For Melissa....

1788

Her eyes met mine and I saw nothing but blind panic there.

The young woman was positively terrified and with good reason. The white hands that held her firmly in place on the painted stage belonged to half a dozen pale-faced marionette dancers and all of them thirsted for her blood. Razor sharp nails dug into her skin and as she begged and pleaded for mercy the audience roared with applause.

This was a nightly event at the Theatre des Vampires. Our popularity soared since we first opened our doors to the Parisian public just over nine years ago and now we were performing two, sometimes three shows per night. People were shocked and disgusted by the macabre acts they witnessed on our stage, but that didn’t prevent them from filling every seat in the house. Little did they know that the tragic and often violent deaths that took place in the final scene were so much more than just the brilliant rendering of a mortal demise.

I stood in the orchestra pit, unaffected by it all. The Stradivarius was propped beneath my chin and my bow called forth a demonic melody that could almost drown out her screams.

The play had been written by me, of course, but I no longer found pleasure in watching them act it out. This place had become my prison and so many months had passed since I last saw the city outside of these walls that I could almost forget it existed at all. They wouldn’t let me out to hunt anymore because they said I was a danger to them all. They believed that I sought to destroy the life we lived here and their fears were entirely justified. I had grown weary of living in secrecy and the reaction I could stir in those disbelieving mortals who listened to my stories of monsters dwelling beneath the City of Light was impossible to resist.

I was a threat to our very existence and my little stone-walled room had been transformed into a jail cell. The door was barred from the outside and I was often left in this solitary confinement for countless nights with nothing but my coffin, an old wooden desk and a stack of candles to be burned on those evenings that I felt inspired to write and compose. My meals were brought to me there, though they were often dead before they arrived. Left-overs, perhaps they could be called... or scraps. I fed on those unfortunate souls who did not die at the hands of the vampires on stage and by the time they fell into my arms, their minds were already so far gone that they rarely put up a fight. This was the thanks I received for leading the bats of the old coven into a new era.

When they brought her to me, after the curtain has been drawn and all of the patrons cleared out, I was sitting at my desk in complete darkness. The room was foul with the smell of death and a few corpses in various stages of decomposition sat propped against the stone wall like a mindless and unmoving audience... the only witnesses to my own deterioration. I wouldn’t let the others through the door to remove the bodies and the vile odour was enough to make them to leave me in peace. It was a tolerable price to pay to keep from being bothered.

I heard the creak of the iron hinges and a faint moan as her body was dropped to the floor. I waited until the sound of their retreating footsteps had faded completely before I lit a single candle and rose from my chair.

She was naked save for a few scraps of crimson stained fabric that still clung to her slender hips and the scent of blood was strong in the air. Dark, matted hair obscured her face from view, but I hadn’t forgotten the way she looked when they dragged her, kicking and screaming into the footlights. They were chosen for their beauty, of course. Young men and women plucked from the ever-growing pool of indigent, destitute souls... those who will be missed by no one.

I scooped her up into my arms and deposited her gently into my open coffin, pushing her hair aside to I could get a better look at what they had left me with tonight. Her skin was as cold as ice and there was not a single inch of that once perfect flesh that wasn’t bruised and punctured. I shivered slightly and swallowed back the decade old memory of an experience that left my own skin similarly marked. She was breathtakingly beautiful, there was no doubt about that. Even in this weak and damaged condition it was easy to imagine how radiant she must have been before she had been captured and thrust into this world of unspeakable horrors.

I don’t know how long I sat in silence, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest and listening to the slow, but steady beating of her heart. Usually I killed them quickly before they could slip into oblivion on their own, but I simply couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Something about her made her different from the rest. Perhaps it was the fact that she fought them with the very last of her strength when so many others lost hope long before the curtain came down... or perhaps it was something else entirely. I can’t claim to understand the things that passed through my own mind back then. But when her eyes shot open and she clutched my arm with the strength of a woman who was fighting for her life, I knew that I wanted more than just her death.


More to come...