blood.
A tear slipped from her eye and she caught it on her finger tips. The old riddle came to mind, one her brother had asked her: I was born in your eyes, live on your cheeks, and die on your lips. What am I?
You are a tear, but what am I?
What am I?
The answer was a single word; one horrible word that she refused to think about. If she could only shut it out, perhaps it would go away. Maybe it would all go away.
Only, it wouldn’t.
There was a sound; a footfall. Soft and muted in the snow. She stiffened and sniffed the air. The familiar smells of home were there. Under them was something else equally familiar. Musky, heady.
He is here.
She stood quickly. Her mother stirred in her sleep, as if she sensed the intrusion, but she didn’t wake. Kariss fixed her blankets with trembling hands, then hurried to the door. She flung her cloak over her shoulders as she plunged out into the night.
The sky spread above, strewn in crystal clear diamonds. The salty tang of the ocean filled her nose. In days gone by the cold would have stung her cheeks. Now it only caressed them like the cool hands of a lover.
“Kariss.”
He was suddenly in front of her. His pale face gleamed in the moonlight and his angry eyes glittered with the light of a thousand stars. The same eyes she’d seen on that long ago night under the full moon.
Her breath caught and his name came to her lips like a worried sigh, “Kolli. You found me.”
“Of course I found you. I knew where you’d be.” He reached for her. At the last second the caress turned into a slap that made her ears ring. “What did Andrei tell you? It’s one of the rules, you can never go back! Someone might recognize you!”
She stumbled back, hand to her face. “She’s my mother, and she is dying all alone!”
“As did my mother, and my sisters and your brothers and countless others. We gave them up when we accepted his blood. That was the price we paid for this freedom.”
“What freedom?” she asked bitterly. “To wander the nights eternal while all we once knew withers? What freedom is that?”
“The freedom of life.” He caught her and pulled her to him. She resisted, her spine straight, but the familiar warmth of his arms softened her. “We are alive, Kariss. Alive and together.” He nuzzled her neck and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Unless you anger him. I’m - I’m sorry for being harsh, but what would I do if he punished you? What if he…” he choked off, but she knew the rest.
What if he took back the life he’d given?
She found no words, only stood wrapped in his arms and the cold wind.
He let her go and took her hand. His eyes searched the landscape around them and a faint smile played on his lips. “Do you remember when we were young?” He prodded the snow with his boot. “Do you remember how we used to wait for the first snowfall? And when it came, like a blanket to cover the world, how we used to run through it? Do you remember how we used to make angels? And then the spring would bring the sun back and melt it all away.”
“Yes, I remember.”
He breathed deeply, as though inhaling the memory. “What will you do now? Will you share immortality with her?”
Both the question and answer made her stomach clench. “No. She’s too old and frail. Her mind is gone. I doubt even the blood would bring it back.”
“I am sorry.”
And she knew he was. If she closed her eyes and concentrated on the tiny pulse of him in her mind, she could feel his sorrow, like an aching tooth. He was sorry for her and for himself, and so was she.
He let go of her hand and stepped back. “Take tonight but no more. You’ve been here a week already and we can’t risk any more. Tomorrow when the sun sets we must leave. Andrei is waiting.”
“Did he send you after me?”
“He didn’t need to, but yes. Our blood debt is unpaid. Until it is, he owns us. You know that as well as I.”
He turned away and started up the hill. After a handful of steps he stopped and turned back. “Only tonight, Kariss. Tomorrow we have to go back.”
Though she nodded, it wasn’t in agreement.
The house should have seemed warm, but it didn’t. Andrei’s blood had taken that, too. She sat next to her mother’s bed and watched her sleep.
She remembered the rest of that long ago night. Intoxicated with his blood, she’d run back to the house. Her feet failed her and she dropped. Fire sliced through her. The pain would pass and she would run again, as if hell’s demons followed her.
And maybe they had.
She banged into the house. The door left open as she stumbled to her mother’s bed. Mother could make it all right. She could take away the burning pain, the terrors screaming in her brain. She could save her.
Kariss fell on her knees next to the bed. Under her heavy gaze, her mother stirred in her sleep and muttered, “Vagn, tend the fire.”
Nonsense from her dreams.
Kolli’s footsteps were soft. He stopped behind Kariss and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Come. Pack your things so we can go. Andrei is impatient. Everything will be better now. You’ll see. We’ll be happy.”
