Soulless, p.10
Soulless, page 10
"You're still so handsome," Simon had said, trying to kiss Ban, to sway him.
"Perhaps. But this places suits me ill. I have no wife or baby clinging to me," Ban replied. "May the Lord God bless you. Farewell."
For the next few years, Ban traveled from village to village, performing odd tasks, even assisting in smithies when needed. Twice he nearly joined the ranks of religious brothers, taking time within their walls to enjoy the peace and sing as a lay worshipper. But the call of the flesh was still strong in him. It prompted him to sin three or four times a month with other bent men, lovers whose names Ban never learned.
"Come back to us when the fire is quenched," a Franciscan called Brother John advised.
"But how will I know?"
The monk had smiled. "One day your heart will turn from the pursuits of the flesh to the pursuits of the intellect. The soul. Then you may return, enter religious life, and take holy vows."
Ban considered that. "Suppose... suppose it happens again, even after I take orders? Suppose I fall in love with another man?"
"That is why you must return when the fire is quenched," Brother John said, placing a kindly hand over Ban's. "So any affection will be divorced from physical sin. Chaste love between men is permitted, my friend. Even encouraged."
By Ban's thirty-second year, his travels took him to the city of Bath. There he beheld the traveling circus called Phoenix, and met the creature who destroyed his mortal existence.
***
After taking Carmilla from Grantley's stable while the stable boys slept, Ban had ridden down to Maidenstone proper, lost in memory. But now, on the high street, he sensed prey in several directions. The only question was, which prey best fit Sebastian's rules?
Tying Carmilla to a post, he stroked her head, assuring the white mare he would take no longer than necessary. The horse understood Ban's need in a way certain higher animals, namely humans, pretended not to comprehend. Ban craved blood. He hadn't killed in three months, almost four, and the mere taste of Martha Bradley and Nicholas Robinson wasn't enough.
A drunken man crouched behind a rain barrel, sliding in and out of consciousness, waiting for his eldest son to find and shepherd him home. The man's shirt was stained with vomit, trousers wet in the crotch. Drawing closer, Ban tried to perceive something, anything, attractive in the man called Jonah Pate. This was precisely the sort of victim Sebastian took without hesitation, mystified by Ban's aversion. For Sebastian, accepting such prey was as simple as eating an overripe plum instead of wishing for a perfect one. For Ban, taking a man like Jonah Pate was acceptable only if starvation loomed.
A woman sat up in a nearby cottage, a single lamp burning, praying to Mary, Mother of God, over and over again. The woman believed her daughter was dead. No... she knew her daughter was dead, Ban learned, merging his qi with hers almost effortlessly. Not long ago, a half-decomposed, unrecognizable corpse had been recovered from the river Maiden. At the time of her disappearance, the missing daughter had been despondent over an unhappy love affair. Frightened of an illicit pregnancy, she'd hinted to her mother that she couldn't bear the shame. Now, after the anonymous woman's burial in Pauper's Field, her mother sat up in the wee hours torturing herself, imagining her tempestuous daughter's suicidal despair, envisioning an eternity of hellfire.
Ban peeked through the cottage's window, able to see through a wide crack in the shutters. The woman was old, a crone before her time, toothless and white-haired and shaking with torment.
No better than Jonah Pate.
Ban continued searching. Most villagers, physically exhausted by the bonfire's excesses, were abed and deeply asleep. Children, having stuffed themselves with delicacies, dreamed of eating as much as they craved every night. A pretty young man dreamed of fighting, dancing, fucking. An old man tossed and turned, muttering, "Black Shuck... God save me, the Black Shuck...."
Let me die.
Ban stopped. Fixing on that thought, he swung toward it, moving to a two-building dwelling positioned apart from the other cottages, where a fire might burn uncontrolled without taking every other home on the street with it. Judging by the building's sign—a sheaf of wheat with a crude loaf of bread inside—Ban had found the abode of Maidenstone's baker.
Let me die, dear God, let me die.
The door-lock was easily overcome. He was strong, far stronger than a fit human. Like any good predator, he could see in the dark, picking out shapes once invisible to his human eyes, drawn by the smell/sense/feel of prey in the house's back room.
