Legacy in Blood Page 9

  “That tells us nothing,” Marisa shot back.

  “Secondly,” Arvid continued imperturbably, “the handwriting is the same throughout – our graphologist confirmed it. And thirdly, there are many crossed out numbers, some of which haven’t existed for at least seventy years.”

  “Pre-war numbers?” Marisa asked.

  “Even better,” said Arvid. “Right back to the beginning of the Twentieth Century.”

  “Vampire,” said Marisa with glee, and then she added seriously: “I’m coming in.”

  “We’ll wait for you,” replied Arvid.

  Marisa glanced at the framed photograph of Ruslan that stood on her bureau. Then she closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, trying to drive unnecessary images from her head. The day before yesterday those creatures had managed to escape her. But today at least one of them would get what was coming to it.

  Vasilisa awoke at dawn in an evil frame of mind. It wasn’t because of the nightmares. All transformed vampires without exception dreamt only in nightmares – this was the diminutive but still vital spark of their human essence reminding them of itself. And the older a vampire became, the more horrifying the dreams. In the dreams of vampires appeared their myriad victims, and their long-departed friends and enemies, many of whom were long turned to ash. Some vampires yielded to their dreams and gave up on life. Thus it was with their father: one morning in 1684, when they were still in Russia, he opened the fire screen and climbed into the burning stove. Nicholaus and Lucinda tried to save him, but the fire was too greedy. It consumed him. To this day, Vasilisa could still recall how her father’s bones crackled in the embrace of the flames…

  And it all began in July of 1269 in the city of Suzdal. Summer that year was especially hot and sultry. Under the scorching rays of the sun entire fields withered up, stocks of fish and meat rotted in their casks, and the cattle began to die off from distemper. And then yet another woe appeared – cholera came to the city. No one really knew if it had been brought by the foreign workers summoned to the principality for construction work, or if it was the invaders that brought this assault with them from the east, or if all the blame lay with the heat in which this pestilence thrived. But the illness running riot over the town showed no desire to leave, capturing more and more lives in its black claws.

  Vasilisa, the youngest daughter and the favorite of her parents, never managed to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Her mother and father also had a middle daughter, the twenty year old Lucinda, and an eldest son, Nicholaus, who was already thirty years old. Nicholaus had his own family – a wife and two children. Lucinda was serious beyond her years and unlikely to marry – the morose, pale-skinned young woman had long ago lost all hope of becoming a bride. But sweet-voiced Vasilisa was inundated with suitors. Unlike her sister, she flowered into a genuine beauty, not over the course of days, but over the course of hours. Vasilisa turned the heads of all, from babe to old man, which clearly vexed Lucinda. Rumor had it that even the deputy of the Kievan prince was in love with the young princess. Lucinda considered her sister to be too proud and constantly tried to shame her for her inappropriate behavior. Nonetheless, they lived together fairly amiably in the large, bright home where prosperity and happiness had always reigned.

  Vasilisa had yet another admirer, about whom she preferred to tell no one. Not even her mama knew of him. At the end of winter a dark, strange man moved into the house opposite. Rumor maintained that he was a merchant who had supposedly lived in the East for half his life and only now had returned to his native land. Light rarely lit up the windows of his home; he was a recluse and never invited anyone inside. The tall stranger left his house infrequently and even then it was usually towards evening. Ever since he had arrived, Vasilisa was tormented by a strange and uncanny feeling that she could not explain. It seemed to her that the heavy gaze of this man followed her everywhere she went, penetrating even through thick brick walls. But the most dreadful thing was that Vasilisa was drawn to this mysterious stranger as if there was something for which she had waited her entire life in his gaze. And this something lured her, as a moth is lured to a deadly flame.

  Vasilisa did not know that memorable July would be the last of her human life.

