"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Mystic Rhythms

 

            We huddled around Adrianos’s cadaver-like body, like desperate mourners preparing for a séance.  Aussie Donna, her fae wings no longer on display, was in the center -- near Ad’s head -- with Spike and Bellissima on one side, Siren and I on the other.  Siren cleared her throat softly, projecting a notion of proper etiquette into my mind.

            “Oh, right!” I exclaimed.  Somehow it had slipped my mind that they’d yet to be formally introduced.  “Siren, this is Aussie Donna.  Donna, this is my…”  I paused, mind racing, and Siren looked at me with acute interest.  My what, exactly?  To be fair, she wasn’t ‘my’ anything anymore.  “This is Siren,” I finished, lamely.

            “Hullo, Lady Siren!” Aussie D said, grabbing her proffered palm and shaking it enthusiastically.

            “I love your hair, Donna,” Siren said, and it was a sincere compliment.  She delicately pointed her finger at a curious-looking hairclip.  “Is that a…?”

            “Yup!  Wombat skull.  Please stay outta my head though, hm?” Donna added.   “I’d hate for you to get stuck in all the cobwebs in there!”

            Siren chuckled politely.  Donna closed her eyes, and began chanting in a low voice as she waved her palms over Adrianos’s face.

            “Is it working?” Bellissima asked, fearfully hugging Spike closer to her.

            “Hrmm… is what working, little sis?” Donna asked, opening one startlingly blue eye.

            Bellissima scowled, motioning toward the Aussie’s ongoing histrionics.  “Whatever it is that you’re doing!”

            Aussie Donna opened her other eye.  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Belli dear… it just seemed like something folks ‘spect to see in this sort of sitch!” she said, with a coy smile.

            Bellissima just rolled her eyes, but Spike allowed a nervous giggle.  “Let’s get serious now, shall we, children?” Aussie D said, and the light from the lichens seemed to dim a bit.

            Long crimson claws slowly extended from Aussie Donna’s index fingers.  She lowered them to Adrianos’s neck, using them like scalpels to make twin incisions on either side of Ad’s throat.  Spike whimpered softly, Bellissima buried her face in Spike’s shoulder… and Siren suddenly took my hand in hers and gave it a strong squeeze.  I looked over at her, but her cobalt gaze was rooted on Adrianos and Aussie D’s ongoing ‘operation.’

            And then Donna started chanting again, a repetitious litany of what sounded like multisyllabic nonsense words… but I had a strong notion that listening to them too closely, trying to understand them, would be to court madness.  Glistening dark-red tendrils began to curl out of the wounds, rising slowly in the air like a pair of cobras responding to the music and movements of a snake-charmer.

            I looked over to the opposite side of the slightly-slanted ‘table,’ and I saw that Spike was rocking Bellissima, humming a tune to help comfort Belli -- and perhaps herself as well.  It occurred to me that maybe Siren could use a distraction, too.

            “What happened to the Portal?” I asked… softly, so as not to disturb the careful ministrations of the Aussie shaman.

            “What, now?” Siren asked, blinking, tearing her gaze away from the sight of the ‘snakes’ of Ad’s contaminated blood.  She touched her opal pendant, which almost seemed to glow in the deepening darkness.

            “The Portal,” I repeated.  “It disappeared when we arrived on this side of it.”  I mentally asked the question that was the real heart of the matter, knowing she’d hear me: ‘How do we get back home?’

            “I don’t know,” she admitted, and there was a hitch in Spike’s comforting tune as she glanced at Siren.  “The Portal was a gift from Sagaan, a very special thank-you for… a ‘mission’ that I carried out on his behalf, in France.  It didn’t come with…”

            ‘…an instruction manual,’ she thought, loudly, as her voice diminished.  We all looked at Aussie Donna then, even Bellissima.  The two tendrils had coiled and intertwined, like a bloody caduceus.  Aussie D changed the meter of her chant, increasing its volume and velocity, and the coils separated again.  But now, one was a bright, tasty-looking red… while the other was a vile, toxic black.

