Aria and Will
Authors: Kallysten
Aria & Will
Kallysten
In an indistinct future, humans and vampires are
allied against the savage demons that relentlessly attack their cities.
In the fortified town of Newhaven, a centuries-old
vampire, Wilhelm, is slowly losing track of why he fights. Meeting the human
child Ariadne and watching her grow up to become a fierce fighter reminds him
of his purpose and gives a face to the humans he tries to protect.
As years pass, however, and Aria becomes a young
woman, then a vampire, his protectiveness slowly turns into love…
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2008 Kallysten
All rights reserved. No part of this
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published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.
The right of Kallysten to be identified
as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First Published 2008
First Edition
All characters in this publication are
purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is
purely coincidental.
Edited by Margaret C. and Mary S.
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Contents
Part One
Aria’s White Roses
The child couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven
years old, yet she advanced through the centuries-old cemetery as boldly as
though it had been a playground. She stumbled sometimes, her foot catching on
uneven ground or an almost buried tombstone, but she never fell, never slowed
down, never ceased to look straight ahead. She couldn’t possibly be aware of
much. The moonless sky only offered the cold light of the stars to guide her.
Still, she walked on, determined as any general marching into battle that
Wilhelm had ever observed.
He followed her at a distance, his attention divided
between the strange child and her surroundings. The rhythm of her heart beat
loud and steady in the emptiness of the night, and Wilhelm knew that if he
could hear it, other vampires might as well. The last thing the city needed
with the recent surge of demon attacks was for a vampire to kill a human child.
Wilhelm had worked too hard to let that happen; he intended to make sure the
girl was safe and home before long.
For now though, he wanted to know where she was going
in the middle of the night, and why she was out alone after curfew—why she was
alone, period.
From what he could see, her clothes were in good
condition and clean, blue jeans and a slightly too large sweatshirt, and when a
gust of wind brought her scent to him it was the clean odor of soap and
shampoo. She didn’t seem to be one of these refugees who arrived in town in
droves every few days, attracted by the fortifications and the armed Guards
that were supposed to keep out the demons.
Finally, she stopped, and by the way she stood
straight and still, Wilhelm could tell that she had arrived where she wanted to
be. He continued to walk toward her, slower now that she wasn’t moving anymore.
In front of her, the marble tombstone was tall, the ground newly turned, the
spray of white roses still fresh.
She remained immobile for a little while, the only
movement being the wavering of her shoulder-length hair in the weak breeze.
Then just as Wilhelm was about to cross the last few feet to reach her, she
pulled something from the inside of her too long sweatshirt sleeve, and gripped
it tight in her raised hand. The stake seemed eerily out of place in her hand,
and Wilhelm stepped forward without further deliberation.
As much as he wanted to ask immediately what she was
doing there, Wilhelm didn’t dare be too abrupt, lest he frightened her and sent
her running. He purposefully made noise as he approached, and when the child
turned to him, eyes wide and startled, he tried to smile as non-threateningly
as he knew how.
“Hello.”
He was just beyond her arm’s reach. Any closer, he
felt, and she would bolt.
“My name is Wilhelm,” he said after a few seconds of
silence.
She frowned. “That’s a weird name.”
“So I’ve been told. You can call me Will, if you want.
What is your name?”
Her frown deepened and she took a step back. “I’m not
supposed to talk to strangers.”
With some difficulty, Wilhelm managed not to laugh.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be out in a cemetery in the middle of
the night either.”
She looked away, her cheeks darkening but her head
still high as she stared at the marble stone in front of her. Wilhelm let his
eyes trail over the inscription, and the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Robert Vanyard
Beloved husband of Emily
Loving father of Paul and Ariadne
He will be missed
The date of death was only three days earlier. Next to
it, the symbol etched into the marble, a diamond trisected by a Y, told exactly
how Robert Vanyard had died. There were too many of these symbols on recent
graves, in this cemetery and all over the world.
“You won’t need a stake, Ariadne,” Wilhelm said very
low.
The child’s heartbeat accelerated, and this time when
she looked at him, her eyes were even wider than before.
“How do you know—” she started, but seemed to think
better of it. Her fist clenched around the stake as her voice shook in
intensity. “Dad said people killed by demons come back, like vampires. He said
that was why there are so many demons.”
