A woman stood a few feet away, dressed in a white gown that had been slightly marred by dirt, long dark hair falling in smooth waves about her shoulders. Yellow eyes glowed in a face that was demonic, twisted, and yet strangely -- undeniably -- familiar.
Maya's mind rebelled. She couldn't be seeing this, a part of her reasoned desperately. If she closed her eyes and then opened them again, surely she'd find it was a nightmare. But then she opened her eyes, and the strange apparition was still there. It seemed this wasn't a nightmare she could awaken from. Deep within herself, Maya realized she had been expecting this.
"Marisol," she whispered. "I knew . . . I knew you weren't dead. I could feel it."
Marisol smiled back at her through a grotesque visage. "Mi querida gemía," the Vampyr answered. "I'm so glad you could join us. I was afraid I'd have to go hunting for you." She paused, considering, and grinned. "Then again," she corrected herself, laughing, "a hunt might have been fun."
"Such a fast learner," a vaguely familiar voice said from another direction. "You do me proud, pet."
Maya whirled to see the man from the inn, the one who had caught Marisol's fancy, his face as twisted now as Marisol's. "You," she whispered, accusing. A flame of anger stirred inside her heart. "You did this to her! Why!?"
The man -- 'Spike' had been his name, she recalled suddenly -- smiled at her. "Why don' you ask her?" he returned. "She was the one who invited me t' play, remember?"
Maya turned to stare at Marisol, who was approaching her now. Before she could speak, another voice sounded. Female, lilting, the words not quite sane. "And she plays so well, my pretty doll." Maya whirled to find a second woman standing a distance away, her face lovely and human, but somehow vacant. The woman smiled as their eyes met. "Will you play with me, too? I always like havin' more than one doll . . . Such lovely dollies you are, so warm and pretty . . ."
"Yes, Maya." Marisol's voice came from considerably closer. "Come play. Or should I make sure I'm finally unique?"
Maya turned quickly to face her, stumbling slightly in her haste and fear. She shook her head, tears of fear and grief flooding her eyes. "Marisol . . . Why?!"
"It's Marissa now," Marisol told her. "Fits much better than a name that mentions the sun, don't you think?" she laughed. "As for why . . . Eternal youth and beauty -- why else?" She smiled nastily. "You didn't think I was going to let myself get old and fat like Mama, did you? With half a dozen children dragging at my heels? That may be well and good for you, but not me, mi querida."
Maya stared at her, shaking her head numbly. "At what price?" she whispered. "Your immortal soul . . ."
Marisol snorted derisively. "You don't believe all that rot that the priests tell us, do you? And even if they were right . . ." Suddenly, her face shifted back into its accustomed shape. "It's worth it to have this," she indicated her face and form, "for eternity."
Maya shook her head again, fumbling at the neck of her gown for the small cross she had always worn. And belatedly remembered she had placed it on her sister's 'corpse'.
Marisol smiled. "Looking for this, sister?" she asked, holding the chain daintily, carefully avoiding contact with the holy symbol. "Gave me a nasty surprise when I woke up. Thankfully, my Sire had gloves."
"Sire?" Maya repeated faintly.
"That would be me," the man said. "You should be proud, actually. Your sister is the first of us I've ever Turned. And you," he drawled, smiling, "are going to be her first. Meal, that is."
Maya looked over to where Marisol had stood, but found the spot empty. She stumbled back in fear, and very nearly fell into the open grave. But Marisol was suddenly in front of her, and a pair of granite-like hands clamped on her arms, pulling her forward and away from the hole. Marisol's smile was cold and filled with a pitiless humor. "Don't worry, querida Maya. It won't hurt . . ." Marisol grinned, her face becoming that of the monster again, and she amended with a laugh, "Much."
"Marisol -- please!" Maya begged. She reached desperately through their bond, trying to touch her sister as she had so often before.
And touched a Darkness unlike anything she had ever encountered or imagined. The shock of that touch of Evil was almost enough to distract her from the agony of fangs sinking into her neck. Her last clear memory was of the strange woman's delighted laughter, and Spike's face twisting into a feral, extremely pleased smile, as her Marisol hungrily drained her of life.
When darkness came, she fought it with everything in her, wanting only to strike those smiles from their faces and then warn her family of Marisol's fate. It was the only thought to accompany her into the void.
Marissa knelt on the soft earth, still holding her sister in her arms, her mouth still clamped hungrily against Maya's neck. She heard a sound of protest and then a concrete grip in her hair pulled her head back. She turned her head to snarl at the intruder, and Drusilla frowned at her.
