Some get dealt simple hands
Some walk the common paths, all nice and worn
But all folks are damaged goods
It ain't a talk of "if," just one of "when" and "how"
So, collect your scars and wear 'em well
Your blood's as good an ink as any

Late January, 1779 — New York City

The irony fit all too well, he would think later (years later), when he had finally worked his way fully out of that murky stretch of being - slave to a hunger so strong it was almost blinding - long enough to think.

Died on holy ground.

Or didn't die, rather. That depended, probably, on one's interpretation of dying.

This was it, anyway, New York's Holy Ground. Holy Ground, it had been baptised years ago; he'd appreciated it as a bit of entertaining wit, even then, hearing the tale for himself. A district that stretched from King's College to the hallowed ground of Trinity Church, not just bordering on the godly (not his god, of course, but that had never been his quibble) but nestled in its very bosom, owned by it. Some negligent landlord the Church made, turning the other cheek to all sorts, as long as the working girls pranced into the pews every Sunday in their best rags. The fire after Washington and his men had fled the city had swept through and stamped out some of the worst of it, the whorehouses and taverns and dank soldiers' encampments, the gambling and fights, the lawlessness, the din. But what could fire do, really, scorching the earth as though the vermin wouldn't come right back, scuttling out of the debris like cockroaches, springing up again like weeds, unheeded?

It looked more of a skeleton now, burnt-out buildings and blackened panes still scattered as proof amongst the rebuilt slums. And still, worse than he could ever have imagined, more than any of these muggles could: unhallowed ground, home to the most unhallowed things.

"Coming, Zahir?"

Ismail - Ishmael, as they all knew him here - glanced over his shoulder and shook his head. "Nah," he said lightly, all broad grin and nonchalant shrug, like he spent time out here alone every day. In all honesty, it wasn't that much worse than Liverpool. "I'll catch you up."

"You know where to find me," the soldier - a Queen's Ranger, none of those redcoats supposed to be this far out of their barracks by now (though as if any of them could follow an order if it beat them in the face) - called back, as he shouldered his musket and trudged off back the way they'd come. Ishmael sure did, and he'd bet all the money he had on it: that bastard would be trouserless in his girl's tent until the last second he had, 'til they were all rounded up back by the docks and set to be ferried across the river to their next foray. Since he was crew on that sloop, Ishmael's activities ran to the same deadline; unlike his soldier friend, he was spending his time a little more creatively.

Earning rather than spending, actually. Coin changed hands easily here (best keep away from bills, what with the way no one knew which way the war would go, couldn't say whether Continental dollars would ever be more than wasted paper, or if British pound notes might as well get flushed out to sea), and Ismail Zahir might not be a scholar or a gentleman, mightn't have an education or a pedigree or even a blasted uniform - but he did have his wits about him and a damned good eye for opportunity. More was the pity he hadn't gotten to Hogwarts after all - hadn't gotten hold of a wand for long enough to learn how to use it - else magic might have been an extra weight on the balance, a little sleight of hand and a spare trick up his sleeve. He had decent luck anyway, usually, whether it was in betting right on a fight, knowing when to take a risk, or how best to talk his way out of a scrape.

Not that he was a criminal or a common thief, mind. Trade was a perfectly honest business... a perfectly fair business, now. He got what he wanted, and so did his partners. Privateering was all well and good - when his ship had first been decommissioned he'd joined another British privateering brig, requisitioning from the rebels - but the profits were shared and parceled up, and Ishmael had found he could do better on his own. It helped, he thought, that he wasn't in the war for the principle of it; after all, the patriots were in as much need of black market stores as the British troops occupying the city.

Ishmael whistled as he wandered slowly towards the meeting place - goodbye, fare ye well, his unthinking tune was, a shanty he'd known since he'd started working as a boy, we're homeward bound to Liverpool town - oblivious to the dark as it drew further in, the shadows growing longer through the murky, muddied January streets. He scratched idly at his neck (his neckerchief already so sloppily loosened under his coat that it wasn't in the way) and regretted now not wearing a cap in this chill. The cold was the worst of his problems, he'd thought. He'd have been more worried about hiding his identity if anyone here cared about dodgy things happening right under their nose.

He'd have been more worried, he supposed, if there was anyone here to begin with.

He probably should have grown worried a lot faster than he did, looking back. But, all the same, looking back - he was so young. A week or two off twenty-three, and about as foolish as anyone would expect. He'd not been fazed by much, back then; he had always been good at taking things in stride.

Perhaps this was why he was so slow to react when he stumbled across the body. It had been partially hidden from view, slumped face down behind a stack of barrels outside, but he'd almost stumbled over a foot, and then he'd seen the hand, bloodless and white, stretched out past the barrels into the street.

And perhaps the surprise of seeing the body was why he didn't hear the faintest stir of movement.  

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post count: 1000 words

  

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In the four decades that Galina had walked since her death, she had begun to grow accustomed to her life. If it could be called a life, she always reminded herself bitterly. The deep continuous thirst drove her just as it drove those who spotted her to fear her. Once she’d been considered a beauty, the toast of court, as lovely as the princess herself. She’d had admirers and even lovers then. People who smiled and flirted with her, even when she was not theirs to try for. Now she was a monster. Or at least she could only imagine what the rest of the world saw of her, her reflection hidden from her for all eternity. But this too she had grown accustomed to. It was better now, better with a sister by her side.

