A Short Trip To Hell: Hellcat Series Origins Volume 1 (3 page)

With the loss of her projected beauty and innocence, Simone also dropped her charade of demure civility.  The true nature of her character had become obvious through her choice of his victims, as well as her genuine enjoyment of his gruesome acts.  She wasn’t intelligent enough to realise that the scent of her excitement only made him hate both her and himself more.  If he’d paid attention to his natural foresight he would’ve killed her the first chance he got, but he’d been ignoring his innate sense of wrongness for so long, that he no longer trusted it, barely even heard it, and when he did, didn’t recognise it for what it was.

Hours after removing the corpse of the dead servant, she’d returned to the cellar with a smug grin on her face.

“You don’t need to worry about your family looking for you anymore,” she informed him, scuppering his one hope that someone would come looking for him and put an end to his miserable existence. 

“What did you tell them?” he demanded, hating the idea that she’d been anywhere near them. 

“Oh, I didn’t have to tell them anything,” she said, “I simply left a body for them to find, one without much of face unfortunately, but the right height and build.  Such a pity, he had such a nice face too.”  She pouted in mock regret.  Julius gritted his teeth, understanding now why she’d taken all his clothes, his shoes and even his jewellery.  “I know it’ll be good for them to be able to mourn your death.  And I’m sure it’ll be a spectacular funeral,” she assured him.  “A pity it’ll be held during the day, or we could go and see who turned up and listen to all the lovely things they said about you.”  She smiled sweetly at him, and he wanted nothing more than to scream and rage and punch things.  Instead he turned from her, not willing to let her see how deeply he’d been affected by the news.  To his family and the world he was now dead.  His only solace was that Eleanor would have her peace from him.  She would be left the grieving widow, and if she never re-married would still be looked after by his family until her own death.  And, despite the breakdown of his faith in God, prayed for Him to allow Eleanor some small measure of happiness.

While Simone never actually said anything, he knew she was surprised by how quickly he learned to control his urges and his Vampiric powers.  His fourth victim left the cellar on her own two legs, her mind wiped of the experience, and with nothing to show for the event except for two healing puncture wounds on her wrist and a slight lethargy which she would put down to too much sun and not enough food.  Simone’s eyes had narrowed in annoyance when she returned to find the girl alive, uninjured and waiting to leave.

They left Essex the next day; Julius having no choice but to follow her like a lapdog begging for scraps.  He simply didn’t know enough about his new state of existence to risk going off on his own, and despite everything he couldn’t bring himself to run off and lie waiting for the sun to rise and end it all.  The will to live is, after all, a most resilient thing. 

He hadn’t meant to stay with her for long, but then, like any bad habit, he simply kept putting off the inevitable.  Her already skewed sexual needs slowly grew more perverse, though the progression was so slow, and steady, that he barely noticed the downhill slide into Hell.

They moved from town to town, city to city, constantly relocating to avoid detection and retribution for their acts.  Until finally there were no more towns or cities that were safe for them in Britain.  They took a boat across the channel to Europe, where Simone revelled in the hedonistic underground culture of sex and opium.  Julius, now tiring of the vicious, empty lifestyle, began to wander the streets alone at night while Simone partied her fill, returning to their quarters only to help her dispose of the bodies of those who hadn’t survive her particular brand of sexual experimentation.   

It was at this tipping point that the universe finally decided to throw him a lifebuoy.  His lifebuoy came in the form of a beautifully elegant woman, with steel grey hair, sad eyes and a heavy accent.  Svetlana came across him disposing of a body into the river Seine, drawn by the scent of blood and death.  She was the first Vampire he’d encountered since Simone had Turned him and he’d begun to believe they were a rare breed.  

At first she was furious with him, admonishing him for killing unnecessarily and endangering her own safety, by alerting authorities to a killer on the loose where she made her home.  His unmistakable surprise at her anger over the corpse and her statement that she had a permanent home here, quickly cooled her rage.  Somehow she seemed to sense his relative youth as a Vampire and his inexperience with the way others lived.

She led him to a bench in a secluded park and they talked for hours.  He drank in her wisdom and experience, absorbing every word.  She reminded him so achingly of his mother; fiercely independent, high in morals and prone to bouts of whimsy and eccentricity, and above all else transcendentally inventive and creative.  She taught him much in those few short hours.  About Vampire politics and societal structure; rules, expectations and repercussions.  That there were many like them in the world, so many that it seemed Simone had purposefully been keeping clear of others.  That he had options, and that he could forge his own pathway. That he had no excuse to step away from his natural sense of morality and righteousness.  That being Vampire did not necessarily equate to being evil or a monster.

