Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. All characters belong to Syfy and the writers of the show. I´m writing just for fun and Im making no money with it.
Lost souls
Massachusetts, late 1770s
Isaac came running along the field. Aidan turned around to him, grabbing him, catching him in his arms. Isaac´s heart was beating wildly.
"Help! Help Mommy!" his son pressed out. His face was fear stricken and he clung to Aidan´s arms when Aidan crouched down to him.
"What´s up, Isaac? What happened?"
"They came for Mom! The men! They say we are cursed and that Mommy is a witch who has brought you back from the dead!" His voice was almost tumbling over and he tried to make himself free from Aidan, trying to pull him into the direction where the large river was running.
"Come, Isaac!" Aidan lifted him up into his arms and started to run to the river. A horrifying suspect was growing in his mind. While he was running with his son Isaac on his arms he asked; "Who has come? Who are these men?"
"The Reverend and some men from the town! Daddy, they want to kill her! They...they said they want to prove her soul with a sink or swim! Dunno...dunno! They want to kill her, daddy!" Isaac pressed out, tears streaming down his cheeks and he grabbed for Aidan´s shoulder and back when his father was carrying him as easily as a kitten.
"They won´t, Isaac! They won´t! I will not let them do this!" Aidan hissed, full of hatred for the Reverend. This man to call a man of God was an insult for all those who were truly full of faith!
Against all odds, against all well thought and fearful expectations, Isaac had accepted that his father miraculously had returned from the battlefield despite the fact that everybody had stated him to be dead. Suzanna had been afraid that Isaac won´t be able to handle such thing like a father returning from the dead. As a soldier had brought in a written document that declared Aidan Waite to have died on battlefield...
Aidan was running down to the river. From afar he could hear the thunderous water in it. It had rained over the last days and the river had a high level now. There were hills and rocks around it and then he heard voices above the streaming and thundering of the water. Aidan sat Isaac down, his hands covering the temples of his son when he ordered him to stay here.
"Stay here, Isaac! Wait! Don´t follow me down to the river bench!" He felt Isaac trembling but the boy nodded in obedience even when he wanted to help his father to rescue his mother.
Aidan shot him a last view and then he ran down to the river bench. It was a small bay that had been built up there by the river, surrounded by rocks and an open forest. In the curve of the bay, where the water was streaming slower, he saw Suzanna, tied with ropes and desperately clinging to two ropes which were held by a man at each end.
The Reverend was standing on the shore, giving his orders to the men who were holding the ropes. They were lowered and Suzanna, desperately struggling in the water, sank below the surface. Aidan saw her struggling, fighting for her life when her head was below the surface, her body´s shape a mere shadow in the river.
Suzanna couldn´t swim!
As most people of the 18th century she never had learned to swim. Even sailors on sailing ships mostly could not swim!
Reverend Herring was shouting above the noise of the river.
"You are cursed, Suzanna Waite! You´re a witch and now you can wash your soul clean from your sins!" He lifted his hand and the men pulled at the ropes to tighten them again.
Suzanna´s head came above the water surface again.
"Save your soul! From the monster who is now your husband" Suzanna was fighting for air, obviously she had swallowed an amount of water, but her face was determined when she stared at the Reverend.
"No! I will not!"
"No!" Suzanna screamed, her voice full of wrath.
Taking this as an insult of God the Reverend lowered his hand again, laid it on his chest and the men let the ropes lower down again so that Suzanna was sinking into the water again, below the surface. With cold eyes he watched her sinking into the deep water.
Aidan leaped for him.
Reverend Herring shouted anything and the men let go of the ends of the ropes! Suzanna sank under the surface completely and the ends of the ropes slipped over the moist ground, down to the river and finally into it when the powerful current got hold of her body, pulling her under and away with the force of the streaming water.
"NO! NO! SUZANNA!" Aidan screamed when she didn´t reappear and all he could see was the wildly whirling water that pulled her down to the rapids.
Suzanna was drowning!
She was...
Dying!
Now when his main target was swallowed by the river, the witch drowning and being dead soon, which was a mercy in difference to burn her at the stake...and her cursed husband should be thankful for it...he turned to Aidan, who was standing at the river in a posture of terrified shock.
"He called the devil to our house!" the Reverend shouted, directing to Aidan.
"A monster!" one man shouted.
"Get the demon!" another fell in.
"Monster!" a third one barked at him in pure hatred.
