The Blood of Life - Chapter 3 - A Rest Interrupted (Patreon)

This is a little more rough than I wanted to be, but I've added some material to this chapter since my writing group looked at it. It builds on the previous chapters and now we're starting to see how things are developing.

The sound of someone knocking awakens me with a start. I am lying on the bed, my clothing stripped off. It’s not a proper resting place with the meager amount of dirt I have, but I know I was truly asleep this time. The extra sack of soil I secured this morning before dawn had eased my rest. Through the heavy curtain, I can see a faint glow that just looking at hurts my eyes. It’s not bright enough in here to be a danger to me, but I do wish the room was darker.

The knocking though continues. “Radic,” I hear through the door. Quickly I scramble up. “I found something, Radic.”

It’s that leopard from last night. Why is he here, and what time is it anyway? I fumble for the pocket watch on the nightstand, which I click open. Foxes have good night vision, and by the faint light in the room, I can just barely make out that it is only 10:30 in the morning. I am a prisoner in this room.

“Radic?” calls the voice. “Are you awake?”

“I am now,” I snap, immediately regretting my outburst. He’s going to expect me to open the door, and I can’t do that. I look back to the bed and my makeshift coffin with dirt sitting on the blanket. He’s going to have questions.

“The innkeeper says you sleep pretty late, but this is important. I was going through things at the store after our chat, and I found something you are going to want to see.”

What is he doing here? I can’t let him in, but if I don’t let him in, that’s going to be suspicious.

“I’m not decent right now, Ekrem. Could we perhaps talk about this tonight?”

There’s a pause. “I think you will want to see this now.”

I take a deep sigh. Once again, people won’t leave me alone. I just came here to find peace, but life has apparently found me.

“Radic?” There’s hesitation in his voice now. Confusion. Maybe he’s going to get someone else. No, there’s no time to wait. I must handle the problem in front of me and see if I can buy time to think.

I walk over to the door and slide the bolt open. I take a deep breath, and plan to just tell him politely that we can talk later. I crack the door open and lean to stick my muzzle out the door when the light from the window in the hallway burns me with indirect daylight.

Immediately, I fall back. Even though it’s not directly on my face, I can feel the sudden pain. In that moment, as I hiss to my own stupidity, I can feel the door bump me as he enters the room.

I feel myself freeze then. It’s been decades since I’ve consumed blood from sapient life, and I did not plan to ever do it again, but he has forced my hand. I either take care of him, or my secret is going to be exposed.

“I didn’t want to do this,” I say straightening up, “but you couldn’t leave me alone.”

He looks at me. “Oh wow, you are naked.”

“Yes,” I hiss. Maybe if I physically knock him out, no one will come looking for him till dark. It’s a risk, but it’s better than killing him. I just can’t let there be a strong.

“Wow, it’s dark in here. Here, let me get the window for you— “

“No!” I shout, and he freezes. For a moment we appraise each other. His eyes glance to toward the bed, but I try and place myself between him and it. “What do you want I ask him?”

He looks me over, and even though he is little more than an outline in the darkened room, I can see his tail has gone still. He’s realized what the mess on the bed means. “That family plot you visited last night…”

“What about it?” I snap.

He looks at me, and I can see the fear there. “That’s where you were buried, isn’t it,” he whispers.

I give a small nod and reach up to slide the bolt of the door closed. “I’m sorry for what I’m about to do to you,” I say, taking a step toward him. “I can’t afford you telling anyone.”

He swallows. “I found the diary of Katarina Horban. There’s a letter in it, and I think it’s addressed to you.”

I freeze, body tense and coiled, ready to take him out as quickly as I can. “Katarina…” I whisper.

The leopard nods. “She was your sister?” he asks.

I should kill him. It would be quick and bloody, but it would be easy. The blood in his body that taunts me, it could all be mine. I would again feel the true power my curse gives me, and I would once again be drunk on the power of death.

Yet I am not ready to throw out ninety years of fighting back against myself for one curious leopard. I settle my fur down and look at him, considering. I didn’t come here to run from the past. I’ve done that for a long time. I came here to face it and put it behind me, and to once more know the thoughts of my sister is a temptation greater than blood.

Now that I’m looking at him as more than just a problem I need to kill, I can see the leopard is dressed in simple clothes, but he is carrying a book under one arm. It’s a sharp contrast to the naked, dirt-smudged fox standing in front of him with dirt stuck to his fur.

“Don’t make me regret this,” I say, putting as much ice in my voice I can. It’s a half-hearted threat, though. My choice of diet has taken away my powers of suggestion. There’s something that the blood of intelligent creatures gives you that simple farm animals can’t. Who knew that I would lose one of the core ways I had to protect myself by being more than a monster?

