Redemption (Dawn of the Damned Book 1) (5 page)

It was Jon that drove her to their lair, or home as they may have chosen to call it, a sprawdling castle-like mansion with endless stretches of acres of land around it, and a towering imposing electric fence all around the compound, a state-of-the-art gate with so thick metal bars that even a Draugr would have difficulties trying to break it down, electronically operated, digitally as well, as guessed by the eye, face and voice scan sequences Jon had to go through before it opened.

If she ever considered Skovborg Fort a fortress, which she had, this made Skovborg appear like a farmhouse. A foreboding feeling crept up in her veins as they drove along the winding road, leaving the gate grinding shut behind them.

Though Chesapeake Manor, as Jon and Kjeld had referred to their home, was very much distinct all the way from down the road, it took an unexpectedly longer time than she’d expected to drive along the driveway before they stopped before its front doors.

Jon had attempted, with little success, to engage her in conversation throughout the whole drive. She’d however remained silent despite his attempts, her face impassive to all, her mind taking a reprieve at a dark corner in her head, not wanting to know what all this now meant.

She must escape, was what she kept thinking to herself. She could not stay here for months, she could not face a council that would condemn her to fate worse than death, in her opinion. She would escape, that she knew she must. And if worse came to worst, she’d kill herself, that was sure. The next life could not possibly be worse than this, if there was indeed a next life. And if it was, she’d kill herself in the next life too. Especially if she was to meet her father, and he held her in his clutches again like he had when she’d only been a child.

Her mother, that is at least one positive thing to look forward to in the next life. Meeting with her mother yet again, and old Torben. She’d remain by their sides like glue, and this time she’d be strong enough to keep them safe. She was not a little girl anymore, that one thing was sure, so anyone that attempted to hurt them would first have to get past her.

“It’ll be alright, Anja,” Jon emphasised yet again, stepping out of the car and rushing around to help her. However Anja did not wish to be helped at anything, so she too hastened to get out quickly, not wanting him to do her any favours. His face was slightly pinched with discomfiture as he stood before her, as he always did take such matters to heart.

“It’s only a car door,” she told him. “I can step out of it safely on my own.”

He looked as though he wished to press the matter further, but then chose to let it go and instead turned to appraise the impressive building they were standing before.

“It’s beautiful,” she finally confessed, which seemed to have him slightly comfortable again.

“It’s a lovely home too,” he told her.

“Well, I prefer something smaller, to be on my own and not have a whole coven around me, slowly turning me vicious..”

“We are not vicious..”

“Would you listen to yourself, Jon! Weren’t you the same person that not too long ago would discuss with me on the matter and concluded that Draugrs that live in a coven are considerable more vicious than those that live alone or in pairs?”

“Yes, I once thought so.”

“But now your opinion’s so conveniently changed because your master has a use for you..” The hard slap from Jon that landed on her face was expected, and she responded with a slap of her own, just as hard, maybe even more, managing to break his skin as its sound echoed across the empty grounds.

They were still glaring at each other in silence when three half-bloods appeared at the front door.

“I cannot believe you’d say those words to me, Anja.”

“They are the truth..”

“You’ve changed, and not for the better. I let you go for I thought you’d heal, instead you’ve let yourself be taken up by hate and anger, and..”

“Well, I wasn’t attempting to move on for I knew I was and would forever be in love with but one man!” She threw back at him. Now it was guilt rather than anger that crossed over his face.

“I never expected to fall in love..”

“Do not apologise,” she told him. “She’ll make you a thousand times happier than I ever could.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t sell yourself short. You know I loved you, and you know we were happy..”

“Show me to my cell please, Jon,” she rushed to say, exhausted both mentally and physically. “Just show me to my hole so I can rest from all this running.”

“We don’t imprison fellow Draugrs in holes, here at Chesapeake Manor,” he surprised her by informing her. In her childhood home, cells of dug up holes with heavy iron grating for lids were used to imprison Draugr’s. The strong sun’s rays in the day would weaken them greatly, as they’d have no shade to hide under.

“How very sympathetic of your coven!” She said in a retort. The last thing she wanted was to keep this fight between them going, but she had no idea how to stop it.

“Follow with me,” is all he said, stepping forward, and she had no choice but to follow after him, up the stairs leading up to the raised entrance.

