Chapter Five: Ana
The forest is black at night. Black in the way modern humans do not understand—cannot conceive of. Without a moon or stars above, it is impossible to find one’s way.
Unless you’re a vampire.
The lights are off in the house. I pass the mausoleum but continue on as if I can’t see it—as if I can’t remember it. Remember being there, in the dark. Remember waking unable to move. There’s a hole in my mind, memories I’m unwilling to recall, unwilling to process yet. Dragomir says it’s been years since I was killed. Murdered. It could’ve been years still since I awoke as well; I cannot be exposed to daylight now and tied down, locked away, deemed a dangerous monster after my awakening, I couldn’t say how much time had passed. So the mausoleum is nothing, just a large dark shape in my sharp peripheral vision, something I shall revisit after.
When I’m through with the task ahead.
My maker had me expecting change. The eight years I’d been gone had seen the turn of a century. Lost independence. My land weakened, made a territory of an empire. Dragomir had droned on and on, “preparing” me for the night they let me out of that tiny room in their basement.
But nothing seems different. Trees are a little larger. The grounds are mostly the same, seared into my memory as I’d traversed them many times.
I have a key to both doors of the house—my own, something small Dragomir had taken from my body when he assassinated me. Turned me. I take it to the servants’ door around the side and it slides easily in the lock. When I was the lady of the house, we kept only a handful of people as staff. Perhaps whoever the new mistress was, she’d provided a greater dowry, for now I heard the heartbeats of at least a dozen, all quiet in their beds.
Except for one.
Madelina had been a mouse of a thing. She kept a good house and I tried, but though timid when directly facing her, I sensed something when I gave her my back—sensed sharp eyes, sensed dislike. I dismissed it then, but not now; now there was nothing nice of me left, nothing willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Madelina pads through the hall, the floorboards creaking softly, light flickering across the walls from the candle she carries in a brass holder, and I know it then.
She will be the first to die.
Her dark hair hangs in a long braid over her shoulder, her long white bedclothes stark in comparison. She’s thin and bony, after all this time, and her face is more gaunt than I remember, the hallows beneath her high cheekbones darker now.
I wait in the dark, pressed against the wall. Nearer and nearer, my gaze narrows on her throat, on the steady pulse of blood beneath her flesh. I hunger but I will not eat this one. This is my first kill in my “right” mind. My first kill without the full insanity of starvation and isolation. My first planned kill.
And it will be beautiful.
She pauses as she turns the corner toward her room, right foot poised with her heel off the ground and nightgown fluttering about her legs. Her gaze moves toward the door, which I have left slightly ajar. She frowns, shifts the candle. She searches the darkness.
I move.
I’m fast now. It lasts for short bursts, but it’s enough. I’m alive, jittery, thrilled, nervous energy moving through my limbs; one hand locks on her throat, the other over her mouth, and I pin her against the nearest wall. Her eyes widen and the candle drops, striking the hardwood and blowing out.
“Spirit,” she hisses against my hand.
Not quite.
I bare my fangs and slam them into her throat. Blood rushes past my lips—fresh, warm, unlike what Dragomir and his consort have been feeding me, funnelling their leftovers down my throat while I’m tied to a chair. The blood sparks hunger but I resist and drag my fangs down, cutting deep.
I lean back.
Madelina sputters and chokes, blood nearly black as it pours down her neck, over her nightgown. She stumbles.
I cock my head to the side, watching. Detached.
She tries to suck in breath. Blood gurgles. She might wake someone soon so I grab her face in both my hands and give her head a firm wrench. Spine snaps and the tear in her throat deepens. I’m drenched in blood. The body drops and I drag my hands over the walls as I walk towards the bedrooms.
I kill two in their sleep before the third awakes. This one I recognize: Almos served my husband well before my marriage. I can’t remember if he’d been kind or not.
I also don’t care.