The very moment Aidan jumped for the Reverend, the other men had him by his arms and shoulders, using their fists to beat him up. They pushed and pulled and their fists went down into his face, onto his body and he roared with anger when the blows hit him all over. A man jumped onto his back from behind and together they brought Aidan down to the ground, beating and kicking. A foot hit him right into the belly and kicks followed into his sides and back when he doubled over in pain, growling, screaming and snarling.
When he managed it to turn his face a bit, Aidan saw in sheer horror that Isaac had come down to the river, against his orders! They would kill him when they would be ready with him, the vampire!
For a second he fixed looks with Isaac who looked down at the scenario with a horrified expression on his boy´s face.
"RUN! ISAAC RUN, ISAAC!" Aidan screamed over the chaos and the shouting of the men around him. "RUN!"
And finally, after half an eternity, Isaac managed it to pull himself away from the terrifying sight that his father, beaten up and helplessly on the ground, presented. Isaac turned around and started to run, run for his life! Aidan screamed when another kick made some of his ribs break and he doubled over in pain. But his son would make it! He would be free and safe in the woods!
For a long moment the Reverend and his fellow men thought that it would be easy now to get rid of this devil in human shape. Being certain of the victory over the forces of hell, they turned their attention to the Reverend, eagerly waiting for his orders.
This monster that had risen from the dead had to die its final and eternal death! God was their witness that they were doing a holy work. God was hating the forces of hell! And God would agree with them, would protect them and nobody would be about to punish them for killing one of devil´s creatures. As this could be no human being. No human was able to rise from the dead other than by black magic, animated by the forces of hell and walking around on the surface of earth!
" " the Reverend shouted at him.
" "
And Aidan proved him true that he wasn´t a human anymore.
He growled, opened his mouth and his fangs dropped and his eyes turned into black pools when he vamped out completely. Within less than a second he was up on his feet again, grabbed the first man by his collar and slashed his throat open. He men and women surrounding him started to scream in horror when Aidan went all vampire. Some started to run from the scene in an attempt to save their lives.
He let the man drop to the ground, whirled around and grabbed the next one. With one fast turn of his hands he snapped his neck and the man dropped to the ground like a string puppet whose lines were cut. The men went in for him but they had no chance against the strength of a raging vampire. Some of them were nailed to the ground in panic instead.
Aidan´s hands grabbed another man by the collar, ripping it off the neck and the man screamed like a pig when Aidan bit down brutally into his throat. He growled, sucked hard and drank a couple of sips, gulping it down, sitting out the rest, before he threw the man to the ground.
The Reverend stumbled back, his face panic stricken but still now he clung desperately to his faith, being certain that being a Reverend would protect him from the forces of hell and that this monster would not be able to harm him. God would protect him with a heavenly shield!
"You! YOU can´t HARM ME!" he screamed at Aidan. "You can´t harm me, monster!
But Aidan ignored all what this Reverend spat at him! This badass had killed his beloved wife! Had accused his innocent and loving wife to be a curse ridden witch who was cursed and had him pulled up from the grave! A devilish and fierce monster, inhuman and the devil´s fledgeling.
Aidan moved in slowly, his hands outstretched and he dug his fingers deep into the shoulders of the Reverend, the man´s face was pale with horror when Aidan growled at him and bared his bloody fangs right in front of his face! The Reverend screamed with fear and he could smell the stench of panic on him. The smell was sweet and tempting! The smell of blood was overwhelming and the ground was covered with corpses. The bodies of the men who had paid with their life for following the mad Reverend.
He pulled the hat from Reverend Herring´s head, threw it aside and closed his hands around the skull. His hands pressed on the temples and the man started to groan with the rising pain.
"NO!"
"That´s for Suzanna, my wife!" Aidan growled at him and put more pressure into his hands until he heard the bones in the skull crackle under his fingers, the man´s face torn with pain when the fractured bones pierced into his brain and he screamed.
In pure disgust Aidan turned the skull abruptly between his hands and the noise of the breaking neck bone was a satisfaction for him. He let the dead Reverend drop to the ground like garbage.
Aidan breathed hard, gasping and fighting for air when the pain of grief was running through him with the force of a raging wild fire. He lifted his head, turning around, his eyes were bled black and his mouth was red with the blood he had sucked from the man. His eyes moved over the surrounding forest, the river and the cold emptiness of the river side from which everybody had fled in horror who was still alive.
In pure horror Aidan stared at the whirling water that ran down the river, down to the small cataract nearby where it tumbled, streamed and gurgled over the rocks.