Mari, the young girl she had once saved from a gruesome fate had become dear to Galina. Their paths had merged together as if a line drew them together. A bond that had become familial to Galina who tried to ignore the ties that had once bound her to a family that was out of reach. She had tried to ignore those bonds in life too, only a few she kept close enough to consider such a tie. But those few had once been dear to her and so were often kept from her thoughts now. No, it was just Mari and herself. They had traveled together now for over a decade and as such had learned much about each other. While in appearance Mari was younger she was in fact older than Galina by almost a century, as such Galina had learned much from her. Mari, however, did often act younger in her impulses than Galina and as such often Galina found herself caring for the girl as if a younger sister. This suited both girls well as they traveled.

The war had made such hunts easy for them, the men wounded in battle were excellent to slack her thirst but they had settled in for the winter and the two vampires and moved to a city. They chased through the streets as silent as shadows watching as a human peeled away from the rest when darkness cradled the city in its grasp.

The man before Galina had been one of those only a few minutes before. He has wrestled for his last breath as Galina drained him from the very lifeblood that kept him alive. The smell overwhelming her until every last drop had drained from his body. She knelt before his body, holding his hand in her own for a moment, looking at the rugged dock worker’s hands white as marble. No matter how many lives she took Galina still felt a deep guilt resonating through her each time. The strength once again flowing through her veins, running its course to keep her alive, made her wonder what this man would have done with his own life. Once she had begun to keep her tendencies in check and had tried to keep to only those who she knew in life might only be a bane on earth. It was the only way to keep herself sane. Or at least one of the ways she kept herself sane, holding on to the smallest shred of her humanity in the only way she could.

Footsteps echoed down the street, only one pair, a slight swaggering shuffle. Galina’s gown rustled as she quickly stood up, unaware of the grace that still remained in such actions. From the sounds of it the person was nearing quickly, she could smell the pulse of blood growing greater with each step. In a swirl of skirts and her dark winter cloak Galina rounded the corner from the street, realizing at the last moment that the hand she had held was not hidden behind the barrels as the rest of the body had been, it lay stretched out onto the street where Galina had tasted the man’s blood. Sloppy work, Mari would tell her when she rejoined Galina from her own hunt.

The footsteps stopped, she could almost hear the pounding of blood through veins. The smell as vivid and wild as the sharpest most enticing flower’s scent. From her hiding place Galina moved slightly, her skirts swishing in the gentle movement as she peered around the corner.

The site that greeted her froze her and she stared at the man, not the one dead on the ground, but the one staring at the corpse. In the gloom of night she could make out the dark hair, the stubble of a beard on his chin, those eyes and that nose. In a moment she was no longer in the cold January streets of London, but instead in a glittering court. The memories flood back before she could help them. A hand clasped around her own, a small note tucked quickly away. The mischievous look that could quickly melt to worry or to the mask of a courtier. The voice as he argued politics and philosophies gathered from his books. The stories of a land Galina had once dreamed to run off to. Instead she’d run into the wilds of Russia cursed to live a life much more dangerous than the one before. Much more dangerous than the one he had tried to protect her from. What must he have thought when she ran from him, from the plans they had begun to discuss?

But now he was here before her. The smell of his blood pulsing through his veins as real as the scent of the bay behind them. His neckcherif unloosened. She didn’t know how he’d found her, but he had. Before she could think, before she could consider what she was doing, Galina had moved swiftly from her corner, her hood still firmly hiding her face she launched at him, sinking her teeth into the beautiful pulsing vein in his neck. Later. Later they would discuss it all.

Word Count: 1000

  

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an amazing bee work of art

To pretend that on that day - the moment before it happened - that Ishmael had had any idea what was going on, would be a lie.

A dead body, that much he realised, connecting foot to hand to their unnatural stillness and bloodlessness and silence. He'd seen dead bodies before, so that was easy enough to grasp. The first corpse he'd seen, he didn't think he had grasped - not really - because back in Liverpool the slavers had been coming back with perished cargo since the earliest days of his childhood. There had been plenty more deaths by the time he'd gone to sea himself - not slaves, not on his ships - but men and boys lost to scurvy, and then the war here after that, but Ishmael had already been desensitised at sixteen, near indifferent at the sight: his father had passed some years before - eleven years old, he'd been - and that had been a nasty slow decline, symptom on symptom of sickness that still scared Ishmael more than seeing a wall of soldiers in their blue and gold stretching out across the horizon, bayonets a-brandished.

Still, he was cavalier about the war. Cavalier about this corpse here, in so much as they had been a person once - a person no longer. He didn't care who they were, who they had been, where they had come from, none of that. All, Ishmael supposed, that he was interested in was how they had wound up here, slumped in the gutter. Whether whoever was responsible had had some particular reason for it and had fled, or if they'd come back, decide to stick around to see more people off. If they had gone, all Ishmael cared about that he was not spotted here in the gloom, looming over the body like a guilty shadow. That'd be a shame indeed, to get mixed up in another man's business.

(Less a shame, maybe, if he had anything worthwhile in his pockets.)

But Ishmael didn't get a chance to crouch down and look, barely got a chance to look up before he felt the rush of movement towards him, only rustling clothes and barely-felt footsteps. He had tried to remember details, as time unwound after that, in all these years later, but all he had were guesses, gut assumptions that may have been confounded by all the disorientation of what came next. Shorter than him, he had thought. Maybe a woman. They were cloaked; it was hard to tell.