“Malik, Raven, Quinnon, meet Anja of Nordskov,” Jon says, sweeping past their curious faces and pushing in through the doors. “She’ll be under house arrest for a few months, before the next convening of the council,” he went on to say, walking on ahead too fast to leave her enough time to look around.

That meant he was angry. Good! She thought to herself.

“She can take up the room next to mine,” she that had been pointed out as Raven now said. “Between Xiu and I, we’ll keep good watch over her.”

“Sounds great!” Jon went on to say, not regarding her in anyway.

Past a flight of stairs, along a very long corridor, and past another flight of stairs, she found herself following after her gaolers along yet another corridor, more brightly lit this time. They came to a door and the woman that had spoken up earlier took out a large set of heavy keys, found one and turned it in the keyhole. She must be the one in charge of managing the home.

“You’ll be safe here,” is all Jon told her when she stepped in, before they all turned around and stepped out, locking the door behind her.

That was all three and a half months ago, and she hadn’t been let out since. Her room and the adjacent bathroom were the only places she was acquainted with in the house. Every morning a breakfast tray was delivered, and every evening a dinner tray was delivered, a long glass of sustenance blood accompanying it.

She’s tried fruitlessly to break out through the large windows, but the grills outside it held on strong. Each time she managed to weaken them just enough, they were repaired yet again, and in that period her ration of blood was halved so as to weaken her.

Often Jon visited her, and at times Kjeld too. Jon talked to her incessantly, never giving up on attempting to coerce a word out of her, while Kjeld just leaned back against the wall and watched her, rarely uttering a word.

The days crawled by slowly, and she counted them by scratching marks on the four stone walls around her.

This time when Kjeld came to see her, he chose to speak, though she never turned his way or appeared to be listening.

“The council is finally to convene here for a whole week, starting the day after tomorrow. Xiu and Raven will be by to help you choose the right outfits and help you prepare for your hearing.”

“Please, just let me go.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“This one says I’m guilty, but I’d do anything to make up for it..”

“In what country..”

“What’s your problem?”

“She needs proper attire, demure, reserved..”

“Well that’s easy! All her clothes are demure and reserved!” Raven argued. On Anja’s first night here, Kjeld and Jon had brought up all her belongings that couldn’t be used as weapons from her small apartment in the inner city. If she were to guess, she’d say they’d also cancelled her lease, knowing how the two liked to do things all proper now.

Watching the few boxes still left unpacked against the wall, except for the absolute necessities, it was yet another reminder that of her 197 years of existence, she hadn’t amassed much. Most of it were pieces of clothing appropriate for her line of work, pairs of running gear, shoes, toiletries, a few decorous pieces of jewellery and her mother’s necklace.

A part of her had burned with embarrassment at the pained look in Jon’s face as he realised that she never did ever start living once they parted ways. Did he finally realise that this past century all she saw forward to was the day he’d come back to her and tell her that he’d been mistaken, and that he’d rather live a tormented life with her, than an empty one without her?

She couldn’t hold it against him for moving on. She never would. It was a bittersweet feeling, being so very happy for him, and at the same time being so deeply heartbroken for herself, realising that he now had someone that made him happy in a way she never could, and that she never could compete with that.

“That combination just doesn’t make any sense. At least pick a darker pair of slacks..”

“But that’s just it. The other pairs are too commanding. Maybe..”

“I can dress myself just fine,” she now said, deciding to put her two aides out of their misery. They seemed utterly shocked to hear her speak, brilliantly burning eyes turning her way, one pair with dark as night irises, the other a golden brown.

She now concentrated on the one with eyes that much resembled her own.

“Raven?” She asked.

“Yes,” Raven answered. She was young, that much Anja could tell, and she had known all along that which Anja had only now deduced.

“Of what house?” Anja asked cautiously, her heart drumming away in her chest. She didn’t ask for her surname, for only pure-bloods got to keep the surnames of their pure-blood parents. Half bloods were known as someone of the house of someone.

“Nordskov,” the young woman answered, looking on at Anja with uncertainty, and something else yet unpinnable.

“How old?” Anja’s voice was borne down with angst as she asked this, praying inside that this young beautiful girl before her was actually younger than her, as it’d mean she’d not had the unfortunate luck of being fathered by Klaus Nordskov, her father.

“Eighty nine..” Anja let out a deep sigh of relief at that piece of information. Her father had been long dead by then.

