Chapter 1 – Valtu #2
“Pregnant?” I repeated, feeling like the world was tilting on its axis and I was given yet another path to go on in this life. “Are you sure?”
She bit her lip and nodded. I could sense in her the conflict she was feeling, like a sixth sense was suddenly bestowed upon me. She was happy it was my baby, for it was mine, but she was scared of how I would react, and scared what to do about it after.
But the honest truth was, I was happy. I was ecstatic. I should have felt the fear she had, the impossibility of the situation, but I didn’t feel that way at all.
“I don’t know what to do…” she said, trailing off, looking away.
I sat up and reached for her, fingers under her chin, making her look at me. “You don’t know what to do? You’re going to have our baby, Mina. Isn’t that what you want?”
She nodded, a bright sparkle returning to her green eyes. “It is. But I don’t know how I can. I want you to be the father but…they can’t find out. They would kill me.”
Normally when one says their father would kill them, it’s an exaggeration. But with Mina, I knew the general would do it. I’d seen him slaughter women and children alike. His own daughter would not be spared.
“Did you tell anyone other than me?” I asked.
She shook her head but then stopped. “Only my handmaiden. I didn’t tell her but she knew.” My eyes went wide but she rushed on to assure me. “Don’t worry. I have known her since I was a baby. She would never tell. She is like a mother to me.”
I could only hope that was true. Either way, I didn’t want to stick around and find out.
I grabbed her hand and put it to my mouth, kissing her palm.
“We will find a way. We can escape to where they won’t find us.
” I didn’t know where that could be, considering the Russians had taken most of the country, but that didn’t seem to matter at that moment.
I watched as her shoulders lightened and tension left her jaw.
“Okay. We will have to leave soon before they can tell.” She reached down and rubbed her belly.
Under her layers of her dress, you couldn’t tell and even when I put my hand there it felt normal to me.
That was until I felt a surge of warmth and electricity come up from her belly and into my hand.
I had never felt anything like that before, it was like I was feeling life itself.
I could practically see lightning traveling up my arm.
“Where do you think we’ll go?” Mina said, oblivious to what happened.
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment, distracted by the feeling of pure life beneath my hand. What was happening to me?
“Were you born here or did your parents come from elsewhere?” she asked.
“Uh, I was adopted,” I told her. “I never knew my real parents.”
“Oh? That is interesting,” she said.
“I don’t even have a birthday,” I said absently, still feeling that energy surge through me, enough to make the hair on my arms and back of my neck stand straight up.
“We will have to change that,” she said, moving so that my hand fell away from her stomach. “Perhaps you can have the same birthday as our child. I do hope wherever we go, I can play my music. The only problem is, I will be too fat to play the harp.”
Mina was an accomplished musician, according to herself, but her voice was so clear and melodic when she sang to me, that I believed she had a natural talent. In a way, it was her passion for music that made me take it up over the years.
“We will have to leave without the harp,” I told her. “Without anything that won’t fit on a horse’s back. But I promise I will buy you anything you want once we are safe.”
I was such a fool. I had no money. All my wheat crop went to her father, and he barely gave me anything to survive on. I must have known that we would never be able to run away without being found, that there would be no happy ending for us. I must have known that it would only end in death.
But I believed the words I was saying, like only a fool would.
And Mina was happy. She grinned like the sun coming through clouds and she reached for me, pulling me down so I was on top of her, kissing me deeply. My hands went up her legs, eager to feel her again, and that was the last time I would ever feel her skin.
Even though it all happened so fast, I knew it was going to happen moments before it did.
I could hear the footsteps creeping through the brush, I could hear whispers.
I looked around, startled, but there was nothing around us at all.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening to my body.
I didn’t know then what I really was, or the change that was about to be underway, as it is for anyone with my background who turns thirty-five.
I didn’t even know how old I really was.
And then they appeared across the pond. Five soldiers belonging to the general. They saw me with my hands on Mina and that was all they needed.
