Authors: Cameron Jace
“She was worth it,” Snow White said, her eyes a bit watery, staring at her parents.
Loki was still watching. Carmilla lay in Angel’s arms on the bed of lilies while he stroked her hair gently. She looked ecstatically happy while a butterfly rested on her palm. Angel, although son of one of the darkest vampires in the world, didn’t look like a vampire at all, except for his almost inhuman beauty and strength. He waited until Carmilla slept and gathered a bed of purple and yellow lilies and laid her upon it, then sat watching as if she were a sleeping beauty. In many ways, Loki thought they both made a perfect beauty and the beast; Carmilla was as pure and innocent as a princess would be in fairy tales; Angel was as tortured and beautiful as vampires depicted in novels, a perfect portrait of a beauty and a beast.
“So when was he going to tell her he was a vampire?” Loki asked.
“He already had,” Snow White said. “She admired his courage, and that he wanted to be a good person in spite of the evil nature his father wanted to pass on to him.”
Loki watched Carmilla waking up to Angel’s kiss. She whispered something in his ear, and his face lit up as if he were an
angel
.
“What did she say to him?” Loki said.
“Why are you so curious?” Snow White wondered. “I thought you didn’t believe in a true love’s kiss.”
“Seriously,” Loki’s face knotted like an impatient child. “What did she tell him that made him so happy? I want to know.”
“Angel always saw himself as a beast,” Snow White explained. “My mother told him he was a beauty to her, but that wasn’t what lit up his eyes like you just saw. It was when she told him that she loved him and that she would stay with him until death do them part.”
“Wasn’t Angel immortal like other vampires?” Loki said, unable to take his eyes off the couple. He didn’t know what it was that attracted him to them, but he thought he would have loved it if he could have seen his own parents like that within a Dreamory of his.
“Angel wasn’t immortal yet because his transformation as a vampire wasn’t completed,” Snow White said. “He practically chose mortality as long as he was in my mother’s arms.”
“And what happened next?” Loki asked as if she were telling him an amazing bedtime story.
“Carmilla told her father about Angel. Surprisingly, he welcomed him to be with his daughter, believing Angel would be of great help to the Karnsteins in defeating the vampires—which also meant Angel had to go against his own tribe.”
“So Angel stayed in Styria?”
“He wanted to, but had to save his half-human parents, Janette and Amalie, who’d raised him in the human world. He was afraid Night Sorrow would end up hurting them if he didn’t go back,” she explained. “Angel returned to Lohr and managed to help them escape, but Night caught him, aware of his son’s plan to turn against the Sorrows. Night Sorrow imprisoned his own son in a towering castle called the Cachtice, offering him all kinds of human blood to complete his transformation. He’d regretted postponing his son’s transformation since it made him more human than vampire.”
“Just keep going,” Loki said. “Don’t stop.”
“My father fought the temptation and managed to escape the castle. Because he had no allies in Lohr and hadn’t acquired the powers of a vampire yet, he had to escape on foot through the forests, crossing from Transylvania through Hungary, to return to Carmilla in Styria. It was mid-winter, and he risked freezing in the cold. When Night learned his son had escaped, he unleashed vampire bats and black panthers after him. Night, like his name, was fond of everything black. I heard that it was one of his powers, being able to control almost every black animal.”
“What kind of a father does this to his own son?” Loki wondered.
“He’s one of the cruelest vampires known to mankind, but that wasn’t all. There was another reason why he wanted Angel dead, but I will get into that in a while,” she said. “Eventually, my father fed on the black animals Night had sent after him. It’s still a mystery how he killed them, but feeding on the vampire bats and animals increased Angel’s inherited vampire powers dramatically, although it didn’t formally transform him. Night had to send members of his vampire army after him. In their hunt for my father, they were looking for
black
animals, dead and bitten, in the
white
snow with
red
trails of blood,” Snow White turned to face Loki. “This is how the three doomed colors came into my family’s life. Remember the phrase, ‘lips red as blood, skin white as snow, and hair black a…’”
“As night? As ravens? As Night Sorrow?”