Ekrem, for his part, just slowly holds up the book. There is a piece of paper sticking out of it.

I take the book, and it feels familiar. It is warm in my hands because he was holding it. There are no words on the spine, the leather cover is much more worn since I last saw it sitting at her writing desk, but I recognize it. Eagerly, I flip it open, it’s too dark in the room for me to easily read the text.

Quickly, I walk over and strike a match to light the candle. The handwriting on the inside cover is Katarina’s. It is indeed her diary. My paws are shaking as I unfold the letter. My name is clearly on it, and it is dated seventy years ago. Nervously I read it, the leopard next to me forgotten.

My Dearest Brother,

I have often wondered what had become of you, but I cannot say if you still walk this world, or if you have joined the angels above or the demons below. No one in the village remembers the day after we buried you anymore, but I know what I saw. Time erases much, and yet if you still live, time for you has frozen.

If these words should ever find you, know that even in my wanning days, I have thought of you, and even with everything that happened, I realize you suffered more than anyone in this. If only I could see you once more and tell you yourself that I waited for you return. Nor do I blame you for your absence either. I hope whatever fate is yours, should it be in front of your behind you, be a gentle fate.

With love, your faithful sister,

Katrina

I go and sit on the bed, even though I still have the sheet with the dirt on it, clutching the letter. She remembered me. She knew I was not beyond hope. Had I known, I would have come back or at least said goodbye. Instead, I waited till no one could identify me; no one could know for sure who I was. I waited until I was nothing more than an inscription on a stone and a half-remembered story.

“Thank you,” I whisper. I look up at the leopard. “This means a lot to me.” I close my eyes, and I feel them wet.

“Is this why you’re here?” Ekrem asks me.

I shake my head. “I came to finally say goodbye when I thought it would be safe. I never thought they would want me to return.”

“Are you still going back to Vienna?”

I sniff, even though I no longer breathe. A useless biological response, but one I still haven’t completely lost. “What is there here for me? Katarina hoped I would return, but she’s been dead a long time.” I look at the dirt on the blanket, which my tail rests on. “Fresh graveyard dirt, dug from the land of my ancestors? Hardly worth it. Plus, there is you. You know too much now. It is best you do not know more.”

His tail flicks behind him. “That seems like a lonely existence.”

“A long, lonely existence. I can’t stay in one place too long before people become suspicious, and I need to stay ahead of the hunters that would seek me out too.”

“So, you just wander around?” he asks.

I blink to clear the bloody tears from my eyes so I can look at him clearly. This requires me wiping them with my paw, which stains the black fur red. “What else can I do? Does it look like I can hide who I am? The curse is always upon me. The hunger, the need to feed, it’s always there. Look at me, truly look at me. I am a monster, Ekrem. There’s no place for me among people like you.”

Ekrem clears his throat. “Not naked like this.”

Oh right, I’m still nude and covered in dirt. “Modesty is for people who have a social standing to lose.”

“Yes, well, there’s the sheet, and the dirt, and the darkness. It’s a bit primal.”

“We’re all animals in the end, fighting to survive. I thought myself different once, but my life has shown me how wrong that is,” I say getting up and dusting myself off. “Now there is the matter of what I should do with you.”

“You need closure also. I would not deny you that.”

“I appreciate the sympathy.” A tickle in the back of my mind comes to me. Did I somehow seduce this man with my powers to control the living? No… I can’t have. I’ve lost that ability. Well, there’s one way to test it. “Take your clothes off.”

He blinks. “What? Why?”

I chuckle. “Just checking.”

“Checking?”

Since I’m not murdering him, I should at least put some clothing on. People don’t take you seriously when you’re naked. “Making sure I did not somehow command you.”

His face takes on a blush. “You can… do that?”

I go over and retrieve a shirt. “It comes with the curse, but I can’t. Not anymore.”

“But if you could?”

“I could make you mine, lay you on this bed, and do what I wish to you. You would willingly offer me everything, including every drop of your blood in your veins.”

He rubs his neck.

“Ah, now you see, don’t you?” I ask, walking over to him. “You realize what I can do to you. It’s why they hunt vampires. The hunger, it makes us uncontrollable.”

He steps back.

“I don’t drink from sapient creatures, not anymore,” I say.

“But you did?”

I nod and stretch out my arms. “Oh yes. The first ten years were rough. I did not understand what I’d become.” He’s looking at me, but it’s not with fear in his eyes. I put my arms down. “I don’t scare you?”

He shifts between paws. “Not exactly. You seem more misunderstood than anything else.”

My muzzle hangs open, and there’s nothing I can say to that.

“No one has told you that before?”

“Why would they?” I finally say. “Where did you get this anyway?” I ask, holding up the letter.

