The Old

A Manner of Devil

Continued

“The Maid and the Master,” Chris repeated what he had said long ago, and Lewis, that afternoon in the apartment said it too.

“But, what is the Maid? And what is the Master?”

“The Maid holds the blessing of the Clan, and the Master its Virtue. Do you know more than you knew before?”

“No, my lord.”

“I am not your lord,” he said. “I possess a name in this life, and as I may be here for a time, it behooves you to know it. I am Melek.”

Lewis said, “You knew me. As a Master. In the late 1600’s?”

“I have not finished the tale,” Chris said, “or begun it really. I am not telling our story yet, but I am telling my story. You are not in it yet. Not really.”

A few days later, the overseer was found dead in the creek a mile from the great house. He was white as a sheet and drained of all blood. But he was not the last to be found so. All through the town about us, well heeled white men were found dead, throats sometimes opened savagely, all the time drained, and one by one we began to slip off because there were no guards to secure the grounds. Ikixi had told me, “Wait, not this day.” And then again, “Not this day.” I trusted him, but was impatient. Finally, one day, while we worked, Ikixi said, “Gather everything you have. We leave tonight.”

What we had was not much, the clothes on our back and Ikixi had managed to come with some few statues from his home, his gods with shallow large faces and small delicate lips and closed eyes. I had an old broken rosary. That night we fled into the hills and tripped over the bodies of dead white men. A few nights later, we heard the bells ringing as the plantation was set on fire. By then we were with Melek, and there was no sign of the Maid.

“You will have to learn to live in the hills,” he said. “The white men fear these hills, for they are full of power. Here, the Gods were called up, and from here they will be called to all the surrounding islands.”

“Did the Gods kill those men?” I asked.

“No,” said a new voice, and his manner was mild. He looked much like Melek or, indeed, Lewis, not a little bit unlike you.

“No,” he said, “the Gods did not kill them. That was me.”

“You?” I said.

He opened his mouth, and I saw the teeth, and I said, “Are you… some manner of devil?”

He closed his mouth.

“I am the manner of devil that has saved your life,” he said. “I am Kruinh. I am the blood drinker.”

“But where did the vampire come from?” Lewis asked. “Did… did Melek and the Maid create him? And where in the world did they come from?”

“The second question I cannot answer, but the first one,” Chris said, “No,. Melek did not create Kruinh, and by then the Maid was already long gone. Melek and the Maid had summoned Kruinh, and really this was not a summoning in the sense of… trying to conjure up a powerful spirit, trying to control something. They had called to him.”

“We made a compact long ago,” Kruinh told me. “Once Melek saved my life, and I gave him the signs to reach me from where ever he was, that I would come to him, or that I would send others to him. This is the first time I have ever been to your… new world.”

“Not my new world,” I said suddenly.

“Well,” Kruinh raised an eyebrow, “you do have the fire in you.”

“I did not mean…” Chris said.

“You, a sorcerer,” Kruinh said to Melek, “and I, a blood drinker. This man has no fear.”

“I…” I opened my mouth, but realized that this was not untrue, that I did not have fear, and so I said, “I do have respect, though.”

I bowed, “Lord Kruinh.”

“I told you,” Melek said to Kruinh.

I looked to Kruinh and Kruinh smiled.

“You did.”

“Christopher,” Kruinh said to me, “You say this is not your new world?”

“I am a slave,” I said.

“You are a slave no longer.”

“This is the land of my slavery, and it is hot and wild, and I cannot love it.”

“Would you go back to England?” Kruinh asked, “I have family in England.”

The dark skinned man must have seen the look of surprise on my face. He smiled a little and simply said, “It is a big family, a large family.”

“Do they know…?” I asked.

“Know what?” Kruinh looked at me.

“That you are… what you are… a blood drinker?”

And now he laughed and I said, “I do not understand what you are. I have heard tales of it.”

“What tales?”

“That, that there are creatures called ghouls, and half dead people who climb from graves, their minds gone, or their spirits sold, transformed, and that they drink the blood of the living. Perhaps turn some into what they are. You seem to be alive, sir. Sir, you are alive. But…what were you, who were you, when you were like me? Or were you never like me. Are you …? Are you a…?”

“Demon?” Kruinh supplied “The problem with you Christians—”

“I’m not a Christian.”

“You have grown up in a Christian world. Doubtless your family went to church. The god you no longer believe in is a Christian god, and so you are a Christian. It’s all you know, and in that world whatever lives outside of it is a demon or a devil. You cannot help yourself. And so, I suppose by that thinking, I am a devil. For I am no ghoul. I am not something that was turned into what I am now. I was always what I am now.”

“What?” Lewis said.

“Yes,” Chris said.

“But… how?”

“You must understand,” Chris said, “This was three hundred years ago. There was no Bram Stoker, no Dracula. There were no vampire movies and novels. The word was not even much in use. There were collections of stories about undead creatures. Because I had no real idea of what a vampire was, I was not as stumped by what Kruinh was about to say.”

“I was not made into this. And I was not born in hell. I was born in the East. Of a mother and of a father. My father is dead; my mother lives. They were both blood-drinkers, just as I am, the two of them born from two noble families. My father’s father was also a blood drinker. As are my sisters.”

“Sisters?”

“And they are on this isle. Right now. As are my cousins. Doing their duty, feasting. I am the head of that family, for my grandfather has taken his rest and passed the authority of our House to me.”

“You were… born a blood drinker?’

