A painful prickling feeling along the length of her back awoke Moide from her deep slumber. She cried out, her voice ringing like a small bell in an empty stone chamber. Her eyes came to focus, and she found out that indeed it was a stone chamber that she was in. She tried to move her hands and sit up, but found her limbs sluggish and unwilling to comply.
"Don't move too much, Strangling," growled a voice from above her. A dark face with glowing red eyes came into view above her. "The skin is still scabbing."
She remembered the blotches of toxic poison that had splashed upon her skin and look down at her arms. The residue was gone and not a green stain was left to seep defilement into her blood stream. A tear rolled down her cheek as she beheld what replaced the stains. Down the length of ivory white arms where the black and royal blue ink stains of recently made tattoos. They curved and dotted upon her white canvas, whispering to her of the mysterious race that had lived below her people.
The tattoos meant only one thing-the Saelei, those who could not survive sunlight and lived inside the refuge of mountains where they were closer to the heart of the earth, the source of their power. Their skin was dark as night and their eyes as purple as the amethysts that were found in the mines. Every so many thousand of years, women in her village had disappeared, only to be seen several thousands years later at night, playing under the moonlit sky. The absence of sunlight and the presence of strong earth magic had turned their skin a dusky gray that eventually became black as obsidian. The only features that remained the same were their white locks of hair and their green or gray eyes. The lords of Saelei had bound them into service with bonds of a mysterious magic. No one knew exactly what the lords wanted from the captives. Some had said that they craved to live under the sun and that the captives were experiments. Others said that it was because the Saelei lacked women.
A long bare dark arm gently pulled her upright. Somewhere near her, a bell tinkled. A scream of pain escaped her throat as a hot steaming towel was thrown upon her bare back. She tried to move her head to get a better view of the stranger that was treating her, but her head throbbed with overwhelming pain that almost threw her back into a state of unconsciousness.
"The Lord wants you well enough to stand as soon as possible. You must stay conscious or he will not be pleased with me." The stranger wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the stone platform. Again, the tinkling of a bell. He must be wearing jewelry of some sort, she thought.
She could finally peer into the face of the servant of her captor. What she saw made her gasp. A Saelei? No, his eyes were the color of blood and his face was slightly broader and less refined. She felt small in his arms, and most Saelei were shorter than even her. "Who…"
She saw a muscle twitch under one of his eyes. "There were many Nobles who served under the King, and several that oversaw the expeditions to your world. The earth dwellers came to mutual terms with the Nobles when they discovered one another. My mother was their guide." His words had an accent to them that was more familiar to Nobles of the ancient Caucus area of this world.
Her ears made out the sweet bubbling noise of the stream before she felt it. An aqueduct must bring mountain water to the castle, she thought. As he eased her into the water, she let her mind wander and her blood cool. Thoughts of water filled her.
"You cannot escape that way. Don't try, for you'll only become weaker. You are partially bound to the Lord now. And only when he desires it can you tap into your powers." He picked her up out of the cool underground stream and laid her back upon the platform.
More tears streamed down her face. "I have never been so defiled before." He eyes became even sadder when she noticed the array of ribbons tied around the bell he carried on a bracelet.
He growled. "My magic is not impure, Strangling."
"Keep your temper, Mattais." A deep voice came from the top of the long flight of stairs behind them.
"Yes, father."
Moide felt energy pour back into her as the tall figure came, gliding down the stairs. She recognized the dark hair that fluttered behind him. Her tears stopped. It was the Noble. "Your father?"
Mattias stood before her dressed in the simple leather trousers of a stable servant, his eyes gleaming like rubies. "While you may have never allowed yourself to love the Vampire King, it does not mean all the people from your world share the same feeling."
The Noble placed a hand upon his son's shoulder. "You have other things to attend to as well."
Mattias nodded and quietly left the room, leaving her trembling in the presence of her new master.
Several human women came out from behind him, their arms full of dark bundles of clothes, accessories, and brushes. They wore the billowing white dresses that had been favored by the women in human history of long past, when they were to sit in cold stone halls and embroider and wait for the return of their husbands from wars in far off lands.
One came forward and excused herself. They began to dress her in many folds and layers of gossamer ebon and blue garments. She remained still as they did so, and observed the Noble more closely.
He was lovelier than any human, as most Nobles almost always were. His face was like that from a painting of fine youth from one of Italian painter she had met many years ago, before the cataclysm. His hair was like a fine blanket of dark silk nearly as long as her knee-length hair. As for his height, it was imposing. She barely reached the middle of his chest. His sky blue eyes twinkled with amusement as she frowned at him.
She grimaced as one of the ladies accidentally brushed the end of a tattoo at the base of her neck while combing her mass of hair. They started braiding and looping, twining small bells on rings into the loops. She remembered their weight all too well.
"If you would allow me but a drop of your blood of your own free will, my lady, those tattoos could be made to fade away," whispered the Noble.
