“Oh, no,” she said faintly, shaking her head. “No, Marcel, let me go! What you have done is dangerous, foolish!”
I retained my hold on the collar with my right hand, and with the other, brushed the hair from her face. Her tears were running down her cheeks so that her face looked like that of a rain-misted alabaster statue. Slowly, carefully, I pulled her long hair free of the collar and pressed the ends to my lips. The corners of her pallid lips turned up sadly; her tears spilled heavier.
“I am dead to all the world, poor Marcel! I have wronged you and insult your household to be here. I am a failure to my very people.”
“No,” I murmured, “that is not true, none of it.”
“Yes, it is. Allow me only the mercy to die now!”
My heart sank to hear her anguished words. But the time to finish the rite completely had come. I straddled her chest now, keeping the collar cinched steadfastly. She winced shamefully and turned her eyes, weeping desolately. With my thumb I caressed her bottom lip.
“Look at me, Carina.”
When she closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, I spoke with unwavering firmness, “You will look at me, Carina, as I say.”
At her hesitant compliance, I grasped my cock. I admired her beautiful face, those eyes that haunted me always. I remembered her sitting astride my lap, and the taut, virginal orifice that had swallowed my manhood. All the fantasies I had avoided while she was living surged with unbridled zeal into my conscious mind. My cock swelled, and I outlined her lips with the head. How sorely I wished to see her feed upon me this way.
Later, sweet later, I told myself.
She stared as I stroked off. When I felt my climax approach, I raised a little on my haunches and released over her chest. The orgasm was painfully, thoroughly rapturous for the delay of the ritual. And when my mind was sober, I stretched over and snatched the wooden container from the nightstand. This I showed to Carina.
“Open this.”
Her hands trembled as she removed the lid. I dipped my fingers into the red resin within and gathered a gob. I clenched the ends of the collar firmly again and carefully smeared the resin on the touching ends. Then, reaching to her chest, I dipped my forefinger into my jism, and this I dabbed over the resin. Carina made a startled whimper, but I did not meet her eyes then; rather, I watched as a soft, faint yellow glow burnished the magical glue. The glow spread about the entire length of the collar, then intensified to a sunlit radiance a moment or two before fading away.
When it had dissipated, I looked at Carina. She was sobbing still, quietly now, unaware in her shock of what I beheld: the pallidness fading quickly from her skin, replaced by the bloom and suppleness of real life. The blue-green of her eyes shone forth brilliantly once more. So joyous I was to feel the genuine warmth in her body again that tears sprang to my own eyes.
“You are no longer theirs, Carina. You are free to live under the sun’s gaze once more, to see your own reflection and know you are warded securely from the touch or compulsion of Griselda and her brood.”
Her eyes widened, blinked, and as she nursed her bottom lip, it was apparent she felt it too.
“Oh, Marcel,” she whispered. “It is true, it is true!”
I got off of her at last and sat down on the mattress. The container of resin I pitched to the pillows, then draped over and kissed her. The touch of her mouth sent a wave of relief and possessiveness through me.
“I will never let you go again, Carina,” I declared. “The collar cannot be removed except by magic as ritualized and resolute as that which created it. And that is a secret I will share with no one, not even you. While a single vampire roams this earth, you are vulnerable without it. And even were I to discover they had all suddenly vanished from the world, I would still keep it there, as reminder of what you mean to me.”
I touched the enchanted band about her throat. “Here it is, and here forever it remains.”
I felt her heartbeat pitch as she searched my eyes. “Truly, Marcel?”
“Yes, Carina. Why else would I have gone through all this?”
She was silent, frowning hesitantly, as if still she could not quite believe. I kissed the salted tears from her face, and laid down beside her and pulled her close. Taking her hands, I started to kiss her palms when I noticed how dirty her hands were. A nameless suspicion roused the hair on the nape of my neck.
“Sit up and remove that gown,” I said.