And their identity seemed a minor detail, against the horror of what they did next, the way they lunged at him. Ishmael let out a yell. He'd expected, possibly, in the blink of an eye, that they were going to knock him out, bash him over the side of the head with the wrong end of a musket. Drag him away, maybe, or leave him here - like the corpse - in the alleyway too. But, instead, he felt a wrenching pain in his neck, the force of it arching his head sideways as though he might get away. But the pain followed, a strange shooting sharpness, hooked into him and drawing blood.

The blood should have come out in spurts and streams if he'd been stabbed there, gushing out like the fountain of water from a whale. But it wasn't - it wasn't coming out like that - because whoever it was at his neck, they were still latched there like a spider to a fly, and they had needed no more weapon than their teeth.

"What -" He gasped, hissing out air as he clenched his own teeth against the pain. The notion was slow to sink in, perhaps because it was hard to concentrate on anything but the concentrated ache, the throb of his quickened pulse that seemed to be getting slower and duller, forced into some new rhythm of relaxation. He had tried to shove them off him already, forced his arms out in front of him and failed to achieve anything against an impossible strength, so instead he had shut his eyes and grunted against the pain, rooting with one hand amongst his clothes until he found what he was looking for. His fingers snapped around the handle of it, and Ishmael drew out the knife, trying to find somehow to even the score. He'd gotten out of scrapes before -

But not scrapes like this. He had ventured the knife closer to their body, ready to fight back with it, when the thought clicked in his mind. Teeth in his neck. Drinking his blood.

If he'd grown up without his mother in the world, he might have dismissed the thought. Folktales and myths, nothing more. Vampires that roamed the earth. It sounded like a story to scare children. Only Ishmael knew better. Ishmael knew about magic, and wizards, and wands and weirder shit than could come out of the imagination. Ishmael knew there were such things as monsters, and this - this creature - wasn't human. They might look it, might be holding onto him with human hands and have run at him on human feet, but he could feel their coldness beside him, their strength against him, the way they were sapping his from him, leaving him tired and faint and light-headed. What would happen if he tried to cut into them, anyway, into deadened flesh? They'd have no blood to bleed. What good was his knife to him today?

What good was thinking to him now; and what good was a simple knife or a bayonet he didn't have or the docks he couldn't reach or a shout in an empty street or struggling against a force he couldn't fight or this feeling of fear in him, rushing hot and heady in his ears, like the blood leaving his own body? Fear wouldn't stop death in its tracks if it was coming. But he didn't care about death, he told himself, a feverish lie. He didn't. He'd never cared about death before.

But he didn't want to die.

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post count: 1000 words

  

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Seconds before Galina’s sharp teeth found their mark a yell sounded out in the cold night air. Her brow furrowed in worry, her ears listening for the step of running feet. With each pulse of blood she consumed, with each weakening breathe he took in through shaking lips into his lungs, Galina’s heart pounded with the urgency of what must be done. She would not lose the man before her again. She would fight of anyone who came, the heavy steps of boots were anticipated, but she did not worry. Not even when he tried to speak against the pain, his voice sounding as if it were lost in a tide of waves, jarring with her memories. Perhaps she had remembered it wrong all those years ago. That smooth melodic voice that had reached out to her.

”Galina.” A hand reached out to her, illuminated from the open ballroom doors behind. The crunch of newly fallen snow sounded as he took a tentative step toward her. Galina dared look up at his eyes. It was a danger to be out here. Surely he knew that. Worry welled up inside her. But still he reached, his gentle eyes imploring her to tell him what it was she worried for. They both knew. Both knew what lurked in the corners of her life, what tangled web she had gotten herself mixed up in.

“Don’t.” Galina warned him, taking a step backward. Her worries, while unspoken, were known. She wouldn’t insult him by defining them. “You were right.” She admitted, trying to keep her tone light despite the swirling emotions in her belly. “Bees should be careful of spiders. Not go flying into their webs.” Echoed words from a night that felt much too long ago. She took another step back, arranging her features into as much of a smile as she could.

He was not deterred. “Then perhaps the bee needs a new flower to land upon.” His hand still stretched out to her. Hope soared in Galina’s heart, for a moment she could see the life and the world he hinted at, she could wonder at the faith he had in such an action. She could imagine the safety behind his gentle words. His voice a balm to her damaged soul. A voice she was sure that she would never forget, no matter what were to happen, what web she might become caught in.

It was not the same voice that guttered through the loss of blood. But then again voices faded quickly from memory. A foolish thought to believe she might remember it in every detail. The gentle cadence that had lulled her doubts and fears to the side, she had nurtured long after all hope was gone. Yet the hope returned along with a longing she had thought long lost.

The man moved against Galina, hands searching for something. For a moment she allowed hope to believe he was reaching for her own hands. To clasp them to him and tell her they would be together. Then the sharp sting of steel dragged along her side. Galina hissed. That was what he was doing here. It all fit. He had discovered her secrets, had believed the story that had been told to Catherine and was taking her from another web, one even more dangerous than she had been in before. He had told her he’d find another flower for her to safely land on, and while he had never truly been a religious man, her mind believed that perhaps there was hope for her, that perhaps he meant to end her and believed that heaven might still await her at the end.

Terror beat upon her breast as Galina backed up against a wall. It thumped through every vein in her body as it mixed with lust and a half remembered love. The look in the man’s eyes was one she well knew. He licked his lips, knowing the reaction his actions had elicited. Galina lifted her head, refusing to give him the satisfaction of her fear. Her eyes met his defiantly, their icy blue depths challenging him instead of cowering. She had gotten herself into this mess she could get herself out. No matter how tangled the web or the promises of safer landings, she could get herself out of this.