"Never will you be as the Vampire King was." She felt an uncomfortable tremor go down her spine as he cupped her face in his large white hand.
"I spent many, many years looking for you and keeping track what little evidence you left behind of your activities. He protected you very well. " He took her small hand in his and bowed over it. "I am Count Rensilas, once a nobleman of the Hungarian Empire that existed long ago."
"Titles do not impress me, vampire." The women finished with a veil and a circlet of bells over it around her brow.
He smiled. "Coming from someone even older than me, I do not find that surprising." He reached into the pockets of his robes and withdrew nine white gold bracelets. Each one had a different number of bells on them, similar to the ones in her hair on and on her circlet. All the bells had a different symbol etched on them and a different array of colored ribbons tied to them. For each bell he added, he also added a powerful servant under her command, and once the bells were upon her, she was to endue an elemental power to them, and ultimately to the Count.
He clipped five bracelets upon one her left arm and four around her left ankle. "You are never to leave the castle without me. You are never to converse with anyone other than those who dwell in this castle, unless I allow you otherwise. You are to defend my life as your own, and to never take your own life without my permission. And only I can remove the bells." She blushed at a resurfacing memory.
The tattoos on her arms and back burned when he placed an arm around her to pull her close, making her dizzy with pain.
"The city that you were protecting now has my protection as well. I will not harm or feed from them. In this, I hope you serve me with the slightest of free will."
"What do you want from me? How do you know these things?" She raised the wrist heavy with bangles. "Those documents have been lost longer than you have been alive, vampire. HOW DO YOU KNOW THESE THINGS?" She wept and crumpled to the floor. "The Saelei woman is dead. This magic should not be in this world. This magic…" Her fingers burnt as she clawed at the circlet on her head.
He pulled her up and encircled her with his arms. "My kind is slowly being eradicated from this world. Many of the Nobles were born vampires. We have no choice but to feed. Just as humans feed on cattle and eat plants of the earth, we also need sustenance. It has been a struggle about defining prey and predator for many generations. With your power, some Nobles may be able to survive this age. All things have a right to exist. Don't you also believe that?"
She tried to push away from him. "I am not supposed to be here. The Vampire King knew that. What you say doesn't justify all of your actions. You should be surviving of your own power." The tattoos burned as she struggled.
"Then why did you help the Vampire King?" He whispered.
A muffled choke came from her, and she looked up at him. "You know Saelei ways of binding me, but you don't know how he obtained my favor?" She became still, lost in a recollection. "I knew him from when he was an angry young boy, when I was brought to this world by a stream of wild magic tapped into by the Saelei." She paused and glanced up at the stairway that Mattias had left from. "The town he was from had been ravaged by many diseases and plagues, some from foreigners passing through. Famines were frequent, but they knew when to prepare for such harsh seasons. It was also the custom of his people to consume the blood of people on their death bed, for they believed the blood carried the spirit and the spirit in turn relived inside of them. You can imagine what thousands of years of isolation can do to a people. Because of famines in the past, they became more dependant on animal blood from remaining animals as well. Their bite carried viruses and toxins. Their ability to live longer than most humans, that is where their mental powers come from, tapping into areas of the brain that cannot be learned in a short life."
The Noble took in a quick breath of air. "The thirst for blood…but what about the outside world?"
"When he met me, the cycle of famines ended and the land became rich for crops. This created outside interest in their valley. When outsiders finally brought war inside his valley, most of the village was destroyed. Few survivors moved into foreign cities, but were later killed. They had been accused of bringing plague and bad fortune, which is partially true." She placed a hand over an eye in shame. "The war that the outsiders brought drove him to drink more than just from animals or the dying…"
The vampire tightened his grip on her and picked her up, bringing her up to eye level with him. "Are you telling me you sided with him because of guilt?"
She avoided his eyes. "I shouldn't have helped them. I should have let things be."
"So now you help the humans." He set her down. "Will this cycle never end?"
"Don't you think I have asked that? That is between you and the humans. Synthetic blood, treaties and governments. It is your struggle. Once I undo what your people have done to the humans, I am free."
His dark, deep laugh echoed in the small chamber. "It seems to me you've never realized when you were free." He closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye. "The cycle would have eventually started without your interference."
The tattoos burned painfully as she leapt away from him. "Yes, but we will never know. Famine could have done them in. Then they never would have fed on the outside world." Her chest heaved with quick, heavy breaths.
"You cannot escape this." Rensilas lunged forward.
Even with the pain, she managed to elude his lunge. The moment was to be short lived. A cold sensation traveled down her spine where the tattoo ink was darkest and down a nerve in her leg. It went numb and she toppled over, entangled in her layers of robes and skirts.
The Noble pinned down her arms and raised her veil. "It begins thus." And he sank his fangs into the soft white flesh of her neck. As long as the tattoos remained, her blood would not kill him.
She gasped. "Transient guests…even me…"