Blood Martinis: The Gypsy Vampire's Curse

Ch. 9 ... Empty Drums

The next day, Bennet and Brianna rode back to the Blackburn Estate – husband and wife – with Dylan in the town car. Brianna, no longer under the spell cast to keep people from the maze, decided to explore the kennels. It bewildered and perplexed her. Still adjusting to the ins and outs of being one of the supernaturals, she wasn't aware of the social orders or natural laws between them. So, she didn't know whether to accept that vampires were truly as evil as her new family would have her believe. Walking through the lines of cages, the people inside them hollered and hissed, till she came across a huddled mass in a corner away from the others.

“Kate?”she asked.“What are you doing in here? They told me you were lost in the woods.”

Kate didn't answer, she couldn't shake the night before or all the nights before that from her mind. She looked like a statue, with her eyes fixed on the wall as a finger traced a small imaginary circle around and around.

“Are you okay? Can you hear me?”Brianna asked.“What did that monster do to you?”

Kate wondered if Brianna knew who the real monster was.

“Something happened to me too, after you ran out of here,”she continued.“Did you try to get help?”

Kate's finger stopped in its rotation.

“Kilian, found me. He turned me into this… thing that I am now,”Brianna said.

Kate looked up. At that moment, both girls noticed how the other's figure had toned, and it annoyed them. Kate hadn't seen her own body in the mirror. Brianna had seen hers, but thought the new bulk took away from her delicate features. They each unquestioningly believed the other had become more beautiful, while she herself had been ruined. Kate turned back to the wall.

“You really have been broken, haven't you?”Brianna spat, more annoyed that Kate wouldn't acknowledge her.“They told me you would have changed- that you'd have become a monster and need to be put down.”

Those words made Kate's back tense with a penetrating pain.“I want to see Dylan.”

“I don't know that he wants to see you,”Brianna said.

After Brianna left, Kate sat alone for ages. Time passed so slowly, being locked up with nothing but her thoughts. I don't want to die. I don't want to be here. I don't want to go home. I can't be around people. I don't want to be around Kilian. I don't want to ever see him again. I don't want him to touch me.

Flashes of the night before circled her mind, on repeat, with a few other memories laced in. She'd think back to the woman biting her, then forward to the man biting her, back to the man trashing her apartment, forward to her wanting to rip out her own father's throat, and finally into a few rounds with the memories of Kilian's hands on her in the cellar and in the shed. It was inescapable. She couldn't rationalise any of it, make sense of any of it, so it just continued circling and driving her mad. She didn't understand the world anymore, and it was eating her alive.

“Oh, love,”Dylan said. Kate hadn't noticed him standing there.“You’re not yourself anymore, are you?”

She looked up at him. His eyes were kind, a welcome reprieve from everything she had been through. She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find words.

“Where did Kilian find you?”he asked.

She refused to answer, she couldn't speak to him about Kilian because then she might have to speak about what he did.

“Did you hurt anyone?”he asked.

She remained silent, involuntarily shaking her head.

“You must be freezing,”he said, examining the state of her short dress and uncovered shoulders. Blood was still splattered everywhere on her top half, and it and mascara were streaked down her face.

Allowing herself to consider how her body physically felt, rather than just the overpowering sense of her mental state, she realised he was right. She also needed something to take the edge off.“I need a drink.”

“I won't feed you blood,”he said.“You died last night, because I couldn't get to you. I'm so sorry, love. Your body just hasn't caught up yet, but it will.”

“No, I want a drink,”she said, ignoring him. There was already enough running through her mind, she didn't need his nonsense with it.“I want a martini... a lot of them.”

He smiled.“That I can do,”he said.“Maybe I can do a bit better than that. Do you want to spend the night with me? We could get you cleaned up. I can't let you go, but I can get you out of here and make you more comfortable. Maybe I could take you up to the rooftop… we could enjoy whatever hours you have left? Have some drinks and look at the stars? I'll get you whatever you want, just not human blood. How does that sound?”

“I'd like that,”she said.

He snuck her into the house, sure that his brothers wouldn't approve, and brought her to the spa room in the normally unused wing of the house. It had a jacuzzi in one corner, and an eight-foot-by-eight-foot shower room in the other. The linen closet was on the wall beside the jacuzzi, which held spare dressing gowns and towels, and a marble counter top with his and her sinks lined the other. After making sure the nozzles were spraying hot water, he sent her into the shower room and closed the frosted tempered glass door, so she could undress in private. He pulled out towels for her hair and body, along with a violet silk dressing gown.

The heat felt amazing on her skin; every drip penetrated and purified. It seemed her mood affected how much she perceived of her heightened senses, and it was quickly rising. Running her fingers through her hair, down her face, chest and stomach, cleansed her mind of the tragedies that had befallen her lately. Being around him, it still made her feel safe and alive. She trusted him. Whatever would happen to her in the next few hours, it would be okay as long as she could spend until then in his arms.

She stepped out and into the towel held open for her, with his eyes closed and face turned. Drying off, she felt brand new and invigorated. The dressing gown moulded to her now shapely frame, and looking in the mirror, for the first time in her life, she saw a beautiful girl. He smiled at her, and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head against hers.

