooped in and overpowered her, until on moonless nights she stalked the alleys of Silas until she found someone no one would miss; a homeless person, or, on one occasion, a student sexually assaulting another. And then her fangs protruded and she fed the monster that craved the things the last of her humanity shuddered to consider.
But one thing didn't change; the guilt of that day still overcame her, punching the air from her chest until she doubled over, gasping. She might forget the names of her parents, the faces and voices of her family, and of those hundred she'd killed over the years, but she never forgot that woman. The woman who's name she had not thought to ask before desanguinating her on the bank of a Venetian canal. The woman would be dust now, but Carmilla vowed to carry part of her on for the rest of eternity. It was the least she could do for a woman who'd left her a legacy.
The cards grew warm in Carmilla's hands, combining then breaking and recombining into a different pile. She had only let herself read them once before, immediately after breaking out of her coffin prison. Their verdict had been the same then as it had been two centuries before. This time was different. Her hands were languid in their shuffling, her anxiety at bay, not clawing at her trachea. The lingering effects of claustrophobia did not cling to her like cobwebs. In fact, she might almost have been happy. Somehow, Mother had thrown her into a room with a girl that Carmilla came to consider as something more than an irritating mosquito. Much more.
She was smiling when she slid a card from the deck.
The Wheel of Fortune.
This time the right side up. Carmilla couldn't stop the grin breaking across her face. It seemed the woman was right. They did show her something new. Her luck was turning.