Chapter 24 #2
“Violetta would sneak away from home in the middle of the night to see Luther. She had no idea that Caterina had started following her on the escapades. On the last visit, the fateful night that changed everything,” Sebastian said dramatically, “Luther asked Violetta to run away with him. He was asking a lot of her, as she’d never witnessed life outside our tiny village and would have to leave behind all that she knew.
As a token of his devotion, Luther told her about his true nature, that he was vampire. ”
“Did she freak?”
“No. He also presented her with a set of his fangs, which, he said, would give her the power to control him. By doing this, he was showing her how much he trusted her.”
I was speechless. Michael Graves had sworn that I was fated for a dark existence interconnected with vampires, which had seemed crazy at the time.
Now here was my long-lost grandfather, telling me details about ancient events that were eerily like my own life lately.
The coincidence was far too great. Yet, how it all related to me, I still couldn’t fathom.
“Violetta and Luther devised a plan for them to run away the following night. The yearly autumn harvest festival would be taking place in the town square, and they figured her absence would be noticed less by her mother. She was to meet Luther at the edge of the forest that marked the border of the village. They solidified their plan with a kiss and then parted. It was the last they saw of each other.”
“Oh no. Caterina?”
“She’d eavesdropped on the whole exchange,” he said with a grim nod. “The next afternoon, she slipped an herb into Violetta’s lunch that would make her sick and pass out all night.”
“That bitch.”
“Indeed. But that wasn’t even the worst of it,” he said.
“During the festival, Caterina took a few men with her into the forest and ambushed Luther at the meeting spot. The men beat Luther and then hanged him. Believing he was dead, they left him in the forest and went back to the festival, pretending as if they’d been there all night.
Catarina also took Luther’s fangs from Violetta’s room and ground them up into a fine powder.
She then mixed the powder into the fruit punch she made every year for the celebration. ”
“Mm-mm, fang punch,” I joked, and Sebastian chuckled.
“What happened was this: Everyone in the entire village drank the punch. It was an integral part of the harvest ceremony and blessed by a priest, so it was believed to contain miracles and protection. It was deemed blasphemous and bad luck to not drink it.”
“So, when you say everyone drank it, you mean everyone.”
“With one exception.”
“Violetta, who was home in bed,” I guessed. “I still don’t understand why Caterina mixed the fangs in the punch.”
He explained, “Since she’d overheard Luther telling Violetta that she could control him with her fangs, Caterina believed Luther would be compelled to stay away if the villagers possessed a fragment of his fangs within themselves.”
“Because they all wanted him gone?”
“Right. To foolproof her plan, Caterina told a few village elders what she had done to the punch. They then made a conscious and collective effort to ban Luther by chanting a spell to keep him away. What Caterina didn’t realize, however, was that by drinking the spiked punch, the villagers had also taken in some of Luther’s vampire characteristics. ”
“That’s why you age the way you do?” I asked, astonished.
“Yes, and because of whatever improvised spells Catarina used, I suspect.”
“So, it boils down to drinking fangs and witchcraft—or whatever Catarina’s magic was called in her day?” It sounded ridiculous and I was skeptical, but the proof was sitting right there next to me. I could hardly deny what I was seeing with my own two eyes.
Sebastian nodded, then shifted topics. “If you think I had it bad being a pubescent boy for centuries, imagine what it was like for those who were given the fang punch as babies and toddlers. Many of them went mad.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that, but how awful. It must have been great for those who were adults, though, right? Like drinking from the Fountain of Youth.”
“Not everyone wants to live forever,” Sebastian said dryly. “Regardless, none of the adults survived the aftermath.”
“Aftermath?”
“Luther.”
“He wasn’t dead,” I deduced. “Vampires can’t be killed by hanging.”
“Right. However, it did take Luther three days to recover from the assault. During that time, he hid within an outcropping of rocks, protecting himself from the sun,” he said.
“Poor Violetta, believing that Luther had forsaken her, was inconsolable. It wasn’t until she overheard her mother discussing the ambush in the forest that she believed he was dead.
She confronted her mother, who didn’t deny what she’d done.
She told Violetta there was no longer any reason not to marry the man she’d been promised to. ”
I was inexplicably furious. It wasn’t like I knew these people. Still, how awful. “Caterina was the worst!”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t get any better,” Sebastian said. “Violetta went mad with grief. Devastated, she threw herself off a cliff and died in the ocean below. She’d left a note: May death join us.”
“So sad,” I said, my eyes watering.
“As fate would have it, Luther came back to the village the very night of Violetta’s death.
Learning that his beloved was gone, he set out on a warpath of revenge against the whole village.
The townspeople naively underestimated Luther’s strength and tried to fight him.
Caterina and the elders tried to compel him to leave, but his rage was far too great.
” Sebastian swallowed. “I saw the massacre with my own eyes. I’ve witnessed countless atrocities in all the years I’ve been alive, but what happened in our village that night was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
It still haunts me to this day, even though the whole thing took place within an hour. ”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. What could I say that wouldn’t sound glib?
“Luther set fire to the village and slaughtered the adults, including my parents, who would technically be your great-grandparents. He spared only the children because he felt that we were innocent in the betrayal.”
“Lucky for you that Luther was sensible enough to do that.”
Sebastian tipped his head thoughtfully. “He saved Caterina for last so that she would witness the destruction. Her final words before he ripped her limb from limb were a hex: ‘May the village children be a curse to your kind!’”
“That was dumb,” I remarked. “What if her curse made Luther change his mind about sparing the children?”
“Maybe that’s what Caterina had hoped for, since all the adults were gone. Maybe she thought we wouldn’t survive without them. Luckily, Luther dismissed Caterina’s curse as the delusional ravings of a superstitious peasant.”
“How did the children survive, if you were all so young?”
“The fires Luther created were vast enough that surrounding towns came to our aid. This is how our bloodline was dispersed. We went to different regions, where our adopted families resided.”
I ruminated on all my grandfather had told me. “Did you hate Luther for what he did?”
Sebastian shrugged. “If I hated Luther, I might as well have hated Caterina and the whole village. They were all innocent yet guilty, if you know what I mean? Luther only wanted to love Violetta. Caterina only wanted what she believed was best for her daughter and family. And the village was only trying to protect their way of life. I’ve been alive for over a thousand years.
Can you imagine what it would have done to me, carrying around so much hate?
Harboring hate gets you nowhere, and the only person it really hurts is yourself.
No, I made peace with the past long ago,” Sebastian said, his voice a million miles away.