They started running for us, swords drawn, and I got to my feet and hauled her up so that she was over my shoulder like a bag of wheat.
I had never moved so fast in my life and it was like I had a preternatural grace about me, like an animal taking flight from a predator.
Little did I know that I was becoming the predator.
I ran to Mina’s horse, flung her over its withers, then pulled myself astride, urging it into a gallop through the woods.
The men were on foot, but there was no doubt they had their horses nearby and were trying to catch us by surprise.
I wondered how far we could ride, if we could actually escape this way.
It was September, but we could ride into the north of the country for at least a month until the snow set in.
Perhaps the native peoples near the North Pole would shelter us in the unoccupied spaces.
The horse went as fast as it could, jumping over logs and streams, dodging trees and rock, and neither of us spoke. Mina gave out the occasional whimper or sob, and I knew she was crying because her handmaiden turned her in and that our lives had changed quicker than we were ready for.
I didn’t even know where we were going, but then I heard it over the thundering sound of Mina’s horse—the hooves of other horses, racing fast.
Coming toward us.
It was too late.
When the forest opened up to a meadow, a river cutting through it, there was an army of mounted soldiers on the other side.
A roar came out of my throat, something deep, dark and feral. It scared Mina, startled the soldiers. But it wasn’t enough to deter them. I turned the horse on its heel but now the soldiers were coming up from behind and we were surrounded.
“Mina!” the general’s voice came from the pack and the horses parted as he came through.
He was a tall thin man with an imposing face, like it was carved out of pure rock.
He put his hand forward as if to reach for us.
He said something in Russian to her, something I couldn’t understand and yet I understood.
He was making me out to seem like I was a bad man who captured her, raped her, impregnated her.
He coaxed her as if she were a skittish puppy hiding under a bed, offering it scraps.
But Mina didn’t fall for the scraps. She shook her head, her hands buried in the horse’s mane, and didn’t move.
“She isn’t going with you,” I said to the general in German. “She is staying with me.”
The general raised his chin with a sneer and spoke German back to me. “I forget you’re so primitive that you don’t even speak Russian. I would be careful if I were you. If you cared for her, you would admit to your crimes. You would sentence yourself to death so that she may go free.”
“And what of the baby?” Mina asked.
“Of course you can keep it if you choose,” he said, a blatant lie.
And while this was happening, my bones started to burn, like I was on fire from the inside out.
I felt like internal flames were being fused to my veins, that I was growing stronger somehow, unnaturally so, and that’s when the hunger started to kick in.
A deep growl from my stomach that made the horse snort and dance nervously underneath us, as if we were going to take off.
We should have, in hindsight.
At any rate, the horse’s movement was enough for the soldiers to spring into action, coming toward us.
Mina’s horse spooked further and suddenly reared back with a loud whinny and Mina was thrown to the ground.
I jumped off just as the horse took off at a gallop and grabbed Mina, hauling her to her feet, standing in front of her to protect her.
I snarled at everyone like I was a wolf in human form.
A few soldiers laughed nervously, eyeing each other in cagey amusement, but their horses were so disturbed that they wouldn’t advance further. They started pawing the ground, throwing their heads, and then rearing when the soldiers kicked their flanks.
It was at that moment that I understood.
The horses were afraid of me.
I was afraid of myself.
But I didn’t know why. How could I? There was no word for what I was becoming.
The soldiers got off their horses, some of them taking off in the direction that Mina’s horse went, and they approached me slowly, spooked as well. It wasn’t until the general barked at them in Russian that they suddenly lunged like the trained monkeys they were.
I did my best to fight them off but it was impossible to do when I was trying to protect Mina. In the end I covered her like a blanket in a futile effort to keep her safe.
But then there were too many soldiers, from all sides, crossing the river to get us and then they were ripping us apart.