At her shocked tremble, I repeated the order. She obeyed slowly, and I saw with bitterness that numerous angry scrapes and raised, dark bruises were appearing over her arms and legs. The injuries, I knew, were doubtless from her struggle to escape the sarcophagus, and probably from initially unearthing herself from the grave as well. My wild and wanton woman-child had been so sorely misused! I threw the ugly gown to the floor and lay her down. I looked upon, with human clarity, the breadth of all she had suffered. Her breath was fatigued, yet her gaze had lost none of the adoring ardor since that day we had spoken in the valley. I embraced her fiercely. I rued for the secret of turning time back, to stifle those proper, cowardly words with which I had spurned her. At least fate had been merciful to have directed the vampires to let her free, instead of forcing her to remain in the sarcophagus until I could free her!
“Marcel, I could not stop myself. I was torn between following her orders and protecting you as best I could, or at least in the only way I could fathom.”
“I know,” I said, “and you will not reproach yourself on this, not ever again. But I hope you can forgive me.”
“What is there to forgive?”
I smiled sadly. “For that shameful propriety that I allowed to hinder me from claiming that which you offered so earnestly. I was a fool, Carina.”
“Oh, Marcel,” she sighed. “It is only that I love you.”
“Yes, and never again will you reproach yourself regarding this that befell you? If you do, you shall regret it . . . most sorely.”
Her eyes shone with unshed tears. Her whispered answer was ripe with passion, “As you wish, Marcel.”
“As I command,” I corrected, and her cheeks flooded scarlet.
I could not help but smile and kiss her palms fervently. I reflected again on the delicious chastisements I should have given to her before, and vowed they would be administered soon enough.
I stroked her hair and patted her raised hip. I was just about to rise and get her something to eat when I heard an ungodly sound from outside the house. It brought an immediate image of a nest of angry snakes to my mind. Gooseflesh sheeted over me, and I realized my task was not yet complete, nor would it be as long as Griselda’s brats existed to carry out her desires.
Carina raised her own head and whimpered. “They have followed me.”
For several moments, we listened as the hissing of the vampires grew angrier, louder. The sound seemed to blanket the entire frame of the house. The windows clattered against their sills, the interior walls jarred. From the kitchen we heard the cups and plates fall off the shelves and break over the floor. After a time, the sound began to recede, and the house stood again quiet.
“They dare not enter or make trouble,” I assured her. “The rites are complete, and you wear the collar. Without you, they must return to the monastery. They cannot venture out without your power to guide them past the wards.”
She did not seem any less troubled by my words. Although I wished more than anything to stay with her all night, I sat up.
“Listen to me,” I instructed. “You are safe. You will not leave this house until I can return to explain your presence to your father and the others.”
I stood up from the bed to find my clothing. Carina got to her knees and grabbed my hand desperately.
Anxiety broke her voice, “Marcel, what is this? I know I am safe now; I feel it. There is no need for you to go . . . out there!”
I took a clearing breath and closed my eyes against the provocative vision she was on both knees upon my own bed.
“Obey me, my kitten,” I said. “Your collar may not bind you to my will, but bound you are nevertheless. Another word, and I will demonstrate here and now how well I have divorced my hesitations regarding you.”
She let go my hands, but as I dressed I saw she had not moved, and her face was crumpled with conflicting dread and the desire to obey. When my boots were laced, I came back, kissed the crown of her head, and gestured for her to lie down.
“I expect to find you in this bed when I return.”
She did lay down but started crying again. “You will not return! And I will live a lifetime in the sun, yes, but without you!”
For a moment, I thought to toss her over, punish her at last, soundly, thoroughly. It would silence her and would consummate all that heaven had brought between us.
It was not cowardice this time that stayed my hand, but the niggling apprehension that she could be right. As well as she needed my stern discipline, and as potently as I wished to deliver it, at that moment I needed more to kiss her mouth.
And so I did, relishing the taste as a condemned man carries the smells of his last meal to the gallows. I went and got the poker, and though I knew she was perfectly safe, I deemed the steel of which it was made might give her some comfort and laid it beside her on the bed. Then, taking the hammer, I left the house. Her sobbing grew forlorn as I closed the door behind me. But neither of us could afford my regard for it now.