"Catherine," he said when he saw the baker's widow. Her qi joined with his, merging seamlessly, telling him more than he needed to know. She'd grown up the loveliest girl of her generation, flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, skin like fresh milk. But when she was sixteen, Silas, the baker's boy, had discovered her bathing in the Maiden and raped her.
By the time the child quickened, Silas proposed marriage, citing a change in his soul wrought by Jesus Christ himself. Praying Silas was sincere, and knowing she had no other choice, sixteen-year-old Catherine had wed him. Before long, she was known throughout Maidenstone as the baker's wife. And the year she turned thirty-three, she was the baker's widow.
"I had to kill him," Catherine whispered to Ban from her sickbed. After climbing upon her roof to mend the rotted thatch and falling through, she'd been paralyzed from mid-trunk down, unable to rise from her bed or feed herself via cup or spoon.
"Of course," Ban said, bringing a stool close to her as their spiritual connection deepened. "Tell me."
Catherine had objected only feebly when her first child, a boy with shrunken legs and one bulging, cow-like eye, was seized by Silas. Some ill fate had befallen the babe, but the details were never clarified.
"It was a changeling, no son of mine," Silas insisted thereafter, ignoring the fact he'd seen the child pulled from between his new wife's legs. "Don't think on it again."
Valiantly, Catherine carried on. She tried to be a good wife to Silas, learning to cook his favorite foods and master the bakery's nuances. By the time she turned twenty, Catherine was far more skilled than Silas, expanding her knowledge by tapping travelers for fresh ideas. By contrast, Silas, twenty-one, developed a marked preference for home brew over work. When he wasn't sleeping it off, he was searching for new quim, especially virgins who had no yardstick of comparison.
Twice more Catherine conceived. Twice more she bore crippled, cow-eyed babies, taken by Silas and no doubt cast down a well or thrown off a cliff. Life went on. The bakery prospered as Catherine pulled loaves from the oven and delivered goods herself. Then when she was thirty-three, Silas heard God's call.
The call was not, as Catherine hoped, for Silas to take Holy Orders or become a mendicant. Either path would impel him to renounce the world and sacrifice his personal pleasure. No, as Silas explained, the Lord had told him to put Catherine aside and replace her with a fertile young wife. The putative wife in question, Molly, had already borne Simon's bastard, a healthy young boy. Now Silas was determined to make Molly's second child, just four months from birth, his legitimate heir.
"The nunnery is but five miles hence," Silas said, pointing as if Catherine were too dumb to comprehend. "Renounce our wedded life and pledge yourself to God. Your womb is dead. Your failure as a mother accuses you. Offer yourself as an obedient bride of Christ and pray in His charity He accepts you."
Catherine hadn't answered. Seeming to listen, she'd gone to the fire, withdrawing a red-hot poker. The moment Silas turned his back, she thrust it between his buttocks, entering him far more deeply than he'd ever entered her.
"I laughed," Catherine confessed to Ban, too much white visible around her eyes as she focused on his face. "Silas thought himself so clever, so superior. But one hot poker up the arse, and he vomited blood. Shit buckets. Curled up and died."
"Surely he deserved it."
"Perhaps. Still, I cleansed him. Dressed him in his best. Told the doctor he collapsed from too much drink and died vomiting. From the look on his face, it seemed likely. And no one pawed in his drawers to see if his hole was burnt wide open or not." Catherine sighed. "So for six months I dwelt alone, no husband or son to enslave me, proud as a queen. Every morning was strewn with jewels, every evening was golden. Heaven. Till I sought to repair my roof, and Fate punished me at last.
"I ought never have attempted it. My neighbors begged me to think better of it. Peter, the goatherd, even promised to do it for me for nothing, though I didn't believe him. He just wanted a spot in my bed, not to mention control of the bakery. I climbed upon the roof, and for the first hour I was on top of the world." Catherine laughed. "Then a rotted board snapped and I fell. Never felt a thing. Nor do I now."
Grimacing, Catherine shut her eyes, showing pretty dimples and brown front teeth. "Dr. Flowers says my back is broken. I'll never walk or feel again. But I can smell, curse me. Do you smell it?"
