Subversion

Mary Reeher

(One big, dorky homage to the original vampire novel. Well, not quite the original. Close enough. Situation debt to Bram Stoker.)

“God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced.”
-Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 16 May.

He was a magnet of heat; if I had been warned a thousand times, I wouldn't have been able to keep away. Something caught at me, like an unfillable craving, like a knot of newborn's hunger high in my throat. This made me nearly hysterical. The small, critical voice-- not a conscience, I sincerely lacked a conscience-- was telling me I sounded like an irrational idiot. The master was busied elsewhere, but the three of us had been in the habit of sleeping late into the night, content that the Count would bring us something, perhaps a piglet in a bag, or a Romany urchin, rather than let us out of our ladylike chains. I had higher hopes for my breakfast.  

And now that there was another person between the door, and me I found my own vague plans foiled. 

In the crypt, my eyes took in all details with their usual acuity. Tracings of spider webs, a tear in the hem of my dress, the twist of malice in the corner of my companion's mouth. She sat between me and the door, not a physical barrier, but certainly a mental one. Mercifully, her sister still slumbered. The two of them together would have been too much to take at that particular moment.

"Harker isn't some wandering salesman. Do you plan to toss his body on the next passing carriage and say he ran off in the night?"

"We will only talk!"

"Don’t think I don’t know what talking will lead to." Malinka sniffed with theatrical distaste, like the designated protector of my honor, but then grinned, showing the white cat's-teeth of her fangs. She had appointed herself mother of our little troupe long ago, and I despised it. Alit as she was on the edge of an open sarcophagus, I had a petty, childish urge to give her one mighty shove and push her back into it. "You suffer from an excess of curiosity, little sister."

"Does He know you're doing this?" Aranka sat up in her stone box, suddenly awake and alert.  She had never been the brightest creature, but it was clear the source of her concern wasn't the solicitor, but rather, the Count. (Across these lands, his true name was of no consequence; common people knew him alike as “wampyr” or “draculea”, meaningless and fearful. The privilege of his true name, the Christian name he died under and shed, is not one shared with many.) She had been his courtier once, a near relation, before her blood had gone to dust in her veins. I only wondered how the two got on when he was alive, some centuries back; she had a taste for trouble but was otherwise pretty and useless as an etched winecup. 

Malinka answered before I could. "Of course, not. We might interfere with his business affairs. Or throw off his plans for dinner later." As if our handsome young guest were some sugar-dusted delicacy in our larder being saved for All Soul's, or Easter. Drifting over to where Aranka now sat (dusting grave-soil from her clothes, with long, dark curls pitifully tousled) I began to comb the grime from her hair. The comb in my hands was inlaid ivory, but splintered by missing teeth. One of the advantages to our condition was that no matter how hard I pulled, she didn't cry out as I worked the larger snarls from her hair. Malinka-- called Mala by her sister Aranka in more affectionate moments, Amalia by her lord-- seemed put out by my dismissal of her, and she continued berating me as I worked.

“Avaricious little minx!”

Giving up even the pretense that my plans were innocent, I put up my hands.

"Is it so objectionable that we should share? What does it matter to me if the two of you follow along? What concern is that to our guest, for that matter? I have always been generous with you two-- don't laugh--" I punctuated this with a cruel pull to silence my subject's giggles, sorry that such attempts would be unlikely to cause her pain. "You wore my English dress the last night we had guests! You of all people." Aranka and I were of a size, and my renewed trousseau, sewn in more urbane Western styles, was my only real tool with which to bargain. Her sister, however, had a lusher figure, oddly sensual and suffering for the lack of blood. (I could only assume I bore the same marks of tiredness in my face. Remember, reader, I lack a reflection.) I seized upon that next, without shame. "Would you have me eat pigs? Cattle? Little lost children? Mala, I swear, you conspire to make me unhappy."

Maliciously, I began to cry. It was only half an act, but the rusty tinge to the tears on my cheeks robbed them of some of their innocence. As if I were awash in blood on the inside, a vessel, not a creature.

Aranka pulled the freshly-combed hair down over her shoulders before clambering out to console me, but Malinka's face only got that pinched look she often wore. She looked very much like her master in some moments, when angered. I had seen him angry much more often, seen the red flare up behind his eyes when I misspoke or acted out of my own temper. Now that I had silenced her, it was if I was unable to stop talking. The words poured out of me.