The light is poor in his corner of the room, but he sees me; he backs up, huddled between two beds. I’m covered in blood and his gaze trails over my gown, up to my face and fangs. He murmurs more words about monsters and demons.
Strange, having someone see you as something else. The servants before glanced over me, Ana the wife. Quiet, obedient. Accommodating. Ana easily replaced. Forgotten. Now I am a monster. A demon, apparently.
Even if I don’t entirely feel it, I can grow to be that. Happily.
My nails have grown long and I slash them against his throat, cutting deep. My other hand juts out and snatches his hair, yanking his head back. He thrashes and cries. I cut with my nails again and blood arcs gracefully in the air, painting the walls. And I cut again. And again. And again, pouring some of my rage into the movements, preternatural strength doing more and more damage. I pause at last, a fistful of stringy meat in my fingers, and turn my hand over and gaze at the mess. So easy. Ana had been nothing to them, and now they are nothing to me.
I discard the body and go in search of more.
Six more go easily. And their children. I feel no horror in dissecting their tiny bodies. Innocence means nothing now. I was innocent and it hadn’t mattered. There is no justice, no right in the world, and I feel nothing at being a part of that unfairness. They are victims simply due to their parents living and working here; I was a victim simply due to my family’s choice in husband for me.
I am finished with the lower floor; now I walk up the stairs. My steps are soft and the wood makes no noise under my bare feet; my gown is sticky against my legs, soaked through with the blood of my victims. My stomach is empty and hallow, twisting with huger I will soon satiate. My heart is...gone. I left it in the crypt when I died and I do not wish it back again.
No one has awoken upstairs. I head straight for my bedroom, where I slept with husband night after night, believing he loved me, trusting him. The door is shut and I ease it open, steeling myself even as adrenalin pumps through my veins, as my pulse pounds in my ears, as my vision tunnels. Knowing what I will see still doesn’t prepare me.
The bed is occupied. Two lumps under a sheet. A woman in my place. Her hair fanning out across my pillow. Her pale, dainty hand on my husband’s chest. If I look, I know I will find her clothes tucked away in my chest across the room. I will smell her in my spot at the breakfast table. I will see signs of her presence all over my home.
It isn’t rage anymore rising in me. Clutching me. Coating me in a cold sweat, burning behind my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I’m trembling, shaking, staring. There isn’t a word for this feeling, betrayal cutting so deep I feel cleaved through. The steady tattoo of my pulse hasn’t eased up but is beating harder, harder, so hard I see it pounding against my peripheral vision.
I want to flee. I want to cry.
Most of all, I want to wake up.
Monster. Demon. I remember myself then, remember what I am. Remember that I am here not to mourn—I can’t mourn now. Pavel betrayed a girl called Ana.
And Ana is dead.
I move silently to the candle waiting on a shelf. There ought to be light for this, so that they might see me. So that I might prolong their fear.
A soft breath draws my attention. I tilt my head, predatory gaze moving across the room in search of the source.
Then I see the bassinet.
Unless you’re a vampire.
The lights are off in the house. I pass the mausoleum but continue on as if I can’t see it—as if I can’t remember it. Remember being there, in the dark. Remember waking unable to move. There’s a hole in my mind, memories I’m unwilling to recall, unwilling to process yet. Dragomir says it’s been years since I was killed. Murdered. It could’ve been years still since I awoke as well; I cannot be exposed to daylight now and tied down, locked away, deemed a dangerous monster after my awakening, I couldn’t say how much time had passed. So the mausoleum is nothing, just a large dark shape in my sharp peripheral vision, something I shall revisit after.
When I’m through with the task ahead.
My maker had me expecting change. The eight years I’d been gone had seen the turn of a century. Lost independence. My land weakened, made a territory of an empire. Dragomir had droned on and on, “preparing” me for the night they let me out of that tiny room in their basement.
But nothing seems different. Trees are a little larger. The grounds are mostly the same, seared into my memory as I’d traversed them many times.