            Donna flicked her left hand irritably, and the black ‘blood’ flew off to the side, landing on a stony outcrop, where it smoked and sizzled like spilled acid.  Bellissima cringed and pulled Spike even closer to her.  Donna then appeared cross-eyed for a moment as she focused on the pure red blood floating in front of her.  She leaned forward, licking her lips thoughtfully -- and slurped the liquid right out of the air.

            “MMMM… Elder Blood, aged over millennia!  Now that’s… tas… ty…”

            Aussie Donna was a very old, quite disciplined Elder in her own right.  In most ways, she had learned to overcome the baser instincts of our cursed Kindred.  She was highly intelligent, and an extremely skilled mystic, uniquely attuned to the Natural World.  Verily, whenever Aussie D’s around, nature seems to spin a supernatural way.

She was a loyal friend with a quick wit.  She was quite beautiful.

            I’d fallen in love with her… unexpectedly, wonderfully.  The notion of vampire monogamy was absurd, as I’ve said, but we gave it a try, for sixty years.  How very lamentable that such a perfect love could also be such a heartless lie.

            So… I knew her, better believe it.  I knew the import of that particular striation of dark amethyst, now appearing in her brilliant blue eyes.  I knew that the appearance of freckles on her face, while outwardly cute and endearing, was a sign of the intense bloodlust building within her.  I knew.

            I lurched past Siren -- bless her, she was being true to her word and staying out of Aussie D’s head, otherwise she would’ve known, too -- and managed to partially restrain Donna, just before she would’ve buried her still-lengthening fangs into Adrianos’s neck, infecting herself and possibly killing Ad in the process.

            “More!” Donna yelled, squirming frantically in my grasp. “Want MOAR!”  Sinister-looking vines started to slither down from the ceiling and walls, trending toward me, with ill intent.

            “Aussie Donna, calm down” I said to her, trying to soothe her while still restraining her.  Adrianos groaned softly, moving his extremities for the first time in a long time, and Siren shot to her feet.  Bellissima reached out for her sister, but I shook my head at her.  Spike pulled Belli back, and then tenderly placed a hand on Adrianos’s knee.

            “Donna, look at me!” I urged.  I was trying to turn her around, but she kept struggling, attempting to break free so she could feed at will on the ancient Elder before her.  “Aussie D, please… feed on me, instead.”  I then took the measure of last resort: “BELLADONNA!”

            Donna finally rounded on me, her fangs like a saber-toothed tigress, her eyes a ‘lusty shade of red.  ‘Belladonna’ wasn’t actually her full name, but it was a nickname I used to use, back in the day, when she was in a foul mood.  And it fit, seeing as how belladonna was a plant -- one that was also known as (heh) Deadly Nightshade.

            “Feed on you, Nevik!?  For old times’ sake?  What a good, tastilicious little former minion you are!!”  And then she attacked me, sure enough, sinking her long fangs into my chest so deep it felt like she impaled my heart.  That’d only be fair, really, since I broke hers.  She drank my blood, savoring every greedy slurp of it.

            Lady Death was a temptress, a seductress in a little black dress of her own… and I flirted with her yet again.

 

* * *

 

            I awoke, some unknown amount of time later, with the taste of blood in my mouth.  I drank deeply of the unlife-giving blood, until it was abruptly taken away from me, much to my chagrin.  Then I heard Spike’s voice… “He’s going to be okay.”

            I sat up, regaining my bearings.  My shirt (yet another one) was in bloody shreds, but the wounds that Aussie Donna had incurred were mostly healed.  Aussie D was nearby, walking about the cavern and staring up at the faraway ceiling whilst talking to herself.

            Spike was crouching next to me, holding her right hand to the torn-open wrist of her left.  When she pulled her palm away, there was a smear of blood, but her wrist was no longer oozing.  Glancing over her shoulder at Adrianos, Spike leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Thank you, Nevik.  That… was very brave.”

            I rubbed my eyes as Spike stood up and walked over toward Aussie D.  Ad was also awake, although he still looked like hell.  He was sitting up, at least, his head in his hands; Siren was situated right next to him on the displaced mound of earth, gently kneading his back.  I didn’t see Bellissima at that moment… and my whip was gone, too.