“Ejner’s?” She now asked, and the young woman nodded, a smile on her face, her eyes glinting proudly. A good sign, her brother Ejner must have been a great father. A good thing to know, considering all he’d witnessed as a child.

Anja couldn’t stop her mind now from going back to that time, her life before she joined the Gunnarsen family. Most of her memories to before she was six years old were a blur, her mind having shut it all out.

Old Torben, she remembered. Her mother, she remembered very clearly too, as she did her pure-blood brother Ejner, with whom she would often attempt to outrun with her short legs.

Ejner was one hundred and seventy three when she was born, and for a long time she’d haboured some form of resentment at him, for not having helped her on time. It was much later in life that she realised he’d have helped her if he ever suspected what was going on in his father’s home.

Ejner lived away when Anja was born, and was working as Area Three’s Commissioner under Mazu Mazoki himself, the head of a much revered African pure-blood family who was then Governor of the African continent’s Draugr population, or what is commonly termed as Area Three. However Ejner made sure to visit each summer from the Gold Coast that was the capital of Area Three, and would always bring with him more sweets and chocolates than she thought she could stomach. She always managed stomach it all however, despite her mother’s instructions.

Anja can’t remember when it began, it mightn’t even have been going on for long, otherwise her mother would have sought out Ejner’s help sooner. Her pure-blood father and stepmother would feed on her each evening since she was a child, if the pieces of angry conversations between Old Torben and her birth mother that she remembered were anything to go by. She’d only caught snippets of it. So it wasn’t the feeding that drove her mother to attempt to escape with her so often after her fifth birthday, lending her lashes of whipping, and threats of death. Her mother had then changed tactics, realising that this was a battle she couldn’t win, a battle against near invincible creatures, and so she sought help from the one person that could help them. Her half-brother.

The actual abuse from her father she cannot quite remember. Not so much, other that the darkness from when she’d tightly shut her eyes and innocently think that just because she wasn’t seeing it, she wasn’t experiencing it. Apart from the blessed darkness, were the grunts, sounds that if she heard today, she fought herself against strangling the source with her bare hands, a sound that had haunted her for centuries.

Her mind had blocked out most of it as a child, making her think that feeding on her blood was all he did. Each time she tried to remember it, all she got instead was darkness, and the grunts. A good coping mechanism that let her forget, but it never let her heal. Each time the Gunnarsens fed on her, the memory of the darkness came to her. She mightn’t exactly remember that which happened, but the very idea that darkness represented was enough to make her want to claw out her very own skin, for people had talked enough to let her know exactly what her father had done to her in that darkness. Even now, when anyone, especially pure-bloods, got close to her, it is that darkness that made her recoil, or want to lash out and scratch out their eyes, in fear that they’d attempt to feed from her, then they’d attempt to take more from her as a result of her intoxicating blood.

Probably the most important heated exchange she remembered was that last one her mother was involved in, when she had sneaked into Ejner’s private quarters in the family home, clutching Anja’s hand in hers.

Anja remembered her mother talking in hushed whispers, urging Ejner to help her, to take Anja away with him. She remembered her mother raising her dress with shaking fingers, and prodding fingers as her mother showed Ejner marks on her skin that let him know that his father was not only feeding from her neck, but was taking liberties that were outright immoral, that a father should never take with his child. Bite marks on her arm’s, inner arms, thin hips, inner thighs, pink scars on her buttocks that Anja never saw, but assumed looked terrible as both her mother and half-brother had breathed in sharply.

She’d never forget the look on Ejner’s face when her mother settled back her dress over her paled features again, the darkening of those identical eyes to hers, the guilt mixed with anger, self-hate and so much more than her young mind could fathom.

She remembered walking up to him then, distraught at seeing her big strong brother look so, and placing a caring hand on his knees.

“It’s okay..” is what she remembered saying, but Ejner had jumped to his feet right then as though her very touch burnt him. A look of hatred and anger had crossed his face, and she’d feared that he was directing it to her, and cowered away.

“I’ll kill him,” is all he’d said instead, his voice calm but heavily soaked with cold reserve.

“You can’t,” mother had argued, looking so weak as a human, beside his raw strength as a pure-blood Draugr. “Just take her away with you, please.”