I have a key to both doors of the house—my own, something small Dragomir had taken from my body when he assassinated me. Turned me. I take it to the servants’ door around the side and it slides easily in the lock. When I was the lady of the house, we kept only a handful of people as staff. Perhaps whoever the new mistress was, she’d provided a greater dowry, for now I heard the heartbeats of at least a dozen, all quiet in their beds.
Except for one.
Madelina had been a mouse of a thing. She kept a good house and I tried, but though timid when directly facing her, I sensed something when I gave her my back—sensed sharp eyes, sensed dislike. I dismissed it then, but not now; now there was nothing nice of me left, nothing willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Madelina pads through the hall, the floorboards creaking softly, light flickering across the walls from the candle she carries in a brass holder, and I know it then.
She will be the first to die.
Her dark hair hangs in a long braid over her shoulder, her long white bedclothes stark in comparison. She’s thin and bony, after all this time, and her face is more gaunt than I remember, the hallows beneath her high cheekbones darker now.
I wait in the dark, pressed against the wall. Nearer and nearer, my gaze narrows on her throat, on the steady pulse of blood beneath her flesh. I hunger but I will not eat this one. This is my first kill in my “right” mind. My first kill without the full insanity of starvation and isolation. My first planned kill.
And it will be beautiful.
She pauses as she turns the corner toward her room, right foot poised with her heel off the ground and nightgown fluttering about her legs. Her gaze moves toward the door, which I have left slightly ajar. She frowns, shifts the candle. She searches the darkness.
I move.
I’m fast now. It lasts for short bursts, but it’s enough. I’m alive, jittery, thrilled, nervous energy moving through my limbs; one hand locks on her throat, the other over her mouth, and I pin her against the nearest wall. Her eyes widen and the candle drops, striking the hardwood and blowing out.
“Spirit,” she hisses against my hand.
Not quite.
I bare my fangs and slam them into her throat. Blood rushes past my lips—fresh, warm, unlike what Dragomir and his consort have been feeding me, funnelling their leftovers down my throat while I’m tied to a chair. The blood sparks hunger but I resist and drag my fangs down, cutting deep.
I lean back.
Madelina sputters and chokes, blood nearly black as it pours down her neck, over her nightgown. She stumbles.
I cock my head to the side, watching. Detached.
She tries to suck in breath. Blood gurgles. She might wake someone soon so I grab her face in both my hands and give her head a firm wrench. Spine snaps and the tear in her throat deepens. I’m drenched in blood. The body drops and I drag my hands over the walls as I walk towards the bedrooms.
I kill two in their sleep before the third awakes. This one I recognize: Almos served my husband well before my marriage. I can’t remember if he’d been kind or not.
I also don’t care.
The light is poor in his corner of the room, but he sees me; he backs up, huddled between two beds. I’m covered in blood and his gaze trails over my gown, up to my face and fangs. He murmurs more words about monsters and demons.
Strange, having someone see you as something else. The servants before glanced over me, Ana the wife. Quiet, obedient. Accommodating. Ana easily replaced. Forgotten. Now I am a monster. A demon, apparently.
Even if I don’t entirely feel it, I can grow to be that. Happily.
My nails have grown long and I slash them against his throat, cutting deep. My other hand juts out and snatches his hair, yanking his head back. He thrashes and cries. I cut with my nails again and blood arcs gracefully in the air, painting the walls. And I cut again. And again. And again, pouring some of my rage into the movements, preternatural strength doing more and more damage. I pause at last, a fistful of stringy meat in my fingers, and turn my hand over and gaze at the mess. So easy. Ana had been nothing to them, and now they are nothing to me.
I discard the body and go in search of more.
Six more go easily. And their children. I feel no horror in dissecting their tiny bodies. Innocence means nothing now. I was innocent and it hadn’t mattered. There is no justice, no right in the world, and I feel nothing at being a part of that unfairness. They are victims simply due to their parents living and working here; I was a victim simply due to my family’s choice in husband for me.
