His Bloody Bride

Chapter 9: The Cure.

CHAPTER 9: The Cure

 300 HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Maria had been walking for hours. The soles of her feet along with the pads of her toes spiked with pain with every passing step, and her forehead was swamped with layers of deep sweat. Her hair, which was pulled back so it flapped against her back, was oily and irritated as the rays of the sinking sun shined upon it. During this long and enduring walk, she had not found anything resembling to a village. She’d snort and heave a dry laugh at this, because after she had given her sister to those two vampires, she had thought she caught a glimpse of a possible village over the horizon of the crossroad.

Heh. Eva.

Eva had always been too unlawfully trusting of others. She was also too kind; allowing older homeless town-folk residence in their home whenever they knocked, giving what remains of food she and Maria held to others in dire need of it. She was even more foolish with her family. She placed faith in Maria, even if she had hesitations. That, made her weak. What peasant does that, allowing others in line for water at the water pump to skip her, reads to orphans, and wears a smile on her face even if she’s starved? Eva, that’s who. That is why Mary never felt loyal to her, she had to be a survivor, had to find wealth and fortune, and with her younger sister tagging along every step of the way, playing heroine, how was she to do that? She couldn’t, which is why she allowed her sister to be dragged away for the promise of vampirism.

After what seemed like days, her bold and exhausted eyes scan over something hidden behind a perimeter of pine trees and forests. Her hands get scraped as do her shoulders as she walked past these. Her legs were wobbling, her rate of oxygen out and intakes were high, her body was dysfunctional due to the lack of sleep and food, but she had to continue, because she was a survivor, and she wanted others to know so.

The sun had just set, and so the sky was faintly illuminated with stars and a lightish blue. The moon, which was a crescent, allowed Maria to see and make out the faint shape of a house. And surrounding it, were other.

Maria was lucky as she had stumbled upon a human village instead of a vampire populated one. She confirmed this, by scanning the town folk, noticing that they lacked to pale glow to their skin, the aura of death, fangs, and the amount of bloodshed a vampire one would indeed factor. At the fact she had to look for all those odd factors made her wonder how how on the world had her world deteriorated to the point where they feared creatures of the moon and drinkers of blood.
There were a few people in the town square, where Maria had walked so boldly into. At the sight of a water fountain amongst it, Maria withered. She gulped water down like the dehydrated human she was, and when she was done, she could swallow and not feel cotton balls in her parched throat like she had had all through the day. The people walked across the main dirt road, entering homes and shops. Lanterns marked the main street, as well as the interior of homes and shops, making their faces and the town visible. The town was old, with unfine clothe clothes, wooden homes that had cracks in their roofs and walls—one particularly Maria could see into because of a large hole in the side, which caught a mother holding her son as the mother read an old folktale, ‘Il lupo che ha Sanguinato’; which using her italian background Maria translated it into ‘The Wolf who Bled; by candlelight as she read her child to sleep—old rustic buckets, and the town folk themselves who were aged.

Because of the unbearable heat and the fact that even before this, she hadn’t eaten for days, her body and mind shut down and Maria collapsed at the edge of the fountain.

When she awoke, she was laying on a bed with a girl tending to her. The girl was beautiful, with long silk like blonde hair, a heart shaped face that complimented her pale blue eyes and angular jaw, with a curvy but slim figure.  “Hello there.” the girl smiles as she pats another moist cloth to Maria’s forehead. She looks around the same age as Maria herself.