Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

S  I  X  T E E N

 

EATEN

BY

OTHERS

“What about Drinker vengeance?”

-Gabriel Court

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“I want to fuck him!” Gabriel nearly growled on his mother’s bed.

“Oh, shut up!” Rhodias snapped, combing out her copper hair.

“I love him. He’s so beautiful. How can he be with Kruinh? He’s so sttong and golden and lovely!”

“If you’re talking about that blond—”

“Alexander!”

“If you’re talking about that blond boy you made, he’d as soon kill you as touch you.”

“I killed him. I killed him while making love to him. I would gladly fuck him and die in his arms.”

“And you may just yet if you keep on playing the fool.”

Gabriel stopped and strained his ears.

“What the hell is that?”

Through the walls, at a great distance, Gabriel and Rhodias could hear something like screaming.

“Your slutty aunts,” Rhodias said, simply. “Kruinh brought them men.”

At once, Gabriel growled and shouted, and then turned around and furiously began fucking the mattress.

“I want him! I want HIM! I WANT HIM! I WANT HIMMMMMMMMM!”

When, exhausted, snorting, red faced and hair tousled, Gabriel had finished, his mother, unmoved, said, “Are you done?”

“I want him.”

“Yes, you’ve said that.”

“And Rosa wants us to let her out.”

“You say it as if this is news,” Rhodias frowned at her son.

“She’s your daughter.”

“She is someone who has violated the Great Law, and as you have seen, Kruinh and Tanitha are not to be crossed.”

“I saw him kill Carter and all of the drinkers Rosa had made.”

“It is Drinker justice,” Rhodias said. “It isn’t the first time he’s done it, and I doubt it will be the last.”

“Drinker justice?”

“Yes, my love. The same justice as when your precious Alexander hacks off your head while you tell him how much you love him.”

“Drinker justice,” Gabriel said again, but when Rhodias was about to speak, he made a moton to silence her.

The pretty, dark haired vampire with his sharp eyes and chiseled features no longer looked desperately in love, nor did he look like the scared boy who had fooled Sunny. He looked like what he was.

“Why trouble with justice?” he demanded.

“What about Drinker vengeance?”

“Aunt Asenath has nineteen children,” Tanitha said while David combed her hair.

“Wow.”

“It’s not that amazing. She’s a thousand years old. It’s not like she had them all at once, or even by the same man.”

“She is unmarried.”

“She’s many times married, and the husbands have always turned a blind eye to her escapades. I can’t even remember who she’s married to now. Her oldest, Zona, is older than father. Her youngest is your age.”

“Wow.”

“She is the rolling stone upon which moss never grows.”

“And Rhodias?”

“You know all about that bitch.”     

And then Tanitha said, “Only you don’t. She would not be here if Rosa was not imprisoned. She and her husband and their whole family, vassals to us, moved to England where they Anglicized our name to Court. Rosamunde has done much damage but all of it within bounds. It is only in the last century or so that she has crossed over into enemy territory, and of course, we cannot hold her mother at fault for it. You cannot control your children. But they have done many things. Offended many people. Not only Drinkers. One day they will pay.”

“Miriamne?”

“Has never married or had children. Why would she when Asenath had nineteen? She is closest in age to Father. Closest to him period. They traveled together when they were young, before he met my mother, and after her death it was Miriamne who dragged him out of his suffering and brought him to America, where I was living.  When Father agreed to stay in Glencastle, he made Miriamne steward of Visastruta.”

“And there is a last one?”

“Magdalene, the oldest of my father’s sisters. Her roads are dark and she takes them alone. We rarely see her. If she were here she would say we were too soft.”

“Soft?”

“She would have killed Rosamunde, Gabriel and even Rhodias. She is a great believer in upholding Law.”

And when Tanitha said Law, and shook out her hair, it seemed she said it with a capital L.

“Why did Rhodias call your mother a halfbreed?”

“Oh,” Tanitha shook her head. “My mother was from Venice. Her family was very wealthy. The Zepessi. Her father, Vlad Tzepesh was allied to our family and was slain in Constantinople. His wife Marina was mortal. She fled with the rest of his family to Venice where they became the Zepessi, and she had herself and her daughter, my mother, Changed. My mother began her life as a mortal. Though, I suppose, you could say she ended it that way too.”

Before David could ask, Tanitha said.

“There were many wars between drinkers in those days. Allegiances and vendettas. And the world was bloody, far bloodier than it is now, though you may find that hard to believe. We were all nearly killed once. Mother did not live.”

David nodded. He asked no more. This was the most his bride to be had ever told him about her long history.

David went out to take the air. He was surprised by his inability to sleep, perhaps his cycle had caught up with the immortals he traveled amongst.

“Be careful,” Tanitha had said.

He walked the carpeted halls, not wishing to be lost, and now he felt the cool heaviness of the ancient ring on his finger, a thing that ought to have been in a museum, a ring of pharaohs inherited from someone who may very well have known pharaohs.

David wandered into the now empty dining hall where the earlier drama of that night had taken place. He strained his ears, and he could hear something like screaming. But if he tried he could hear all sorts of sonnds in this place. And yet he felt safe. He was in Transylvania, in a vampires’ castle, and he felt safe.

This is why he was so surprised when he stumbled into the three of them in the great foyer before the dining hall. Rhodias and Gabriel looked at him in shock, but Rosamunde, her red hair tumbling down from her white face, her prison gown spattered with dust, almost snarled.

“Good…. Evening,” David tried.

“Good evening?” Rosamunde demanded, her voice rising. “Good evening!”

He knew who she was, but why was she out of her prison?

“This is the one that high and mighty Tanitha loves!” Rosamunde said.

Well, now apparently she knew him as well.

David wondered how quickly he could get away, and the thought left him as soon as it came. Was this how Sunny had felt? How that boy Blake, and all the bodies that had wound up in the morgue before him had felt at one point? He owed it to himself, to Tanitha, to everyone to at least try to run.

Of course, it did not work.