Blood Genesis

“One more night,” the pitiless royal guard snickered, puffing out his barrel chest in an unnecessary display of power. “Are you ready to die with the sunrise,
female
?” He spoke the last word with derision.

Jessenia closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath for courage, ignoring the annoying smirk on the simpleton’s face, shutting out the sound of his obnoxious baritone voice—yet, it echoed still, ricocheting around the barren room like thunder in a violent storm, refusing to be silenced, refusing to give her a moment’s peace.

In an act of contrition, she shrank into a submissive posture and shuffled to the back of the chamber on her knees, hoping to avoid inciting the guard’s unpredictable wrath or provoking his violent temper. As she pressed her narrow back against the damp, craggy wall and bowed her head even lower, she tried to ignore yet another garish reminder of her circumstances: the piteous sight of Timaos Silivasi, hanging from the ceiling like a prized slab of meat. He was still unconscious from an earlier lashing, and he appeared as nothing more than a freshly slung carcass, hung out to dry…waiting to be butchered.

Timaos wasn’t dead.

But perhaps if the gods were merciful, he would pass in his sleep.

It would be a much kinder fate than dying at the hands of Prince Jaegar’s men.

As it stood, his broken wrists were anchored to a rusty hook; his bloodied back was beginning to show signs of infection; and the weight of his dangling torso acted like a cruel, cadaverous anchor, spinning its helpless vessel around and around in slow, macabre circles, the hideous display illuminated by the dungeon’s torchlight.

Try as she might, Jessenia could not avoid the heart-wrenching visage of her lover, nor could she avoid the guard’s still-echoing question:
Was she ready to die?

At seventeen summers?

In the prime of her life?

And for what crime—being born a female?

No, Jessenia was not ready to die
.

She was
not
content to go to her grave with the knowledge that Timaos would die as well, simply because he had loved her, simply because he had refused to hand her over to Jaegar’s savage henchmen. She was not ready to accept her fate—or her lover’s. And if, in this barren moment, she allowed herself to think about either consequence any further, especially the horrendous manner in which Jaegar’s loyalists intended to slay her, she would surely go insane. For what was still to come—
in
the morning
—was far too horrific to contemplate, let alone imagine.

Jessenia bit her lip and grasped her head between her hands, rocking back and forth in a soothing, primal motion, desperate to interrupt the momentum of her thoughts.
Stop it
, Jessenia,
she admonished herself.
Do not
think about it!
Just…don’t.

Despite her best intentions, a ghoulish image flashed through her mind: the way she would be forced to kneel at the sacrificial stone like a conquered slave, broken and humbled, before her bloodthirsty conquerors…

I mean it, Jessenia!
Stop
this
at once!

The way Prince Jaegar’s soldiers would stretch her slender arms around the stone’s wide edges and then bind her wrists to the slab. The intricate cultic knots they would tie—would they actually bite into her flesh?—as they made a barbaric mockery of the original celestial religion…

It doesn’t matter. It
will be
over quickly
.

The way the prince’s minions would press her head flat against the rock so they could cleanly slice her throat and collect her innocent blood in a once-sacred vessel…

Damnit, Jessenia
!
Don’
t do this to yourself!

The way the males would chant and watch—
and cheer
—as her young, innocent blood flowed in crimson rivers, pooling into the urn. The fact that they would grow drunk on the aberrant power of her sacrifice—

Stop
this
!

Please
…

Stop it, now!

All of it was beyond imagining. All of it was beyond comprehension. And she had no doubt, whatsoever, that
all of it
would be beyond her endurance when the time came.

But the time hadn’t come.

N
ot yet
.

And thinking about it at this juncture, imagining tomorrow’s wicked ceremony,
today
, was an act of utter futility. It wouldn’t change a thing. And worse, it would steal away the only thing that mattered: Jessenia’s last hours alive with Timaos, the man she loved more than life itself.

She took a deep breath for courage. “The gods will be with me,” she whispered beneath her breath. “Surely, they will help me through this, the darkest night of my soul.”

The guard roared with wicked laughter, mocking her essential need for solace as well as her very real anguish, as if she were nothing more than a minstrel or a fool to be jeered at. “I wouldn’t count on it, sweetheart,” he howled.

Jessenia ignored him.

She smoothed out the top layer of her ruffled linen skirts, absently staring at the nearly translucent fabric. Determined to bring her thoughts to heel, she used the garment as a focal object, a mundane point of distraction, something—
anything
—she could concentrate on, in order to escape her looming demise. She got lost in the intricate celestial pattern, so deeply embroidered in the fabric; she drifted away while counting the individual stitches, so neatly gathered along the hem; and she relinquished control while tracing the mystical lines, all in an effort to keep her mind
quiet
, to force her psyche to simply float away, to
just let go
and find sanctuary in the solace of her soul.

As her fingers continued to work absently, tracing the familiar lines and angles of the garment—she had sewn this dress herself, after all—her breathing began to deepen, and she gradually refocused her thoughts.

She would not give the cruel ones her last hours.

She would not yield her mind along with her body.

These final moments belonged to her and Timaos, should he ever awaken.

Just then, the strangest thing happened: It was as if Jessenia’s soul took flight, passing through the veil of her garment like a hawk soaring through the mist of a cloud. Although she was a child of astrology, descended from both humans and celestial gods, this was unusual, even for her kind.

The hard earthen floor of the dungeon disappeared, and she found herself soaring at enormous speeds through a hazy blue-gray sky. The very air around her became electrified, as if it were charged with spectral energy, inhabited by unseen ghosts, and the density transformed as well: The clouds were like thick roiling scrolls, ebbing, flowing, and unfolding in mystical layers, right before her eyes. The filmy centers transmuted into opalescent hidden symbols, illuminating the sky like living glyphs that had suddenly come to life. Time became insubstantial, neither here nor there, as the past, present, and future all blended into one seamless tapestry of interwoven knowledge.

