Chapter Four #2
No matter how many years passed, whenever she walked across the ice at night she recalled the time her dad had slipped and nearly broke his neck on this very path.
When he came through the doorway Mihaela’s mother shooed her out of the room.
She, the ever mischievous child, had peered through the crack of the door, curious to see the state of her father.
He had come home with his clothes wet, his chin bloody from where he had hit the ground.
It was a strange thing, what her mother had done. Not only hiding the sight of her father hurt but also the sight of her mother tending him, helping clean the cuts.
The memory and any reminiscence of her parents dissolved. A tingling sensation crept up the fingers of her right hand, pulling on her nerve endings as if someone was patting her hand gently, trying to get her attention.
“Astra?” Mihaela hesitated. She liked it when Astra materialized from nothing, as if stepping out of another time and place, and intertwining their fingers in welcome.
There was another jolt and she stopped mid-step before the dark entrance of the building, standing on a patch of snow and scattered sand and salt.
From the corner of her eye Mihaela saw a figure reflected in the glass door, a silhouette walking towards her.
She tried to turn and face it but her body failed to obey.
It was horrifyingly similar to that time four months ago.
Mihaela’s pulse quickened. Too many pairs of hands gripped her and dug into her skull, wrenching her face upwards.
Fingers pressed into her temples, pushed the hair away from her forehead, pulled the flesh to the side, burrowing in, searching.
The pressure made her ears pop, her vision blurred, the world around her slipping out of focus.
Look at him! A male voice commanded and the pressure increased. The fingers dug deeper into her skull. She vaguely felt the nails leave marks under her chin from the effort to keep her looking up, then twist her head to the side. The figure reflected in the glass moved and multiplied.
Her mind reeled. The sand beneath her feet shifted, and the building to her side tilted dangerously close.
Something was pushing her back—back to when it happened.
Mihaela did not want to remember. She did not want to be the trembling thing on the ground, confused and alone.
Still warm and still alive, her last moments as a human.
The man reached out to pull her up to her feet. His hand seized her wrist like shackles.
Not human. Not like Astra either, Mihaela thought, struggling to both look up and away from the man. I don’t want to see him. Not again. Her hands flew up to cover her face, fingers pressing into the tender flesh.
“Stubborn as your brother,” the man had said, his voice a low cracking sound, as he yanked her up by the hair. The echo of the memory tore at her.
Look at him! the voice said again, growing urgent.
Her head was forced once more up so she could look nowhere but up. The man’s body moved into the shadows, dragging her with him. She could not make out his face. She did not want to. Scorching liquid burned her mouth and throat, the iron tang made her gums throb with pain.
“I will give you the greatest gift I can bestow upon mankind,” the man had said in her memory. The force behind his voice cut like glass.
The man was wrong. There was nothing human about him. His eyes—something was wrong with his eyes. They spilled out of their sockets and ran down his twisted face, glowing like silver magma.
Mihaela retched. She opened her mouth wide, gasping for air, and choked on blood. Her nails continued to rake across her cheekbones and dig in the hollows of her eyes, desperate to pull them out, anything to prevent her from seeing that thing, its melting face and burning eyes.
She was on the ground, pressed tightly into the door, her hands had formed into tight fists and when she finally relaxed them, they were full of wet sand.
She did not remember how she got here… on the ground…
this building… this door… a backpack within reach, bulkier than when she went out for the evening.
I was at the library… my mother, she—
When she came back to herself a stranger was crouching next to her. His hand tugged her face up and propped a finger gently under her chin. She blinked through the tears of blood at the man before her.
His long dark hair was parted down in the middle, his swarthy skin devoid of warmth, and he was frowning at her.
Mihaela’s eyes trained down his body and scoffed.
The man wore a dark violet suit, the shade verging on indigo, and under the coat he had a black shirt unbuttoned at the top.
The more she looked at his naked chest the colder she felt.
She did not know if vampires sneezed, but she felt she was close to running a fever simply from looking at him.
Instead, she focused on the black handkerchief in his breast pocket and the little pin and chain decorating the coat’s lapel.
“é lei?”[9]
It took Mihaela all her strength not to jump at the sound of the new voice, the coldness of it enough to splinter her. She looked over the man’s shoulder at the second figure behind him.
Neither of them is human.
“é lei,[10]” the longhaired one confirmed with a nod and stood up, brushing the snow from his rumpled trousers.
She recognized his voice as the one who had been probing her mind, ordering her. Look at him, the voice had said, pulsing.
The second man was a little shorter than his companion, though broader in chest and shoulders.
He had a more muscular build, his dark hair was short, curly, a few stray locks had fallen over his forehead.
Mihaela could not see the exact colour of his eyes, she could only hope they were not as black and lifeless as the other man’s.
But he was dressed sensibly for the weather, which she found comforting.
Under the long brown wool coat, he wore a grey three-piece suit, his shirt buttoned up properly, a dark tie around his neck.
She could see the glimmer of a watch on his wrist. He looked well put, a figure of authority—unlike the other one.
Apart from the thing that had made her, these were the first vampires Mihaela had ever seen.
She had not thought of what she would do if she came across others of her kind.
University, hiding from her parents, missing Astra—all of that had kept her busy.
She had no idea if there was some etiquette, some secret handshake.
Was there a word in a dead language the undead whispered to each other in greeting and acknowledgement?
Seeing how they had forced their way inside her mind and backed her into a corner, they were older and stronger than her.
Then again, almost anything was stronger than a fledgling vampire.
Even a human if they were determined enough.
The well-dressed man spoke hurriedly, his eyes fixed on her. His companion’s lips pressed in a thin line before giving out a low hmm.
“What is your name?”
“You scrambled my mind but you didn’t see who I am or what I’m called?” Mihaela laughed, her voice dry and haggard.
“You make a fair point.” The longhaired vampire smiled, showing his fangs. “You can tell us who you are or I can find out for myself.”
Go back into that little head of yours, his voice slithered in.
“Mihaela!” she yelled out, her name echoing in the empty yard, as she desperately scrambled to her feet.
If she offered freely, would they still go and scrape more of her insides?
“My name is Mihaela, and one time in middle school a girl asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said no but I have a pet fish and I… it made sense at the time, and all the kids laughed at me, and I…”
The well dressed vampire looked up at the building before them, his eyebrows shot up as he scrutinised the Soviet-era construction.
At this hour only a few windows shone bright, some had Christmas decorations, little blinking lights, painted snowflakes and Santas, rough paper garlands cut and glued by children.
“Mihaela,” the well dressed man repeated her name, rolling it around his tongue to taste it, “are you aware that you are the only vampire in this country?”
“I…”
She looked from one man to the other, frowning. That did not sound right. Someone had made her, she could not be the only one. The only vampire in this city, sure; she was turned in Tarnovo, but not the only vampire in the whole of Bulgaria.
“Vampires, if any, must go to Greece or Turkey. They cannot stay here. They are not permitted,” the man explained, and his words made no sense to her.
“He was not Greek,” Mihaela blurted out. From the little she recalled of the vampire who made her—her maker—he was not from this part of the globe.
And neither are you two, she thought and mused.
Their skin was tan and they had something Mediterranean about them but they also were not Greek.
When they first spoke to her, Mihaela found their pronunciation weird until she realized they were not talking to her in Bulgarian at all.
They were speaking Russian. Like her parents’ generation—and the one before them—children used to study Russian at school, but her class was one of the last to have it in the curriculum.
Mihaela disliked using the language; its classical literature be damned.
“He isn’t, no,” the man conceded and pulled up the sleeve of his coat to look at his watch. “He should have taken you with him when he made you.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“You can ask him yourself.”