"What do you want to know?" Annika finally asked.
"I'm looking for information on my kind and yours. Really, on any kind that's not human. Can you help me with that?" I asked.
Annika deliberated. The one with black eyes was still waiting to pounce, but the one with the red hair was growing curious. She spoke. "I can," she said. Her mind was less callous than the others'. "You walk this way with me?" she asked, nodding toward an open expanse of land just past the houses. There was a line of thick forest a few hundred yards beyond it.
Annika's thoughts were not pleasant. She hadn't wanted the red-haired one to talk to me, but she wasn't going to stop her either. She returned to the house with the bodies, and the ravenous black-eyed one went with her.
"I'm Ritka," she said as we walked. "I have never seen your kind before, so I want to know what you are. That's why I'm talking to you," she explained. She wanted to be clear that this was no favorable gesture, only a morbid curiosity on her part.
"I thank you, Ritka. I've never seen your kind before, either, but I have heard of you," I said. "You're vampires, are you not?" I asked.
She shrugged. "You say vampire like there's only one kind. We are eretica. We drink blood, yes, but that is all we have in common with the others. We don't have teeth, and we don't hunt. We don't turn into bats, either," she said. A gruff cough escaped her lips. I think she was laughing.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
"We all three lived in this village. A strange man came maybe fifty years ago. He was of the devil, I suppose. He offered us immortality in exchange for our souls. The three of us were already condemned as heretics, shamed for not believing in the God they all believed in. We thought we had nothing to lose," she said. Her voice grew raspier as she spoke. I sensed she didn't talk often.
"But you did lose something," I said, expounding on what she was thinking.
"We lost everything," she said. "Our souls first, but then we turned into this," she said, pulling at the loose skin on her cheeks. "It took a year or two before we were completely changed. But the bloodlust came before that. It happened to Annika first. She was making love to a traveler when she was overcome with a need for his blood. She bit at him but couldn't get it fast enough. She clawed at his neck till the blood poured out. And she drank it all. Soon her fingers began to change," she said wiggling the arthritic, hollow points of her own. "Eventually, we couldn't control it."
"What did the people in your village say?" I asked.
"Nothing they could say," she said. We killed them too quickly, she thought. I had figured as much.
"Have you known many of your kind?" I asked.
"No, but we had heard the stories, too, like you," she said.
"Have you heard stories of any of you dying?" I asked.
"They say we can drown in fresh water but not in saltwater. We have never tried, obviously," she said. I was disappointed. I knew I could not drown.
"Do you feel pain?" I asked.
"Only where I once had a soul," she said. "We are not like others either. We aren't fast, and we aren't strong. But the rest are."
"The rest of who?" I asked.
"The others you'd call vampires. They are always fast and strong. I bet you are like that," she said.
"I'm not a vampire, though," I said.
"Then what are you?" she asked, cocking her head to one side. "If you're not a witch and not a vampire? A shape-shifter?" she asked.
I shook my head. "I'm something in between, I guess. I don't know what you'd call me."
"Do you have a family?" she asked.
"I do," I said.
"And you were born this way or you were turned?" she asked.
"Born," I said.
"Maybe you're a vieczy," she said. I raised an eyebrow. "You haven't heard of them?" she asked. She made the same throaty sound. "Vieczy is the child of a witch and a shape-shifter. They say women shape-shifters can't bear children, but the men can impregnate. And everyone knows witches can have children," she explained. I reached for my pack, pulled out my notebook, and started scribbling furiously. "They are born, not turned like us. I think they may be the only vampires who are. Sometimes they grow old, but usually they stop around your age," she said.
"But they are immortal?" I asked.
"Of course," she scoffed.
"Can they die?" I asked. She looked at me strangely.
What kind of trouble are you in, pretty girl? She asked in her mind. "I suppose," she said. "But I don't know how. Some say cutting out the cold, still heart will do it, but vieczy I've met have skin too hard to penetrate. It's colder than a witch's or a shape-shifter's, and it's hard like stone," she said.
