Life's Blood (The Cordelia Chronicles) (11 page)

Each time it was the same. The people of the night would set up camp in the woods nearby the village. The unusual events would occur, and the terror-stricken village people would set about searching for the monster among them. But by then, the people of the night would have packed up and moved to a new location. They knew they couldn’t stay put once the murders had been realized because it wouldn’t take long for the villagers to connect their unusual lifestyle with the deaths of their herds…or worse, their loved ones.

But, because they were a god-fearing people, the villagers needed to reconcile the crimes, even after they had stopped being committed. They would berate, harass, arrest, and even crucify their own people in an effort o put their minds at ease that they had rectified the situation.

Dozens of villages were affected before a direct link was made to the people of the night. A woman who had married a man from a village a few miles away was recalling the horror that had befallen her community mere months before she’d been sent to live with her new husband. She explained how her family had been waiting for her grandmother to return from tea at a friend’s house so they could start their dinner. But when she hadn’t returned long after nightfall, they began to worry. Her friend only lived a few blocks away, and she’d made the trip a hundred times before. They feared she’d tripped on uneven ground and hurt herself during the fall. They went to the friend’s house, but she said the woman’s grandmother had left hours earlier. The family searched the area tirelessly, alerting the neighbors to her disappearance as well. Most of the village joined the search, but after hours with no sign of her grandmother, they returned home. Days later, one of the farmers spotted the elderly woman’s body on his way to the market, along with the bodies of several farm animals. The woman then recounted the weeks of interrogation and trials that followed that fateful day.

The woman’s new husband was astonished to hear his wife’s tale because it so closely mirrored events that had occurred in his own village the year before. He visited a neighboring village to ask the townspeople if they had experienced any similar events, and he was shocked to learn they had. The man spent the next few weeks traveling on horseback to multiple villages, only to learn they had all lived through the same tragic events. And all of the stories shared one common thread--the arrival, and subsequent departure, of the people of the night.

The man knew he had to put an end to the murders, and he sought out the people of the night’s current location to confront them about the murdered among them. That’s when he realized these people were not like any he had encountered before. Though they were nomadic, they lived like kings. Modest on the outside, their tents were filled with exquisitely carved wooden furnishings, and the people wore the finest silks. And they were all stunningly beautiful with porcelain complexions and thick, lustrous hair.

After days and nights of hiding in the woods, watching as the people of the night rose with the sunset, the man soon noticed they spent most of their time dancing and carousing. None of them seemed to do any work--other than tidy their homes or prepare for the parties. But each night, the men would return with sacks full of loot. They were clearly burglarizing the neighboring villages and living off the sales of the most-profitable wares. The man feared one or more of them might be taking extreme measures to secure their riches--killing anyone who got in the way of their pursuits. However, he knew that didn’t make sense. In all of the cases he’d uncovered, the dead had rarely been the most wealthy members of the village. Rather, they were the weakest. And it was while he was contemplating this notion that he witnessed a most-heinous crime.

One of the people of the night--a strapping young man--returned to the village dragging a cow behind him on a rope. The man guided the cow to a wooden ring in the center of the circle of tents, and then he placed his fingers on his rolled tongue, closed his lips around them, and blew out a loud whistle. Within seconds, the other people of the night stood on the fringes of the ring. One by one, the nomads walked up the cow and sunk their teeth into its flesh. They were draining its blood.

The man watched in awe and horror for a long while. He couldn’t believe it wasn’t just one member of this nomadic group performing these acts of terror--it was every one of them. And he knew he had to put an end to it. His first thought was to go back to his village and put together an army that would attack the unsuspecting people of the night. But at the end of his two-day trek home, he’d come to realize that would never work--the people of the night were cannibals. They would bring the most brutal of deaths upon any members of the army who were not smart or swift enough to escape their clutches. So, he came up with a different plan. A foolproof plan.

“It says here this Virgiliu guy came up with some sort of concoction that made these people mortal,” Balthazar said after he’d had a chance to quickly skim the photocopied pages I’d handed him a few minutes earlier. “Mina, have you heard this folktale before? I don’t know that I have.”

“Lia shared it with me when she first found it a few months ago,” Mina replied. “She’s been piecing together different versions of similar stories for weeks, trying to find the ingredients he used, but she hasn’t been able to find anything conclusive.”

According to the version I’d given Balthazar to read, a few days later, Virgiliu returned to the people of the night’s temporary settlement with five of the strongest men from his own village. They spent an entire night watching the people of the night dance and party until the break of dawn. There was a girl--she was young and waiflike--and they decided she was
the one
. The one would they would kidnap and bring back to their village. They wished her no ill will, but if they were going to find a way to help these people, they needed to know more about them.

During the daylight hours, the men broke into the tent the girl shared with what appeared to be her husband. The thick canvas of the tent was light tight, which made it difficult for the men to accomplish their mission. They couldn’t see their hands on front of their face, let alone determine the girl’s whereabouts. The men felt their way around the space, but they soon realized it was entirely empty, save for some piles of dirt that had been turned up from the tent’s earthen floor.

The men clawed at the ground, hoping to uncover some clue as to the girl’s whereabouts. They’d seen her enter the tent, and they knew in no uncertain terms had she exited. They hadn’t dug very deep when one of the men cried out that he could feel the fabric and skin of two bodies. They pulled the bodies from the soil and dragged them out of tent. Both were completely limp, and the men thought they were dead…until the man sprang to life, kicking and screaming. Virgiliu  grabbed for the nearest weapon he could find--a tree branch--and swung at the man with all his might. The young man was knocked back from the force, giving Virgiliu time to plan his next move. He broke a sharp twig from the long branch, and when the man ran at him, Virgiliu pierced his heart with the makeshift dagger. The young man crumpled to the ground, silent but not dead.