The man’s arms locked her in, his gaze brushed over her lips, her jaw, up to her eyes. A deep rumbling chuckle came through his chest. “You fear nothing.” His words were firm. “But you should.” He was right of course, she should fear him. Should have the day she first caught his attention. But it was much too late now.

Footsteps echoed down the empty corridor, the predator’s gaze turned to see her scholar. The words trilled in her, despite the forbidden nature of them. Her scholar. The one who promised hope and redemption for someone as damaged as her.

And now that scholar had tried to harm her. She could only think it was for her own benefit, blind to the truth around her. She was redeemable, he had always believed so. But now they could find that safe landing, that flower that would protect them both. And they could find it together.

Her delicate white hands wrapped around the tawny wrist of the man, putting pressure around him in an icy vice grip. She pressed firmer and firmer, feeling the bones weaken and the blood stop flowing to the hand. She knew it put him in more pain, knew that it might damage bones that would readily heal when it was all over. He’d drop the knife, it would clatter to the ground. Then he’d understand, after it all, when there was time to explain, just what she was doing. The life she had provided to them. The one that had been so cruelly taken from them by the weakness of the human body and the wickedness of life, renewed by the cursed blood.


Word Count: 1000

  

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an amazing bee work of art

Whatever luck he thought he’d had in life, fate had truly gone and fucked him now. He’d heard the hiss of - surprise, if not of distress - from his first scrape of the knife against the creature, but it had not done the damage it should. Just as he’d known it wouldn’t. The knife was useless -

and all the same, it was a blow to lose it. Ishmael felt the grasp on him, had already gasped at the pain’s intensity before he looked down. The world flashed searing white as he heard a crack of bones, as the sudden numbness surged through his broken, bloodless hand, and abruptly all the vision he had was an unearthly focus on that hand - that unearthly hand. It might have been made of marble, or sturdier steel than the blade that had just clattered to the ground, lost and buried in the growing gloom; it was a hand invested with some demonic strength. But everything in its appearance belied that absolutely. It was a smaller hand than his, and daintier - a woman’s hand. Made of milk-white porcelain, slim-fingered and neat-nailed, far paler even than his own bluish skin. It was a hand that might never have seen the sun, that might have been shielded, always, by a silk glove; the kind he could imagine dancing across ivory keys or engrossed in careful stitching, with such threaded details opaque to the untrained eye; it was a hand he could picture plucking a flower by its stem, carelessly offered up for the prudent press of kisses, light fingers trailing over skin like a spring breeze.

Her hand was the furthest thing from the kind of hands he knew. Or the kind of hands that ought to be at home here, out in this place. Used hands, working hands, worn hands. Ishmael didn’t need to look to know his browned hands had dirt lining his fingernails, had spent the last few months regularly dusted with the fine powder from loading and reloading his gun, had spent the last several years growing calloused from the salt air and the damp and the ship’s lines, from running the rigging through them back and forth.

The last living feeling he had in his hands was a stinging shiver that swept up through his arm and furiously along his spine, almost more powerful than the strange feeling of the fangs in his neck. Her hand was cold as winter. A hand come from the grave.

His head was reeling from such a dizzying notion, but it was not much longer before the sensation - all sensation - began to subside. The pain of being drunk from had become almost pleasant, only a muted itch at his neck, somehow just a relief. He was beginning to feel grateful to have her there to steady him, too. And she was starting to feel warm.

If he was dying, he’d have wanted to say something about it, Ishmael thought. Some undaunted speck of wit, a laugh, a protest, a joke. (Nothing too profound, probably, but something memorable.) If only his brain was working to think with, or his throat working to speak with. “Why - ?” He murmured, a sentence that fell apart in an instant, hardly knowing what he was possibly asking of her. Well, wasn’t this a bloody disgrace?

He supposed it didn’t matter, much, what he said to her. He could not stop her now, whatever he said. No sense in pleading, then. No sense in treating her as any human he’d met: she was not someone he knew or had ever met, and he couldn’t think that the vampire would hang around to see him on long, if she made a habit of murdering people here. She was no one to pass a message on, if he had wanted to. Not that he had such a thing to pass on. His family were half a world away - he supposed that was a blessing for them, that they needn’t know the way he’d gone, a hapless fool, as vampire’s dinner. And he knew a fair few people here, close, had friends, but no one well, no one he would long miss, if he had the chance to miss them in death. They’d not think of him long, either, and he didn’t blame them either. His being mysteriously gone might cause a brief stir, but they had more to focus on than some sailor’s unlucky demise. His dying wasn’t special. They were living through a war.

He’d have liked to do something more with his life than this, though. Not that Ishmael had ever had fanciful ambitions - not that people like him were supposed to in this world - but he would have liked to dally a little longer in it, seen something more. Gotten rich. Seen his father’s homeland. Fallen in love. Learnt to read, mayhaps.

Useless things, really. But, all the same, it felt a pity, to be dying - he knew he was a goner now, death had him in her powder-white grip - and to have nothing to think of, nothing to hold onto with any sense of reality, any pull of importance. His head was empty, his memories only good for making a hazy sheen against the hollowness. This was it, then, the end.

Acceptance bloomed in him in an unexpected burst. He twisted around now, turning towards her unsteadily, her hold on him the only thing keeping him upright. Whether it was the hood of her cloak or the way the world was swimming in the rising moonlight, Ishmael didn’t know, but he couldn’t make the slightest thing about her out.

