Scarlet Rose

Chapter 5 - The Brand New World

When Katherine awoke the next day and saw that she was still in that damn mansion, remembering everything from yesterday, she wanted to cry. Until now, Katherine might have thought it was just some kind of nightmare that she was about to wake up from, but this morning was lying in the same bed she woke up in yesterday. She hated this situation and most of all hated the count Shiro Akira. It was he who gave her his blood and with it sentenced to be locked up in this place and on his property. But what she was most concerned about was her father and brother. Oh, how devastated they would be to find out that Katherine did not make it to Cardiff on time... It was possible her fiance had arranged a search...

She knew from Margareth that the count had only taken the luggage and the carriage remained on the road. The bodies of the servants and horses were burned in a nearby meadow, but probably some trace will remain after that. What if her fiance, while looking for her, reaches that forest, finds traces of blood left after a battle, a carriage and a traces in a meadow near the forest? He will surely come to the conclusion that something bad, very bad has happened. Any logical person would think Katherine was probably dead at this point. And if her fiance will think so, he would surely pass on his findings to her father and brother. If they get a message like this... It will break their hearts, the more so that they sent Katherine to Cardiff so she will be safer there. They will find that they shouldn't have sent her, or at least not alone. They would blame themselves, especially father, she knew it perfectly well.

It was the same after her mother's death - the father never said it directly, but he blamed himself for her death. For Katherine, this was another proof that mother didn't die of the disease, because father wouldn't blame himself so much if it was true. But it didn't matter now. Most importantly, Katherine did not want to cause suffering to her father and brother. Why did life have to be so unfair? So what if she survived that nightmare night when could neither go to her fiance in Cardiff nor come back to London to father and brother? Why did God demand such a high price for saving her life? Katherine wanted to believe that He had a plan for her, and she was here not by accident. But Kath couldn't understand why she had to spend God knows how much time in the mansion full of vampires, with only one human being?

Yes, maybe two of these vampires were pure blooded, but how she was supposed to know if they were much different from those wild creatures that attacked Katherine and her servants in the forest? There was no way she could trust someone who was not human, but a blood-drinking beast. And no matter if they saved her life or not.

So what if they saved her back then, in the woods, if she couldn't leave their house? Now they could do what they wanted with her. Who knows, maybe they planned to make a slave out of her, which would provide them with fresh blood? The very thought of such a fate made Katherine shudder. It was not only scary, but also very humiliating, after all, aristocratic blood ran through her veins. Katherine was not born to serve, others were supposed to serve her.

A knock on the door broke her out of those thoughts. Katherine shuddered a bit, but as the door opened slightly and she saw Margareth's familiar face, Kath breathed a sigh of relief.

- My lady, thought I would have to wake you up, but I see you are already awake.- said Margreth, opening the door more and going inside.- It's good, you can't spend the whole day in bed, my lady.- she added enthusiastically, opening the wardrobe wide and going through the dresses.

- That was my plan.- Katherine replied in a slightly cold tone, folding hands over her chest as she sat on the bed, resting on the pillows.

- I'm really sorry, but this is not an option, my lady.- Margareth said boldly as she walked over to the bed and picked up the covers. Then she grabbed Katherine's arm to help her up, but since she wasn't going to get off the bed, Margareth almost pulled her off the bed, forcing to stand straight on the floor.

- I said I don't want to get out of bed!- Katherine raised her voice, pulling her arm out of the woman's embrace.- What insolence... How dare you treat me like that, you low...- Katherine began, looking for a suitable insult.

- I advise you to bite your tongue now, my lady.- Margareth gave her an intense, scolding look.- I am not interested in what kind of family you come from. If you will be rude, I won't hesitate to slap you again.- she warned, not taking eyes off her. The fact that this woman was slightly taller than Katherine made her even more fearful and respectful.- I don't know who spoiled you so much, but I'm not going to fulfill your whims, my lady. Now please just stand there, choose a dress for today, and I will bring a maid to help you get dressed, my lady, and she will then lead you to the dining room. Breakfast is already on the table.- she added politely but firmly, then walked towards the door, but before left, she turned to her for a moment.- And hopefully I won't have to come here a second time, having to personally dress you, my lady. Believe me, you don't want this, miss.- Margareth said with a serious face and left the room.

Katherine clenched her hands into fists, feeling powerlessness overwhelming her. She was glad there was a human besides her in this huge house full of vampires, but still she hated dr Margareth Stone - that insolent, outright country woman. Katherine hated that this woman seemed completely unconcerned with her demands, and was not going to do as she said even for the sake of peace, like most of the servants Katherine had dealt with so far. Though it was obvious that Margareth was not percisely the servant, but more like the private physician of this residence, and knowing the story of her life before living here, she never served rich people, but treated and looked after simple peasants.

