Tragic Vampiric Romance - 1 (Patreon)

[Written as part of a secret-santa exchange.]

The small gothic town was briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning. The brief flash of light did little to improve Elettra’s impression of the place. She mostly saw sharp and hostile angles. Not a welcoming site after hours of walking.

The town of San Guerino sat far too deep in the mountains for the modern rail system to have reached it, which had left her hiking since morning to reach it. The rain had started a bit before supper time, and had seemed to only get worse after the sun went down.

It truly was a miserable start to a job, and Elettra muttered a prayer under her breath while fussing with the collar of crucifixes around her neck. Being out after dark, tired and alone, was never a comfortable situation for a vampire slayer. Especially not when in unfamiliar territory.

She was definitely going to have words for the priest that had called her in, yet had made no arrangements to help her up from the train station. A horse would have been very appreciated. Especially when none of the folks down in the valley would dare lend her one for a trip up to San Guerino, which was far from a surprise, villagers tended to do their best to avoid vampire plagued settlements. The fear seemed a bit stronger than one might expect from an infestation of a few months, but the world was moving faster in these days of steam and industry, perhaps rural superstitions had also sped up.

Finally reaching the mountain town, Elettra was surprised to see it had an imposing town wall, built from stone. With the steepness of the slopes around, she had to admit the town seemed like something of a fortress. Reaching the front gate, she hammered on it, hoping someone was listening despite the late hour.

As she waited, she gave the town’s defenses a second look, and realised that, while they were impressive, they were surely medieval at the latest. Which meant they likely didn’t say much about the current economic situation of the town.

A small slot opened in the door, two accusative eyes glaring down at her from a face partially lit by firelight. “Who goes there?”

“Elettra Rossi. The hunter your town priest called for,” she replied in a tired voice.

The man behind the door grunted, but it was followed by the scraping noises of a crossbeam being removed. Another moment later and the door opened, revealing the full thug of a man that the eyes belonged to.

“The Father is sleeping by now, but I’ve been told to show you to the inn,” the man said, closing the door behind her and barring it once more.

“It seems a rather secure community,” Elettra noted, looking out from the covered watch area to the rainy streets beyond.

There were a few pens filled with pigs and chickens near to the wall, but the buildings beyond them looked tightly crowded. It was too dark to see more than the nearest buildings, however.

Beside her, the guard muttered under his breath in a rather less intelligible local dialect while he pulled a rain cloak on. He then led her into the dark streets of the town, lit by a torch that was struggling in the rain. Heading deeper into the town, she found her impression of the age of the town reinforced. The buildings inside were generally of a medieval style and looking somewhat worse for wear. Here and there additions or repairs had been done that were obviously more recent, but were also obviously poorer than the town had once been.

The guard stopped outside of a building that looked little different from the surrounding houses, and gave a loud knock. After a few moments he began pounding on the door once more. There was a barely audible shout from somewhere within, and she was left wondering just what sort of inn this was. It may have been late, but she was certain one could still have expected guests to be returning from tavern visits at this hour.

Finally, the door opened, revealing a man with sharp features but a dull expression. He grunted something in the local dialect that she felt reasonably safe in guessing meant roughly ‘what’s going on?’, though it was as much by tone and body language as knowing the words.

The thuggish guard barked that she was the vampire hunter the local priest had called for. That seemed to hit some memory in the innkeeper’s head, and he turned to me with a more apologetic expression.

“Excuses me, madame. I hadn’t realised you would be arriving so soon,” he said, using something closer to the accepted national dialect. “Please, come in.”

Stepping into the ‘inn’ behind him, she found it looked even worse for wear on the inside than it had on the outside.

“I will guess you don’t see many visitors,” she muttered, looking at a partially broken stairwell, just barely visible in the light of a small candle by the door.

It was hard to say for certain, but she also had the impression there were rats lurking just outside the candle’s light. They were definitely in the walls, she could hear the scratching and crawling noises from the walls.

“The town’s never been the same since the old silver mine died off,” the innkeeper replied in a tired voice. “There was still some to be mined when my grandfather had been a young man, but now?”

He shook his head of thinning and greying hair.

“Where is my room?” she asked, not being in the mood to discuss the town’s history.

she was cold and tired and had stayed in worse places with her job. So she simply wanted to go to bed.

“Up on the second level… watch the steps,” the man said, grabbing the candle and leading the way.

The broken steps were not the only risks to the stairs. Several others creaked enough she feared what might happen if she put her weight on them, to the point that one stair in three seemed a lost cause. The hallway above was not long, however, and they arrived at her room presently. Opening it, she saw there was a small fireplace, an antique dresser that may have fetched some money if one brought it to a market, but likely not enough to cover the expense of getting it out of this forsaken place, and then a simple bed.

“May I use the candle to light the fire?” she asked.

“There’s no wood in it?” the innkeeper replied, sounding honestly confused that she would expect there to be.

“Then may I have some wood to light a fire? I was out in the rain for some hours and would rather prefer to warm up in place of slowly wasting away from pneumonia while your town continues to suffer its vampiric threat,” she said, her temper somewhat rising with how poorly this man was doing his job.

“I—I… yes. Yes of course, madame. I have some downstairs… I will fetch it for you,” he replied, though he slowly became more difficult to understand as her gaze remained fixed upon him and he slipped into the local dialect.

She waited in the doorway, the room very near pitchblack in with a lack of candle and the cloudy night outside. she was just able to navigate the room to reach the window and stare out of it.