Aidan threw his head back, his mouth opened wide, baring his fangs and he started to roar in agony like a dying lion. His roar was thrown back by the walls of rock nearby, shaking the forest and the river to the ground. Than finally he sank down to his knees, crying and wincing with pain.
Suzanna´s body was pulled under the surface. She tried to hold her breath desperately, struggled to get back to the surface above her but the water was too strong and her skirts and her dress sucked up the water like cotton balls, becoming more and more heave. The whirling water pulled at the dress and it wrapped around her legs and her body, tying up her arms and legs like ropes of steel. She fought for the remaining breath but her lungs were bursting with hunger for oxygen, the burning pain in her chest becoming stronger and stronger which each second when she was helplessly whirled around in the wild water. With each attempt to free herself from the icy grave she was pulled deeper into the river. Suzanna wanted to scream and when finally the hunger for air, the hunger to breathe became overwhelming, she opened her mouth and in less than a second it was filled with ice cold water that seemed to weight a ton, pressing down her throat and into her lungs like a mass of molten lead.
Last bubbles of useless air escaped from her windpipe when her lungs were flooded and she sank deeper into the water.
I´m dying! I´m dying! She thought. Images appeared in front of her eyes and she saw Aidan´s face, the face of her beloved husband...Isaac. Aidan. Her father. Her life, the marriage... Then...
Darkness closed in around her and her body was washed down the river...
From afar a man had watched the scene. He heard the screams of the men and women who were participating in the witch trial at the bow of the river. A place where it had built up a small bay before the tumbling water would run down the little cataract between the heavy blocks of rock. The turmoil and the shouting had reached the level of a crescendo. He looked over from the place where he was hiding behind a group of rocks.
They had tied a woman to a rope and he saw how two men let the ends slip from their hands and the woman sank into the water, her chest and then her head disappearing under the whirling surface.
They were drowning her!
Just in the same moment a man came running down to the river, just in time to see how the woman sank under. He stumbled around in horror, not believing what these people had done to …
...his wife!
"Suzanna!" the scream let the forest shake when the man ran into the trial group.
The man behind the rocks stiffened. The man down at the river was...
...Aidan!
And the villagers were killing his wife accusing her for witchcraft. Idiots! They didn´t know what a real witch was! What a real witch was able to do to save her life during a trial as long as she wasn´t burned down to
ashes at the stake. Instead they focused their useless, stupid brains on hunting down innocent women from the village, pushed up by the trials in towns like Andover and Salem. Hundreds of women and men had fallen prey to the fanatics and idiots and there had been only a handful of real witches among them! Who really deserved to be...destroyed.
Aidan was doubling over in horror before the men started to attack him and he vamped out!
The blonde man watched a mere second than he decided to go for the drowning woman instead. Aidan would manage it on his own! He had warned him to stay away from all he knew and everyone who had known him alive. But he hadn´t done so and these were the results!
The blonde ran down between the trees and rocks, pulling off his coat and his shirt while he sped down to the water. There were only seconds left before the body would be washed down to the lower part of the river where the large cataract would smash the woman´s bones and head against the giant rocks, breaking each single bone in her body! No chance to get her back then!
With inhuman speed the man ran down to the river, throwing himself into the icy water. For a moment he looked around for orientation, than he held his breath and bowed down, diving down into the river. The current was strong and he had to take care that he would not be pulled downwards. He opened his eyes under the water and stretched out his arms while he tried to stabilize himself with his legs. He flailed his arms around and then he got hold of a part of a dress which was spread out by the flowing water. His fingers closed around the seams and he pulled. Anyway he had to get hold of the body but he would be able to pull the woman up not before he would have her in slower flowing water near the riverside.
He struggled with the pull of the water that was dragging at the motionless body, struggling to get himself up to the surface and pushing her head through the surface too so she might be able to breathe. As long as there would be some life in her. He had no clue how long a human being could stay under water before dying. As far as he knew a vampire couldn´t die by drowning but this woman was a mortal one!
Finally he managed it to break through the icy and whirling surface, pushing the motionless body upwards what for he wrapped his right arm around her waist. He had to fight to swim back to the riverside, handicapped by the weight of the woman, but finally he managed it to press his feet into the ground that was covered with slippery gravel and stones. He stumbled out of the water, pulling the lifeless body with him.
Carefully he was lying her onto the moist ground between the trees. He bent his head, pressing his ear onto her chest, listening for a heartbeat. When her heart won´t beat anymore it would mean that she was dead and he won´t be able to turn her as the blood wouldn´t work in her anymore!