On the one hand, Katherine felt an urge to befriend Margareth as she was the only human being here, a person whom she could really trust, but on the other hand, Katherine didn't like having to listen to this woman. In the end, however, she sighed slightly as approaching the wardrobe. Then a vampire-maid, same one who had helped dress Katherine yesterday, entered the room.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Shiro and Wayne were just sitting at the dining room table when Margareth entered the room, visibly agitated.

- Maggie, did something happened?- Wayne asked, looking at her with a slightly worried face expression.

- Probably some problems with young lady O'Sullivan, am I guessing right?- Shiro spoke up, correcting the napkin lying on the table. Their vampire servants usually came from the lower classes and it took a long time for them to learn the proper service for the aristocracy.

- Yes, unfortunately you are right, count Akira.- Margareth confirmed, then looked at Wayne and gave him a slight smile, for she liked him calling her Maggie. He resembled Margareth her younger brother, so she felt a great deal of sympathy for him despite the situation she was in because of those pure blooded vampires.

- Ah, why must such a lovely young lady be so rude?- Wayne sighed, seeming genuinely moved by this fact.

- Hopefully, while staying here for a while, she'll get more refined and become a real lady.- Margareth said.

- Yes, let's hope so.- Shiro admitted, reaching for a goblet filled with blood.

At this point, Katherine appeared in the dining room and wordlessly passed Wayne and Shiro, walking to the other end of the table and instead of sitting next to Margareth, like yesterday, she sat on one of the chairs across from her. Margareth was about to comment on the fact that she didn't greet others properly when Shiro was faster and spoke up.

- Politeness requires greeting when you enter a room where other people are.- he said sternly, looking at Katherine scoldingly.- However, after yesterday's performance, I noticed that you probably don't deserve to be called a real lady, miss O'Sullivan.- he added, but without a slightest trace of malice.

- How dare you, count...- Katherine spoke up, rising from chair, her eyes throwing lightning bolts at him.

- Please sit down, miss O'Sullivan. I remind you that you are in my house.- Shiro replied in a firm tone that reminded her of father's tone so much that her legs turned to jelly and she had to sit up, whether wanted it or not. But when he looked at her just like people used to look at a little child who was throwing a tantrum for no reason, the blood boiled in her again.

- Yes, but let me remind you that I don't want to be here at all. You are holding me here by force, without asking for permission.- Katherine replied reproachfully.

- Miss Katherine, it was by no means our intention to imprison you here.- Wayne cut in on their conversation, apparently unable to sit still, his gaze traveling from the cousin to her.- At the moment, we can't do anything with the fact, that giving our blood has such bad side effects. But believe me, Shiro has been looking for a solution to this problem day and night, ever since we saved Maggie. And he never stopped.- he continued in a calm tone, not taking his eyes off Katherine.- So please, don't hold any grudge against us. We just wanted to save your life, my lady.- he added gently, giving her a slight smile.

His words sounded so sincere, and his pleading tone and smile affected Katherine in some strange way. Her anger eased quickly, and she didn't know what to say, so looked away from both of them, focusing it on her plate.

- I'm sure lady Katherine will understand this sooner or later.- Margareth finally spoke.- I partially understand your anger, my lady, and I admit that for some time could not come to terms with my situation either, the more so because I have a mother and a brother in the village.- she turned to Katherine directly, causing her to look up. Seeing that she had gained her attention, Margareth continued.- I was angry, but quickly realized that count Akira and count Williams had no control over it and also wanted to free me from this peculiar curse. That's why I hope you will be nicer, my lady.- Margareth added in perhaps the softest tone she had ever used towards her.

Katherine said nothing, just looked back at her plate. What was she supposed to do? Kath did not want to apologize for her behavior, but also did not have the courage to continue showing anger. Besides, Katherine felt her anger fade away from the moment she met Wayne's eyes and heard his voice. Is it because he was simply nice to her? Or did maybe had some tricks up his sleeve? He was a vampire after all, maybe could influence people somehow. During the meal, Katherine suddenly wondered what superhuman abilities the count Wayne and his cousin had. She even found Shiro intrigued her more, but perhaps because he rarely spoke. Even during this meal, despite Katherine's rude behavior, Wayne kept talking to her and Margareth over and over.

Katherine noticed that Wayne was undoubtedly charming, able to have interesting conversation, and appeared to be a very social person. His cousin, Shiro, on the other hand, seemed to be complete opposite. In many respects, he really resembled her father - he was firm, did not care about her whims, and his very aura inspired respect and even fear, he was very calm, composed, a bit proud and a little bit cold. However, Shiro seemed to be much more introverted than Katherine's father.

