The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires) (20 page)

“And you?” I asked, looking at Dr. Antor.

“I was a doctor in the plague days. I had been murdered. They thought me infected but I wasn’t…”

Louis interrupted. “He was the most gifted selfless physician of his generation. He studied under Heinrich Henkel, the world renowned physician.”

Dr. Antor lowered his head shyly but Louis went on. “He was caring for those who had been left to die. But then he sickened, not with anything fatal but with catarrh—it had troubled him since childhood… they nearly split his head open Rose, but I raised him up.”

“And Eve... and …”

“Vampires all. The children and Tom and Molly and Dora, too. They will tell you their stories later if you wish it, and I shall speak for the children, for they cannot tell theirs.”

“And I am that…?”

Dr. Antor shook his head. “Your fall has pulled you away; you are caught between two worlds.”

“But I wish to be human!”

“It is complicated, Rose”

I motioned for him to leave me then. And so I was left to consider all that I heard and to realize there were worse things than insanity.

*

I slept and heard voices too, muted this time. No longer audible but muffled and faint.

My hearing had changed back.

When Louis came in again I asked him where Mrs. Darton was.

“She is in her room, Rose.”

“You are angry with her…I heard…”

“She broke her word about something and it cannot be forgiven.”

I was about to ask him something but it seemed so ludicrous that I began to laugh. “Please! One more question, you left out someone. Dr. Bannion, is he a vampire too? Are they all creatures of the night at Marsh Asylum?”

“No, he is not as they are not.”

I was almost enjoying this. “Are you certain, not even one?”

“No.”

My thoughts darkened further when I suddenly thought of what I had seen in the cellar. “Tell me about the cellar, please. That is one horror that has not yet been explained.”

“They are the remains of those who tried to destroy the children. They came here onto the grounds. They were in the house! Tom had found them.”

“The intruders, so you killed them…”

“Not right away. They were used first.”

“They looked drained of blood!”

“Yes, they were. But they had come to destroy. They deserved to die.”

“Please, no more!”

But there was more. “Rose, you must listen! Just before you came to the club we had been informed that one of our best clients, a deviant by the name of Hartwell, was blackmailing us. He was their leader, don’t you understand? A murderous hypocrite, immersed in sin and degradation, who then comes to destroy that which he sought.”

“But the others? Mrs. Sternwood and the girl…”

“Imogene, the girl who attacked you on the moors, yes
…
she is being made an example of and Mrs. Sternwood tried to kill you!”

“This is insane, I can’t stand it. It is madness!”

“No, it is not. It was all part of it all,” Louis sighed. “Of the transformation, the wine—”

“Oh yes! The wine!” I had quite forgotten about that. Forgotten or had nearly pushed it out of my mind so that it lay like a moldering dead thing decomposing in my head. “Yes, the wine…”

“I shall just have to tell you straight out for there is no other way. You had Eve’s blood in that wine and the blood from those you saw in the cellar.”

“That explains the dreams I had! I dreamt of her and also the children.” I slapped both my hands over my mouth.

“There are two ways to immortalize a person...”

“To make them vampires...”

“Yes, they can be raised from the dead or transformed. To be raised from the dead they go within the very reaches of hell—and depending how that affects them, they emerge differently… they of course forfeit their souls.” He was eyeing me carefully. “Before you say anything, let me finish please. It will be better. The way to avoid passage to hell is to be transformed and this is what was being done to you, although the soul is still taken. There is, after all, a price for everything. You were nearly created—your hearing and so on became more acute, and now...”

“It is back to how it was.”

He nodded. “You are in crisis now. That is why. I stopped the wine, I didn’t wish to—”

“Make me a monster?”

“Please.” He paused before going on. At last he did. “It was so you would live forever and be hers.”

“Hers?
And you went along with it? How could you do such a thing, Louis?”

“I am damned anyway. What is more damnation for a monster like myself?”

I felt sorry, and even as horrified as I was by all I had been told I still yearned to comfort him. How could I be such a fool?

He was studying me. “How do you feel, Rose? It is important that you tell me.”

“I feel dizzy, not strong.”

“That is the lack of blood, Rose.”

“So I have changed back, have I? Your sick plan failed, did it?”

“Not entirely, but nearly.”

“Nearly?”

“You are closer to immortal existence, but you will need my blood—”

“No! I would rather die!”

“In agony? For that is what would happen.”

“Yes! Yes, in agony.”

I wished him to go. I wished him to leave me alone forever, but then Dr. Antor came in. “It’s the children, they are pleading to see you.”

*

They hurried to me and kissed me and although they laughed and tried to be merry I could see they looked deeply troubled and far more pale and fragile than I had ever seen them.

“You’re not ill, are you?”

“No Rose, we are never ill.”

“No, I should think you are not,” I replied.

Ada put her head down on my arm. “Please Rose, do not leave us. We should not wish to exist without your love.”

I broke down then, so hard I did cry that Dr. Antor had to come and aid me.

When I was alone, I knew the truth. I would stay with the children; I would remain with them, for I could not bear to live without them.

And whether I could ever love Louis Darton again, I was not certain. Yet, I suppose I even knew the truth of that, despite myself.

Despite everything.