During a slight lull in their conversation Julius asked how she’d been Turned, unsure if he was offering offense by asking, but confident that, if he was, she’d calmly put him in his place.  She was silent for long enough that Julius’s heart sank, thinking that perhaps he’d offended her too deeply, but then he noticed a red-tinged tear trace a path down her cheek. 

“I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong saviour,” she explained finally, her voice a husky whisper.  “Late one night our village was attacked by marauders while all our men were away fighting to secure our land.  They raped and beat us, set fire to our homes and then began slitting our throats.”  Julius’s fists clenched; he’d seen that kind of behaviour in his time at war, and found it repulsive.  “We begged for mercy, but they didn’t care.  They calmly butchered us all, leaving those who’d fought them to bleed out, instead of making the deaths quick.  I was one of those who didn’t die straight away.  I lay on the cold, hard ground waiting for death to take me, praying for it in fact. 

And then a man rode up on a horse.  I was the last one alive.  He was attracted to my looks, something about me called to him, and he gave me his blood, gathered me onto his horse and took me away with him.”  She wiped a tear away from her face.  “He was good to me, taught me what I needed to know about being a Vampire, but I could never forget my husband.  My darling Miloslav. We had been so in love, so lucky to have one another, I pined for him.  My soul was incomplete without him.  Months later I ran from my rescuer, making my way back home.  My village had been rebuilt, it didn’t look much like the old village but I could scent my husband. I found him alone in his new home.”  She drew a deep, shuddering breath, but continued.  “He was shocked, of course, amazed that I was still alive, his eyes were wide with wonder and love.  And then I explained to him what had happened to me, what I was.  I knew he’d understand, that he’d protect me, help to hide me, and we would still find a way to be together.”  She reached out blindly and caught Julius’s hand, as though the memories had cast her adrift and she needed an anchor.  Julius squeezed her fingers without speaking.  “I was wrong.  He cast me from him, screaming for the others to bring weapons and fire.  I barely escaped the village.  The next day I decided to kiss the sun.  I simply no longer had the desire to live.  I wished that I’d been left to die in the village that night.”  Her voice broke then.  Julius raised her hand to his lips.  He didn’t want to make her remember any more.

“I, for one, am very grateful you didn’t,” he told her, and he meant it.

Then he asked her to take him in, teach him, be his mentor.  She smiled, the ghosts of the past forgotten, and put her hand to his cheek. She told him that he was destined for great things, but that she was not the one who would lead him, she was merely there to show him his alternatives.  The path he ultimately took had to be his own decision.  She did promise to be there if he ever needed her in the future and wished him well.  And then she was gone.

Julius hadn’t been able to face spending another night with his ‘Sire’, as he know knew Simone to be, instead he holed up in rarely used wine cellar for the daylight hours.

When he returned the following evening to the apartment with the dark basement that Simone had rented for them, she’d known that he was leaving.  As he packed his clothes and his meagre store of possessions she threw herself at him, using every feminine charm she possessed to try and lure him back to her bed.  When that failed to move him she tried the tearful, abandoned girl and finally the raging Harpy, screeching that he’d wind up shrivelled in the sun or staked by an angry mob if he left her side.  

He soon grew bored of the tirade and thrust her from him, ordering her to stop and leave him be.  She froze and it took him several seconds to realise that she hadn’t stopped because she’d chosen to.  She stopped because she had no choice.  He’d been so angry with her, so close to physical violence, that he’d unconsciously thrust out his power. The kind of power he would’ve used to make a human obey his commands without question, and somehow his mind control had affected Simone.  He didn’t hang around to puzzle through the confusing new development.  He released her from his mental hold and left the suite without another word.  She didn’t follow him. 

The following day, many miles from the town he’d left Simone in, and secure in the basement of a long abandoned inn, he dreamed for the first time since his Turning.  He dreamed of eyes the colour of emeralds, hair the colour of Cherry wood and a sword with a distinctly curved blade. 

ONE HELL OF A DAY

Alexander

(Early 18th Century, England)

The worst day of Alexander Sullivan’s life began in deceptive pleasantness. He was in a warm bed, entangled in the limbs of a lovely young wench with the bouncy, blonde curls of a cherub, clear blue eyes of an angel and a mouth sent to tempt the most pious of saints.