  The first to fall ill was Natalya, Nicholaus’s wife. No one in the family wanted to believe that it was cholera; they all denied the obvious to the bitter end, continuing to insist that the woman had been poisoned by beluga caviar. Natalya died after five days, and on that very same evening Nicholaus’s younger son became feverish. The boy fought for life for three days, but he lost. Vasilisa looked at his desiccated little corpse then shifted her gaze to her brother, who was grey from grief, and she did not know which of them she pitied more. In the next several days they lost the cook, the nanny, and a groom. People perished literally before their eyes. The healer, who came to their home from far away Novgorod, only shrugged his shoulders, exhorting them to courageously endure their trials. When Nicholaus’s elder son died, her brother’s reason dulled. Weakened and having lost all will to live, he took to his bed after two days. Shutting herself away in a bright room, Vasilisa cried quietly into a pillow. Towards evening she felt that she was starting to run a fever. Vasilisa lay in her bed, rolled up in a blanket, and prepared herself to meet death. After some time she felt a presence in the room. And for some reason she was not very surprised when she opened her eyes and saw the tall stranger from the house opposite theirs standing next to her bed.

  “Who are you and how did you come here?”

  “I am he who can help you,” the man replied. “You and your kin.”

  Vasilisa trembled at the sound of his low, velvety voice.

  “And what do you want in exchange?” asked the girl, her teeth rattling.

  “Nothing,” the man smirked. “But the price will be very high. Perhaps even too high.”

  “I don’t understand,” confessed Vasilisa after a slight pause. “But we are wealthy, so the price is irrelevant.”

  “I do not speak of money,” whispered the man. “Simply say that you are ready to accept my gift.”

  “I am ready,” the girl whispered.

  In the back of her mind, she had already decided that she was dreaming, and that soon she would behold death – a blackened, withered old crone with a scythe.

  “Be not afraid,” the man said unexpectedly. “Do what I tell you, and no old woman with a scythe will come for you.”

  Vasilisa had wanted to ask how he knew about the old woman and the scythe, but the man suddenly pulled up the left sleeve of his shirt, raised his right hand, extended his index finger and with a single abrupt movement sliced the skin near his left wrist. Dark blood instantly welled from the wound.

  The man walked closer to Vasilisa’s bed and stretched out his wounded arm to her.

  “Drink,” he ordered.

  Vasilisa recoiled in horror.

  “I will not!” she replied, shocked. “You’re insane!”

  Blood from the wound began to drip on the snow-white linens of Vasilisa’s bed. The girl realized that there was nowhere to run, nor did she have enough strength to do so.

  “You must do the same for them,” said the man calmly. “Don’t waste time. Drink.”

  Vasilisa began to shake her head.

  “Drink,” repeated the man and he looked her straight in the eyes.

  All at once, Vasilisa realized that she would do anything he desired, anything he asked of her. She took his large, rough hand in her own and brought it close to her lips. The unusual, harsh flavor was surprisingly pleasant. Vasilisa’s head spun and warmth spread throughout her entire body. Hitherto unknown sensations inundated the girl entirely; it was as if she soared over the earth… And then Vasilisa fell down into a dead faint.

  That night she died and was born anew. More accurately, her blood comingled with the blood of another creature and evolved, transmogrifying Vasilisa’s entire nature. She had forever become a different creature, and this new creatu
re did not have a path backwards. Of course, at that time Vasilisa did not know any of this: it seemed to her that after a long and wearisome struggle the illness had departed.

  Towards morning she awoke and felt that she was completely healthy. She paid no attention to the strange taste, or rather, the strange sensation in her mouth – her joy was too intense. But she was not at all eager to recall last night’s scene. The main thing was that now she had the means to save her family from cholera. She decided to ask that she be left alone with her brother so that no one besides the two of them would know about this new ‘medicine.’ Barely dragging her clothes on, Vasilisa ran to the chamber where Nicholaus lay. Mother and Father were black with grief. Lucinda was crying silently in a corner, wiping away her tears with a kerchief her brother had given her.

  “Take courage,” said the healer, catching sight of Vasilisa as she entered.