Useless. There wasn’t enough blood in him left to see. To stand. To think. Or, on the bright side, to be of any use to her anymore.

He supposed they were all useless things in the end.

Stupidly, deliriously, Ishmael smiled, and sank to the ground in her arms.

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post count: 1000 words

  

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Still no footsteps thundered down the road, no mortals came to investigate the last weak cry of the man in her arms. It almost felt too easy, to simple. A reward that Galina had never thought would finally come. She should have known then, should have realized it was a reward to easily won. But her thoughts were jaded. Full of well cherished remembrances from her past. She had lived through her crucible and now had come out stronger for it. A crucible of madness, destruction, heartbreak, sorrow. This was a gift from a fickle God. One delivered much too late into her waiting arms.

Soon, my love, soon. Galina crooned in her mind, gently caressing him with her thoughts. He would not feel them, not physically, but she could only hope some level of comfort might come to him from them. From the gentle wishes she held so tenderly for them. They would not be joined in death as the steel blade of his knife had hinted, already she could feel the slight sliver of a wound healing from the very life blood she took from him. No, they would be joined as something knew, something stronger, something unholy. He would understand then. She would make him understand. She’d nurse him into this new life, new world, she’d exposed him to. Teach him what he needed to know to survive. Even Mari would come to understand the new addition to their family.

Against her, Galina could almost feel the imperceptible relaxation of his body as each mouthful of blood swept from his veins onto her tongue. His warmth growing gentler, softer, against him. It would not be long now before she would return his life force with something stronger, more substantial than mortal blood. A cursed blood, some might say, but how could it be cursed with her scholar by her side. How could anything that returned what had been lost from them be cursed? It was a blessing, the blessing of strength, of love, of family, that she would return to him. The blessing of promises broken by a God that did not care. That had turned his back on them. Who had allowed all of this to unfold before him. No, she would give him a blessing, one that would rejoin them in a way they had never thought possible before.

She could feel his throat working beside her, humming as it attempted to push words from those gentle lips of his. Slowly, so slowly, the first of these words struggled to the surface. Why? Galina wished she could give him a response, to comfort him, to make him see reason. She wished that she might stop and explain her actions. But he had always trusted her judgement. Worried over her, but allowed her to make her own choices. It was how the love he had planted for her had grown and blossomed into what it had become, twining the two of them together irrevocably. Instead Galina’s tongue caressed the wounds in his neck. Her swallows and pulls against the skin grew gentler, sweeter, a lover’s kiss instead of the frenzied force of the demon she had become.

With one last gentle caress of her tongue over the wounds in his neck, Galina withdrew her face from the crook of his neck. He twisted in her arms, a shadow of the strong man she had once known, clinging to her, his eyes looking past the hood of her cloak, searching for her face. A face covered in shadows. But surely he knew who she was, could feel it in his very being the same way she could feel him thumping through her body, pulling her ever closer to him. The blood sang to her, pulling her closer to him, reminding her of this new bond they now shared. Certainly he could feel it too. Could feel it calling into the past looking for their severed bonds and uniting them in a new light, a new life. His body sank to the ground in acceptance a gentle smile looking upon her.

Overcome with the strength of her emotions, so long forgotten, she ran a gentle hand through his hair, down his face, caressing him as gently as any lover’s embrace. “To save you.” Galina finally answered, gently, the words a caress of their own. To save him from a web such as he had once saved her. It seemed so simple an utterance for such an immense concept, one that had lingered with her in her very being since he had uttered his plan to her in a rush of hot whispered words.

”We’ll run away, Galina. Once this is all over. We’ll return to the land of my father. Free.” He paused, his intense eyes looking into her own, imploring her of the reason for this. “Free from the shackles that bind us, the webs that tangle us. We shall be welcomed with the warmest reception, able to live life as we want.” His long fingers brushed against the curve of her face, earnestness evident in every feature.”Let me keep you safe, shelter you, love you, save you.” His impassioned words entreated her.

At long last she could fulfill their promises, too hastily severed by the frailty of human life. Abandoned by her own body’s betrayal and left to be forgotten, lost to the annals of time. “To save you.” She repeated gently, a soft echo of the unspoken words in her memories. She bite into her own wrist, blood - his own, mixed with those who had given her life - trickled down, a stream of deepest garnet against the porcelain of her own wrist. Galina wrapped her arm under his neck, pulling him into the crook of her arms, offering her opened wrist as she might food to a babe. A babe she’d never have. “Drink.” Came her gentle command.

Word Count: 1000

  

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an amazing bee work of art

This was supposed to be an ending.

Was this peace descending? Somehow the wound at his neck had almost stopped aching entirely, the gentlest kind of pressure there, a balm to the punctures. But it couldn’t be her bite softening, becoming soothing - it had to be him losing grasp of his senses. This was the end and he knew it.

And he knew it, because his killer’s grasp had become his mother’s arms, fingers carding through his hair, stroking his forehead with too much tenderness to explain, ghosting across his cheek. And he could feel it. What was this supposed to be, then: kindness or remorse?

Ishmael had never professed to think about what happened after one died. He did not much care for death itself, but even this, the bloody kind, seemed better than the alternatives. Better than disease or influenza, a drawn-out sickness. There was nothing so horrifying as an invalid tossing and turning and thrashing about in a bed, hanging on too long for anyone’s comfort. It was an ugliness best avoided. Spared people the pain of patience. This had been quick, at least: drained dry in a matter of minutes, his suffering hidden by the pall of dusken streets. There were no onlookers, nothing dragging him back to the living, nothing of him that would leave a trace. Maybe this was a mercy. 