“See it the way you like, but remember how the colors came into my family’s life,” Snow White said. “Night Sorrow spread rumors about Angel being the sadist vampire the locals were searching for, that he was the one responsible for spreading the fatal disease everyone feared in Europe. The description of my father spread all over Europe; people imagined that he could be Snow White, Red as Blood, or Black as Night whenever his name came up. Angel was hunted by everyone, even humans. They called him names like: Black Sorrow, Snow Death, and Red Dragon. You know that the origin of the name Dracula was ‘Dracul,’ which means ‘son of dragon’, or is even sometimes interpreted as devil, right? So Red Dragon meant red vampire. My father had become a vicious vampire in the eyes of the world.”
Loki still wondered how everyone else knew more about vampires than he did. Sometimes, he doubted he was the greatest Dreamhunter in the world.
“Angel finally reached Carmilla in Styria. They set a date with her father for a royal wedding, inviting the kingdom’s noblemen to celebrate,” Snow White continued.
“What happened to his vampire-slave parents?”
“Jeanette and Amalie did escape but never made it to Angel’s wedding. They sent him letters from different towns across Europe throughout the years, telling him they were alright, but were struggling with being vampire slaves.”
“Sounds like a happy ending for Angel and Carmilla so far,” Loki said, still wondering what all this had to do with Snow White.
“Not really,” Snow White said as the wind started to redraw their surroundings again.
“Not again,” Loki huffed. “This is like ‘around the world in eighty days’, except it happens in one dream.”
Snow White’s dress fluttered in the wind. “The news of the wedding frustrated the noblemen of Styria,” she raised her voice, using her hands as a feeble shield against the whirling wind. “My mother was young, beautiful, and desired by many of them. They despised her getting married to a stranger from a town plagued by the vampire disease.”
“Where are we going now?” Loki said, unable to hear his own voice. To his surprise the words she spoke to him turned into smoky, readable letters, waving upon the surface of the dancing wind that whirled before his eyes. The words read:
Something unexpected happened the night before the wedding.
“Another dark and stormy night,” Loki mumbled as they were transported to what looked like a cottage in the middle of a forest.
Loki saw Carmilla was holding Angel in her arms, heated waves dancing like curly guardian ghosts from a fireplace behind them.
“My craving is growing stronger,” Angel whispered to Carmilla, wrapping his arms around her waist. Loki saw the veins on Angel’s arms and neck throbbing. ”The blood of animals isn’t quenching my thirst,” Angel told her.
Carmilla, with her hands tangled up in his curly long hair, pulled him closer, not knowing what to say. She pulled his chin up and kissed him, trying to help him deal with his pain. Next to Loki, Snow White fought a trail of tears seeping from her eyes. Loki wanted to hold her close in his arms—he had wanted to do that for a long time—but he was afraid she’d snap at him or burst into tears. He didn’t want to stir any emotions so his presence wouldn’t be manifested in the Dreamworld. He couldn’t risk being seen.
As they were kissing, Angel did what evil men—who don’t necessarily chose evil—did. Smoothly, he moved his lips toward Carmilla’s neck, and drew out his fangs.
Angel raised his head up a little, preparing for the bloody dive into Carmilla’s neck.
Although this was a memory, Snow White couldn’t help but shriek. Loki saw the air ripple slightly as if it was a pool of water. Carmilla’s eyes were diverted momentarily as if she’d heard them. Even Angel seemed to have felt their presence. Gladly, they didn’t see them, but Loki understood how easily they could have been exposed.
Then the colors in Angel’s eyes turned normal. He stopped himself from feeding on her, although his pain was excruciating.
“Love conquers all…” Loki said. “Fangs,” he mumbled to himself, making sure his voice was very faint so he didn’t manifest his presence.
“Why didn’t you bite me?” Carmilla asked Angel. “I want to be with you forever.”
Carmilla held Angel’s head between her hands, and this time, he lost control. His fangs drew out again, still reluctant to feed on Carmilla, even though she’d given him permission.
“He tried his best,” Snow White said. “He knew their lives would go to hell after this moment.”
As Angel struggled to hold back, he accidentally pricked Carmilla’s finger with his sharp teeth. The image instantly reminded Loki of when the mother pricked her finger in the Snow White tale by the Brothers Grimm, except this wasn’t a needle, it was Angel’s fangs.