She was watching him wake as the first rays of sunshine streaked through a tiny gap in the heavy brocade curtains, her eyes glinting with anticipation and her sinful tongue darting out to moisten rose pink lips. She was a little older than Alexander had initially thought; more woman than girl, but still a couple of years shy of his own twenty-four.

Alexander felt himself harden despite an immense, ale-induced headache and the weariness of a night spent entertaining the entirely unvirginal woman.

He had several vices, not least of which was sex. Life as a soldier often left him without the company of the fairer sex for months on end. On his leave days he made a point of making up for lost time.

This particular minx had brazenly felt him up in the alehouse as he went to pay for his third jug of ale and invited him back to her place of residence. Her dress and jewellery hinted at wealth, and Alexander guessed she was thumbing her nose at her father by mixing with the rabble.  He prided himself on not discriminating against noble blood and hesitated only long enough to down his jug of ale before accepting her invitation.

Being hit on by women wasn’t anything unusual for Alexander; he’d been gifted with the looks of an Archangel. The sort of looks that had been getting him any girl he wanted since he was twelve years old. His only physical flaw was his build; he had a lean, some might say, delicate physique.  Add to that the ethereal sort of beauty that boys were not supposed to have, not unless they were drawn to other men, which he wasn’t, and he was the inevitable target of many forms of abuse. On the plus side he’d learned how to fight early in life and how to run fast. Very fast. Fighting bigger built, bully boys as well as fending off the advances of certain older men had simply been a part of everyday life.

By the time he was eighteen, despite his lack of size, he was so proficient with a sword that he’d had no trouble enlisting in King George’s army. Once the other men in his regiment had gotten over his looks they’d settled into a routine of unoffensive, ribald teasing which Alexander bore with good humour, because he knew they secretly envied his ability to charm women without even trying.

He squinted at his timepiece on the table beside the bed and grinned; he had just enough time for one more round of fun before he needed to make his way back to the garrison and report for duty. He rolled over and pinned the squirming, giggling woman beneath his body and bent his head to capture her fiendish mouth.

Just before their lips met there was an imperious knock on the door.

“Belinda,” a woman’s high-pitched voice called. “Belinda, you need to rise early today, we have an appointment this morning with the Earl of Sussex and his oldest son.”

A small squeak, quickly muffled, issued from the young woman’s mouth, and her eyes went round with sudden alarm.

“Belinda?” the woman’s voice rose an octave and the door handle jiggled ominously.

“Yes, yes, Mother,” the woman choked out, pushing Alexander away from her and pointing urgently towards the heavy curtains. “I’m… I’m awake. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Why is your door locked, Belinda?” her mother asked, sounding as though she already knew the answer.

Alexander didn’t hesitate, he had no desire to be caught in the middle of a noble blood squabble. He sprang from the bed, gathered an armful of clothing off the floor and dashed towards the curtains.

“I…I must have locked it by mistake,” Belinda called back loudly, as she raced to pull on a nightdress which had been neatly laid ready on a chair next to the bed. She gave Alexander one last wicked grin over her shoulder before shooing him again and heading towards her rattling bedroom door. “I’m coming, Mother.”

Alexander thrust aside the curtains, relieved to find a patio door behind them. He quietly opened it and scooted out onto the tiny balcony, pausing only long enough to pull on his trousers before peering over the railing. He grimaced as he realised he was three stories up, but stern-sounding footsteps resounded across floorboards in his direction. With little other choice Alexander balled up his shoes and the rest of his clothing and tossed the bundle to the ground, before swinging over the balcony and beginning the perilous climb down the brick and stone wall of the stately manor house.

He heard the distinct swish of the curtains being thrust aside and the patio door opening again.

“Charles!” The older woman’s strident voice rang out across the grounds, and Alexander glanced upwards to see her glaring down at him, her lips drawn into a furious line. “Charles,” she bellowed again. Alexander didn’t think he wanted to hang around and meet ‘Charles’, so scuttled over to a convenient window sash and then let himself drop the last ten feet to the ground. He landed hard on the neatly trimmed grass and pain shot up his right leg and into his knee.

Before he could regain his feet, two large black dogs came trotting from the far left of the manor house. They were eerily silent as they stalked him and were followed closely by a large bear of a man carrying both a sword and stout walking stick.