"No!" Drusilla told her, almost pouting. "Princess wanted another doll."
Marissa frowned at her, then quickly regained her bearings and smiled. She shifted back into her human face and the smile became charming, almost brilliant as she leaned slightly towards the other vampire. "Oh, but Princess has one already. And Princess' doll doesn't like having to share her Princess so much." She allowed a touch of hurt to tinge her expression, putting a bit of a pout into her own lips. "I thought you liked me, Drusilla . . ."
Drusilla's own mask faded, returning to the beauty of her human visage. "I do!" she answered, her eyes widening slightly. "Princess loves her pretty doll!" Drusilla paused, considering. "Would it hurt my lovely doll to have a pretty sister to play with?"
Marissa released Maya's limp body unceremoniously, letting the girl slide with a hard thud to the ground. She reached up a hand to touch Drusilla's hair, delicately brushing the elder vampire's cheek, and then placed a gentle kiss on her lips. "I have you to play with, my lovely princess. And Spike. I don't need anyone else." She tilted her head and asked softly, "Do you?"
Drusilla was nearly purring. She leaned her head forward to nuzzle the younger vampire's cheek softly. "No one at all," she murmured. She kissed Marissa softly and added dreamily, "You taste of her. Warm and sweet, with spice and dreams and death. Lovely, lovely death." She sighed happily and looked up at Spike. He had come closer during the exchange, and she could sense the remainder of Marissa's life-blood pulsing quickly in him in arousal. "Can we have a party now, Spike? There's ever so many lovely little butterflies, all dancing in my tummy. They want to come out and play. They want to dance in blood and lift me up to the moon . . ."
Spike and Marissa exchanged a look, and the newest vampire smiled, her eyes glowing softly. Spike grinned in silent agreement. "We'll have a grand party, pet," he promised. "And I think I know just the place for it."
Maya floated in the midst of darkness, cradled weightless and dreaming. Images came to her, frighteningly clear. Her family's house looming closer, a hand reaching out to knock on the door. It was opened by her mother, who blinked in sleepy confusion that quickly turned to shock. Her arms stretched out in concerned invitation, a name on her lips that reached only to "My Mari--" Then she was inside of the house, and it became a nightmare.
Blood. Screams. Her family's faces twisted with terror. Then, only eventually, death. And through it all, a sense of nearly orgasmic enjoyment that made her mind rear back in horror.
Maya struggled against the lassitude that held her body, trying to escape the images. They continued, accompanied always by that horrible glee, until she had seen each member of her family lying dead. Then it faded somewhat, although the glee remained. Other images tried to take their place, images of Spike and the other woman from the graveyard, images of other things, more physical things, that Maya had never even imagined. When she finally woke at dawn, it was with a gasp and a moan of fear and relief.
For a moment, she thought she had dreamed it all . . . but when she tried to get up, she found herself almost too weak to move. Her limbs seemed weighted down, and there was a dull throb of pain in her neck. Reaching up to touch it, her hand came away stained with blood that the chill of the night had stopped from drying. She frowned and looked down at the soft, turned earth beneath her. Memory hit her full on, then, and she lurched to her knees even as stars exploded behind her eyes from the act. Marisol's death, her funeral, the moonlit encounter at her graveside . . .
Maya staggered to her feet, the world spinning, threatening to throw her into the empty grave beside her. She had to get to her family, had to tell them, warn them. But a voice deep within her mind told her it was already too late. When she finally reached their home, strong enough by now that the last few steps were a near run, the voice was proved right.
The door hung open, not quite on its hinges, and before her lay the result of the nightmare that had plagued her before waking. It was as if a monster had seen into her mind and reproduced it . . . Or, a little voice whispered, as if she had seen into the mind of the monster that had done this.
Her family lay scattered about the house, their throats nearly torn out, blood streaking their night-clothes . . . but not the places where they lay. Marisol and her new friends had feasted well. Maya's eyes flicked about the house as she walked around the barely-lit space, her mind numb with shock. Mama, Papa, Louisa and Eduardo. And upstairs, the younger Rodrigo, Elizabeta . . . and little Angelita, her favorite doll lying absurdly clean beside her crumpled body.
Maya knelt beside the child's body and reached out to touch her face, her mind recalling impossibly clear the feel of little arms about her neck in a tight hug. Her fingers barely registered the chill of the child's skin. "No," she whispered, shaking her head slowly. "No . . ." I'm not seeing this . . . This isn't happening . . . They're not dead.