Was it ending, though? Sensations were coming back sharper, the haziness stabbing, the wound in his neck suddenly worse and a throbbing in his head and his chest and every nerve on end from his feet to his fingertips. What was this, if it was not living? If Allah was looking down, had he angered him so much that he was, in death, being dragged somewhere worse?

Surely he hadn’t been that shitty a person. Not the most diligent or devoted or disciplined, no, but not scum either. A shame if there was only punishment to come for whatever he’d done in life. Ishmael was sure he could have been a great deal worse.

Apparently his murderer did not call this punishment. To save you, she said. Some kind of saviour she was, sneaking up on him in the dead of night. (And there had been no need to crush his wrist to do it, thank you very much.) Ishmael didn’t know whether she was expecting thanks for her actions, inexplicable as they were, but she had given him an instruction and an offering, and Ishmael was not conscious enough to make a debate of it. At this moment in time, he could barely remember what a vampire was. He could barely unstring one second from the next. He had no energy left for it.

Later, he would wonder. Whether he ought to have resisted her dripping wrist, whether there ought to have been some alarm in his head. Whether his gut should have told him no, no, never, not like this. If there was anything in his instincts telling him no, though, Ishmael never after could recall it... had he always been a little inhuman, then, or was choosing the way to survival the most human instinct there was?

But he did not think, and only drank. Just a faint loll of his tongue at first, gingerly, like tasting a raindrop or a flake of snow. A lick of blood on his tongue. (This was not halal, would definitely never be halal - one was forbidden from spilling the blood of animals, never mind humankind - but he supposed rules of religion hardly mattered now, if he had been damned or saved or rescued by something no religion understood.) And he felt the restorative work the blood was doing instantly, like some kind of miracle. Like fire racing through his veins, setting him alight and chasing the haze away. The fervour fuelled him on, and his lips latched onto her wrist where the puncture wounds were, sucking greedily, messily, like the babe in arms he was.

With the heightened sense of feeling came a surging sense of pain. The numbness had fled entirely and his limbs were light and jagged and full of ice, the fang marks at his neck just a strange prickling sensation now, utterly subdued beside the raging thirst in his throat that felt dry as bone. That would stop, would it not, if he just kept drinking? He would not need to drink her dry. He would be sated soon. He had to be.

He only stopped and disengaged when his mouth felt full and thick of blood - it did not feel so tangy and metallic as it had when he’d bitten his lip or cheek in life, had never tasted so rich and sweet - and he was tired, again, in a more satisfied way than the weariness of death that had washed over him just a little while ago. Besides, she had saved him, whoever she was. Saved him, she said. That was a miracle and a mystery of its own, and now that his thoughts were shifting back into place, he had questions.

“I’m going to live, then?” Ishmael said, slurring slightly, and he thought he managed to raise an eyebrow in illustration of his bemusement. He curled his hand around her arm; still too full and disoriented to attempt to move anywhere out of her lap, but not so weak that he wouldn’t demonstrate his need of her, as he dug his fingers in. (Her and her answers, whichever she had to give.)

Oh. She didn’t feel so cold now. Not cold at all, not like she had.

No, she was warm.

There was blood smeared at the corner of his mouth. “So,” Ishmael said, as the heady drunkenness of this scene started catching up to him, a whirlwind of things he didn’t understand, a sky full of stars above, some strange new future that had hooked him in, one he could never have foretold. First things first. “Who the hell are you?”

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post count: 1000 words

  

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Against her wrist Galina could feel the first tentative laps of his tongue, then his mouth grabbed at her skin around the cut, seeking more of the life giving liquid. Galina could remember her first time, the first sensation of blood against her lips, the salty tang of it hitting her tongue, the idea that it was somehow wrong, yet her only chance of survival lingering at the periphery. She too had been weak, illness having wracked her body, leaving her hallow and almost lifeless. The wrist that had been offered to her had indeed been her only salvation, her only hope of survival. She had knowingly latched her lips upon her maker’s wrist, had foolishly traded away her life (a life almost lost) for the nectar of survival. She had not understood the stakes then, as the man who now depended on her did not understand the stakes, but she would make him understand. She would take him under her tutelage and help him survive. She would not leave him only a few days outside her old home to fend for herself. Together they would walk this path, together they would survive, together they would build a life. Together.

Finally the man’s gulps lessened until finally he parted from her arm. His question made Galina laugh, placing a gentle hand to his temple she stroked away the hair that lingered there as a mother might comfort a babe. “Yes, you shall live.” She told him, her voice quiet in the silence of the street, her gaze beneath her hood full of fondness. It was all she should do not to hate herself for causing him to fear such a thing for himself. How could she ever think to harm him.

With the man’s attention on her now, calm, no longer threatening she was able to take him in. His eyes were different than she remembered, darker, perhaps because of the night around them. His jaw seemed sharper beneath his beard as she traced it with her gentle fingers. He had aged well, hardly a day seemed to have passed since last she had seen her scholar. How long had it been since then? Years? Decades? Surely he ought to have the salt of old age peppering his hair, hard earned wrinkles on his forehead. She had even hoped for laugh lines by his mouth and eyes, as they had crinkled when he smiled at her, delighted with what she might say. She had hoped his life would give them many, he deserved happiness, laughter in his life.