Happy. Kolli had been wrong. It had been so long since she’d felt happy that she’d forgotten how.
She stared through the darkness and listened to the winter wind howl. It was a lullaby for the damned and she knew the words by heart. She knew the empty, aching darkness it screamed about.
Her mother coughed and she turned her eyes to her. She watched her chest rise and fall and listened to the heavy, labored breaths. How many more would there be? A hundred? Half a dozen?
The rasping breaths were torture. The sluggish heart beats were agony. It could go for days, for nights, for weeks. She could linger, slowly decaying, while Kariss sat at her side, forever young, forever whole, forever safe.
How much more could she stand?
She brushed her mother’s gray hair from her face and she woke. She fixed Kariss with a pair of watery blue eyes and asked weakly, “Who are you?”
No more.
A single tear slipped down her cheek. She met the blurry eyes and focused on them; focused on the feeble mind behind them. “Sleep. Sleep and dream of better days. Dream of your husband and your children when life was sunny.”
Her mother’s eyelids sagged, and then dropped. Kariss bit her lip until she tasted her own blood. This was not the mother of her memories. Gone was the stern face, the flashing eyes, the quick temper. This was a feeble woman waiting for the angel of death to take her away. If he refused, then so be it. She would play his role.
She leaned over the sleeping woman and breathed in her leathery, sick bed scent. Gently, she turned her mother’s head to one side, exposing her wrinkled neck. Her lips hovered over the pulsing vein.
“Goodnight, Mamma. Sleep and be free.”
She struck.
Her mother’s eyes went wide. Her whole body jerked, suddenly animated. Kariss pressed her down into the bed and drank. The hot blood filled her mouth. She swallowed it, mouthful after mouthful. Her mother’s feeble limbs waved once, twice, then fell still, too weak to fight, and still Kariss drank. She reached for her mother’s memories, buried under layers of too much hardship. She sorted through them, sifting, seeking. And there it was.
The weak sun shone, giving its final farewell before it left for its winter exile. The snow sparkled. A bird called, loud and harsh. Kariss stared through eyes that weren’t her own; they were her mother’s eyes. She looked at the assorted children that peppered the wintery landscape. They ran and laughed. They fell and rolled and made angels in the snow. They were all good children, or as good as they could be. All too thin and too loud, as children were wont to be. She didn’t have much in the world but she had them and Vagn and so she was happy.
Happy. That feeling Kariss had forgotten.
The scene faded. Kariss fought to hold it, but it ebbed away with her mother’s life. The old woman fell stil
l on the bed and there was only blackness inside her head. Black and cold like the winter night.
Kariss pulled away and wiped tears and blood from her face. The old woman stared back at her with wide, glassy eyes. The wound on her neck bled and scarlet blossomed on the pillow.
Kariss swept from the house and into the night. As if he’d known what she’d do, Kolli stood nearby, waiting. She stopped next to him and he took her hand. His eyes moved to the stars and he said softly, “Aren’t they beautiful? I remember when we used to lay in the snow and try to count them. It seems so long ago, yet nothing has changed.”
Her voice was wet with tears. “You’re wrong Kolli. Everything has changed.”
“No, Kariss. it’s only we who have changed.”
In that moment she understood the truth. You can never go back. It wasn’t a rule meant to protect yourself from discovery, but to protect your heart. You could travel to the places of your childhood and drink in the faces of those you’d once loved, but it could never be the same. It wasn’t that they had changed, but that you had changed. So long as you stayed away, you could tell yourself that you were the same, but when you stood face to face with the past, you’d find only the dark, ugly truth and all the illusions would melt away, like Kariss’s forgotten happiness and the lost angels in the snow.
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You can read more about Kariss in Legacy of Ghosts. Kolli and their master make an appearance in Masque of the Vampire.
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About the Author
Joleene Naylor is the author of the glitter-less Amaranthine series, a world where vampires aren’t for children. As a compliment to the novel series, she has also written several short story collections and the Amaranthine Files encyclopedia..
In what little time is left she watches anime and updates her blogs, all from a crooked Victorian house in Villisca, Iowa. Between her husband and her pets, she is never lonely, and should she ever disappear one might look for her on a beach in Tahiti, sipping a tropical drink and wearing a disguise.
Ramblings from the Darkness at www.JoleeneNaylor.com
You never know what you’ll find in the shadows…..
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