Futile Flame (17 page)

‘I will wait for her return,’ Caesare said, his voice strong and clear and he walked into my house before Federico could make any objection.

‘Oh no.’ I backed away as the door closed behind him and the other man returned to the carriage.

Caesare had found me. He knew I was alive. But how?

I turned and hurried back down the street towards the dock and as far away from my house as I could get. All the time praying that Caesare could not sense me and would not pursue right away. My immediate plan was to stow away on a ship. It would be easy to remain invisible and, to maintain my strength, feed on the sailors as they slept. As I rounded the corner I saw the gypsy caravan from my dream driving full pelt towards me.

‘Get inside!’ Miranda yelled as she pulled up before me. ‘He felt your presence and he’s on his way.’

There was no time to ask any questions. I hurled myself inside the caravan, barely registering that it was identical in every detail to my dream. It could so easily have been a trap set up by my brother, but although I knew it was insane, I trusted Miranda. I heard her click her tongue, flick the reins, and the horse broke into a rapid gallop heading out of Rome and away from Caesare once more.

The caravan interior felt strange. There was something silent and timeless about it. As I closed the door behind me the air rippled with magic. I was aware of Miranda driving and of the rocking movement of the carriage, but these were like distant events. At the speed with which she drove I should have been tossed around, yet I could walk without difficulty. I tried to sense the world outside, but finding I could not, I sat down on the bunk and waited for answers.

The bunk was as comfortable as it looked. I lay and dozed fitfully for an hour or so until I felt the caravan slow and come to a halt. After a moment, the door opened and Miranda entered.

She smiled at me wickedly.

‘I’ll light a fire and we’ll rest here tonight,’ she said.

‘But it’s only morning. Shouldn’t we keep driving?’ As I spoke I looked beyond her and saw the twilight framed by the doorway.

‘You’re a witch!’ I gasped.

‘Of course I am,’ she laughed. Then she turned and walked outside.

It took me a moment to come to terms with what seemed to be the sudden change of time of day. The atmosphere in the caravan had altered. The hollow noiseless feeling was gone with the opening of the door. Eventually I stood and stepped down from the cabin and out into a barren clearing off a main highway.

‘Where are we?’ I asked as I watched her positioning sticks and kindling for a fire.

‘A long way from Rome.’

I stared around me. The terrain was distinctly different. A few miles away I saw a vineyard of red grapes. The land on which it stood stretched beyond my view but I suspected we were many miles away from Rome, more distance than we could possibly have travelled in the space of one day.

‘You’re safe. Your brother cannot find you while you are with me.’

I scrutinised Miranda. She was an enigma I had no way of understanding quickly.

‘I didn’t dream meeting you, did I?’

Miranda laughed easily again. ‘The caravan protects me. A by-product of having visited it is that memories of me become confused and vague. Most people forget completely; but then, you are not most people are you?’

‘You know what I am?’

Miranda nodded.

‘And yet you saved me. Why?’

‘My palm path predicted it,’ she answered, glancing down at her own hand. ‘I have no choice but to follow my destiny if I am to return to my past.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her words confused me. She merely shrugged in response.

‘Bring out the stools,’ she ordered once the fire was burning vibrantly.

Obeying, I fetched them from the caravan, placing them beside the fire as she unhooked a bag that hung from the side of the door. It contained pans and she began to prepare food while singing hypnotically. She was the most fascinating creature I had ever met.

‘I can teach you many things,’ she told me as she handed me a bowl of stew. ‘Most importantly right now is how to hide from him. He knows you are alive.’

‘How did he find me?’

Miranda gazed into the flames of the fire for a long time watching . She watched them dance. Curious, I looked too. I wanted to see what she saw.

‘It was a chance remark from a Count he knows. The man told him of the miracle you had worked on his relationship with his new wife.’

‘I suppose rumour would reach him; referral was how I obtained my clients after all. I should have remained anonymous.’

‘No. You are a healer by nature. It was instinct for you to use what knowledge you had in order to help others.’

I looked at Miranda, expecting sarcasm in her eyes. Her expression was serious and sincere.

‘I’m a blood sucking monster. I’ve killed people. Aren’t you afraid?’ I asked finally.

‘No. You will not kill me.’

I didn’t ask her how she knew, yet I was certain at that moment that she was right. She was the last person in the world I would ever want to destroy.

Chapter 28 – Lucrezia’s Story

Miranda was a Romany witch. She knew all the secrets of herbs. Her knowledge of plants and their healing properties was endless, and in me she had an excellent pupil. My vampiric mind was able to retain information, and with my natural logic I questioned her incessantly about her knowledge of immortality. Regardless of that we travelled for months before I asked her about the pentagram symbol.

‘It’s evil, isn’t it?’

Miranda laughed. ‘Of course not. It’s a powerful image but it can be used for good or evil. It depends on the way it’s used. The pentagram is a complementary empowerment symbol. It can be used just as effectively to charge up a healing potion as it can be used to enforce a curse.’

I considered her words carefully. My brother had used the symbol to empower his curse. He had turned me into a monster, all for his own sick pleasure.

‘Can it be used to make me human again?’

Miranda was sewing beads onto a piece of silk she’d traded for in a small town we’d passed through. She stopped and looked at me.

‘Why would you want that?’

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure I did want mortality again. But I needed to know and understand all the possibilities. I was dressed as she was now and she had taught me to dance, a powerful erotic swaying of the hips and belly. The coins on our hip sashes jingled, creating music from our movements.

‘Mortals have sought the elixir of life for all time,’ she explained.

