Blood Child (8 page)

Wounded animals are dangerous because they don’t understand you are there to help them. They understand their pain, their need to escape it, and nothing else. This woman was an animal. The sight of the woman snapped Maggie out of her fog. She moved forward, trying to help. My arm caught her, holding her back.

“But it’s Marcella, Em’s mother.”

I’d only seen pictures of Emily’s mother, and the snarling creature before us was nothing like her.

“Stop, Mother,” Emily’s voice called from the top of the stairs. “It’s OK. They aren’t going to hurt you.” I turned to look at Emily as she slowly descended the stairs. The creature focused on her and no one else. Maggie and I vanished from her glare.

“Look at the mess you have made of yourself. I told you I would be back to let you out as soon as everyone was asleep.” The tone was a scolding one. Clearly, the creature Emily was calling Mother hadn’t followed instructions.

Maggie started to protest, but Emily’s hand flew up, and she was silenced. All cognition drained from Maggie’s face.

“Ty, I am so sorry that you had to meet Mother like this. She really isn’t herself right now. Too much cold blood. Something warm will help her think. Maggie, be a dear and give Mother something warm.” The last words lingered on her tongue. Maggie moved forward and knelt by the woman, giving her arm. Mother responded by looking at Emily. After a nod from Emily, Mother sank her teeth into the flesh before her.

“Don’t turn away. You need to see this. You need to know. It wasn’t my blood my father needed. It was hers. He killed all those people, and it was her blood he needed. Now he rots, aware, trapped in his own disintegrating flesh. And she lives. ”

“But the poem?”

“Was a mistranslation. A fortunate one for me and mine, we would have been slaves had he succeed. My father believed that he had the key to immortality, but what is immortality without youth. He needed to drink her blood after her rose, but his own vanity trapped him in his sarcophagus. The elegant tomb became his prison; he lies in there aware even as we speak unable to summon the strength to move. I imagine he is quite insane by now. “

I watched as Mother broke Maggie’s skin and began to suck the wound. “She was the innocent whose blood was called for in the poem, her blood needed,” Emily said. “She was closer in the blood chain.”

My eyes looked back at Emily. She wasn’t enjoying the scene, but she was definitely in control.

“Mother, you need to stop now.” And that was that. She stopped and looked up at her daughter. “Go to sleep.”

Mother was obedient, went to the corner, and again looked up at her daughter. She didn’t want to go back in the box, but Emily shook her head. A moment later Mother opened the lid to her coffin and walked back in.

“Please, Ty, lock her back in.”

I didn’t want to do it. Just as I didn’t want to watch, but what Emily said, I did. Her blood commanded me. From the first day I met her, I was hers. One tiny drop of her blood in a glass of wine. The dreams. It was Emily and her mother in the great hall talking about what to do with me. In her dream home, Castle Cesjthe, the castle under who’s shadow great-grandmother was born the illegitimate child of a Bathory. A child that not knowing her true parentage would go on to marry a Bathory cousin tying her descendents even closer to the Bathory/Dracula bloodline.

The fire that scorched my feet burned away my free will. Mother’s blood would have set me free to walk the earth for an eternity, or that was its promise. Marcella was innocent. She loved Atalik, and he had killed her after the birth of their child. She never wanted to divorce Atalik, but he was convinced she wasn’t the one he needed. He thought it was his daughter, but thanks to him, she would never be innocent.

He had eaten Emily’s placenta and thought it would make him immortal. It didn’t, and he went in search of someone else who shared the lineage of the Blood Countess. All of his wives were related in some way to the infamous countess. However, Marcella was the closest, and she was pure, like the books in his study. Her heart loved him and only him, so it remained pure in spirit. She fell for his charms; if he had only been patient, she would have made him immortal.

The shell of Marcella, Mother, went to sleep. Her coffin remained in the house, and Atalik went to the fire the next day. He and his first two brides. They, like Marcella, awoke the long-ago night that Em fell in the chamber crypt. The rituals that had bound her to Atalik had also bound her to the other women. No one opened the chamber long enough for them to escape prior to the interment. Gerald had started the killing by releasing the women, intent on raising his master and gaining immortality through him. The slaughter gave them strength to move about the house, eventually turning on Gerald when he tried to return them all to sleep when he realized that they wouldn’t stop. The blood of victims even the brothers didn’t bring them to their senses. More than a decade locked away and aware in their glass door coffins drove them insane. Atalik had woken up as well, but the immortality he had been granted didn’t come with a rejuvenated body. Feeding might have fixed that problem, but the granite sepulcher prevented him from escaping.

When Mother chased Emily into her closet, she tasted her own child’s blood and a small level of aware flashed in her eyes. Emily screamed at her to go away and she did back into the basement and her prison. That is until Patty’s helpful therapy broke down the walls containing all the memories Emily had hidden away.

The school is up and helping young people make something of themselves. None of the juvenile offenders have gone back to a life of crime. Their desire to rebel leaves them shortly after they come to Cesjthe School—usually after the first meal and Mrs. Maggie’s cookies. They all have jobs, real jobs. I write, teach, and do as my mistress commands.

About The Author
L
ucinda T. Rose is a writer, poet and blogger. Her blog, Rose Reads (
http://rosereads.com
/
), is the winner of several awards, including the Versatile Blogger (2012).
Blood Child
is her first novel. Currently, she is working on her second
b
ook
. Lucinda teaches High School English during the day and English as a Second Language at night. When she isn’t working or writing she spends her time with Luke, a lovable mutt, two feline overlords, Jack and Nu Mu, and a turtle, Hrothgar. She lives in Orlando, Florida.