“Holy mother of…” Alexander abandoned all thoughts of grabbing the rest of his clothing, and began hobbling away as fast as his injured knee would allow. It was right about then that he remembered he’d come back to the Belinda’s place in her carriage, and he’d left his horse back in town. And that the carriage ride had been a fairly long one.

It was midday before Alexander finally made it back to his garrison, clad in nothing but a torn pair of pants, and sporting an impressive array of lumps and bruises, as well as a nasty dog bite to his thigh, and a knee swollen to twice its normal size.

His commander had had little sympathy; Alexander supposed it didn’t help that this was the fourth time he’d been late back to duty in the past year. He had his little vices you see; good ale, good women, a few good rounds with the dice, and they tended to overcome his good judgement. Regularly.

With his day going from bad to worse, he’d been summarily discharged from His Majesty’s Royal Service for repeated tardiness, given his outstanding pay, his personal effects, which amounted to little more than some clothing, shoes and his horse, and sent on his way.

He was exceedingly grateful that he knew another young wench in town who happened to be a nurse.

Not being naive enough to swallow his story of how he’d come by the injuries, she’d slapped him before treating his dog bite and sprained knee, none too gently he might add. Realising that not even
his
charm was going to get him a night in her bed he thanked her and left, finding solace in the first alehouse he hobbled past. They had fine ale and a steady stream of patrons ready to play a few games of dice, and he had a pocket full of coin.

Following the theme of the day he had an appalling time with the dice, and by evening had lost almost every cent of his severance pay. Too drunk and too depressed to know when to quit he bet his last shilling against a large, bearded man of unknown origins.

He won.

The turn of luck was so unexpected that the shock actually sobered him up. He realised that he’d need to find somewhere to stay for the night and, looking at the paltry number of coins in his hand, the cheaper the better. It was too late, and he was in too poor of a state, to find a warm female body who’d be willing to share her bed with him. So he pocketed his meagre winnings, found his horse, and, unable to mount the chestnut due to his stitched thigh and bandaged knee, set off at a moderately-paced hobble to find somewhere to spend the night. He seemed to remember a disused armoury a little way out of town, and figured it’d be safe enough for a night.

A large and unusually bright full moon hung above him in the clear night sky, rendering the flickering gas street lanterns unnecessary.  He glanced up, wondering sourly if he could attribute his run of disastrous luck to the extraordinary lunar appearance.  While he wasn’t a particularly superstitious person, he’d heard too many tales of how the moon could affect one’s life to discount it entirely.  A low rumble in his belly reminded him that he hadn’t even bought himself an evening meal, just another thing to add to his discomfort.  At least it kept him from considering about his future.  He tried to not worry about stuff like that.  In his experience things somehow worked out.  Despite being born out of wedlock to a girl barely seventeen, who’d died of the coughing sickness when he was just eight years old, he’d made it up to this point without starving or landing himself in gaol.  Something would come up.

He’d just passed the last of the gas lanterns on Church Street and unsteadily led his horse onto the tree-lined lane that wound towards the abandoned armoury when the crowd of footpads besieged him.

Perhaps, on a good day; sober, uninjured, armed and well fed, he would’ve been able to take down a few of the brigands, enough to make the rest scatter, but today had not been a good day.

Not a good day at all.

In fact, some detached part of his mind mused, as his body was kicked, punched, stripped and then dragged further down the lane, this had to be one of the worst days in the history of bad days.

Curled in a foetal ball in the middle of the cold, damp footpath, blood pouring from a knife-wound to his abdomen, he begged God to save him.  He vowed to give up drink, dice and women in return for another chance at life.  When no saviour appeared he began to rage at God instead.  He used every descriptive word he knew, none of which were fit for the ears of a lady, but they seemed appropriate to the setting. Several images suddenly flooded his mind; his mother, beautiful despite her ragged, mismatched clothing and the aura of sadness that almost always clung to her, Elsbeth; his mother’s friend who’d taken him in despite her own large brood of children and a drunkard for a husband, his friend and commanding officer, Will, who’d saved his ass more times than he could count, and vice versa.  He’d never before thought about finding that one woman meant to be yours forever or having children of his own, and for the first time in his life, he knew true regret.  With God not bothering to reply to his begging or his raging, he fell silent, breathing through the pain, and calmly awaiting the welcoming arms of death.

And then, just as the warm, white light arrived to soothe his dying agony, he was trod on. By a fucking horse.