"I do," Ban said gently.
"I've shit the bed again. I don't even smell the piss now. But the shit...." Catherine sighed.
It didn't matter to Ban. He could see the shadow of former beauty on Catherine's face. More importantly, he sensed her courage, her strength of spirit. She was attractive enough to assure feeding would satisfy him. And in the eyes of Maidenstone, her injury had rendered her worthless, a collective judgment that would satisfy Sebastian.
"The stink never fades," Catherine continued. "I'll lay here in my own filth till the clock peals nine and the girl Dr. Flowers sent arrives. Unless...." Longing filled her voice. "Unless you take me. Carry me out of this world to God Almighty for judgment."
"Is that what you wish?"
Catherine faltered for only a moment. Some part of her had been designed to fight, to endure. But her defiance was fading fast.
"You're beautiful," she whispered, upper arm trembling as if she wanted to lift a hand and cup Ban's cheek. "Perfect. An angel, yes?"
"Yes." Taking Catherine's numb, inert hand, Ban placed it against his face. She smiled, pretending she could feel the flesh-to-flesh connection, and he smiled back, controlling his bloodlust with all his might.
"First, tell me." Her eyes filled with tears. "What was I meant to do? After Silas took me on the riverbank. Got me with child and cast my first babe away. What was I meant to do? What was the right choice?"
"There wasn't one."
"There had to be," Catherine whimpered.
"No. There was only endurance. You've gone as far as any god could ask. Now I'll end your suffering. Take you to paradise." Ban held Catherine's gaze until hope kindled in her eyes. Then, faster than a mortal could perceive, he withdrew the double-pronged bleeder-ring from his pocket, opened her throat, and drained her dry.
Chapter Eight
Nicholas dreamed he was back at university, debating atheism with Richard, a fellow student. At nineteen, Richard's fondest wish was to unite his twin passions, science and theosophy, writing a modern-day treaty that would put St. Thomas Aquinas's ruminations on the marriage of faith and reason to shame.
"So putting aside your nonsensical postulation," Richard said, "that this orderly, naturally hierarchical world around us has arisen from chaos, let us pretend you are correct, sir. There is no God, nor any moral imperative beyond the will of man. What of goodness? Why does it exist at all?"
"It exists because people wish to treat one another well," Nicholas replied. "Most people, most of the time. For every scoundrel in this world, I submit there are twenty honest men. For every craven murderer, I contend there dwell a hundred productive citizens who would never kill, except in defense of hearth and home."
Richard looked dubious. "Ah, but according to you, these honest men, these legions of productive citizens who would never wantonly murder, are held in check by nothing but mere fables. By a collective delusion that after death, a non-existent god will judge them, consigning the wrongdoers to perdition."
"I never said it."
"Perhaps not explicitly, yet it's the only conclusion," Richard said. "Why else, in this godless world you imagine, would the majority stoop to behave with common decency?"
"You just said it. Because it's common. Dictated not by fear of the unseen, but by human nature," Nicholas insisted. "Because of awareness that only by maintaining a well-ordered society can everyone prosper. Or even because of an intrinsic lack of avarice, bloodlust, and greed. Religion teaches man from the cradle that he is evil, depraved, and in need of constant intervention. I submit it is not so—"
Richard interrupted with a bark of incredulous laughter.
"Aye, laugh, because this burgeoning lie has enriched the church, both in Rome and here at home. It allows the aged and physically weak, which you must admit describes the priestly caste, to rule over the strong, the better-educated, even the powerful. Because in a terrorized tribe that never questions superstition, nothing is more potent than a shaman rattling his bones."
"So." Richard looked truly offended. "Evil does not exist, then, sir?"
"I never said it." Nicholas kept his good humor. In his early days at University, he'd been too green to realize winning debates, even private ones, would lose him friends. "Certain men do wrong. A few from stupidity, no doubt. A congenital lack of understanding. Others from a vicious nature or want of proper breeding. Most from temptation: the desire to have what they want when they want it, and damn the consequences. I merely contend a disbelief in God does not equal a disbelief in evil. It simply means such evil is not ascribed to something beyond man's control, like Adam tasting the apple or Beelzebub's snares. Evil, like goodness, is a malady found only within the ranks of mankind, which must strive for greater enlightenment."