            I clambered to my feet, stripping off the remnants of the ‘Underworld Club’ T-shirt.  Aussie Donna paused a moment to look at me, a wild look in her eyes… but then she went back to her itinerant pacing.  Spike was attempting to tail after her -- with mixed results -- and when she spoke I had the sense of a prior conversation being resumed.

            “So… you’re sure you can’t heal him, Donna?” Spike asked.  “Because… it looked like you isolated the toxin there.”

            Aussie D bit her lip, so hard I half-expected her to draw blood, and shook her head adamantly.  “No, nup, nope… can’t do it… that was just a ‘taste-test.’”  Again, she shot a guilty look at me.  “We’d have to purge all the barkin’ blood out of ‘im to do it like that… and that’d kill the poor b*****d, see?”

            Spike sagged her shoulders, looking deflated.  “What do we do then?  There has to be a way to fix him.  There has to be!”

            Aussie Donna stared at her fingers, as if she were admiring her blood-wine-red nails.  “Oy… you have to find the infected vamp’s Maker.  The Sire’s blood could… should, mind you, act as an antidote.”  She stared at Adrianos for a spell.  “You’ll have to drink it all, mate, if you get my meaning…”

            Spike clapped her hands, then sashayed over and gave Aussie D a quick hug.  “Okee-doke!  Find and kill an evil, dastardly vamp, we sure know how to do that!”

            “But how do we find this… ‘V?’” I asked, throwing in my two cents. ‘Vo-something,’ I mentally added, and I saw Siren’s ears perk up.

            “We need to find the Broker,” Adrianos croaked.  He sounded absolutely parched, and I did feel sorry for him.  “He controls every bounty… he’d know who set the one I took.”

            I looked around again, somewhat peeved that one of my companions had done something with the Kindred’s Bane.  But that wasn’t what I was looking for.  “Where’s Belli?”

            “She went for a little swim,” Spike answered, waving her hand in the direction from whence came the noise of the waterfall.  “To get cleaned up, ya know?”  She snickered, looking at my bare, bloodied chest.  “You look like you could use a little bath yourself, Nevi.”

            Nodding, with thoughts of Bellissima and bounty-brokers in my head, I started off toward the not-so-distant sound of cascading water.

 

* * *

 

            She wasn’t hard to find.  As I rounded the corner of the huge, roughly boomerang-shaped cavern, I saw an amazing (if not quite unexpected) sight.  A ‘fall of crystal-clear water, originating from a sparkling rift in midair, was tumbling into a wide, oval-shaped pool.  Bellissima was on the far end of the pool, her bare back to me, using the waterfall like a cold shower.  I saw her clothes in a neat pile on a nearby rock.

            “Hey, Belli!” I called out, loudly announcing myself.  Bellissima stepped backwards -- apparently, the pool wasn’t very deep -- and glanced over her shoulder, her blue eyes sparkling with curiosity from behind a damp curtain of red hair.  I thrust my hands into the pockets of my jeans, feeling the crumpled bounty-scroll… deliberately reminding myself what I was here to discuss with her, the only thing I was here for.  “Got room for one more…?”

            Bellissima laughed at my chutzpah, and I fully expected her to shoo me away, at least until she was done.  To my surprise, she nodded… beckoning, before turning away again and running her fingers through her long, wet hair.

My heart beating just a little bit faster, I kicked off my boots, and then stripped off my jeans and boxer shorts.  Belli didn’t directly sneak a peek as I entered the water… and yet… I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought I saw a brief, reflective ‘mirror’ of mist form in front of the waterfall.

(It was a common misinterpretation of vampiric myth, the idea that vampires didn’t cast a reflection.  Of course we do… it’s simple optics.  Besides, if not for our reflections, how would a glamorous vampiress such as Siren look so fabulous for all of eternity?) 

I walked slowly across the bottom of the basin, enjoying the cool feel of the water while simultaneously wary of it.  I’d never known a vampire who was a good swimmer, and the inability of our kind to cross running water -- a raging river, for example -- was a weakness that I’d never really understood.  But this was just… really nice.