“No!” Ejner had said resolutely. “He’ll die for this. He’s done this once before, with my older half-sister Cordelia. I took her away too when I found out, like you are asking me to now. But Cordelia had lived for over half a century before I was born. Fifty four years spent being abused is too long a time to just simply forget and start to recover, so the moment I brought her away with me, she ran away and hid. I found her more than twenty years after locked up in an old mine shaft having starved herself to death. That’s what father’s abuse had done to her, made her dream of one day having the freedom to kill herself. If there was any other way to kill herself other than by starving, she’d have long done it. However under father’s house, he’d never have let her starve because her blood was too precious for him, and he needed a dose every evening. And even that wasn’t enough..” Ejner’s voice had been bitter and cold, full of remorse and regret, and heavily burdened with the guilt he felt over his sister’s fate.

“I made him promise that if he ever did it again, I’d personally kill him. That is why I make sure to visit every year, stay with you all summer, because I’m looking for signs of him abusing you. I never knew, dear sister..”

And then the most surprising thing had happened. Her brother had broken down, bloody tears running down his face that he rushed to wipe away, which only smeared them, staining his face. Mother had rushed with a large piece of hanky to attempt to clean his face, but he’d pushed her away roughly.

“I’ll kill him!” Is all Ejner had said, before rushing out.

Everything from that moment was yet another blur. Father and son had wrestled throughout the house, if the crashing sounds and crumbling walls were anything to go by.

Anja and her mother were still cowering in Ejner’s quarters when Lady Signe, Ejner’s mother had walked in, her sharp eyes finding them.

“Use the servant’s staircase. You’ll find Old Torben waiting for you at the bottom, and he’ll drive you to my brother’s house, where you’ll be safe. I’ve left him with a note..”

However anything she might have said next was left unspoken as she flew across the room, limbs flailing over them before she landed against the opposite wall, and in front of her stood her nightmare. Her father.

“Run Anja!” Lady Signe had called, flying from where she’d crumbled to meet in the middle of the room with her much older and thereby stronger husband, crashing together with violent reverberations that shook not only the room they were in but the whole house, as Anja’s mother scooped her into her arms and ran towards the servants’ door.

However instead of moving forward right as they were within the door’s reach, they began to move backwards. And it took Anja only a split second to register that her mother’s feet weren’t touching the ground anymore.

Her father flung her and her mother against the opposite wall without much difficulty, but the exertion was too great for a mere human to take, and Anja felt her mother die instantly, upon her head’s impact with the dark stone walls.

“Mama..” is the only sound that left her lips before her father picked her up again. Mother and son now attacked her father, but Klaus had lived longer than both of them, and was as well much stronger, easily shoving them off him while maintaining hold of her, his hands around her neck, squeezing her air out.

“You little beast..” he was saying, but Anja wasn’t scared for the first time in her life. She almost welcomed it. She was yet young, and deluded into thinking that a Draugr could be strangled to death, and was looking forward to meeting her mother in the next life, who wasn’t part of this world anymore.

However Ejner had found a large boulder from somewhere, probably part of the now crumbling house, and knocked the back of the head of their father with so much force that Klaus released his clutch around her neck and collapsed to the floor.

Anja remembered being disappointed at that moment. She’d hoped to die.

“Run!” Her brother had commanded yet again, and she’d picked to her then shaking thin legs and done just that- run!

She ran down the dark servants staircase, meeting with old Torben halfway, who’d promptly carried her into his arms and borne her away.

It was much later that she was to discover that Ejner had drained away all their father’s blood after subduing him, and buried him in an unmarked grave where he undoubtedly starved to death.

Ejner was later to be tried by the High Council for the crime, and was sentenced to fifty years imprisonment with limited rations. Though it was a capital offence to kill a fellow Draugr, his father’s death was justified because of his despicable transgressions against his half-blood children. The punishment was given so as to remind Ejner never to undermine the authority of the High Council again. He should have brought the matter to them and let them handle it.

Nordskov Abbey crumbled and burned away after that fateful day, many servants dying along with it. It was years later that the remains of Lady Signe were found in a crumbled in dungeon where she’d locked herself up to starve to death, crudely engraved on the stone wall beside her a simple note.

Anja dear,

I never knew.

I’m sorry.

“How is he?” Anja now asked of her niece, Raven.

“As fine as can be expected,” Raven answered, a melancholic flicker in her eyes. Anja enterpreted it to mean that Ejner was still haunted after those events that led to their father’s death.