Lamia Prior: Baptised In Blood

Chapter Two

Abraham came to the door of the small house. It had been open for some time and the musty air of inside hand spilled out into the Boston night. His brother had been here. Abraham wiped the blood from his face. He’d had a virgin and now the blood that coursed through his veins was sweet and warm. His stomach had settled and with it he’d regained control of his faculties. The musty air had been soiled by the smell of old blood and dirt from the old world. It was Arlo’s stench and it filled his nostrils with a rage like no other. He knew Arlo wouldn’t have found her here. If he had, the girl’s blood would be on the walls and her limp body and stolen innocence on display for the world. Arlo was out for blood, he wouldn’t be gentle with her. Bram crossed the threshold into the place he’d called home. His eyes flickered as the darkness became clear as day and the blood on the walls flashed a bright beautiful red. The vampire’s heart stopped. He turned his head frantically. His desperate eyes scanned the lower room. There was blood. Lots of it, across the walls, along the floor. Someone had been dragged. He sniffed the air. It was the blood of a female. Abraham narrowed his eyes and his body tensed. Arlo’s scent was still strong and he was one of the remaining few that could make himself completely invisible.  

With the stake in his left hand, Abraham crossed the floor and dragged his right index finger through a pool of blood. He licked it, sucked it with his long pointed tongue. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be. He’d tasted her. But that sweetness, it was almost identical to her. Silently he stepped across the blood and to the bottom of the stairs. Then, with one more turn of his head, he scanned the immaculately furnished room. Arlo could still be here. There was none other who would bleed their prey out just to watch them struggle. The younger ones were too impatient, they relished the kill, the feeding frenzy. The fear of the vampire as a sophisticated being, cold and cruel, calculated and handsome had been vanquished with the rise of the new breeds. They were not vampires, they were scum, stuck between ghoul and God. At the top of the staircase, Arlo’s scent waned, but the blood pulsed in Abraham’s vision as though it still searched for a heart. He pushed open the first door, his movements were mechanical, his sense on high alert. It was empty. His coffin was untouched. The velvet covered lid remained open and the bed of dirt remained. No humans had been here. 

 He came to the next door with a sudden sense of urgency. The smell of blood was thick, bitter, and it seemed to seep beneath the doors and into the hall. Abraham clutched the stake, it wouldn’t be enough to kill his brother, but it would be enough to save Abraham’s life. The war between the Order and the Vampyra had grown with sophistication. The bedroom door swung open beneath the weight of Abraham’s foot. He crossed the threshold. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dense and lightly lit air. On the bed before him, although she were greeting a lover, lay the headless body of a woman, a girl, no more than sixteen. Her throat had been severed and the bedding saturated. Her perfect face, freckled and pale, was framed by cuts of raven hair, and had been left unmarked by the beast that had savaged her. It was propped up on the pillows, an observer to her own desecration. The vampire stepped forward. The cheeks of the girl were swollen, filled with garlic. She’d been killed before she’d turned. Killed before she found immortality. He looked down at her open legs. Over the course of his 250 years Abraham had become accustomed to atrocity, but he hadn’t seen any such as this since the beginning of the war. With tender hands he placed her ankles together. Before he left, he covered her nakedness with his great black coat. Bitten and killed she didn’t take the form a ghoul or of a young woman, she was suspended between death and immortality and her fate would be left in the hands of God. 

 The light from the cigar was a small orange glow and the putrid smoke drifted up toward his nostrils. He hated them, he always had, but unlike alcohol, they were revolting in a way that did’t make him sick. Abraham drew long in the living room of his house. The walls were still covered in blood and although she were safe, if Arlo found out who was hiding her, he would be able to make them talk. For if they wouldn’t they would be killed where they stood and their place beneath the Lamia Vetus would be filled. A fate no self respecting servant could bear to think of, let alone survive. The war had raged on long before Abraham and Arlo had been turned and long before their father had met his death. It was a war that had existed for hundreds of years, with periods of tentative peace lasting decades. But even in peace, the vampires trained and the Vampyra grew in the hundreds. They had been out numbered for as long as Abraham had known the war, but the Vampyra, half ghoul, half vampire, had never reached their level of strength.