After half an eternity he heard a weak heartbeat in her chest. It was slow and weak but it was still there! He turned her over onto her chest and belly and pressed his large hands into her back just below the shoulders. He turned her head to the side, so her mouth wouldn´t be pressed into the ground.
"Okay, lady! Breathe!" he grunted at her with a voice between a growl and a shouting. Then he pressed his hands deep down into her back, putting pressure on her. The body twitched under his hands and he growled. Pressed again and again. Water was running from her open lips and with each pressing some more poured out from between her lips.
"Breathe! Damn! Breathe! For Aidan´s sake, breathe! God damn it! Breathe!" he cursed at her while he pushed her body into the moss with every pressing. He bent down again to her, listening for a heartbeat, then he went on.
Suddenly a gasp escaped from the woman´s lips and a gush of water poured out into the ground. There was a terrible rasping noise and she woman under his hands choked and started to cough hard. He turned her over on the left side, moving her head into a more comfortable position.
"What I said! Breathing! Sometimes it only needs a bit of rigorous intention, Lady!" He could hear her heart beating a bit more steady now.
He looked down at her. If he had gotten it right, her name was Suzanna. What meant Suzanna Waite when she was Aidan´s wife. Her wet hair was long and hanging in drilled tendrils around and on her face that was of simple beauty. She was young, not more than some twenty five years old he estimated from her facial features. Her eyes were still closed but the was breathing, even when it was slowly and her breath came in gasps.
She still had enough life in her to turn her!
Carefully he pulled her up into his lap, in a halfway sitting position. Her back was leaning at his broad chest and carefully he stroked her long hair to the side, baring one side of her neck. With the fingertips he felt for her pulse point and he bent down, his lips moving over the delicate skin of her throat.
For a moment he inhaled her scent, then he sighed slightly and his eyes turned black, his fangs itched to fall and he let go. When his lips touched her skin again and he opened them finally, his fangs scratched over her soft skin. The hunger for her blood was gnawing in his veins and intestines and he hesitated a moment before he felt so much control as to take her without sucking her dry, killing her instead of turning her.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, he bit down carefully.
He heard the fangs breaking through the soft skin that was rather cold now from the icy water of the river. When he started to suck, her blood was cooler than normal but still warm enough to keep her alive.
It was warm and sweet and delicious, tasting like honey and wine and of sweet cherries. Carefully he sucked at her throat, swallowing, then stopping to listen for her heart again. When he was sure that she was still alive he went on, giving in to his hunger. Her blood filled his veins and his body with her warmth and finally he felt her going more numb in his arms, her heart was slowing down and he gasped and retracted his fangs from her throat. He licked over his lips, enjoying the last drops and then he moved her in his arms until she was lying in the crook of his arm. Her head was lying on his upper arm.
"Okay, sweet Suzanna!" he mumbled; "let´s go! For Aidan! You will drink and you´ll live my little lady!" He smiled and a grin split his face. He bent down to his own wrist and bit down hard. His face was torn with a painful smiling when he felt the burning bite marks on his wrist. He sucked at them to get the blood running and when the first drops of blood appeared on his skin he pressed his wrist onto Suzanna´s lips.
"Drink! Drink Suzanna and you´ll live forever! Your eternal life is running through my veins! Drink god damn it!" he urged her, not sure if she might hear him. For a long moment she didn´t react and the blood was running down from his wrist, but finally he felt her lips closing in and she began to suck weakly.
"Good! Good! That´s good for you! Drink from me and you´ll live forever, Suzanna!"
Suzanna´s lips became red with his blood and her lips moved, more licking than sucking. Obviously it took her much effort because she was very weak but when things went on, the sucking grew harder and more urgently. He felt her teeth digging into his wrist and he gasped when it started to hurt. But she was drinking and that was all what was counting in the moment.
"Okay, little lady! That´s enough! It´s enough NOW!" he pulled his wrist from her lips, carefully but definitely pushing her head back into his arm. She was trembling and carefully he laid her back onto the ground. For a moment he looked at her and when she was sleeping now by exhaustion and due to the turning process, he stripped down the wet dress from her body, undressing her and wrapping her into the blanket he took from his horse that was tied to a tree in some distance. He started a fire to keep her warm and sat by her side, waking and watching over her through the whole night.