‘Don’t see this as a curse. It is a gift. You will live far into the future and see the world evolve into a magical time. That magic will be science. Real magic will be lost as we know it. The world will become one of unbelievers. But you! You are the living essence of magic and you’ll survive the ravages of time forever.’

‘You make it sound romantic! But it’s terrifying.’

Miranda nodded. ‘Yes, but you’ll survive, Luci. You will find a place for your empathy. Now draw the symbol in the dirt.’

I did as she asked, and my magic instruction took a new turn.

‘Not that way,’ she said, taking a thin stick from the pile beside the fire. ‘Like this.’

She drew the symbol starting with the top point, then indicated that I should copy her. ‘The pentagram feels like it belongs on my tongue, under my hands,’ I said.

‘It was used during your making; it is a symbol of power for you. Here is another, stronger image.

Miranda drew a motif in the dirt. It was shaped like an eye and held in its centre a three-branched shape.

‘In the centre is a triskele,’ she told me. ‘It means re-birth and renewal. The three circles around it represent the number of all magic. Three is the number of fertility: the most powerful magic of all.’

‘I did have many children,’ I explained.

‘Yes, and they are important. Your first to your last, and your vampiric child is going to be the most crucial to your very existence.’

I laughed. ‘I cannot become pregnant now.’

‘Not in the true sense, but nevertheless you will procreate.’

She finished sewing the scarf and passed it to me. I swirled it around my hair, dismissing her words immediately. I had to hide my blonde locks; we feared the rumour of a fair-haired gypsy reaching my brother’s spies who roamed the country. Miranda told me that Caesare did indeed have the power to create revenant servants to do his bidding. They were his eyes and ears. He was far more powerful than I could possibly imagine.

‘Did Caesare sell his soul to the devil?’ I asked.

‘In a way. But things are never that simple. The devil is a creation of the Christian faith and he emulates our Pagan horned God in appearance. This is how the priests justify that my beliefs are evil. My God is the consort of a beautiful Goddess, and she, not the male God, created all of nature. Magic is all around us, Luci. Can’t you feel it ripping through your hair in the wind? Can’t you smell it in the sting of the rain? Surely you can feel it’s power in the intensity of the sun?’

A breeze picked up as she spoke, whipping at my scarf, and a straggling blonde curl flicked free until the wind suddenly dropped. Miranda laughed as I tucked it back in. She spoke in riddles and rarely answered my questions directly. When Miranda was in the mood, she told me all about her world and her beliefs. The stories of the Goddess and her consort were the most beautiful ones I’d ever heard. It made more sense to believe her version of creation. We would often debate the content of the bible against her knowledge and faith.

‘I’m not saying that your faith is entirely false,’ she said during one conversation. ‘Some of it was born from my own. Often the rituals you observe have come from the ceremonies the Pagans derived centuries before. The problem with Christianity is that men, and not women, are in charge.’

I laughed but Miranda looked at me sternly. She meant what she said and so I fell quiet and listened to her talk.

‘Men, particularly ones who profess religion, are the most corrupt.’

I couldn’t argue. I’d seen it in my own household. I stroked Miranda’s arm as she spoke and cuddled up beside her as though we were lovers. I was besotted with her. But we were never sexually intimate. Although she kissed and petted me like a mother or sister, our relationship never went in an erotic direction. It never occurred to me until later to wonder why. I loved her more than I’d ever loved anyone. My life soon began to revolve around her.

Chapter 29 – Lucrezia’s Story

‘You’re a vampire,’ Miranda told me as we camped on the outskirts of a French town. ‘But you are not a monster. Monsters have no emotions. They kill and think nothing of it. But you have stopped killing; you feed to live.’

‘I’ve told myself this over and over, but none of it makes sense. What are we and why do we exist? How did this all happen?’

Miranda shook her head, a smile playing across her mouth. ‘Your questions are no different than those of humanity, Luci. As for the answers to them: that will take a long journey of discovery. Many hundreds of years will pass first.’

‘Will I live on?’ I asked. ‘And never age?’

She nodded. The fire was glowing on her dark hair, it absorbed the light, and her eyes held a faint golden glint. Sometimes she looked familiar. I’d spent hours scrutinising her face trying to determine her ancestry. She knew so much and, for a mortal, she was afraid of nothing. She never grew sick or aged. I was intensely curious about her, but she only ever told me what she wanted me to know. Her mind was impenetrable, though she had no trouble at all reading mine.

We were together for seven full years. During that time I fed carefully from chosen victims in the various towns that we visited. As we travelled, Miranda taught me all she knew about magic.

‘You know almost everything that I know,’ she said. Her eyes held the mystery of centuries. I suspected that she would always be one step ahead of me no matter how much I learned.

‘Vampire,’ I said. ‘But what does that mean?’

Miranda laughed.

‘You look for philosophy where there is none. Sometimes things just are. You must know that Caesare was not the first.’

I did know that. I was certain that he must have been turned. Even so, I’d thought it through over and over. I recalled, and now understood, the words of magic he’d used during the ceremony. I often wondered who his maker was.

‘None of that matters,’ Miranda sighed. ‘He might as well have wasted his breath. You had to change. It was in your blood.’

‘How so?’

‘Does the leech ask why he lives? Does the deer cry as the hunter takes him down, wondering why he must die?’

‘I don’t know what you are saying; you talk in riddles.’

‘There are some things that happen that cannot be explained,’ said Miranda, remaining enigmatic. ‘At least not until the time is right. You are not ready for this knowledge. But know this: Vampires are like the burning sun. Without somewhere to shine, their glow is pointless. You are a fire that will never die, even when the earth crumbles to dust.’