Chapter 11
There was something both rewarding and disdainful about drinking a Bolshevik spy’s blood.
Let alone one with a demon in him. She had sensed that about Igor.
He was very infected. As was Boris. Their minds have turned to complete derangement, and their eyes were blind.
Igor accused her of being a Nazi when she was far from it.
These days, calling anyone a Nazi, especially in America, was a trigger word, resulting in many people getting beaten or killed just from being labeled as one.
Sonya saw the black haze of a demon filled these people.
It wasn’t pretty, and they barely knew it was happening.
But in most, it was because they had opened the door, a weak spot, for the evil to enter.
This man Igor and his comrade Boris, had performed some kind of ritual. Perhaps as part of their movement?
She tried to reason with him, but he was still bent on trying to destroy her and April. Boris had admitted to it before he went crazy and chewed his leg off.
Such a pity since he was singing, spewing all kinds of information.
Information Sonya needed to find out more about the group that had imprisoned her, the group that had killed so many of her friends and innocent people.
It didn’t matter what nationality they were.
..Russian, Chinese... the results were the same.
Now they wanted to change and infiltrate the very country she now love so much and felt so at home in: the United States of America.
Coming to April’s house was indeed a Godsend.
She had a sense of finding and hunting down demons.
So, she had a sense to get ready when she would arrive at Summer House. But she didn’t know who?
And she haven’t eaten for days since her last encounter.
Yes, she was a demon hunter, but she was also a vampire.
So she would choose to eat those who were infected, who were criminals, war criminals, child predators, etc.
If she was to be a vampire, at least she would help get rid of the evil in the world.
This Igor, after the conversation she had with him, was unfortunately, a criminal with very bad intent. He was on her menu, and a part of her wanted to stop drinking from him, but she knew she needed the fresh blood.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. Someone was at the door. She glanced up and met April’s horrified gaze. Their eyes locked for a confused moment before April ran off.
Poor girl. What confusion this must all be. A new tutor, Bolsheviks pretending to be Nazis at the door and now, a bloody scene. Not to mention how April’s lab was now a mess.
Sonya released Igor’s stump, wiped her mouth with the back of his sleeve, and went in search of her new student.
“April?” she said as she made her way down the hall. “April?”
She took the stairs down to the main floor and called her name again. Reaching the last step she heard stirring in the dining room.
“April?” she said as she followed the noise and entered the room.
Her eyes wide with shock and curiosity, April sat in her chair, her back stiff and her hands flat on the tabletop.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Sonya said. “It must have been quite a horrifying sight.”
April nodded. “You’re a...” She licked her lips and looked at Sonya, so many questions dancing in her eyes. “This seems so silly... I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but... are you a vampire?”
Sonya nodded as she slowly made her way to the table, careful to sit at the other end so as not to alarm the young girl. “I am.”
April nodded. “That would explain the superspeed. How you were able to get from one place to another in this house. How you were able to disappear and appear in the kitchen, the lab, outside to ge the chainsaw, the lab... Are you going to drink my blood as well?” she said, her voice suddenly small.
“Don’t worry, April,” Sonya said, hoping to reassure her.
“That is not my intention. Not at all. There’s no need to fear me.
Over the years I’ve managed to avoid human blood whenever I can.
I drink almost exclusively the blood of animals, or I fast a lot.
I fast and pray. I barely eat, but when I do, it’s just enough to survive, although it does get a little more complicated at times. ”
April nodded her understanding.
“I assure you, I take no pleasure in ending a life, even an animal’s life.
” She rolled her eyes up to suggest the men on the second floor.
“Well... I usually don’t,” she added with a smile, hoping to lighten the tense atmosphere.
“The situation you witnessed up there is not my usual way of doing things. Usually, it’s a little more battle, a little more fighting, and a little less questioning.
These men were very bad men. They intended on doing some very horrible things to us so it was a matter of self-defense. ”
April shrugged and pressed an uncertain smile. “I guess I would agree. I did my part in trying to defend myself.” She lifted her sledgehammer and smiled. “Living out here in the middle of nowhere by myself at times, you have to be prepared.”