Virgiliu instructed his friends to bind the girl’s hands and feet. Then, they mounted her seemingly lifeless body to the back of Virgiliu’s horse and began the long ride home. They knew that if they rode hard and fast, without making any stops to rest or eat, they could make it home before sunset. Before the girl would wake. She was weaker than her husband had been, and it seemed she couldn’t so much as move a muscle during daylight hours.

The girl started to come to just as the men reached the outskirts of their village. But she was small, and despite the exceptional strength she possessed for a girl of her petite size, they were able to easily subdue her. She thrashed and lashed at the men in a desperate attempt to break free of her restraints, bearing her fangs in a vain attempt to threaten the men.

Once they had returned to the village, they locked the girl in a cell they’d built beneath Virgiliu’s home. And, Virgiliu went to work on a cure for her condition. He knew he needed to work fast--it would take some time for her people to trace her kidnapping back to his village, but they would eventually come for her. He spent every available moment mixing different herbs, spices, and flowers, and stewing them with a variety of animals parts. Each night, he would take the girl a small rodent or rabbit to drain, along with a brew for her to drink. Finally, one night, she refused the squirrel he’d brought her and instead asked for a plate of vegetables and berries. At first, Virgiliu thought it was a ruse, that the girl had realized the only was she would be freed was to claim she had been cured. Still, he brought her the meal, knowing she would last only a few days without blood if she hadn’t been cured. Soon, he noticed the color returning to her cheeks, and she’d gained a few pounds. That’s when he knew the truth. He’d found the cure.

Virgiliu went to work preparing mass quantities of the concoction, and when he felt he had enough to cure all of the people of the night, rounded up several men and heads of cattle and began the journey back to where they’d taken the girl. Sure enough, the people of the night were still there. The men injected large doses of the cure into the cattle. Then, they sent the girl--with the cattle--into the tented camp.

The people of the night rejoiced at the sight of the girl, and they began to dance and sing. But she knew she knew they would soon realize the change in her, so before they could set about preparing a celebration for her safe return, she urged them to feast on the cattle. And they did.

“Yes, but it says here the cure only worked for a while,” Chaseyn said, pointing at a page in the book he had been reading from. He’d reached the end of the story where it was explained that the people of the night were temporarily cured, but their affliction returned a few months later.

“That’s why I’ve been searching for Alexei’s maker,” Mina explained. “In some versions of the story, Virgiliu creates a more potent form of the cure that is mixed with the blood of one of the originals.”

“And that worked?” Chaseyn asked.

“It would seem so,” Mina replied.

Balthazar nodded his understanding. And, I waited with anticipation to hear his take on the story. I’d managed to scrounge together what I hoped was a complete list of the ingredients, but I had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was missing. I hoped he could help fill in the blanks.

Mina and Balthazar had spent the entire day with us, scouring the pages of the books I’d uncovered and looking for answers. We’d done what we could to discern where we would find the ingredients we needed, and they detailed the work they’d done to locate Alexei’s maker. It had been a long day, and we were all exhausted.

“So we’ll see you in a few days,” Mina said, giving Chaseyn and I each a quick hug and a kiss.

Mina and Balthazar had put on their coats and were getting ready to leave. They were flying back to Romania the next day. They had planned to spend a few weeks at home, but now they had reason to make a hasty return. Chaseyn and I would catch a flight a few days later, after we had a chance to break the news to my mom and make our travel plans. We had decided to meet in at a yet-to-be-determined location in Romania in two weeks, it would give us the time we needed to fly to Romania and collect the necessary ingredients before we met up again.

“What time’s your flight?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. In fact, I had their entire itinerary memorized, but I wanted to delay their departure. I wasn’t ready to be alone with Chaseyn. I didn’t know what to say to someone who was dying. And worse, I didn’t want to face the fact that he was.

“Just past noon,” Balthazar said, pulling me into a hug. I was reluctant at first, but after a second, I relaxed into it, and I heard him breathe a sigh of relief. We were making progress. After, he turned to Chaseyn and gave him a one-armed half-hug with a hardy slap on the back. Very manly.

“We’ll call when we get there,” Mina added as they walked down the path to Mina’s car. Only one car, I noticed, and wondered how Balthazar had arrived. I decided not to focus on it too hard. It didn’t matter in the big picture, though I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been waiting in her car the whole time while we decided if we wanted him to be part of our plans or not. In the end, I decided Mina would never be that deceptive. Balthazar probably ran or flew or whatever it was vampires did to quickly get from one place to another.

We stood on the porch and watched as they drove away. Chaseyn stood behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist. He rested his chin on my head, and we stayed that way a long while, staring at the stars.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

I shook my head. I knew I should be. Between family visiting and the excitement of the holidays, it had been a busy week, but I felt wide awake.

“Do you want to talk?”

I shook my head again. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about what was happening. We were living it, and that was hard enough. Tomorrow we would need to book our flights and find hotels along our planned route. I needed to withdraw from my classes for next semester and find a way to tell my mom about my change in plans. There was so much to do, and so little time. It was a lot to absorb, and I needed to process it all before morning. Tonight, I just wanted to forget about it all--pretend it wasn’t happening.

I took Chaseyn’s hand in mine and guided him inside. He followed me into the kitchen and living room as I turned out the lights, and then we made our way upstairs. At the top of the stairs, I turned to face Chaseyn. I cupped his chin in my hands and placed my lips gently against his. I had every intent of deepening the kiss, but I couldn’t. For the first time, his lips felt cracked and chafed.