Wilhelm had heard the theory before, oftentimes before
witnessing graves being dug up, caskets torn open, and corpses burned. He hated
that this new myth was spreading even though it had no ground to it. He hated
even more that it likened in humans’ minds vampires and demons. How long until
humans started killing the first as vengeance for what the second did?
“I am sorry to have to say this, Ariadne, because I’m
sure you loved your father very much. But he was wrong. You could wait a year
by his grave, and he still wouldn’t come back.”
If she had not been so still until now, Wilhelm might
not have noticed how she started trembling. As it was, he pretended not to see.
“Come on, honey. Let’s get you home.”
A light hand on her shoulder sufficed to turn the
child back toward the direction from which she had come, and she walked with
Wilhelm without further prompting. After a few seconds, quiet sniffling sounds
broke the silence; those were harder to ignore.
Wilhelm pulled a handkerchief from his jacket’s
pocket, and held it in front of Ariadne.
“’Trade you,” he offered.
A shaky hand proffered the stake, and a second one
took the linen from him. A word of thanks was uttered, but so low that anyone
else might have missed it. Wilhelm tucked the stake into his pocket, and rested
his hand on Ariadne’s shoulder once more, lightly enough, he hoped, to be
comforting without being oppressing.
It had been over three centuries since his mother had
drilled into him that a gentleman never left home without a hat, gloves, and a
clean handkerchief. After a few decades, Wilhelm had let go of the first two,
yielding to the dictates of fashion, but the handkerchief had remained, futile
but easy enough to keep hidden in a pocket. At times like now, it could be of
use.
Once they reached the street, he let Ariadne’s steps
guide his, keeping his hand on her shoulder and his attention on their
surroundings. Despite what the rumors said, the fortifications and the Guard
did not stop all the demon attacks, which was why the curfew remained in vigor.
Why, also, Wilhelm continued his solitary patrols through the city rather than
take his turn standing guard over the walls.
Only three streets away from the cemetery, the child
stopped in front of a fenced yard and turned big, teary brown eyes up toward
Wilhelm.
“That’s my home,” she murmured. “You can go, now.”
Wilhelm shook his head and pressed her onward without
a word. He wouldn’t leave her until he had figured out why and how such a young
child had been allowed to wander out at night.
They reached the door, and Ariadne stood in front of
it, head down and sullen.
“Aren’t you getting in?” Wilhelm prompted her.
She shrugged. “I don’t have a key.”
“Then how did you get out?”
Her eyes flickered to something behind Wilhelm’s shoulder
for a second. “I know how to climb down from my window,” she said. “But I can’t
climb back up.”
Glancing back at said window and the decorative
woodwork along the façade of the house, Wilhelm refrained from commenting.
While little girls could run away, using this kind of fanciful trellis, demons
could also climb up to them.
Then again, demons rarely bothered with climbing to
second story windows when they could simply tear down a door.
He took his hand off the child’s shoulder and pressed
his finger against the bell. He could hear it chime inside, three long notes
that were probably easy to hear from anywhere in the house. The light and
noises he expected did not come, however. He rang again.
“Mom is sleeping,” Ariadne said. She sounded close to
tears again.
“Well, we’ll just wake her up, that’s all.”
A third time, Wilhelm pressed his finger to the bell,
harder this time as he was beginning to lose his patience. Finally, he could
hear footsteps inside the house, and light filtered from the hallway through a
window panel on the side of the door. When it opened, Wilhelm had to frown as
the grown woman he expected turned out to be a teenage boy maybe three or four
years older than Ariadne. The boy looked at Wilhelm, then at the child. His
gaze seemed to push her into motion and she slipped past him and into the
house, her steps faster as she started running up the staircase facing the
entrance.
The boy turned to watch her go, and when she had
disappeared turned an inquisitive look back toward Wilhelm.
“Are you with the Guard?” he asked.
There was a hint of heat to his voice, or was it
reproach?
“I am not,” Wilhelm answered truthfully. He had been
part of the men that had created the quasi-military group, and he had trained
more than his share of recruits, but he had never formally been part of them.
“Are you Paul?”
The boy stiffened and gave a sharp nod. “Ariadne told
you?”