“But you’re still worried about what I might do to you?”
April shrugged again. “Come to think of it, you probably wouldn’t want my blood anyway.
It’s quite weak in nutrients, as it were.
” She snorted. “You would almost think that I was also a vampire. I mean, I require the blood of others in a sense. I need the purification of blood to survive. All because of severe anemia.”
Sonya looked at her and smiled. “You would almost think you were like me.”
April frown. “Do you really think that could be possible?”
Sonya shrugged and let the thought sink in.
“I do conduct experiments with various animals,” April said, not taking the possibility of being a vampire very seriously.
“I’m trying to find the animal that will hold the key to regenerating blood.
There have been times when I thought I had found the solution, all without killing the animal,” she added.
“But it never worked for long. I guess my condition is so severe that there’s not much I can do about it. ”
“What about humans?” Sonya offered. “You know, many vampires don’t enjoy taking human life. If you have a breakthrough in your research, vampires might no longer have to drain their human victims.”
“Like a drink for vampires? Vampire wine?” April laughed.
“How fitting. We are a vineyard, after all, but I have to admit that vampires weren’t at the forefront of my thoughts as I researched this.
” She shrugged and seemed more relaxed as she sat back in her chair.
“I was told that my mother died while giving birth to me. Apparently, she’d lost a lot of blood soon after.
Hemorrhage, perhaps. Or anemic like me. Anyway, whatever it was, it seems that I’ve inherited this delicate and complicated condition. ”
“You must be handling it quite well to have made it this far,” Sonya said.
“My father had help from some very talented doctors,” April said. “The doctors realized pretty early on that there was something wrong with me. For a time, my father thought he would lose me, but the main doctor set up an effective contraption that kept me alive.”
“Really? What’s his name?”
“Her,” April corrected. “She’s really a kindly old woman... like a loving grandmother. No one would ever guess that she is a doctor. Her name is Sifu.”
“Sifu?” Could it be?
The name was like a punch in the gut. Sonya gasped and was immediately sent back to 1946 in the heart of China.
As a royal prisoner of the new communist state, she had lived within the four walls of a tiny cell, cold and hungry.
The conditions had been horrible and inhumane.
How could one human treat another in such a manner?
It seemed inconceivable.
Staring blankly at April, she clung to the edge of the table as the pain and suffering of those endless years came back.
Tears filled her eyes as she saw herself lying on the floor of that cell, dying, out of her mind and weeping as she laid dying.
She imagined seeing her baby, which she held for a brief moment in the hospital years before when she was still with her husband, an important man.
The baby was a girl, and he was not happy.
He was a temperamental man, even some said was more a man child, who accused her of all kinds of things.
He believed the child was not his, but Sonya insisted she was.
Sonya had asked that the girl was spared and that she would be raised outside of the palace, but still they took her newborn baby away.
When Sonya was abandoned by her husband, and she was captured and placed in prison by the communist guerillas, it had been years after she had given birth to her baby.
She still dreamt of her baby girl as she stayed in a state of shock and numbness in her cell, dreaming of better days.
A sudden vision of an elderly woman came to her, peering at her in the cell... a stranger.
But the image of the older woman disappeared, replaced by that of a tough prison guard who took no pity on her. Sonya was too weak from malnutrition and starvation to look again. Besides, her eyesight was failing.
“She’s just as good as dead,” he told the two men at his side. “Wrap her up and toss her out.”
Sonya could barely move in protest as the men wrapped her up in a filthy woolen blanket, even covering her face. One of them grabbed her feet while the other took a hold of her shoulders.
“The third ditch is too full,” the guard cried out. “Bring her to the fourth one. She’ll be the first of many to fill that one.”
The men grunted as they walked out of the cell, lugging about their half dead bundle. She couldn’t have been all that heavy; she was little more than skin and bones at that point.