What was slowly dawning on Galina was dropped upon her with the weight of a hundred heart breaks. Every misery she had endured felt heavy upon her at his words. His gentle hand against her arm felt cool instead of warm. He didn’t recognize her, didn’t know who she was, didn’t know the plans they had once had. In that moment of clarity she saw what she had missed in her fervour and desire. She saw how foolish she had been, what she had just done to a man she did not know. She could no longer hide the truth from herself. Could no longer keep herself from noticing the differences between the man she had loved and the man before her. He was not her scholar, not the love of her life, not the man she would have traded her very soul for. He was nothing more than a common man, nothing more than those who wandered this land look for opportunity. An opportunity that Galina had just taken from him. Galina drew back, away from his piercing gaze, into her hood, hating herself for what she had done. She could not undo it, could not take it back.

She could not dwell on this, however, as the sound of boots hitting the ground thundered nearby. Someone must have raised the alarm. Fear rose in her bosom, clawing at her throat. She could not leave him alone, defenseless here, did not have time to make him understand what had happened. “Shh!” She hissed, stilling his tongue with her finger pressed against his lips. “We’re not safe here.” She told him, almost pushing him from her lap in her haste to stand. Her skirts swayed against the ground, dirtied from the encounter, but it gave her no pause as it would a lifetime ago. “Come.” She commanded, reaching out her small hand to lead him away.

She could correct her mistake by offering him shelter, salvation, protection, she lied to herself. If she could keep him from harm, explain what had happened, it might in some small way help him. He might even come to love the changes he faced himself. Might come to understand in some small part what she had done. But her reasons, those she would never be able to explain, not to him, not to Mari, perhaps not even to herself. She would lock them away, save them as she would save this man, and never think upon such foolishness again. And never would she attempt to turn someone again, regardless of her reasons.

Back into the alley she led Ishmael, ducking into another one that went by the backsteps of bars and houses of ill repute. Back into the shadows that her life now encompassed.

If only it were that simple. Ahead she could see a troop of soldiers watching into the dark, looking for the commotion. Waiting for them to stumble upon them. Above her she heard the call of her only family, “Leeny” crying through the wind. Mari was unpredictable enough, she’d need to explain the situation to her before introducing her to the newest member of their small family and she’d never get him past those soldiers.

“Wait here.” Galina commanded gently. She’d come back to the man. She’d come back and explain it all to him, save him. But right now she could not. She disappeared into the night intend on coming back.

Word count: 1000

  

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an amazing bee work of art

You shall live, she had said, but he had asked the wrong question, didn’t understand the answer. Live, he said, she said, but already this could not possibly mean life as he had known it. What would it entail, then? Blood, he supposed, drinking blood. But other than that, his mind was blank.

She did not elaborate, but she was still near and a comforting presence. Her hands in his hair. It was something to focus on, a small detail, a feeling that held him together and did not let his mind wander astray. The caress of her fingers, delicate, deliberate, along the contours of his jaw. (Was there blood on his face? He felt the stain of it on him, like he’d eaten like a heathen child or an animal - as though he had revelled in the mess of it.)

He didn’t know when he had last felt such fondness for anyone as she was showing him - he had never had an affair so intimate - and that made such little sense, because he didn’t know anything about her other than what she so obviously was, but he did not recall meeting a vampire, here or anywhere else in the world. He hadn’t been many places else. He hadn’t seen much. No wonder that he’d never been in love. So why was she so gentle with him, when he had earned none of the kindness she was showing him? (Was it kindness or, following what it had, sheer remorse?) That was what a killer did, sometimes, if they felt regret. Treat a body with tenderness or reverence once they’d savaged it. He’d seen a woman beat by her husband once in one of the boarding houses in Liverpool as a boy, could still recall the way the man had flinched at himself, jerked the back of his hand away and cradled it in his other, as though his own hand was someone else’s. He’d reached out to his cowering wife, after that, and pulled in her close, pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead as if that might undo the bruise. The comfort after the hurt. Was that what this was? Did she regret what she had done?

He hadn’t the energy to question her further, but it did not seem like they were in any rush to leave this place. Perhaps she would sit with him for hours - or days, or years - until he was ready to face this life; maybe the life she led was a surpassingly lonely one, and perhaps all she had wanted was a soul to comfort, anyway.

There would be time to figure her out, unpick her reasons and understand her identity. Ishmael was... well, not tired, for drinking that blood had seemed to ease all sensation of that, almost all human sensation he remembered... but exhausted in his mind, drained of all willingness to come to terms with anything right now. If he was going to continue ‘living’, then, if this was not some makeshift deathbed and she had resolved to take care of him, there would be time later to think. Too much time. First, he might have the luxury of laying here - simply existing in the sudden strangeness of his own body - without thinking.

Or not; sound thundered in his ears before he could help it, vibrations of the ground that seemed to travel too fast and too easily. Just because he had time did not mean he had the luxury of it here; he might have changed impossibly in a heartbeat, but the world around him hadn’t altered at all. This was still a street in the wrong pocket of a city, this was still New York in the midst of a rebellion that spanned the Atlantic. There were still humans about, and the muggle sort to boot.

There was a spark of worry in his chest, some vague instinct about pitchforks and villagers and witch-burnings, the same kind of defensive twinge that came about when he saw anyone scrutinise him a little too intently, just as often about the colour of his skin and signs of his ancestry as it was because they suspected him a thief. Ishmael didn’t know quite what his skin looked like now, but his hands looked paler in the moonlight. He slid his tongue along his teeth, wondering about them too, and indeed it caught on something sharper, something new. Should he really be worried about whoever was coming? He had been no match for the cloaked figure who’d snapped his wrist and sunk her fangs into his neck so easily. (Would he ever need be worried again?)