“Feeling better?”he asked.

“So much,”she said.

When they got to the roof he called the butler, on the intercom, to bring up blue steaks, parmesan asparagus, twice baked mashed potatoes, a bottle of vermouth, a bottle of gin, two martini glasses and a lot of olives. It was what she had requested. He put out the cushions, from the rainproof chest, onto the enormous wicker sofa; then started a fire in the cast iron pit. They sat together, her leaning into his side under his arm, and he placed a blanket over their legs. She was warm, and felt loved and content.

She peered up into his eyes, and he down into hers. Their lips met, and it felt like electric rain.

Brianna and Bennet sat on their now shared bed in his room.

“I just don't know how to say this to you, in a way that's going to get through to you,”she said.“I didn't want to become this. It wasn't his choice to make and it wasn't yours.”

“You still chose to marry me,”he retorted.“You wanted to be in this family. Well, this is this family.”

“What else was I to do? You had already ruined me,”she snapped.

“I didn't do this to you,”he said.

“But you were going to, and that's why Kilian thought it was okay,”she interrupted.“This never would have happened to me if you had just been honest.”

“What wouldn't have happened to you?”he asked.“You wouldn't have married me? You wouldn't be immortal? You wouldn't be one of the fastest animals on earth? You wouldn't be the richest woman in Ireland?”

Brianna couldn't bare saying it to him. He just didn't get it.

Bennet took her silence as another slight against him. Nothing he was saying was getting through to her. He knew things would change once there was a real commitment, but he didn't think it'd be this quick. “Maybe we should have waited to get married.”

“I'm going to miss you,”Dylan said, his mood suddenly growing dark.

“I don't feel like I'm dying,”she responded.

“I don't know that my sister did either,”he said.“Until it was upon her.”

“I didn't know you had a sister,”she said.

“She was only seven years old when she died. I was eight,”he said.“It was the first snowy day of the year. She wandered out to the forest beyond the gate. I watched her follow a rabbit out, but I didn't think anything of it. I was too busy play sword fighting with Kilian. Our mother called us in for dinner a while later, and Isabelle didn't come. Father went out to find her. He said her little body was lying cold on the ground, blood pooling from her neck.”

“That's terrible,”she said.

“A vampire had killed her. We didn't really know what that meant back then,”he said.“Kilian, Bennet and I were still human. Our father was a werewolf, but most of the time werewolves have human children, and mother had chosen to stay human. They were waiting to change us until we were old enough to make the decision ourselves. Part of me wishes they hadn't waited. We'd be trapped in the bodies of children, but Issy would still be alive.”He paused on that for a while before continuing.“Father picked up Isabelle's body and brought it into the house. I remember my mother couldn't stop crying, but then Issy woke up. She sat up and was herself again. Our father wouldn't let us play with her. Mother kept her locked inside the cellar. She screamed for so long, smashing and banging into things. I was furious with them for that doing that to her. So, when father went to find the vampire who turned her, I snuck up to the cellar door and spoke with her. She was whimpering behind the door at that stage, and was so happy to hear my voice. I'll never forget that. She was herself, but not. The virus was eating her soul, and it made her do things that I know she didn't want to do.”

“What happened?”Kate asked.

“I let her out. It was the worst mistake of my life. I wasn't strong enough at that stage to control her,”he said, staring at the ground.“She was so hungry, she was insatiable. She came at me and had me pinned on the ground, trying to reach me with her teeth. I held her back and I shouted for my mother. When mum came in, Issy jumped on her and tore her neck to pieces. She didn't try to turn her, she probably didn't know how, she just gluttoned herself on her blood. Bennet and Kilian had followed her in and Bennet was just standing there. Kilian grabbed a fire poker from the hearth, and stabbed it through the two of them. He didn't mean to get our mother, but he pushed so hard it just slid through. She wouldn't have been okay anyhow.”

“I'm so sorry that happened to you,”she said.

“It was my fault. It was all my fault,”he said.“She was my little sister. I could have kept a better eye on her in the first place, or at least listened when they said she had to stay in the cellar.”

“You couldn't have known, Dylan,”she said.“You were a child yourself.”

Kilian walked out onto the roof, making her back tense.

“What's she doing here?”Kilian shouted at Dylan.

“She's not going back in that pen, Kilian,”Dylan responded, getting up to go talk to him privately.

“You know what you're going to end up having to do,”she heard Kilian say as the two walked back inside and let the door close.

At the same time, the man… no, vampire… who had turned her, appeared. He climbed over the edge of the roof. How long has he been hanging there? She wondered.

“Do you want to live?”he whispered.

She knew she didn't want to die. She didn't want to see Kilian again. She didn't want to tell Dylan what he had done. Although she didn't want to lose Dylan, her one string left leading back to the yarn of sanity, she didn't want to be here anymore either.“Yes,”she said. He grabbed her up in his arms and walked off the roof.“No!”she shouted, scared they would die, but he landed effortlessly on one knee. Despite how hard they hit the ground, it didn't hurt them. He stood her on her feet, and she felt relieved. For a moment, she felt free.