"That's not me, then," I said. I pulled up my sleeves a little ways to show some of the scars around my wrists.
She was taken aback. "You are sure you aren't a witch?" she asked. "They're the only ones who bleed like humans. They have heartbeats, too."
"But I don't have a heartbeat, and I don't bleed either," I said. "You can open the skin, and there is blood inside, but it doesn't pump, and it's thick like molasses."
"Are you sure?" she said. She looked at me with a new curiosity in her eyes, appraising my movements. "Witches can die, you know. You can drown them or burn them or break their necks. And we can take blood from them. We don't like it like human blood, but it will do if we need it to, when we can catch them."
She was thinking that I was a witch, and she was starting to picture the same things the one with the black eyes had. I tried to derail her. "How do you catch them?" I asked.
She squinted up at me to focus on my eyes. "We can paralyze them if they look into our eyes. And then we can have them. Sometimes they can still run after just a look," she explained. "But they die later." She, of course, was trying to do that to me. It wouldn't work, I knew. I was impervious to such powers.
She licked her lips.
"I'm not a human," I sighed, sliding the journal and pencil back into my bag. "And I'm not a witch," I said as I slid my coat off and rolled my sweater up to my elbow. "You can try, though," I said. I extended my bare forearm out to her.
For one second she looked at me in disbelief, but then she let a snarl escape from her mouth. She didn't hesitate after that.
She had to try several times, her brow tensed, to get the needle-like end of her finger through my skin. She inserted it parallel to my arm, the way I'd seen blood drawn on television. The pain was searing at first but subsided.
This was, of course, how it went when I traveled. If I were met with a village or a tribe with legends about killing creatures, I would tell them what I was so they would try it on me. Mostly they were vicious and extremely anxious to destroy any creature they came across. It had obviously never worked, but it had always been painful.
Ritka continued for a few moments. She was making gurgling sounds as her long fingers tensed and wiggled a little inside my arm. That made my stomach catch. She was getting frustrated. I assumed that meant it wasn't working.
"Ah!" she yelled suddenly, and she ripped her finger from my arm. That hurt much more than I anticipated. I looked at the pale skin of my forearm. There was a hole in my flesh about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and it burned. It was very deep and jagged, and would, of course, leave another scar.
"Didn't work?" I asked.
"You aren't vieczy," she said, breathing hard. It took her some time to recover. "They have no blood, and I wouldn't be able to break the skin, though it wasn't easy breaking yours. But there's nothing normal about you, either. Your blood is thick. It tasted good but it burned inside me like acid," she said, anger and disappointment in her voice. Tasted? I thought. Hadn't it gone in through her fingers?
"So you don't know what I am?" I asked.
"You are nothing we've met. There is a very rare creature we've only heard of that has no name. It is supposedly like the other vampires in ability, but the skin is softer, and they are beautiful, but no one knows if they drink blood or not. I've never met one. They're warm, too. Not like humans or witches, but warmer than us and the vieczy and the others. They live among humans because of their soft skin and beauty," she said.
That piqued my interest. "But you've never heard their name?" I asked. I rolled my sleeve down and picked up my coat.
She shook her head. "Some say they're like blank slates. They become like one of us-or something-sooner or later. Maybe good like the moroi who protect their living families, maybe bad like us or the vordulak," she explained.
"Where did you hear of these creatures?" I asked.
She looked embarrassed. "From some witches," she said, "before we killed them." She turned and started walking toward the house.
"Thank you for speaking with me," I said, calling after her. "I have money, if you would like. I could pay you for your troubles."
"We have no use for the money," she said. "Just leave us and do not return. I am not sure what you are, but it can't be good to have you near," she said. I understood. This was generally the feeling I left in my wake.
"I will," I said. I put on my coat. The sun had set in the time we were talking, and the land was deserted for many miles around. I ran as fast as I could out of the strange village, stopping when I was safely far away to write down a memory this strange encounter triggered. Then I raced back to Moscow.