I splashed water on my battered body, washing off the blood and grime.  As I got closer to Bellissima’s nude form, I couldn’t help but notice the impressive collection of tattoos, all over her nubile body.  I stared at her… and I got caught staring.

“Do you like what you see, Nevik?” she asked, turning her head slightly to reveal the corner of a crooked smirk.

            “I, uh… hmm…”  I suddenly felt very vulnerable without my clothes; Bellissima, on the other hand, seemed liberated, empowered.  “Belli,” I said, attempting to redirect the conversation, “I want to ask you something.  About the ‘Broker’…?”

            Bellissima turned to face me, her eyes dropping to take in the myriad markings on her own skin.  Her soggy hair hung over her breasts, and the surface of the water lapped at her navel.  I ruefully tore my gaze away from the scar on her stomach -- the one that I had, indeed, caused with my own whip, in an old duel that wasn’t nearly far enough in the past to be forgotten.

            My train of thought had been derailed, and Belli didn’t seem too terribly interested in setting it back on track again.  “They’re mementos, really…” she said, running a hand down her tattooed arm.  “Reminders, a ‘living’ history… of all my kills.”  I gulped softly.  I knew Bellissima Bladedancer was an accomplished assassin… but now I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would’ve been at the very top of the bounty-hunter leader-board (if anyone actually kept track of such a thing).

“Funny you should mention kills and bounties, Bellissima,” I said, taking a step or two back as she took a couple of slinky steps toward me.  “We need to know…”

“I need to know…” Belli said, interrupting me again, “how to pull an object from an ether pocket.”  Her next question was rhetorical: “Will you teach me, Nevik?”

I nodded… of course I would.  I’d do anything for her, and I think she knew it.

“It’s not easy,” I warned her, but she just bobbed her head, her blue eyes now even brighter.  “It’s normally an ability only learned by Elder Kindred.  I was… heh… highly motivated.”  And that was true.  I had gotten tired of carrying the ‘Bane around in a leather satchel all the time… and let’s just say that being able to pull a weapon from midair had certain tactical advantages as well.

“I understand,” Bellissima said.

“Are you sure??  Vampires much greater than you or I have lost hands on the wrong side of the ethereal while attempting it.”  I was just teasing at that point -- Belli was only a year younger than me, vampirically-speaking, and I knew she was more than up for it.

Her countenance suddenly turned deadly-serious, though.  She moved the hair away from the left side of her neck, flipping it back over her shoulder.  I couldn’t help but glance down at her chest… I noticed that there was a blank patch of skin on the curve of her left breast, over her heart, as if it were space reserved for a future tattoo.

“Kiss me, Nevik,” Bellissima whispered, tilting her head to the right.  Her eyes fluttered shut, tiny drops of water dripping from their lovely lashes.  “You know what I mean…”

I gaped at her beautiful neck, closing the short distance between us, pressing my wet body against hers.  Even though her invitation had been as clear as the water we now waded within, I hesitated.  Bellissima and I had a relationship that was… complicated, to put it delicately.  Even though most Kindred practically bit each other ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye,’ Belli and I had tasted each other exactly once.  On the roof of a timeless gothic Cathedral, sixty-seven years ago.

“What are you waiting for?” she breathed, slipping her hand around the back of my neck, pulling me closer.

“Bellissima… wait,” I faux-protested, not wanting to wait at all.  “The blood-oath…”

“Forget about your silly oath… you’re not going to hurt me… taste me, drink of me… there’s a blood-memory… I want you to see…”

My right hand found the smooth curve of her hip.  My left hand slid up her back.  I felt my fangs push themselves further out of my gums, and the reddish tint now reflected in the never-ending waterfall was the hungry glow of my own eyes.

I sank the tips of my fangs into her, breaking her soft, pale flesh, and her sweet, spicy essence flowed forth.  The blood overflowed from my mouth, trickling down her neck, between her breasts, across the scar on her belly, before staining the previously pure water of the pool.

She pulled me closer still, begging me to drink even deeper.  I eagerly complied.

I’d do anything for her… she knew it.

I saw her blood-memories, and so I wasn’t too offended when she spoke a name that wasn’t mine…

“Oh, Darius…”

 

* * *