“Last night, when I went back to the shop, I was thinking, and I realized I had seen the surname Horban before. There are some items in the shop that have never sold, and I was looking through some of the old books in the back. There are a couple of diaries we’ve ended up with over the years that sit and collect dust. I had been meaning to throw them out, but they’re sometimes the last things still around that belonged to someone now gone. I think there are a few other books from the old Horban estate still on the shelves. I could see what I have for you.”

“It is a tempting offer, but I travel light,” I say. “I plan to leave tonight For Pest and then on to Vienna.”

“Ah, so you have what you came for.”

“More than I expected.” I look down at the letter and the diary. “Thank you.”

He nods and doesn’t say anything, and we regard each other. I cannot say what I should do right now with this leopard. He seems harmless, but he knows too much.

“It is best you go and we never speak again,” I say. “You do not want to be caught up in my affairs.”

“You can’t control the hunger?” he asks.

I frown. “I control it fine,” I snip. “The fewer people who know the better.”

“Of course. Well, glad I could be of use,” he says and bobs his head. “Have a safe journey.”

“Thank you,” I say, and he lets himself out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving me alone.

I look back at the book and trace my paw pads across the worn leather cover. I should sleep, but I cannot let this pass up. I will need to have the innkeeper ship the book back to Vienna, but before I do that, I want to know what Katarina thought.

I open the cover, still wearing only a shirt, and begin to read.

#

Hours later, I set the book down. I can almost hear Katarina’s voice in my head as a distant echo. I had forgotten what it sounded like, but with her words, I can hear her again.

This volume dates to the years before the attack and a year or two after. Most of it is about her marriage and the day-to-day parts of her life. Some of it sheds light on things I had forgotten, but she seems to have been reasonably happy.

The pain of my death is recorded, and the surprise of the grave being disturbed. They seemed to have no idea what had happened, but the letter Katarina wrote suggests at some point she knew I was still out there. I skip around, trying to get a general feel of what happened. Father seems to have had bad luck in business, putting a strain on them. The last entry though is from four years after my attack, and it gives me great pause.

It has been a tiring day, but I must record this less I forget the details. Today, Gavrilo was fishing by the creek behind the house where it becomes wide when he saw a bear on the opposite bank walking. He was dressed in an old-fashioned outfit he says, and he had never seen the man before. He had a bow slung over his shoulder. When Gavrilo called out to him asking if he was lost, the bear turned toward him, and he saw a great raw scar ran from below his ear and down his neck. This specter, because no living person could survive a wound like that, floated across the creek, not touching the water, and then vanished suddenly when he got to the other shore.

Gavrilo is absolutely terrified, and it took me an hour to calm him down and get him to tell me what he saw. With the disappeared of the Milovan the butcher a week ago, I feel something is going on in the village, and I will speak to the priest tomorrow, and see if he thinks these is a connection. Since Radic died, I have heard strange whisperings, and I have suspicions something unnatural is going on. I do not think this incident is just the overactive imagination of a young mind.

I will record what the priest says tomorrow in my new journal. I must now try and get some rest.

After that, there is a blank half page, and the other side is blank. There are no more pages in the journal either. Whatever happened is in Katarina’s next journal, and who knows what happened to it.

Whatever it was, whatever happened, Katarina would have recorded it. She was a dedicated diarist, and if she filled this book up and planned to start a new one, she would have. Both she and our parents lived for years after this, although I don’t know what happened to Gavrilo. There was no stone for my nephew, or the child Katarina bore the year after my attack.

I get up and pace, thinking. The apparition could be anything. Perhaps it is a child’s overactive imagination or a spirit. Perhaps it is the ghost of the huntsman, trapped in this world seeking revenge on the one who struck him down. The only person who might know where the next volume of Katarina’s journal is in Ekrem. Even if he doesn’t have it, maybe one of the other diaries he has might shed some light. Plus, if I need someone to look at the records in the parish church, he will have to do it. No matter how much the priest bids me to enter.

I sigh and halt my pacing, frowning. It will be dangerous to find the answers, but I need to know what happened. While I didn’t plan to stay, leaving now will forever lock what happened away from me. The only person I can ask in this endeavor is Ekrem. He’s also the person who will know what to do with whatever else I find. It’s even possible he might be able to point me to someone here who still remembers Katarina from their youth. That will be risky, but there’s no other way I can find out what happened.

The reason for my curse and the secrets of the man who created me are here. I thought it was a fluke, but there’s more to it. I never saw him again, but I did not seek him out. It’s quite possible he never left this region. He could still be somewhere nearby, carefully picking off prey in a large region to keep suspicions down.

All the secrets of my past are here in Strasek, but am I strong enough to seek them out? That is a question I’m not sure about.