Jessenia blinked several times, trying to understand what had just happened, trying to make sense of all that drifted before her, even as she struggled to divine the cryptic but important meaning, the message suspended in the clouds.

The past sped by first—images, impressions, and memories—as she watched, breathed, and became a part of the living history. She watched as the celestial deities descended from the Valley of Spirit and Light and mingled with the human population. She breathed in the story of her race being born. She became the traditions, the magic, and the beauty that defined a new civilization, and she gloried in the gifts her race had been given, in the knowledge, strength, and wisdom they had literally
beco
me
.

And then she sat back, a passive observer, as several centuries passed by, as new generations were born and older ones died off. She watched the rise of the royal family, King Sakarias and Queen Jade; she celebrated the birth of their noble children, Jadon, Jaegar, Ciopori, and Vanya; and she knew—
she intrinsically
understood
—what the royal offspring meant to the kingdom.

And then the clouds grew darker, the scrolls grew heavier, and the glyphs became enigmatically dense. She watched as Prince Jaegar grew into manhood and the madness descended upon him. She literally saw the dark, inky roots of demonic suggestions take hold in his mind. She watched his soul turn black, his bloodlust peak, and she shivered with the awareness of what was to come: an insatiable thirst for power amplified by malevolent pride; a ravenous hunger for supremacy, born of the desire to be like the gods; and an army of envious males who would sacrifice their own women—their mothers, sisters, and daughters—in a tainted grasp for control. She could hear the maniacal voices that whispered in their heads, incessantly bidding them to kill…kill…
kill
.

Jessenia watched as the kingdom reacted far too slowly to Jaegar’s rise to power, failing to grasp the full breadth of his plan, the full depth of his evil, until it was far too late. She held her breath as, one by one, she observed the males—those who were not yet corrupt, those who had not yet shed blood—coalesce around Prince Jadon in order to form a resistance.

The resistance had been too weak.

Too late.

Too finite.

And then, just like that, the past and the present merged into the future, and Jessenia’s eyes grew wide with the wonder—and the horror—and the magic of what unfolded before her:

B
lood
…

As far as the eye could see.

It consumed the moon, the skies, and the rivers…

Everything was tainted by the
b
lood
of the slain
.

And somehow, in a desperate act of retribution, in an all-consuming haze of madness, the
b
lood
had its final reckoning: The collective crimson soul of the murdered females rose up like a phoenix from the ashes, clawed its way out of torture and pain, and
curse
d
the houses of Jadon and Jaegar, all the while desecrating the original religion and forever altering the future…

I
nfinitum
.

Jessenia shuddered as she beheld the Curse.

As she tried to grasp the twisted reasoning of the females as they doled out the males’ punishment:

Sin
for
sin.

Blood
for
blood.

Life
for
life.

The accursed were forced to roam the earth in darkness as creatures of the night.

They were condemned to feed on the blood of the innocent and stripped of their ability to produce female offspring.

They were damned to father twin sons by human hosts who would die wretchedly upon giving birth, and the firstborn of the first set would forever be required as a sacrifice of atonement for their fathers’ pagan sins.

And last, but not least, they were banished from their ancient Romanian homeland, never to dwell in the mountains of Transylvania again.

The scope of the Curse was inconceivable.

The repercussions were unimaginable.

A
nd dear goddess of mercy
, it was placed upon the sinners’ sons—and the offspring of
those
sons—and all the progeny who would be born thereafter, without clemency, without reprieve…without end.

If Jessenia had been standing on solid ground, she would have staggered backward, but as it was, she could only remain in ethereal form, flowing with the vision, gawking and listening as she watched Prince Jadon fall upon his knees and
beg
the Blood for mercy.

As she listened to his haunted plea for grace.

Incredibly, the Blood heard his cry, or at least it found sincerity in his argument, because it offered Prince Jadon—and his line of descendants, alone—four incredible
mercies:

Although they would still be creatures of the night, they would be allowed to walk in the sun. Although they would still be required to live on blood, they would not be forced to take the lives of the innocent. While they would never produce female children, they would be given one opportunity
—o
ver thirty days
—
to obtain a mate, a human
destiny
chosen by the gods. And the woman would be marked by an emblem on her wrist that would match a sign in the heavens.

Although they would still be required to sacrifice a firstborn son, their twins would be born as one child of darkness and one child of light, and they would be allowed to sacrifice the former, while keeping the latter, in order to preserve the celestial race.

What she heard next had no conventional meaning to Jessenia.

There was simply no historic context, no concrete concept in her language, no facet of her imagination she could use to interpret such terms.

Yet and still, the words sent shivers down her spine…

Vampyr.

Nosferatu.

That
which
lusts
for blood.

As distinctly as Jessenia heard the words, as rapidly as she interpreted the vision, another revelation came on its tails, only this one left her breathless with wonder.

At long last, it supplanted her dread with
hope.

Jessenia saw a magnificent purple sunset heralded in the clouds. The skyline was dotted with snowcapped mountains. The earth was peppered with radiant blossoms. And there were babbling brooks flowing into crystal-clear rivers; lush green meadows set beneath copper-red canyons; and breathtaking arroyos concealing glorious waterfalls, each one flowing like a pool of liquid diamonds cascading out of a hidden crag. And somewhere in the distance, like a desert mirage, she saw the outline of a man, a once-familiar boy—a ten-year-old child she had seen around her village.

She saw the son of Sebastian and Katalina Mondragon.

And he was all grown up.

He was noble and proud, powerful beyond imagining.

And most of all,
he
remembered
…