  The girl realized that she had come in time. Everything proceeded as she had planned. She managed to get rid of her family and the intrusive healer. Nicholaus was already unconscious so Vasilisa made a deep incision in her wrist with a knife and then pressed her wrist to his dry lips. Her brother began to writhe in the throes of agony, and the girl, terrified, watched over him, periodically wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. She was astonished at how quickly the cut on her arm started to heal. Vasilisa could do nothing except to thank God for the miracle he had sent in the form of their strange neighbor, who was apparently a remarkable healer. The girl intended to express her gratitude to him as soon as Nicholaus got better.

  Soon the agony ceased, and Nicholaus fell into the sound sleep of a convalescing man. Everything, even the color of his face, spoke to the fact that he was on the mend.

  “He’s better!” exclaimed the healer when the girl allowed them all to return to the invalid’s bedchamber. “In the name of all that’s holy, he’s better! What miracle did you work upon him, my dear child?” he asked Vasilisa. “You’re a magician!”

  Father, Mother and Lucinda embraced and cried happily. Vasilisa snuck a peek at her slashed wrist. The skin was almost completely knitted back together. Mother walked up to her and embraced her.

  “My dear child,” she sobbed. “You prayed, I know. We were all praying for our Nicholaus.”

  And she cried on her shoulder. Vasilisa smelled a distantly familiar, acutely sweet aroma. The aroma was so thrilling, so appetizing…

  “I’m rather…hungry,” said Vasilisa, stepping back from her mother.

  And then it seemed to her that everyone around her began talking simultaneously.

  “Quieter, I beg you,” she said. “My head is pounding.”

  She remembered what happened next in fragments. She recalled how blintzes with caviar and salmon appeared on a plate in front of her, and how she spat out everything that she attempted to choke down, repulsed, and how the events of the night before floated before her eyes – there was the man, slicing through the skin of his arm, and there she was, greedily falling on the wound; warm, viscous liquid poured into her throat, and oh, she would give anything just to repeat that delightful sensation. She recalled how she ran into the stockyard, how she seized a small, bleating lamb and sank her teeth into its neck. Much later, standing over the bloodless corpse of the animal, Vasilisa finally understood the strange sensation in her mouth that had haunted her since early morning. Her bite had changed. It had changed because of the newly formed pair of long, sharp fangs which were so handy for breaking though skin and plunging into warm, full veins.

  While her mother and father accompanied the healer out, Vasilisa seized the opportunity and ran straight to the man she guessed could answer all the questions that were swarming and mingling with horrible speculations in her overwrought mind.

  “What did you do to me?” she screamed as she burst into the house across the way. The heroic strength in her arms easily allowed her to tear the massive granary lock off the door.

  “Come out, pagan! Come out and tell me what you did to me!”

  He appeared out of the gloomy depths of the room, dreadful and captivating, attractive and repulsive at the same time. And he began his tale. It was a tale about how the world was made, and about the strange creatures that inhabited it alongside humans, and about how many different kinds of creatures there were, and about the true purpose of each creation…. Vasilisa understood his words, but she had difficulty understanding his entire meaning; she did, however, manage to catch the essence. She began to cry when she realized that she had been turned into a vampire. Swallowing her tears, she insisted that it would have been better to die of cholera. He contended that with time she would come to value life, any life, even the one that he had given her in exchange for the one he took away. Then for the first time she had heard that mysterious and incomprehensible phrase – Begotten of Old…

  They talked far into the night. When she returned home towards morning, it felt to her that she had lived a whole life, full of sorrow and despair. There was worse to come.

  When Nicholaus woke up, Vasilisa was close at hand. To this day she could recall every minute of that hell through which they all had to go. And each of them would have given everything in the world in order to forget, but that was an unrealizable dream. This hell came to them in their sleep. It lived inside each vampire. It was an integral part of a vampire’s being.

  In the course of the next three months, Vasilisa and Nicholaus decimated the population of cows, horses, sheep, geese and chickens in Suzdal. But pig and cow blood slowly became less capable of allaying the hunger that grew with each setting of the sun. Rumors of a bizarre illness striking the livestock flew through the city. The commoners whispered amongst themselves, pointing at their home. The gentlefolk devoutly crossed themselves whenever they passed by. People now kept their distance from the princely residence.