I am finished with the lower floor; now I walk up the stairs. My steps are soft and the wood makes no noise under my bare feet; my gown is sticky against my legs, soaked through with the blood of my victims. My stomach is empty and hallow, twisting with huger I will soon satiate. My heart is...gone. I left it in the crypt when I died and I do not wish it back again.
No one has awoken upstairs. I head straight for my bedroom, where I slept with husband night after night, believing he loved me, trusting him. The door is shut and I ease it open, steeling myself even as adrenalin pumps through my veins, as my pulse pounds in my ears, as my vision tunnels. Knowing what I will see still doesn’t prepare me.
The bed is occupied. Two lumps under a sheet. A woman in my place. Her hair fanning out across my pillow. Her pale, dainty hand on my husband’s chest. If I look, I know I will find her clothes tucked away in my chest across the room. I will smell her in my spot at the breakfast table. I will see signs of her presence all over my home.
It isn’t rage anymore rising in me. Clutching me. Coating me in a cold sweat, burning behind my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I’m trembling, shaking, staring. There isn’t a word for this feeling, betrayal cutting so deep I feel cleaved through. The steady tattoo of my pulse hasn’t eased up but is beating harder, harder, so hard I see it pounding against my peripheral vision.
I want to flee. I want to cry.
Most of all, I want to wake up.
Monster. Demon. I remember myself then, remember what I am. Remember that I am here not to mourn—I can’t mourn now. Pavel betrayed a girl called Ana.
And Ana is dead.
I move silently to the candle waiting on a shelf. There ought to be light for this, so that they might see me. So that I might prolong their fear.
A soft breath draws my attention. I tilt my head, predatory gaze moving across the room in search of the source.
Then I see the bassinet.
****
I've never gotten used to nightmares.
Comments
#1 Author Commentary
I'm not a historical writer. I don't WANT to be a historical writer. So this sucks but that's okay 'cause it's all in Zara's head and she's three hundred years old so if I messed up something we'll blame it on her memory being faulty. First person POV FTW!
Also, the "chapter every two weeks" thing is kicking my ass. Hard. We might have to go to one a month because I'm trying to finish Lineage (which, you'll recall, I get paid for), and then I'd like to start Exhumed so it can release late next year. And I assume Bloodlines fans WOULD like me to finish Exhumed *cough* so that'll come first. Thoughts? Should I set up a mailing list to notify people of a new chapter being posted, or does everyone already follow me on Twitter (or follow Zara)? Suggestions?
On a more serious note, this chapter was extremely difficult to write for a number of reasons which I will not get into. It required Jack Daniels and I'm still shaking a little. Fun times.
It also alludes to information not given in Bloodlines when this scene was recounted by Peter. I won't write it in detail but exactly what happens is mentioned in Exhumed--Zara's past will be important for a variety of reasons in that book. (There. Is that sufficiently vague?)
#2 I remember thinking 2 weeks
I remember thinking 2 weeks was quick turn arounds. I'm good with monthly. And I think I follow you everywhere so I'll find it as you post them. :)
Sorry this was a difficult one with past times. Good thing for your friend Jack.
Oh and vague! What is coming? I'm curious.
Oh that bassinet! Goodness. That is sad, for both Zara and the new baby.
#3 A lot of people seemed to
A lot of people seemed to come out of Bloodlines thinking her narcissism was just a cover up for her vulnerability and, certainly, she has vulnerabilities. But she's not a heroic character. She has done horrible things and is capable of doing horrible things. None of this will be glossed over in Exhumed and some people will have to take the rose-colored glasses off and see the monster residing in her.
Thank you for reading! Yes, 2K words every two weeks doesn't seem like much, but when I'm trying to finish up other things, it is. If I ever get writing ahead, I can bump it to two weeks again.
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