But she seemed to have been roused by the sound of soldiers, and he stumbled to his feet - though the very motion was more fluid, easier than he’d imagined - and took her hand mutely, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness of the streets and... trusting in where she was leading.

He could not say why. But she hadn’t let him die.

Following her through the shadows, Ishmael stopped where she had halted and leant back against a wooden-slatted wall, managing a nod at her instruction. It was unlike him not to debate it, but his head was still spinning and silence felt in order, given the situation. He still couldn’t see her face, couldn’t make out anything more than the paleness of her hands and a few strands of her hair catching the breeze under her hood. And before he could find any words at all, she had gone.

Where to? Who knew. Too late to follow her, already; she had disappeared around a corner, and her footsteps were too light to hear. It was almost as if she hadn’t been here at all.

So Ishmael had waited.

And waited.

(And, in a funny way, though more than a century had passed and he had left that place long ago, part of him was waiting still.)

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post count: 1000 words

  

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Of the many regrets Galina had over the course of her long life, perhaps the one that haunted her the most was the moment she left Ishamel behind. It would be many long decades before she knew the man’s name, but his face had been ingrained on her soul. Their conversation would play in her mind as keenly as those from her mortal life and she would always feel the sting of heartbreak and regret each time she thought of him.

But in that moment Galina felt sure of her decision. Sure that she would be able to come back, sure that she could save him, shelter him. It barely occurred to her that it could be any other way, that the events would play out in a much different order.

Rounding the corner, Galina easily slipped into the shadows. The soft soles of her boots barely making a sound, the heavy wool of her skirts hardly rustling as she made her way down one alley and then again, rounding corners and listening to the faint ‘Lina’ on the breeze. Pools of light from businesses open this late at night barely lingered on her form as she slipped through the streets, avoiding the puddles of half melted snow.

The memories that had been pushing on her consciousness since the man appeared consumed her, as if they were moving with her. The scholar’s watchful eyes, the prince’s menacing smile, her brother’s easy laugh, her maker’s exuberant gestures, and the princess’s worried gaze. It was as if they ran with her. Bits of memories flitting through her mind:

’A bee has the wings to fly to another flower, free yourself from this web - this madness. Steal away with me.-’

’... you’ll do as I say. You love me, Galina, there is no other way of life for you. You’ll always come crawling back to me.’

‘They say she won’t make it...isn’t there anything that can be done?’

‘I can save you. But you will have to give up your life. Give up everything you’ve come to know.’

‘Galina - you deserve happiness, perhaps more than anyone I know….’

Had she found happiness in this second chance? This new life that belonged to her now? Had turning her back on the life she’d once held, the one she knew the intricate dances to freed her? Or had it become a prison? A prison with bars that shut her off from everyone she had loved, would love? Perhaps she would have been better to simply let go instead of selfishly clinging to life, hoping that her maker hadn’t spoken the truth, that she would be an exception. But she had reasoned that any life had to be better than the one she had been caught in, that freedom was close - not through death but through this path as well. Was her very existence freedom or a prison of her own making? Her thoughts tumbled through her mind as she rushed through the city.

It started quietly at first, a dull roar that Galina could dismiss amongst the voices and memories that plagued her. But as she got closer to where she had left Mari she could not mistake the sounds. She’d heard roars of this nature, the angry cries of a city focused on an object. “Lina!” She heard, clearly amidst the undeniable sound of a mob.

Risking her safety in the shadows Galina stepped into the shallow light of a streetlight only to see the light of torches dancing over the cobblestones and buildings around them. Mari’s large eyes were wide with a mix of excitement and fear, as if the chaos fueled her. Her sister’s small form, no lager in appearance than a twelve year old, ran toward her, blond hair streaming behind her.

Galina could not tell if Mari had incited the mob, or simply gotten caught into it. But as her sister’s cold hand slipped into her own, she knew there was only one option left to them. To run.

The sisters dashed down streets and alleyways, their lithe forms barely stumbling and or hesitating as they made their way. Each obstacle easily seen by eyes made for the dark. The shadows that had plagued Galina’s mind since the man first appeared vanished as if light shone on them. The memories stilled as the adrenaline rushed through Galina’s veins, the last of her strength after providing the man her blood, pushing any further thought of the past back. No longer did the ghosts haunt her. Only the truth that they had to push on. There was no time to stop, no time to consider. Only the time to run.

Down the streets, the alleyways, past the sleeping houses, and the lit inns. The mob pressing down on them. But with each turn, each new street, safety glimmered. Further they pushed on until darkness plunged around them, the only sounds left their ragged breaths and the sound of their near silent feet on the ground below. Streets turned to grass, fields turned to forest and the only thing Galina could do was think I’ll be back. I’ll be back for you. The words ran through her mind like the pulse of the blood they now shared. For she could not fathom leaving him behind, could not fathom doing as her own maker had done, could not image abandoning him. She would explain to Mari what had happened and then they would double back for him.

But each step away from that alley where she had left him brought with it the finality of a lie that would haunt Galina for centuries to come. A lie to the man she had left behind, a lie to herself. How many times would she lie to herself? Lie that the future could be brighter than the past? How many times would she fall for the same naive belief once spoken by a lover?

Word Count: 1000

  

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an amazing bee work of art