  In December they started in upon the servants. Glasha the scullery maid was the first victim of the vampires. Vasilisa still remembered what she was called, but even more than that, she remembered how she keened as Nicholaus and Vasilisa both plunged their fangs into the veins that pulsed in the bends of the elbows of her perfect, white arms…

  That night Vasilisa again went to him, to the one who had simultaneously become for her both tormentor and savior. He was a wise tutor and a skillful lover. Vasilisa never knew his real name: she simply called him Mentor. Later, when a brutish crowd chopped him to pieces before her eyes, Vasilisa experienced both relief and grief in equal measure. But before that moment Mentor managed to teach her much, and he gifted her with many a magical night, when the feast of flesh passed into the feast of love and vice versa. He taught her to balance on the boundary between pain and pleasure. He thought that a zest for life could only truly be experienced in the dance of pleasure alternating with pain, and pain passing into pleasure.

  Well, if that was so, then Vasilisa had fully experienced that zest. In the spring, after she and Nicholaus had fed on their tenth human victim, the cook, their mother hung herself in the woodshed. A week later their father tried to do the same thing. But Nicholaus had time to pull him out of the noose, whereupon he forcibly poured his own blood into his father’s crushed throat. Nonetheless, many years later their father managed to accomplish his intent.

  Lucinda held out until the bitter end. She remained human even while they were fleeing the revolt. The illiterate, superstitious humans first broke into Mentor’s house and ripped him to shreds. He intentionally did not try to run, giving Vasilisa the opportunity to save herself and her family. He knew what awaited him and accepted death with dignity. As a horse carried her speedily away, Vasilisa saw the humans besiege her home, cover it with bunches of garlic and then set it on fire. She watched her family nest burn, the nest whose every corner she knew by heart; she watched it burn and she cried, putting the spurs to her frightened horse. And she realized that her family was now doomed to wandering and vagrancy, that only the Lord God himself knew how long they would last…

  Ever since then,
in each of their refuges, there was always a secret exit hidden from the uninitiated.

  Lucinda lived with them as a human for just shy of ten years. Neither Father, nor Nicholaus, nor Vasilisa ever tried to persuade her. It was her choice, though in the depths of her soul Vasilisa knew that Lucinda came to it neither from fear of old age nor from fear for her own life. None of them would dare harm her. Lucinda eventually became a vampire out of despair, for in the end she had no one left her except her brother, sister and father, who were all vampires.

  Many years had passed since then. Now they lived as three, not counting Filip, who had been with them long enough to become part of the family. None of them grew any older, not by a day. Lucinda and Nicholaus looked much the same now as they did then – like humans in their thirties. Vasilisa remained forever young and fresh – half woman, half adolescent girl. Or as it might be put now, a well-developed teenager.

  Ah, well, the past…it returned to her every day, every night, accompanied by nightmares. ‘Even in sleep the past, which it is impossible to forget, seeps into the heart drop by drop…’ Vasilisa often recalled these lines, written by the great Aeschylus.

  But this morning when she awoke in a vicious mood it was not at all because of dreams. The nightmares had long ago become commonplace, and Vasilisa had long ago forgotten the dreams that had come to her during her human life. But she remembered quite well the raid on Wing and still more her first rejection in a long time. The bitch! But the worst thing was that she had rejected Vasilisa twice. First when she ridiculed her business proposition and then when she had refused her body. Vasilisa was indignant. Who the hell did she think she was? Begotten of Old… You’d think Vasilisa didn’t understand who she was really dealing with. She called herself such pretty names, acting all high and mighty. But she was really just a thief and assassin.

  Vasilisa turned on the television in the hope of relaxing. Flipping through the numerous channels she decided in favor of the one which was showing Mary Poppins, Goodbye. In a trice the aggrieved, mature woman in her gave way to the mischievous seventeen year old girl.