He’d told me I needed his blood. But he couldn’t guess how much he was already there, in me, coursing through my veins.

I would stay for them, how could I not
?

“So you wish to remain?”

Even as he asked this, he looked miserable.

“Don’t you wish it?”

He took a step toward me, his hand already reaching for mine, but stopped when he caught my guarded look. “Rose for myself, I should wish to have your love forever—and beyond. Yet I am so guilty and ashamed for what has been done, what I was party to. It is all part of my unending damnation. One evil is connected to another, don’t you see?”

I did actually. “And it all began with Eve…”

A shadow crossed his face. “She is a creature of her own corrupt cravings. Make no mistake. Eve had you designated for the house to be close to her. Oh yes, she did that deliberately, flaunting you before me, to tantalize me with her catch.”

“You mean—”

“From the moment she saw you she knew what she intended to do. Don’t you see she wanted me to see what she reeled in?”

I was aghast and it was some moments before I could think straight. But then at last I remembered what I had seen that terrible night. “I saw something else on the moors, a goat and Eve—and the goat turned into a man or at least that was how it seemed.”

He looked away for a moment. “Yes, that was real. She did summon something…”

I was incredulous. “A man?”

“No, not a man, an inhuman creature and my immortal enemy, Eco. He is like I am—with one exception. He is Satan’s loyal servant.”

He began by telling me Eco was fallen angel spawn as was he. “But unlike me he is evil incarnate.  He has been at the forefront of every act of terror or outrage there has been. He shouted for Barbaras over Christ, he cried out for Caesar at Pilate’s court, he rode with the Crusaders, turned people over to the Inquisition. He is more like Satan than Satan!

“Eve has always sought to have illicit relations with him, knowing how much I hated him. That was one thing I forbade her to do. I have not forbidden her much but that she could not do, even for the sake of the children.  Yet she did summon him and couple with him. She did this to spite me, for finding us together! Rose, I have gone along with whatever she wanted—and it has affected the children.  I am sad for that! But I have never permitted her to summon Eco. She could practice her infernal rites, but summoning was out of the question.  That was agreed upon, she swore to me. Ah, but what is the word of a vampire?”

“So what will happen to her now?” I asked.

“She is no longer taking tea or blood.”

“The
tea?”

“Yes, the tea you hate. Dora has told me. It has wolfbane in it. That is the blue flower now in bloom that you saw in the garden. Mixed with tansy and brewed into tea it permits vampiric creatures to be
resistant to sunlight and water and anything else that is detrimental. She will be destroyed shortly; it is her fate for she has sought it.”

“So she can do this—die, you mean?”

“Vampires can be destroyed, but those such as myself, sons of fallen angels, we cannot. We endure…”

I understood at last as more truths were revealed.

“My mother was human. She and my father mated on an ancient beach—her people killed her, such was their reaction to her sin.”

“So you are half human?”

He nodded sadly. “Her blood flows through my veins, yet—it has become that which is immortal—I am vampiric, although not a vampire.”

“Do you drink blood?”

“On occasion…” I began to sob then but Louis reached out to comfort me. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry, but you do drink it!”

“But not by choice.”

“And the others?”

“They are my coven. Molly and Tom, Dora, Eve and the children…”

“And what of those sisters?”

“Yes, the Lodge sisters perished too in Antor’s living time. I raised them up for they died nursing the ill no one else would go near.  Yes Rose, they are all my coven.”

We stared at one another for what seemed like an eternity. “Rose, you have decided to remain for the children?”

“Yes,” I wept. “For the children.”

With that last statement, he handed me some wine with an added ingredient. “Please, it is what you need, it is my own.”

I raised the goblet and tasted the liquid. And as I did, I saw his life, that is, his existence.

I began to see images that represented the eons of time he had lived through, yes lived, for I could not think of it differently. Battles and plagues, kings and knights and paupers. I saw every single period of civilization that Louis had witnessed.

“Will I see more?”

“Perhaps, it depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much you wish to know.”

And there was so much more to know, to be told. I was being educated you see, shown the ways of the coven in order to be brought fully into the world of the undead.

As for the clubs, they were explained to me as places where entertainments were held. Louis said, “Think of Roman orgies but with blood instead of wine, where every perversion was catered for...”

“But that’s horrible!”

He sighed. “Rose, so aptly named, rose—how do I make you understand? I am what I am. I have no code to guide me, no promise of heaven awaits—I have too much freedom and no restraint.”

“None you have given yourself.”

He took my hand in his and kissed it. “Until now.”

*

They all came to see me later. Louis brought them.  “They would like to see you.”

The coven members were to welcome me into their fold.

Dora told me again of her father. “I never knew kindness from him, not ever. And when he found out the young man had deserted me, he threw me out. I had a butcher knife hidden. I spoke to my unborn child. “I am sorry to do this, little one, but you will never know the ways of the world, for it can be filled with pain and little else. Soon you will sleep the forever sleep… and so…” she pointed toward her throat.

The scar I had seen and wondered about.

She began to cry. But Louis spoke then. “Dora, show Rose what you have.”

Dora looked horrified. “No master, she will not understand.”

“She will.”

Dora hurried out and came back with a sleeping infant.

“But where?”

It wasn’t until the child stirred and I saw its eyes that I knew, it was undead.