At one point, however, Katherine mentally scolded herself for being so interested in it all. She shouldn't care. She didn't want to be here, hated vampires, including those two pure blooded ones, who kept on saying they only wanted to save her life and wouldn't keep her here if it was up to their decision. Katherine shouldn't trust them that easily and had to remember she was dealing with vampires, creatures she had almost no knowledge about.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After the meal, Wayne and Shiro went to the office together.

- Did you really have to use your skills on her?- Shiro asked, leaning against the desk, flipping through one of the books.

- Ah, come on, it's not a crime. Also, I calmed down the situation, didn't I?- Wayne replied, smiling slightly, evidently proud of himself.

- Maybe so, but if she finds out that you influenced her in a supernatural way, she will all the more claim that we want to make her our slave.- Shiro replied warningly.

- I didn't think about that, forgive me.- Wayne sighed, sitting down at the desk and focusing on the map lying on it. Based on the information gathered yesterday from scouts, he was supposed to mark on it possible places where the turned vampire's nests were.

- Well, you won't take it back now. But for the future, remember that it's better not to do that.- Shiro replied calmly, not taking his eyes off the book he was checking.

Then each of them focused on their work - Wayne marking points on the map, and Shiro browsing the book, looking for a way to free Margareth and lady O'Sullivan from their mansion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After the meal, Katherine decided to walk around this huge house. Now she didn't want to spend the whole day in her room anymore, and didn't want to spend it alone with Margareth. She heard from her that on the second floor, in the corridor with Katherine's room, there was also a library at the other end, so she decided to go there. Katherine loved books and thought that count Akira and his cousin, as the pure blooded vampires, must live at least several hundred years, so their book collection could be really huge. So far it was probably the only positive thing about her being stuck here.

After being upstairs, instead of going to her room, Katherine walked across the hall and found a door at the end of it, opened it, and immediately saw a large number of shelves full of books. In the center of the room was an elegantly ornate desk and chair, and the books lied down also on the floor here and there, but arranged nicely in piles. The room was large and had plenty of bookshelves, but each was already full, so the sight of the books lying on the floor, also partly on the desk, did not surprise her that much. As expected, the library of creatures who lived much longer than humans must have had more books, and from all over the world. Katherine went first to the desk, examining the titles of the books lying on top of it, then she walked around the room, leafing through the piles on the floor. She picked up some books which titles interested her and set them aside, then began browsing through the bookshelves. Katherine would love to read all of those books, but she knew that her life won't be enough to do it, but at least knew she would have something to do while waiting for count Akira to find a way to free her from the side effects of consuming his blood.

On one of the higher shelves, Katherine saw a thick book that read 'History of the Vampire Kind' and knew right away she had to get to it no matter what. With a little difficulty, because it was heavy, she dragged the chair from under the desk to the shelf. Then Katherine scooped up a bottom of her dress, to keep it out of the way as she climbed into the chair. When she finally reached the shelf, gently pulled out the book, for she noticed at once that it was very old. Katherine stepped carefully off the chair, the book under her arm, and placed the book first on the desk, then pushed the chair over to it.

Finally Katherine sat down at the desk, gasping for breath from exhaustion. Then she opened the book, gently turning the yellowed pages.

And as the title said, the whole history of vampires was actually written here, from the first representative of this species, who appeared well before the birth of Christ. Seeing the name of Cain, Katherine immediately associated that the first vampire was probably the son of Adam and Eve, the one who murdered his brother out of jealousy. As a part of his curse, he became the first pure blooded vampire, took a succubus as wife and created the first clans. He had many children who married each other, keeping their blood pure for generations. As a result, despite the fact that his descendants scattered around the world and began to speak different languages, each of them was closely related to each other as they came from the same Cain's family and did not mix their blood with humans or other beings. This principle, the obligation to preserve the purity of blood, was created by the Cain himself and through the ages it was obediently applied. Of course, there were incidents where pure blooded vampires fell in love with someone outside their circle, but such incidents were suppressed immediately. A loved one was killed, and such a vampire had an immediate wedding with the first free representative of his race.

Reading about this, Katherine wondered if she really had a right to complain about her fate. Yes, there were quite a few parallels between the behavior of the human aristocracy and the pure blood vampire clans, but she hadn't heard any human go that far. But, of course, she couldn't compare humans and vampires just like this - it was logical that the world of such beings would look a lot more brutal. After all, as this book stated, the pure blooded vampires were powerful, almost immortal, especially after reaching a very old age. Therefore, if the elders wanted to keep the order and rules, they had to severely punish anyone who wanted to rebel.