The image of her drop of blood froze the air around them. Angel stared at the human blood with blackened, demonic eyes, appalled and yet longing for it. He had never tasted human blood before that moment. It was his lover’s blood, which smelled better to him than anything in the world.
Carmilla nodded with approval. “Maybe if you only take two or three drops of blood at a time, you won’t fully turn into a vampire. If you manage to only take a drop or two from me every day, I believe there’ll still be enough goodness in you to fight your dark side.”
“Are you sure?” Angel said.
“I would do anything for you, my love,” Carmilla said, and pulled his head nearer to her finger. Angel sucked the little drops of blood as if his life depended on it—which was actually true.
“My mother made a deal with my father; that she would give him two or three drops every two days for the rest of her life and he accepted it in exchange to stay a good man, and not feed on humans,” Snow White said.
“She wasn’t just sacrificing her youth,” Loki commented. “She was practically saving the world from the potential darkness of the son of the most vicious vampire in the world.”
“It was a turning point in Angel’s life,” Snow White said. “It helped him control his craving, and stopped him from fully turning into a vampire. The best thing about this moment was that their love grew stronger as they were bound to need each other.”
“What about Carmilla?” Loki wondered. “Didn’t this affect her health and beauty?”
“On the contrary,” Snow white said. “Carmilla grew more beautiful and healthier. When Angel drew blood from her, his saliva healed her and kept her young. It was like magic.”
Loki wanted to say that this was pretty damn gross, but he decided to stop talking and be polite for once.
“Unfortunately, her father knew about this deal on their wedding day. He didn’t take it lightly and called off the wedding. Carmilla had to leave the land with Angel, against her father’s wishes.”
“Sacrificing her family to be with Angel,” Loki bemused.
“It was a moment when they chose their own destiny and went against everyone’s wishes. They were cursed by everyone, hunted by everyone for different reasons, trusting in only their love for each other,” Snow White said. “Everyone in Europe was looking for them. They embarked upon a Spanish ship, sailing across the ocean, looking for a new start, away from Europe.”
“Wind, please?” Loki said, looking up at the sky. He knew that this must be the right time for them to be delivered to the ocean to see the ship.
“How many times do I have to remind you that this is
my
dream?” Snow White grinned. “Only I call for the Wind of Change.”
“Princess,” Loki said, arching his back, and acting like an 18
th
century nobleman—he struggled with where to place his legs in that position, but he improvised. “Would you please deliver us to the ocean?”
Snow White omitted a smile. “Come here,” she signaled for him with her wiggling forefinger. Loki accepted her calling. “You don’t want to find yourself smashing against the ship’s deck when we fall, do you?” she wrapped her arm around his neck. “Wind,” she summoned.
The wind circled around them, ready to transport them to the next scene.
“I just remembered something that happened in the closet,” Loki put a finger on his chin as if thinking then raised his head a little. “In my first closet, there was a young girl with me, and, if my memory serves me right, she kissed me,” Loki lowered his head again, looking her in the eyes. “That was you, right?”
“Shut up,” she shouted against the wind. “I kissed you as a kid. It doesn’t mean anything, and it was a peck on the cheek.”
“You like me,” Loki winked.
Instead of getting a response from her, Loki got splashed with ocean water on his face.
“Hang tight,” she said, pulling his hands over her waist. They were standing on the deck of a pirate ship, struggling against the tides of the ocean.
23
“Why are we on a pirate’s ship?” Loki managed to say, spitting salty water out of his mouth.
A black flag fluttered above his head as the ship swayed against the waves of an angry ocean. A white skull, crisscrossed with bones, was drawn on the flag.
“So clichéd,” Loki commented.
“I’m what you call a fairy tale princess,” Snow White said. “Cliché is almost my middle name.”
“Jolly Roger?” Loki read the name engraving on the inner wood of the ship.
“Don’t bother with too many details,” Snow White said, all wet and shivering, eyes closed, and spitting out water like him. Her wet hair was sticking flat to her face. “Just focus on what I want to show you.”
All around them, the pirates were loading cannons, speaking a language Loki didn’t understand. The ocean got angrier and coughed up more salty water onto Loki’s face.