Лиза Смит: The Craving

With a heavy heart I plodded up the grand, dark wood staircase. There was no need to be completely silent; the few servants who remained were in their quarters in a distant wing, far away from the death and mess. I could hear their overloud voices, their discussions of prospects and other households – all desperate attempts to fend off the darkness that their employers had slipped into so suddenly.

I wondered what Margaret was doing, vowing to get word to her about Klaus and his vendetta. She was probably in her own home with her husband, mourning her sisters and parents. Which was harder? To be dead, or to live with the memory of the dead? As a vampire, I would never know the former, but always experience the latter.

I soon reached my room, where a night ago Bridget had thrown herself at me. I smelled traces of the violet perfume she had doused herself with. It had infiltrated my pillow and sheets. So much more childish than Katherine’s scent, the subtle, alluring, complicated mix of citrus and spice…

I took a valise – another gift from Winfield, planning for the honeymoon, I suppose – and threw the few things I considered mine into it. My old clothes, some spare change, my journal. I flipped to an earlier page where I’d written about Katherine.

September 8, 1864

She is not who she seems. Should I be surprised? Terrified? Hurt?

It’s as if everything I know, everything I’ve been taught, everything I’ve believed in my past seventeen years is wrong.

I can still feel where she kissed me, where her fingers grasped my hands. I still yearn for her, and yet the voice of reason is screaming in my ears: you cannot love a vampire!

If I had one of her daisies, I could pluck the petals and let the flower choose for me. I love her…I love her not…I…

I love her.

I do. No matter the consequences.

Is this what following your heart is? I wish there was a map or a compass to help me find my way. But she has my heart and that above all else is my North Star…and that will have to be enough.

I snapped the book shut, curling my lip at my foolishness. Downstairs was the present reality and thinking about the past did no good. I threw the book into the valise and went downstairs.

But instead of finding Lexi there to greet me, there was emptiness and a horrible, familiar scent.

Death and decay.

A faint breeze whistled through broken wood; the back door was left wide open. I shivered despite myself. The silence, Lexi’s absence, howled like a banshee.

A single piece of paper, the size of a ticket, fluttered on the floor. I picked it up, feeling dread prickle my skin.

All it said was: PAYMENT NUMBER TWO – LUCIUS.

November 13, 1864

I am cursed. It is obvious now. Maybe that’s what being a vampire means. Maybe tragedy and evil come with the hunger and the fangs; it isn’t just having to live off human blood. It is the unending aloneness, being cut off from real life and from real relationships. Death will always be there to separate me from those I loved.

There is a scroll of names in my head, and the list keeps getting longer every day. Rosalyn was the first to die because of me. Katherine couldn’t stand that I was engaged, so she killed the girl. Even Katherine’s blood was on my hands. Though she came into my and my brother’s lives and turned them upside down. She died as a result of my actions. I should never have tried to reason with my father, never tried to convince him of a different viewpoint. As soon as he confided in me about the vampire hunt, I should have done everything I could to get Katherine out of town.

Pearl. She, too, could have escaped. I don’t know exactly what her story was, but she seemed far more peaceable than Katherine.

Alice the barmaid.

All the humans I fed on in New Orleans. Too many to name, even if I had bothered learning their names. They were just unlucky folk who accidentally crossed my path when I was hungry or needed something.

Callie. She died because I was stupid enough to think that she would be rewarded for helping out two vampires.

The Sutherlands.

Bridget, Lydia, Mrs Sutherland and Winfield. A normal family who just happened to catch the attention of one insane, vengeful vampire.

And now Lexi. Lexi should have stayed in New Orleans in her hostel for the undead, safe in her own world where she could continue her own version of doing good.

She will be the next to die unless I figure out how to save her.

I have spent too much time in New York bemoaning my fate, moping, feeling cursed. By standing idly by and complaining, I am letting evil occur all around me. Now is the time for action, for justice. I must channel my loneliness and despair into rage. I must stop being a coward, as I’ve always been, in both life, when I let my father bully me into a marriage I didn’t want, and in death, when I’ve allowed Damon to torture me and kill the people I love.

Never again will I let others bend me to their will. From now on I will fight.

And I will free Lexi, if it is the last thing I do.

I crumpled the piece of paper in my fist, growling with anger. How had he taken her? I hadn’t heard a thing, even with my vampire senses. Only the servants, a couple of mice and rats in the walls, but nothing else. The vampire Lucius had come in complete silence and managed to seize – or disable – Lexi before she was able to cry out. What speed, what Power this beast must have!

But for all the vampire’s ancientness, for all that he was a ‘direct descendant from Hell’, for all the monster he was, he had, with that single piece of paper, revealed one very human weakness about himself. He had a very petty need to gloat . If Damon were in his place, I would have come downstairs and seen Lexi dead on the floor. But the beast wanted me to know that everyone around me was in danger, to scare me before he killed me.

Now there was only one thing on my mind. If Lexi was still alive, it was my duty to go after her and save her. And if she wasn’t alive…it was my right and pleasure to kill Klaus’s foot soldier. This I swore.

What was it he had said in the prison? An eye for an eye . He took something valuable from me and Damon, our wives and their family, because we had taken Katherine from him. But the Sutherlands were human, of no importance and very easily disposed of. His beloved Katherine died in a church fire.

What if …

The words struggled to the surface of my brain.

What if he planned on killing Lexi the same way?

Suddenly I felt like I had a chance again. But which church? There had to be hundreds in the city.

I ran outside. The smell of decay hung heavy in the air, as though Lucius had unwittingly laid a path for me. I followed it south, feeling as though I were gaining strength with each step that brought me closer to where Lexi might be – and who I should be. I had tried to stay away from humans, and that hadn’t worked. I had tried living with them, with disastrous results. But I had never tried a more moderate path. I would never be human, but I could help them, as I’d helped Bridget that night in the park. I could never live among humans, but I could find companionship among humans like Mrs Sutherland and vampires like Lexi. Those ties would tether me to this world and keep me honest.

I ran past a brick town house and grabbed a pigeon in mid-flight from the air, tearing into its neck for extra fuel. The stench was stronger now, and I saw an Irish Catholic church just two streets away. I knew people had actually been worried about this particular structure being torched, as had been done to others during the religious riots in Pennsylvania. But the place was quiet, with several old women sitting in the front pews, and, oddly, the scent of decay that had permeated the air outside so strongly had evaporated. There was no odour of anything besides candles and incense burning at the altar.