Aleron: Book One of Strigoi Series (Stringoi Series) (26 page)

Pandora and I filled the next two nights hunting, talking, and caring for Eliza, who remained comatose. Her appearance began to change, and I could see her breathing slow to a crawl each time the sun began to rise.

The stench had become intolerable, so Pandora drew a bath and washed Eliza’s body of the rotting remains and filth. When her body was submerged in the water, Eliza flinched and twitched fiercely before settling back into a calm state, allowing Pandora to wash her.

I carried her back to the room where she could slumber peacefully. I could see more distinctly the changes to her appearance. Her hair was more radiant, her face slightly longer, her lips fuller, having adjusted to compensate for what hid behind them. She was almost entirely pale, save a few freckles surrounding her nose and cheeks. Her stomach was perfectly flat with the passing of certain internal organs. Though closed, I could tell her eyes were larger than before, her lashes full and eyebrows shapely. Her finger and toenails had also grown. The puncture wounds I inflicted upon her had vanished. She was even better and more angelic than her mortal self.

It may seem ironic to think of one of us as angelic, but were demons not angels that fell? Just as they were angels to begin, they resembled what they were in the end. Eliza as well as all other vampires were angelic, perfect beings, in a physical sense. Unblemished, she lay waiting to open her vampire eyes for the first time.

It would be another twelve days before the hunger would reanimate her body. I remember returning only to find the room Eliza was resting in
empty. I quickly scanned the structure with my mind and located her on the upper level. When I entered the room, Pandora was standing directly in front of her, blocking her from my view. I stepped toward them as Pandora turned to face me.

“She’s beautiful, Aleron.”

Eliza walked around Pandora, and I saw her eyes! They had changed and were now a reddish pink, clear and bright as a blood moon, her transformation complete. I stretched out my arms and she came to me. My bare chest lay against her naked body, the warmth of my last meal transferring to her chilled skin. We embraced, and I looked up at Pandora, who was smiling as a proud parent would.

I could feel the hunger within Eliza. “We must go and feed your thirst, my love. The night has been waiting for you.”

The three of us left in search of her first vampire meal. The search wasn’t long. Pandora vanished, allowing Eliza and me to hunt as a pair. I led her to an alleyway that I used to frequent when I needed a quick meal. It was perfectly situated just south of the main square, where people from all walks of life gathered socially. Every so often I would lure my victim to the alley, and they would be seen no more. I could have lured Eliza’s first meal in the same manner, but it wasn’t necessary. The meal came voluntarily. It seems the man caught a glimpse of Eliza as he tried to relieve himself in the shadows. I remembered snickering to myself when the boorish man failed to put away his penis as he walked over to Eliza, who was wearing only the near-transparent gown. “You lost, girl?” He asked while fixing his trousers and hiding his manhood appropriately. In her preternatural voice she replied, “Yes, sir. I’m lost.”

With her head down in a submissive manner, she raised her eyes slightly, knowing the color of her eyes would cause suspicion.

“What’s wrong with your eyes, girl? Have you been crying?”

He took her hand into his. “You’re freezing! Take my coat and cover yourself.” The man placed his coat around her shoulders and intended to give her warmth. As he made this chivalrous gesture, she grabbed him by his neck and began kissing him. He couldn’t resist her allure, so he joined her passion. The man thought she was thanking him with a kiss, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. She was tasting him until her
thirst reached its peak and could no longer be contained. She drew back his hair and exposed his neck. With a swift and calculated movement, her opened mouth fully covered his entire throat. The man’s muffled cry was silenced by the puncturing of his vocal cords. Eliza’s eyes became dark red, infused with his blood. She sucked furiously, not allowing any of the man’s blood to escape. Within minutes he was completely drained of life. She withdrew from him and allowed his limp body to find its final resting place on the damp hollow ground of that dark alley.

Eliza turned and looked at me. It was as though she just discovered life itself, eyes wide and red, mouth covered in blood, tongue licking her teeth. She basked in his memories and his aged soul. With the closing and reopening of her eyes she smiled and said one word, “More!”

And more she had. We fed frequently that night. It was nearly impossible to quench Eliza’s thirst. If there had been any mortal prepared to become one of us, it was she. She had studied us. She had even known which blood to avoid and how to kill before becoming a vampire. She loved us with all of her heart. She had wanted to become immortal since the day Mynea took her in and shared life with her. It had been agonizing for Eliza to be an immortal trapped within the confines of mortality. That was why she called out to me, why she wanted more. She had wanted more for decades. Her destiny as a mortal now fulfilled, her future as a vampire had just begun.

CHAPTER 22

n the weeks and months following her birth, Eliza came to realize her natural vampire abilities. We lived as a family: I, the father; Pandora, our mother; and Eliza, our child—and what a brilliant child she was. Every lesson was executed with perfection. In a few months Eliza began to hunt on her own. Gender mattered not to her; men and women were equally her victims. There was no particular pattern to her killing. She reminded me of my immortal mother, for she bled anyone who had the misfortune of crossing her path while she was thirsty. Eliza was exceptionally beastly with the disposing of the bodies if she were lucky enough to dine on a criminal.

By chance, she came upon a murderer of children in the city of Tikrit. He was a former Iraqi doctor whose lust for death went unchecked and unknown for years. Eliza made him pay for his sins a thousand times over. She brought him back to our home and placed him in the scavenger’s daughter, a torture device handpicked and modified by Pandora
and used to demonstrate the will and boundless treachery Vlad expected from his beloved coven.

This device was prevalent in sixteenth-century London and was an especially cruel way of torture. The victim’s head was pushed down and the knees forced up into a crouching position. As a result, severe muscular cramps in the guts would precede blood being forced through the nose and ears. In time, the victim went from a state of acute suffering to one of madness. To add to this state of agony, Eliza would slowly feed on him as long as fresh blood oozed from his nostrils and ears. His prayers became incoherent and garbled noises. For six nights he cried. All the while Pandora observed just how cruel Eliza could be to those who were damned. I often wondered what fate lay ahead for the hunter of immortals, or if we were truly the zenith of the proverbial food chain.

Pandora continued to tell me stories of ancient times when she and I lay together. She would read my thoughts and answer questions before I asked them. The only thoughts that would remain unanswered would be those that concerned Mynea. This didn’t bother or surprise me, for I knew full well the ill feelings Pandora kept for Mynea. Mynea had twice managed to win the affections of their master from Pandora. Mynea personified her first and most hurtful betrayal. She represented the death of undivided love and devotion once shared between the eldest of us, a division between our Adam and Eve.

The union of Vlad and Mynea cast Pandora into the abyss of loneliness and despair, the type of hurt one never recovers from. I knew Pandora would give her heart to me if she could; however, it had died long ago with the birth of the third immortal. Her heart only maintained functionality, an organ and muscle charged with circulating dying blood throughout a decaying undying body.

Pandora poured herself into Eliza. The two were inseparable, with the exception of the few times Eliza would hunt on her own. Pandora,
a mother to many, found intrigue in Eliza’s bloodlust, and Eliza found a suitable replacement for her lost mistress. From two completely different origins, these two immortal females became kindred spirits, twin souls with a newly established singular purpose. That purpose began the night Eliza brought a human woman into our home.