The sun was high up in the sky but it was a dim light here under the trees when she opened her eyes to narrow slits. She felt tired and weak, but obviously she was alive. Or she had died and was now in some place...either heaven or a purgatory? There was fire nearby. But it wasn´t consuming her body, was only warming up the place. Her hands moved over something soft and warm that was covering her from feet to chin. The surface was soft and her fingertips felt each single hair of it. She lifted her head and there was a rustling and whispering below and beside her. A bird was cheeping and its voice was so loud that she twitched, assuming that it must be sitting on her shoulder. Suzanna turned her head but there was no bird on her shoulder. The blanket was rustling around her and when she pulled it up, the moss under her crackled. She tried to focus on the bird, searching it and finally she saw it high above in the trees of the hemlock.
Carefully she looked around, surrounded by so much sounds and noises and birds peeping and singing that in a reflex she covered her ears with her hands, overwhelmed by the spectrum of it. She stared at the grass nearby and never before it had been so brilliant, so colorful and shimmering, even in the dim light here under the trees. Suzanna gasped with fear and she looked helplessly around.
What had happened to her? Where had she been brought to?
She grabbed for her dress that was hanging from a tree nearby, dressed herself in it despite it was slightly moist.
Moist! Her dress...it was the dress she had been wearing when the men had pulled her out of the farmhouse. When the men, led by Reverend Herring had tied her and pulled her down to the river...
"Oh my God!" Suzanna gasped and she stumbled around, turning around and with slow steps she went down to the river. When she had passed the last trees at the riverside, the forest opened to an area covered in stones of different sizes and glistening gravel. The streaming water was thundering in her ears and she stumbled over the gravel.
When she looked up she saw a man sitting on a trunk. He had tousled blonde hair that was loosely tied to a ponytail at the back of his head. He was dressed in gray pants and black over-knee boots, a light gray vest and a dark gray and long jacket that reminded of a tunic.
He smiled at her and spread out his arms like to welcome her.
"Welcome back, Suzanna!" he greeted her with a broad smile on his face. Suzanna didn´t understand what he meant by "back"...
"What...what does it mean? What happened to me? And who are you? Who?"
"I´m Bishop! James Bishop..." he smiled at her.
"Who are you and where...where is Aidan?"
"Aidan is gone! He had to run from the town area after they tried to kill you, Suzanna. But I saved you from the river and here you are!"
"I...I mean...I was...I was drowning! I should be dead! Who are you and what have you done to me? Tell me!"
"I made you into what Aidan is, little lady!" He stood up from the trunk and came over to her. Suzanna stared at him in fear and disbelief.
"Made. Me. Into...what Aidan is? You mean...you made me...?"
"A vampire! Yes! I turned you into a vampire! You´ll live forever. Like Aidan, your husband and my son!" Bishop answered and he could clearly read the disbelief in her beautiful face.
"Son? He isn´t your son, Bishop! I know his father! He has a book store, runs a printing office! Don´t lie at me!" she spat at him and she tried to slap him in the face but he caught her hand midair, still grinning.
"You don´t believe me, Suzanna! So look! Look at me!" And he bared his fangs in front of her, growling low under his breath, his eyes bled black.
He looked like her husband Aidan when he was...hungry. Or angry.
Vampire!
"Do you believe me now, Suzanna? Now look for yourself!" He hold a small mirror in front of her and Suzanna stumbled back in shock when she saw her own face full of anger, fangs down and eyes black as the night. She turned around and started to scream but he grabbed her and pulled her into an embrace so tight, that it stifled her screams at his chest.
"Ssshhh...it´s all good. All good..." his hands were stroking over her shoulders, the back of her head and her temples.
When Suzanna calmed down finally she demanded: "I want to go to Aidan! He wants to know! He has to! He saw...when I was drowning! He must know, Bishop!"
"You can´t go for him, Suzanna! He fled from here and I don´t know where he is! You´ll have to feed to get your fill and you have to hide from everyone around here! Otherwise they would burn you or stake you! You can´t stay here nor can you ever return to here!" Bishop explained in a cold voice. He wouldn´t let her make the same mistake as Aidan had made,
"But I have a son! Isaac!" she protested.
"Better they won´t find him as they look at him as the son of a witch! No such good idea, you can imagine!"
"But I have to find him, Bishop! He´s still a boy, no adult man to care for himself!"
"We might look after him later. But now we´ll have to leave before they start to search for any of us!" Bishop gave back and he went into the forest, back to the place where he had tied his horse at a tree. He extinguished the fire and when he had saddled his horse he asked her:
"Have you ever been riding a horse, Suzanna?"
"No! No, of course not!"
"Then you´ll learn it now!" And he shoved her up onto the horse, getting on the horse behind her, supporting her with one arm while he took the rein in the other.
Together they made it for the next town or farm. Suzanna would have to feed soon...
The End