While all she could make out was the vaguest shape of the buildings across the lain, she stared up at the roof of the building across from the inn. There was something there, and it was watching her. It may, perhaps, seem cliche to insist that she could feel it, but the gaze of a vampire is a different thing from any of God’s creatures. It is cold and piercing, a pinprick of Hell itself reaching out. She had grown quite aware of that sensation when a hunter.

The innkeeper returned as she was staring out in the dark. He shoved a log into the small fireplace along with some kindling, lighting it with his candle. He left a few small logs near the fireplace for me and then scurried off, little braver than the rats she was now certain were lurking in the shadows of the hallway.

Closing the curtain and then locking the door, she removed her pack and damp clothing, placing them all near the fire. It left her nude but for the crucifix choker, which she never removed while on a job. She then shook out the bedding, wanting to ensure nothing was lurking within.

The room was not warm, but it was an acceptable temperature, once she had bundled herself in the blankets provided. It was enough.

-

The next morning she rose before dawn, but she found that was rather an unimpressive feat, now that she had a better look of the town’s surroundings. It was tucked within a cliff-sided valley, likely getting no more than a few hours of true sunlight in any day. A perfect place for a vampire to hide.

The innkeeper was once again perplexed by her requests of basic hospitality, not realising she might have expected breakfast. Not sure she trusted his cooking, she asked for directions to any tavern or similar restaurant that might exist. That he was at least able to provide, directing her towards a bakery.

Once she arrived, however, she wondered if she may have been better off risking the innkeeper’s culinary offerings. The locals glared at her as she entered the small bakery, instantly knowing she was an outsider. It was far from uncommon in her experience, hunters clearly standing outside the norms of polite society (and generally arrived during times of crisis), but this seemed especially hateful.

Doing her best to ignore them, she turned to the baker. “Milk with bread, please.”

“Do you have a bowl?” he asked stiffly, clearly not used to speaking anything but the local dialect.

“I can eat it here and return the bowl?” she offered.

The baker made a face, but she pulled out a few coins more than she felt the simple breakfast was worth and it seemed to win him over. At least enough to provide her what she asked for, no smiles or other traces of friendly servicewere forthcoming. She found a corner to stand in and picked at the more solid bits of bread by hand, quietly wishing she’d asked for a spoon. The baker probably would have charged at least a lira to borrow it if she asked now, however.

It was a simple breakfast, but filled her enough to feel ready to deal with the local priest. She handed the bowl back with a small grunt and then set off, sure she’d find her way to the church easily enough. They were generally hard to miss, especially in a town as small as this one.

The streets she saw as she wandered were as worn and decayed as the inn had been. A few homes looked quite unlivable, and the amount of weeds growing around the entrances left her quite certain they’d been abandoned. Elettra let out a small sigh, sure that explained how the vampire had managed to stay hidden from the locals for so long, even with the town being rather compact.

After a few blocks, the church caught her eye. It was not a building in the traditional sense, but was, in fact, carved into the cliff itself. There had once been some no doubt impressive stained glass windows, but those were now boarded over, a few broken panes just barely visible between planks of wood.

Stepping into the church itself, she felt a shiver down her spine. It was hard to believe the place was hallowed ground with the feeling in the air. It was also clear it had once been a natural cave that had been expanded, the ceiling still rough and holding stalactites.

Walking past pews, some of which were broken, she found the local priest kneeling at the altar. The large and gold leafed crucifix above was broken, one arm missing entirely. A few nail holes showed there had once been a statue of Christ attached, but it was nowhere to be seen now.

It amazed Elettra that anyone still lived in this town.

“You are the hunter, then?” the priest said, not getting up or turning away from the altar. His voice was high and tired sounding. “I do not recognise your footsteps.”

“I am,” she replied flatly.

“You came more quickly than I had dared hope,” he said, finally getting up off of his knees, though he then busied himself with cleaning the altar, rather than looking her way.

“Trains are useful like that.”

“Ah. Yes. Yes. The railroads. Wonderful things. They make the whole nation so much… smaller,” he said, a little enigmatically.

She supposed trying to be a community leader in a place like San Guerino would lead anyone a bit eccentric after a few years. Though her report hadn’t actually said how long the priest had been assigned… still, his hair was grey and he must have been her some time.

“What can you tell me about the vampire,” Elettra asked.

The priest froze for a moment, gathering his thoughts by staring up at the broken crucifix once more. “It is female. The body was once a sickly girl I often visited, attempting to aid through her affliction. I know not how she fell to vampirism… perhaps she blamed myself, and by extension god, for failing her?”

“The ‘how’ and ‘why’ are generally only my concern if there is evidence of other vampires about,” she muttered.

The priest twitched a bit at that, then looked down to study his hands. “You think there may be others?”

“Not especially. You reports make no mention of issues before this new one… now, if we can move on to more of the ‘what’ and, perhaps most importantly, the ‘where’, that would be appreciated,” she replied.

“Mhm. Yes… Reports say it still looks human. I’ve heard they can become quite beastly sometimes?” he said, still studying his hands as he fussed with them nervously.

Small town priests were often frightened of hunters. Hunters had connections with Rome, and were known to report unfaithful priests from time to time. Those whose poor leadership had allowed vampires to thrive.

“As for the ‘where’… I simply do not know. We think it spends most nights away from the village, though we suspect there are times it stays within. Too many houses have been abandoned over the years… there’s too many places for things to hide.”

“I noticed,” Elettra said, feeling tired once more.

She’d been hoping for a better starting place than that.

With nothing else to do, she kneeled in the aisle, clasping her hands to make a quiet prayer for a moonlit night, that she might better keep watch. As she did so she felt a shiver run down her spine. By the time she’d opened her eyes, however, it was only her and the priest, the silver haired man having moved quickly to clean the pews.