"How long has it been since your master provided for you? And," a smile turning my lips, "he will never know. We shall only sip. And the marks will heal."

Aranka seemed strangely moved by this; she made a little noise, as if her stomach had growled with hunger. In moments like these, she seemed more like a child than I did. If her sister had any compassion left, I doubted it, but it was clear I had earned the sympathies of one, if not both. Appealing to their baser natures was not my usual tack. But hunger and curiosity had worn me raw.

“He’ll heal,” Aranka murmured, like my echo. A pleasing falsehood.

The water pitcher’s contents had frozen over. I had to dash through the thick sheet of ice that topped it, and even then, our washing water had delicate frozen chips in it, like snowflakes. I dabbed the blood from Aranka’s cheek, dried into a black flake from her last feeding; she cleansed an anonymous scuff from the cotton broadcloth of her dress, like a careful housewife.

We abandoned the crypt for the comforts of a lady’s boudoir. The primary concern had not been our enjoyment, but that the Count’s carefully compiled merchandise might not mildew in the damp. To my annoyance, it took the two of us at once to dress the other, and it wasn't as quick a business as I would have liked. First, changing from a full-length muslin (the last prize of one of the master's trips afield, pressed into service as a nightshift, ha) still speckled with grave soil into a starched whisper of a chemise. Our hands were bare. We had been sleeping, hadn't we? I braced myself to be cinched into stays. How humiliating, like a beetle in its shell. (I could not object, of course, to how the lacing stole my breath. I could almost circle my waist in my hands. Again, dear reader, you must forgive my limitations.) Snaking penitential curls, demurely drawn over my breast like living gold. These preparations we took to become pleasant young ladies, rather than blood-dappled fiends. Not a lengthy transformation.

Surely he would not suspect for as little as the sound of unstockinged feet. We kept a light step; where there was dust enough to mark them. The three of us roamed the halls like a perfect trinity of specters. I found my quarry at last in one of the corner rooms, a spider-haunted solar, sound asleep on a decaying velvet couch. His book was in his pocket; a diary, or merely his commonplace book? I thought of students I’d met, long ago. One usually could not find guests strayed this far from the lower floors. Better that we found him than his host. He’d been wandering, poor lamb.

For a single, annoyed moment, I thought from the rumpled disarray of his clothes that our host had been at him. But his pallor was merely that of an English complexion, not a sudden, fatal syncope ushered in by a bite on the neck. There was blood still coursing, good, live blood. To redden his cheek, when he stirred, the gleam of waking eyes under heavy lids indicating he had caught first sight of us. Pale lips were parted slightly; his breathing, at ease and shallow, had quickened. Harker had a kind face, marked with worry, and now placid alarm.

Aranka beckoned me briefly, and purred in my ear.

“Look. He wakes. Take the first taste, Lucia. You brought us here."

Mala made some tasteless jest, and to my surprise, I found myself amused. Our laughter, shrill to our own ears and pitched like a discord of bells. Previous quarrels had fallen away—the light in my dark sisters’ eyes could be mistaken for the softness of affection. In the grip of her hunger, Malinka had turned soft and submissive. I could see him watching her. Transfixed, like a butterfly on a pin.

This all seemed a terrible and wonderful joke, a game. The sight of his pulse battering in his throat was too much to bear. And he was perfectly pliant, as I bowed my head, and brought my mouth to his white column of throat. I could nearly taste his heartbeat.

“Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin.”  Aranka said, knowing and quite, quite poisonous under her coquetry. A willing victim, ha! These were our better days all over again, before we had been reduced—to theft, to charity. We had been goddesses and demons and vipers. Malinka followed her lead in ushering me forward.

“He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all.”

“I couldn’t.” Another bitter peal of the sweetest laughter, and I cocked my head, like a hunting dog examining its felled quarry. Mala nudged me in the small of the back. Giggling like girls, we were. This seemed to put the Englishman at ease; the fear left his eyes. Smoothly, Aranka transitioned from our mother tongue to the liquid, honeyed speech this man would understand. For no other reason than to twist the knife?



About the Author:

Mary Reeher is fifteen and a rising junior at Trinity School at River Ridge. Her first Loft classes this year were A Journey Back In Time and Writing The Dark; naturally, this story is inspired by both.