Reading on, Katherine learned that the so-called turned vampires, like the ones who attacked her, appeared as the first 'rebels' tried to find a way to make their mortal lovers same as themselves. Drinking each other's blood turned out to be a effective method, but the person transformed into a vampire became wild and aggressive, and could not control the thirst for blood. The elders of the clans called it A part of the divine punishment given to their ancestor, Cain - trying to turn humans into creatures of their own kind resulted in the creation of beasts that were dangerous even to pure blooded vampires because of their savagery. Therefore, the clans, for the common good of humanity, made an agreement with the magicians who helped the pure blood vampires to apply a spell on the 'turned', which caused them to lose their free will and become completely subject to the pure blooded.

In this way, until 1000 AD, there were 1.000 pure blood vampire clans, each with around 100 members, making almost 100.000 pure blood vampires in total, with only 500 turned vampires, a number that was fully controlled by pure blooded. But it all went into the wrong direction in 1000 AD, when pure blooded Victor Satajew, from the 3rd Russian clan, fell in love with a human girl. Of course, his clan rejected such a fiancée and ordered him to marry a pure blooded vampire of their choice, but Victor rebel even more, run away with his beloved and transformed her without the knowledge of the head of his clan. Unfortunately, their happiness together did not last long, since his beloved has been chased down and killed by the Satajew clan members which made Victor furious and, as an act of revenge, he performed an ancient ritual. He was helped by magicians, dissatisfied with the fact that pure blooded vampires, despite their previous aversion to turned vampires, still created them to make more servants. Therefore, to punish pure blooded, they taught Victor a ritual that reversed the previous one, he perfom it but died as a result. But the ritual worked, which caused turned vampires to regain free will and gave them ability to transform others through biting. Full of anger, they increase their number to 50.000 in 2 weeks and started a s*******r of clans.

By 1100 AD clan after clan died during the Great s*******r, as it has been named later. Mostly pride was losing them, they thought that still had power over the turned vampires, and before realizing they were wrong, it was too late. Only 10,000 turned were killed in the fights and of the pure blood vampire clans only 23 members out of 3 clans survived. They had to hide, gathering strength and planning the right strategy to defeat these wild vampires. Over the next 20 years, turned vampires made nests in forests and hunted people or animals as they wished. Of course, people tried to fight the bloodsuckers roaming the forests, then the first vampire hunters started to appear, but it was a tough fight, because the ability to transform others meant that many more new vampires appeared in place of a few killed ones.

Fortunately, there were also quite a lot turned who didn't lose their humanity and joined the pure blooded vampires. With their great help, in 1120 AD, during the battle with the army of turned vampires, pure blooded managed to kill almost everyone - only 1200 escaped. Till 1390 AD the number of turned vampires reached 1500, despite the constant killing of them by hunters and pure blooded vampires, common goal prompted them to make a pact - they were supposed to help each other kill turned vampires and save humans from them. According to the book right now, in 1402 AD, killing of turned vampires continues, their number went down to 950 at most but constantly changes. From the gathered information now the one who leads the turned is called Antoine, the oldest of them, fascinated and inspired by Victor, it also seems that he has not lost his humanity, but consciously set himself the goal of sowing chaos and increasing the number of turned vampires, which is why he is so dangerous and must be captured at all costs.

Antoine... Katherine immediately associated the name, also the description assured her that the vampire who had bit her and spoke with a French accent, was the same Antoine mentioned in this book. Besides, she had clearly heard him being called by that name. Katherine wasn't surprised now that Shiro and Wayne seemed very interested when Margareth mentioned the name of the vampire who bit her. Antoine was at the top of their 'to take care of' list.

The rest of the pages in the book were blank, indicating that the rest of the story would be written by one of the pure bloods as something important happen, and the fact that count Akira and his cousin had the book in their mansion meant that it was probably their job. This could also indicate that they were quite prominent figures in the world of pure blooded vampires. Katherine had no idea if it was good or bad, for she still couldn't tell if her saviors were trustworthy. After reading this book, one could see that pure blooded may care more for the welfare of humans than those wild vampires, but they commit many sins just like some wicked people. After all, this was what led the magicians, who had previously assisted them in enslaving the turned, as a punishment, imparted to Victor the knowledge of a ritual that reversed the spell.

Katherine closed the book at last, especially since she heard Margareth's voice in the corridor calling her, and footsteps coming closer and closer. Katherine got up from the chair, passed the desk, and picked up the books she had set aside, which wanted to 'borrow' and read later.