Without being truly aware of it, she pulled Angelita into her arms. "You're not dead," she whispered to the child. "You're just sleeping. You'll wake up soon." She placed the doll on Angelita's still chest and started to rock slowly, as she had when the little girl had begged bedtime stories of her. "You're just sleeping," she repeated, her voice filling with desperate conviction. "Hush now. . . . Shhhhh . . ."
That was how they found her three hours later, rocking slowly with her sister's body in her arms, but her voice had faded away to silence.
***
The slender young woman who crossed the threshold walked silently. She had been tracking the pair of vampires for nearly a month, following the trail of bodies further south in Europe until they reached a small village a few days' ride away. The whispers about a young woman's death had reached her there, accompanied by furtive superstitious signs made by the whisperers to ward against evil. They hadn't known that their true hope sat quietly in a corner of the tavern where the rumors were spreading, delicate and 'proper'. They probably wouldn't have understood what she was even if she had told them.
Now she stood in a house that had once been the home of a happy family, and the Slayer cursed herself for having arrived too late. Far too late, for the morning was already three hours old. William the Bloody and his paramour, Drusilla, were long gone. Only bodies remained now, and she would have to watch over their graves to be sure none of them would be animated by a splinter of the demons that had killed them.
Eveline du Chevalier was so tired of this business. She was so tired of arriving too late, seeing evil commit one atrocity after another, and knowing that even if she beat this one there were hundreds more she would never reach before her time finally came.
A creak of the floorboards sounded from the upstairs of the house. The fury in Eveline's eyes turned instantly to wariness. Silently, she crossed the dirt floor and climbed the ladder, a stake held ready in one hand just in case. Her caution turned to horrified concern as she spotted the woman and child. They were in a patch of hazy morning sun, marking them both as human, and the readied stake went back into its hidden pocket in her coat.
"Mademoiselle?" she asked gently. There was no response.
"Eveline?" an accented voice asked from the first floor. "What is it?"
The Slayer turned to her Watcher, a grim look on her face, and made a short summoning gesture before finishing her climb. Gustav Henrich frowned and followed her steps to the ladder. When he got to the top, his eyes widened. "Mein Göt," he whispered, and made the sign of the cross.
Eveline approached the woman slowly, training telling her that the child was as dead as the others in the house. "Madem --" she caught herself and switched to Spanish. "Señorita?" There was still no answer, and she cautiously knelt by the woman. "Señorita," she repeated. Catching sight of the blood drying on the woman's neck, she asked, "Are you hurt?"
Still the woman continued to rock. Just as Eveline began to ask again, however, a hoarse whisper emerged from the woman's throat. "They're sleeping . . . they're all sleeping . . . that's all."
There was desperation in her voice, laced only lightly with assurance. Tears leapt to Eveline's eyes, but she knew that this was a good sign. The woman wasn't so deeply sunk into her denial that she wouldn't accept the truth; there was hope.
"Señorita, look at me, please," she asked. When the woman slowly complied, Eveline realized with a start that they were nearly the same age; the girl looked barely twenty, while Eveline herself was seventeen. She put aside surprise and continued, touching the woman's shoulder gently. "What is your name?"
A frown flickered on the pale forehead and the woman -- the girl -- whispered, "My name? . . . Marianna. Maya. Maya Cortez."
"Maya," Eveline said, assuming it was a nickname. She took a breath and asked, "Maya . . . what happened here?"
Maya looked at her, blinking slowly. Finally, she whispered, ". . . Marisol . . . Marisol did this . . ." She paused, looking down at the body in her arms. After a long moment, she looked at Eveline again, her eyes dark with sorrow -- and sanity. "They're not sleeping . . . are they?"
She sounded like a child, asking her mother to assure her that the monsters didn't really exist, that bad things didn't really happen. But the Slayer knew better. Eveline sighed and shook her head, her gaze sympathetic as she answered quietly, "No. No, they're not."
Maya looked at her for a long moment, then looked down at the child. For the first time since she walked into the house, she let herself truly see what was around her. Tears came instantly, and a low, keening wail started in her throat. When the wrenching sobs started, the Slayer -- a girl only a few years younger than Maya herself -- held her.
It took them an hour to get the whole story from Maya, and convince her that she hadn't gone mad: her sister truly was a vampire now. Gustav was fascinated by the link that remained between the twins, but Eveline forbade the Dutchman to ask for details. Maya still teetered on a precipice, balancing delicately between sanity and the madness of shock and grief.