“Yes,” Kruinh said. “One can be born or one can be made.”

In the apartment, Lewis blinked in amazement.

“I was born. My wife was made. Her father was of us, but her mother was mortal. What makes us takes place in the womb. If a mortal man were to make a child with a woman of our kind, the child would… the term we use is… die in the womb. The child would be born as one of us. But if one of our kind were to be with a mortal woman this would not happen. It is the transformation of the blood, the transformation in the matrix that turns one from mortal to immortal. But both are human. We do not come from hell. We were all, originally, as mortal as you. This is why a mortal can easily be made immortal.”

As he said this I felt like he was tempting me, offering this to me.

Then he said, “Easy to become, hard to remain. Most who are changed live no longer than mortals. They are killed off quickly or, perhaps, give way to despair. It is no easy thing to get past your first century.”

“You know that things said in movies and books are not necessarily true. Garlic and holy water don’t do anything. I do have a reflection. I can walk into anywhere I wish. I don’t have to be invited in. I walk through the day or the night, and I do not sleep in coffins. And yet… these things make people feel better, make them believe they have some form of control over something too big for them. And, what is more, they have a share of truth in them. You can forbid me from entering into your house. I do have the ability to make myself unseen. Now Kruinh was telling me about himself. There were as many questions in my head as are in yours,” Chris said.

“So there are those who were always vampires?”

“Yes,” Chris said. “From the very oldest families, or Houses. But those are small numbers, not that there are many of us anyway. Kruinh was right. It is hard to stay immortal. Most of us don’t really live very long. And a family is not a small thing. But… every vampire made belongs to the family of the vampire who made him. In turn, that drinker, should he make another one, belongs to that family as well. There are many rules, and I cannot tell them all to you now. At least, not without you being bored.”

“I do not think I could ever be bored by this,” Lewis said. “But, what else did you say to Kruinh on that night?”

“I asked him how long he would remain in the Bahamas?”

“A long while,” Kruinh said. “Until I and the family move onto another island.”

“To kill?”

“Not only to kill,” Kruinh said. “To do what we always do. To feast on injustice.”

“But,” Lewis said,“there are so many questions I have.”

“But Lewis there are so many questions I have,” Chris said.

“What do you mean?”

“Lewis, love, I have told you much about our clans, and you have told me nothing of yours”

“How do you mean?”

“You recognize the Maid and the Master?”

“Yes.”

“And did you not say that your uncle Owen was the Master. That there is such a person called the Maid? Didn’t I hear that his mother, your great grandmother, was the Maid once?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Lewis said. “But Maid and Master, or Magister and Maid are not terms used only by my clan.”

“Then you do not think this was your clan?”

“No,” Lewis said, realizing this suddenly. “I absolutely think it was. Only, I do not know what they were doing in the Bahamas in Seventeen Hundred. Or how they knew a vampire.”

“Or if that Melek was you.”

“You said he was, but then you said he wasn’t,” Lewis said, “And I am confused by this.”

“Much later I would meet Malachy, and he would recognize me. He would tell me that he had been reborn. It was then that Malachy revealed his past with me. Revealed many things. I suppose the circle had been completed. Malachy was always a big believer in circles.”

“If I utter the phrase I am confused one more time I will slap myself,” Lewis said. “But on the other hand, I am not confused. I am intrigued.”

“And so am I,” Chris said, “because there are many things about your clan and what you do that are… not strange, but… interesting to me.”

“Like?”

“Your clan is Black.”

“Our family is Black, but the clan is the clan.”

“But the ways of your clan are British, Because you do things that British witches do. I remember when I lived in the islands and what the black slaves did was voodoo, or like it. And then the Maid and the Master came, and they did something different still. I have not seen enough of what your clan does to know much more, but much of what you do, what I’ve seen, reminds of something Cornish, or from my part of England. Or maybe What are the origins of your clan? Is your clan and that clan the same?”

“Everything changes. When new things arise they are appropriated, changed, adapted. Doubtless the circle tracing and many other things do come from recent times,” Lewis said, “or have been changed. And we had family that was from the British Isles. But the clan is older than all that. I do know that. I know that the clan, at one point in time was divided, was torn apart.”

“That’s what Malachy and the Maid said.”

“And that it came back together. Here. Clans can die. The learning and the virtue can be forgotten, the elements and tools lost. Ours was not. Also, what I know of the clan for a certainty is that, in this country, it originated out of the Carolinas, and it was majority black or mixed race with some white people. It inherited much knowledge from the British Isles, but also from Africa. It came to life after a slave rebellion in the very early 1800s. This is how it gained its name.”

Chris whispered: “The Clan of the Reunion.”

“But I have never spoken it.”

“But you did not have to,” Chris said. “This is the only clan I’ve ever known. And every witch I ever knew came from it. It was not called the Clan of the Reunion until that time because by that time…”

“By that time the sacred implements had been reunited.”

“And so the clan is headed in the Carolinas,” Chris said. “North Carolina or South Carolina?”

“No,” Lewis shook his head. “The clan was reformed there. But the clan is headed wherever the master is, and that is here, in this city. For the Master is Uncle Owen.”

“But why he leave there to come here?”

“You mean why would Black people flee the South?”

“That was a stupid question.”

“It did have elements of stupidity, yes.”

“Well, then let me put it this way: Why here of all places in the North? Or in he world?”

“Chris,” Lewis said, “in some way not only me and you, but the clan and you are linked together and I’m beginning to think the simple answer to why we resettled here, is because of you.”