I raised the hammer and pushed out all thought. On Griselda’s brood alone I focused, honing in on the malignant feel of them imparted to the landscape. I smelled their lingering corruption in the air. My eyes skirted here and there as I proceeded, suspiciously scanning every obstacle I approached or passed along my way. My head jerked toward every uncertain sound, and my hands clenched firmer and firmer about the hammer’s handle.
It was not until I had climbed the path out of the valley and stepped onto the dewy pastureland that I spotted the first ones: two lingerers, draped on their knees under the moonlight with their backs to me. Their cowls were thrown back, and they were devouring the entrails of the dog brought down on the ground before them. The animal’s face was turned toward me, but by the cloudy, unfocused look of its eyes I knew it was dead. A low, bestial growl emanated from the vampires as they gulped the entrails and slurped the blood.
I did not breathe as I came up behind them. The first swoop of the hammer met the skull of the one to my left. He let out a shrill scream, and instantly the second literally flew up to his feet. As his immaculate white hands tore at me, I pivoted and struck. The hammer struck him in the shoulder. He screamed and tumbled away. Leaping back, I raised the hammer again and turned on the first, who was slithering toward me on the ground. For a second, I saw that the indention in his skull was minimal, but what appeared as a liquid smoke tendril trailed out of the flesh and bone of his tonsured head. Just as I was about to deliver my blow, the second grasped his arms about my own. The impact was halted, and I wrestled with him until my arms lowered. I thrust both back hard, and my elbows thudded into the creature’s robed solar plexus. He hissed balefully at my ear; his fingers gouged through my shirt into my flesh. With a roar I drove the hammer backward and felt the staked handle pierce his torso.
At once I heard something like a heavy sigh. The first vampire let out a desolate wail. The next moment, I felt the weight on the handle dissipate and the soft rustle of a robe falling to the ground. I had no time to see what had happened; the first was clawing at my legs. Whether he was trying to raise himself or draw me down I did not know or care. I was blind to thought as I cast the hammer high. Aiming the staked end, I bore it down, straight between the vampire’s eyes. The same gasping sigh I had heard before issued from the punctured brow. Blackness veined rapidly over his features; smoke steamed out of the pores of his skin. His now dusk-lipped mouth gaped in disbelief, but no other sound did I hear. His form seeped into itself before my eyes. His robe sank over the earth. A silhouette haze winked where he had been. Then this, too, vanished.
I stood panting and studied the robes lying on the grass. They had been Griselda’s real children, not vampires sired by other vampires, and the question as to whether they had souls crossed my mind. But only for a moment. I headed on in the direction of the monastery. As I neared the hedge of black blocks, the skin at the nape of my neck raised. I was urged by instinct to turn around, and just as I did, an oblique shadow swooped silently from the nearest tree. I dodged left, in time to see a figure in waving, voluminous cloth alight on the earth beside me.
My arms raised with the hammer as he threw back his cowl. I looked up at the face of the vampire who had reproached Carina with the diseased voice the night before. The surprise in his face entailed nothing of what I expected; rather, he regarded me with only mild disgust.
“You come now? After taking what does not belong to you! What demonstration of vain human fealty is this to our mother?”
His question baffled me, but more so the conflict that rang in his tone. My ears detected others slithering closer through the brambles, but I also felt their hesitance as I did from the speaker. They encircled me, and as I spun in preparation to assail them all with the hammer, I saw they had no intention of attacking. An aura of discontent emanated from them. It stagnated the air with an uncertain madness, and yet, it seemed to stay the aggression I had fully expected. The condemnations of the others rifled sourly through the air.
“Make him humble for pardon,” called another, “before presenting him!”
“See, brother, how he struts even now with his precious human toy!”
The one with the hideous voice gestured for silence, and their ranting subdued to only hoarse grumbling.
Whatever it was I had done to displease them, I sensed it would work more readily to my advantage at the moment than wielding the hammer. I faced the disease-voiced one who was obviously the leader.