“Something like that. I wish to speak to your mother.
Is she home?”
Paul’s eyes hardened even as his fists closed.
Everything in him screamed of his protective instincts. “She’s… unavailable.
Come back in the morning.”
“I found your sister alone in a cemetery in the middle
of the night,” Wilhelm said, keeping his voice cool despite his growing
irritation. “I am not with the Guard, but I assure you the Guard will be
informed and investigate this matter if I do not get to talk to your mother
now. Can I come in or not?”
Technically, Wilhelm wasn’t supposed to ask permission
to enter a home without first identifying himself as a vampire. The city’s
charter said as much. There were times, though, when that information only
complicated a simple matter. If he weren’t allowed access now, he would send in
the Guard as he had said he would. He understood grief as much as someone who
had witnessed thousands of deaths still could, but no amount of grief excused
allowing a child to run through the night.
“Come in,” Paul said at last, resigned. He stepped out
of the way, looking down as he did. “She’s sleeping upstairs.”
Wilhelm walked in and closed the door behind him, then
motioned the boy to show him the way. Paul did so with obvious reluctance, but
didn’t say anything. He pushed a door open when they reached the landing, and
after turning on the lights, he let Wilhelm walk in first.
“She took sleeping pills,” he murmured. “You won’t be
able to wake her. She didn’t even hear the bell ring.”
Wilhelm glanced back at Paul. Leaning against the wall
with his arms crossed, he seemed angry, though with whom Wilhelm couldn’t tell.
On the side of the room, a door was ajar, revealing
the en suite bathroom behind it. Wilhelm walked to it and quickly found a
washcloth, which he soaked in cold water. Coming back to the bedroom, he went
to the bed and sat on the edge of it, his upper body turned toward the woman
lying across it. She wore pajamas and a slipper on her right foot, the other
one having fallen onto the floor. A picture frame lay beneath her cheek, the
glass still wet with tears.
With more gentleness than he felt capable of at that
moment, Wilhelm dabbed the wet cloth against her brow, then over her cheek and
down the back of her neck.
“Wake up,” he said, his voice low, yet commanding.
“Wake up, Emily. We need to talk.”
After a few more moments, she finally started to stir
and raised her head weakly toward him.
“Robert?” she asked, clearly confused. “Is that you?”
“Robert is dead, Emily. And your daughter could have
died as well tonight.”
Wilhelm stood as he spoke, and she sat up to keep
looking at him. She was blinking repeatedly now, her brow furrowed in incomprehension.
“Aria? She… what? Who are you?”
“I am the vampire who found your child at your
husband’s grave and brought her back to you. You can thank whatever God you
pray to that I have no appetite for little girls.”
Judging by the way that she paled, she was beginning
to understand. Wilhelm intended to drive his point home further.
“While you lay here lost to the world, your child
slipped away from you. If she had died, you would have had no one to blame but
yourself. Grieve your husband if you must, but do not put yourself in a
position where you’ll have even more reasons to grieve.”
Wide eyed, the woman brought a hand to her mouth.
Within seconds, she was stumbling out of the bed and rushing to the bathroom.
The retching noises that ensued assured Wilhelm that she had understood his
warning.
When he turned back to the door, Ariadne was standing
in front of her brother, both his hands clenched onto her slim shoulders. They
were both looking at him through eyes that reflected a mix of fear and awe.
“You’re… you’re really… really a vampire?” Paul asked.
Wilhelm nodded, giving the two of them a small smile
that he hoped held some comfort.
“Take care of your sister now, boy. And no running at
night for you, honey.”
He noticed, as he walked by the two children, that
Ariadne’s hands still clutched his handkerchief. They were closed so tight on
the piece of linen that they were almost as white as it was. He walked away
without another word or a look back, sincerely hoping that he’d made enough of
an impact on both mother and daughter that this family, or what remained of it,
would be safe from now on.
* * * *
Walking away without a word or a last glance… Yeah,
that’s definitely Will. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen him do
that in the last dozen decades. It used to drive me crazy that he could dismiss
me so easily, but I’ve learned better, in time. He may be almost five hundred
years old by now, but he’s still like the rest of us. Sometimes, he just
doesn’t know what to say. And sometimes looking back means saying too much.