They dragged her off, her heels making tracks through the ground, and she screamed for me, hands outstretched and I couldn’t reach her, not with so many men around me, holding me in place.
All the anger, all the rage, the pain, the anguish swelled inside me.
I felt myself transform into something.
The fire in my bones, the hunger in my gut, the pure animalistic urge to kill and fuck and eat. The soldiers felt it too, and all the horses were gone, and even the general had dismounted before his stead took off on him.
He grabbed hold of Mina by her hair, making her scream.
Threw her on her back in the dirt.
“Stop!” I screamed, another inhuman voice that was ripped out of me, tearing apart my throat.
“What will happen to the baby?” the general sneered in German.
He raised his boot.
Brought it down.
In horrific slow motion.
He stomped right on Mina’s stomach.
I howled in pain, panting, clawing, trying to do what I could to stop this nightmare from unfolding. “Mina!” I cried out.
She had the wind knocked out of her, his boot still pushing down and she was trying to reach up for her father to help her, gasping for air, face contorted in pain and terror.
But he didn’t help her.
He just said something in Russian. A word I understood.
Whore.
Then he brought out his sword.
I was done with feeling helpless.
I started to fight harder as the fire in my bones threatened to drown me in pain, but the pain was nothing compared to what was about to happen.
I remember I was calling her name, screaming it until my voice was hoarse, as if that alone could stop things. But I know now that fate is stubborn when it is set in motion.
Nothing can stop it.
The general raised the sword above Mina’s head.
Her eyes widened until the glint of the sun on the sword made her blink.
He hesitated for just a moment.
A moment for the world to slow down.
A moment for Mina to realize she was going to die.
A moment for me to realize that I was going to lose her.
The same moment I knew I would kill everyone in my path.
“My heart will always find yours!” she screamed at me.
He brought the sword down.
Sliced through her neck, decapitating her.
Her head rolled my way, stopping at my feet.
Beautiful, lifeless eyes staring straight up at the sky, the color of unfurled leaves in spring.
There was no time to feel broken at the loss, at the horror. No time to weep, to grieve, to even feel shock.
I became a monster.
I fully gave in to what I was trying to hold back, that last piece of humanity running away from me like the blood from Mina’s severed head.
With a surge of fiery power, I let out another roar, inhuman enough to make blood run cold, loud enough to shake the earth, and I fought. I surged forward, clawing, biting, like a ravenous bear.
The soldiers stabbed me with their swords, but they didn’t kill me, and the pain only felt sweet and I kept going until I had their swords in my hands.
I worked my way through the soldiers, biting into their necks, tearing out their throats, stabbing them in the chest, the face, the head, leaving them to bleed out while I destroyed them all.
The general at this point was trying to get away. He was running on foot for the hills. He had no one left to protect him.
I gave chase after him, this time it felt more like a game, like I was actually enjoying this, predator and prey. I laughed maniacally as I went, slowing down and speeding up, letting him think he had a chance of escape when I already knew he didn’t.
Finally he fell down, too exhausted to get up, and I was on him.
I took my fingers and plunged them into his eye sockets, ripping out his eyes until his eyeballs were in my hands, then, while he was screaming, forced his eyes into his mouth. Grabbed his jaw and made him chew and choke on them.
Then I put my body over his, bit into his neck with newly sharpened teeth, and drank down his blood until that hunger I had was finally satisfied, until his screams vanished into death.
It was the end of me.
It was the beginning of someone else.
Something else.
It took decades of killing people and animals, drinking their blood, and hiding my true self as I traveled south, taking a boat across to Estonia, then disappearing into Eastern Europe where it was easier to hide, before I finally met others that were like me.
When I discovered there was a term for what I had become.
A vampire.
And that my birth parents had been vampires too. If they had raised me, I would have known that at age thirty-five I would transition from human to vampire.
But I didn’t know.
I found out in time to save my own life.
But too late to save Mina’s.
Too late to escape a cursed life, one that will follow me into all of eternity.