Gustav gave the exhausted young woman an elixir to help her relax, then carefully bundled her up and took her to the inn outside of town where he and Eveline had slept last night. She was asleep behind him on the horse before they were even halfway there. That had been the plan: to allow her to rest, undisturbed, while Eveline tried to make the "crime-scene" look less like something out of legend. While it was their job to stop the unholy, it was unwise to allow stories such as this to circulate as proof of its existence. The panic and suspicion that would set in otherwise would call up another Inquisition, and too many innocents would be hurt if that happened.
So Eveline made it look as if Marisol's "murderers" had returned to rob the family, had slaughtered them as they slept by slashing their throats, and then taken Maya with them. Eveline made sure to create signs of a struggle outside of the house, to allay any suspicions arising from Maya's disappearance that she had been involved. The reason for making Maya disappear was both compassion and caution: she would never be able to hold up to the questions of the townsfolk.
Eventually, the stunned young woman would have let slip the truth, and either been considered simply mad or else mad and a murderer. Indeed, the intense questions might themselves drive her over the edge to madness. Or else someone would have believed her, and the stories would have started.
Eveline worked quickly, knowing that neighbors might come by any time. When she was done, she crossed herself and said a quick but heartfelt prayer for the family. Then she mounted her horse and spurred it to a gallop, heading through the woods as she had instructed Gustav to do, leaving confusing tracks before backtracking towards the road.
Gustav was waiting in their room at the inn when she arrived, his expression weary and concerned. "She is still asleep," he told the Slayer as she entered the room silently. He motioned her towards the window, as far from the occupied bed as they could get. "It is not just the emotional exhaustion," he told her quietly. "She has lost a great deal of blood."
"They fed on her," Eveline said.
Gustav nodded. "Yes. There are bite-marks on her neck. What I cannot understand is why they left her alive."
Eveline frowned and looked over at Maya's still form, her expression pensive. "I have been wondering that myself," she admitted. "The best explanation I can guess at is simple cruelty. The demon perverts the very essence of the person it takes, we know that. If Maya and her twin were so close . . ."
"Then leaving her alive to face that . . . carnage . . . knowing that her twin was the cause, would be the most terrible of jokes."
Eveline nodded. She was silent for a long time, gazing out the window into the bright sunlight that was her greatest ally. Gustav made no attempt to intrude on her thoughts; his mind was just as busied, whirling with sadness and lingering horror at the things they had seen that morning. Finally, Eveline's voice jarred the silence. "We will find them," she vowed quietly. "And when we do, I will kill them. Slowly."
Gustav frowned and looked at her closely. They had been together for nearly three years, and had seen a great many terrible things, but he had never heard such a tone in the Slayer's voice before. Then he recalled the image from the loft, of Maya rocking slowly with the child's cold body in her arms, and he understood. A similar resolve awakened in his own soul, and he nodded. "Yes," he said softly. "We will."
Eveline looked at him and read the conviction in his eyes. She smiled thinly, and was rewarded with an answering smile from her Watcher. Then she looked at Maya's still-sleeping form and the smile faded. "We have to get her out of here before word reaches this town of the murders."
Gustav nodded. "When?"
Eveline sighed. She wished she could give the poor girl more time to rest, but it was impossible. Alarms would be raised, tongues would start wagging, and by nightfall -- if they were very lucky -- fingers would be pointing at the two strangers and their mysterious guest. They had to be as far from here as possible before the process began. The Slayer moved towards the bed to gather their few bags. "Now," she answered.
They were gone in less than half an hour, Eveline carefully supporting a still dazed Maya, who was wrapped in a cloak and hood to 'hide' her identity, while Gustav carried their bags (thus preserving the illusion that the Slayer was just another female). The horses were quickly made ready, and Gustav settled Maya securely in front of him, allowing her to drift in and out of sleep as they rode. They trio set off at a rapid pace, leaving a perplexed innkeeper and two handsomely rewarded stable-boys in their wake.
***
When word reached the inn a few hours later of the shocking murders, and the missing daughter, suspicion arose. A search party was sent out to try and find the strangers and their 'cargo', whom several witnesses confirmed had seemed to be a bit unsteady on her feet, but the three seemed to have vanished like mist. They were never seen in those parts again.
The Cortez house was burned to the ground in order to purify the spot and grant peace to the dead family. Suspicions quieted and it became accepted as fact that Maya Cortez had been just another victim, her body no doubt hidden away in some copse in the woods, never to be granted a proper burial.
For years afterward, stories floated about the previously quiet town, repeating the details of the massacre until the event became closer to fable than truth. If anyone in the sleepy town had come to know what happened in the years following that terrible night, it would have become the stuff of legend indeed. As it was, the only ones to whom the Cortez twins became mythic were the Watchers . . . and the Vampires.
But that story is yet to come.
Fin
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