In the memory this dream sprang from, Richard had made his exit then, tossing over his shoulder an insincere prayer for the deliverance of Nicholas's soul. But in the dream, Richard only laughed, transforming into Bancroft Ulwin.
"I like this game." Ban's voice was sweet, musical. "And I approve of your philosophy. Good and evil are constructs devised by humans. I died centuries ago. No longer human, I am consequently beyond good and evil."
"I never said it," Nicholas repeated for the third time. Ordinarily, he never chose to debate unless his argument was thoroughly mapped out, every possible objection already considered. When it came to a non-human creature like Ban, Nicholas didn't know how he felt.
The vampire seemed to read his mind. "Ah. Yes. You suffer agonies, don't you? If a wolf had tried to rip out Martha's throat, I daresay your moral sensibilities would never have engaged. But because I speak and think and look like a man, you find it somehow unconscionable that I feed on man's blood."
"Of course. You survive by betraying your own kind."
"Not my kind. Not any longer." In the dream, Ban stepped closer, holding Nicholas's gaze until an unbearable, unanswerable ache burned in his lower belly. "Informed of my existence, what is your philosophy now? Do we share a godless world where evil men sometimes prevail and good deeds must be their own reward? Or is this still a world of angels and devils, right and wrong, heaven and hell?"
Nicholas awoke with a groan. For a moment, he thought he was hung over, that he'd stayed up indulging in more drink than usual. Then he saw his ripped trouser leg, the spatter of dried blood on his bed linens, and remembered.
Ban healed the wound, Nicholas thought, touching the spot on his inner thigh where the vampire had fed from him. Strange, how the memory stirred Nicholas, automatically stiffening him in that one inadequate spot toward the root. No matter how Ban denied it, had his blood effected some healing of old wounds? How else could such lust in a eunuch be explained? Unless the psyche alone—intellectual desire—possessed such power....
Mouth dry and vision bleary, Nicholas sat up. As expected, the room rotated, settling into quiescence only when he closed his eyes. Yes, he'd lost enough blood to feel hazy. Breakfast in bed would be wiser than risking the stairs and possibly breaking his neck.
Just last night, you contemplated throwing yourself down the stairs, a sardonic inner voice prodded Nicholas. Yet after being used obscenely, you seem to value your neck a good deal more. The smell of his seed, his saliva, clings to your chest like eau de cologne.
It did. With slow movements, Nicholas traced himself from flat belly to ribs to pink aureoles, fingertips sliding over the places Ban had splattered him and then licked clean. Each nipple hardened, tingling with faint pleasure as Nicholas touched them, remembering. What would it feel like if Ban sucked them?
Best avoid the stairs, then, so you can find out, came the sardonic voice again.
Nicholas realized he was sitting alone in his bedroom, naked to the waist, trousers ripped, caressing himself and fantasizing. Ludicrous. Better to make himself minimally presentable, ring for service, and eat as much as he could manage before trying once again to speak with Grand-Mamma.
His silver hip flask sat on the washstand, next to the tin of salve and a note. Unfolding the parchment, Nicholas discovered Ban wrote in a self-consciously correct hand, far superior to his own.
My Nicky,
I took the liberty of refilling your flask. I didn't want you tumbling headlong downstairs in pursuit of your nightly dram. After what passed between us last night, I returned the rope to its proper place. Let us hope I need not fetch it back. As for the knife, it was too big for the sort of play I like best, so it too has been returned. I shall bring better toys from my own chest. Keep the salve, though, and guard it well, for your future comfort.
Tonight when I return, we shall discuss the sale of Grantley, lest you imagine I'd forgotten. After business will come pain, or pleasure, or both.
Ban
***
Breakfast, which included a tot of whiskey in his tea, did much to improve Nicholas's vigor. His dizziness disappeared, along with his weakness. And not only did his right knee bend as if the sprain had never happened, it ached far less than normal. Unable to resist the temptation, Nicholas made his way downstairs, then up, then down again.
