Chapter Four

Evangeline’s POV

I didn’t get the chance to ask Marcel how he knew about our magic or what he meant about our parents until some time later.

We did as instructed, and he walked us right past the gathering of blood drenched animals who were crouched and contorted on all fours, picking through pieces of torn and mangled meat.

Two men stood out from the others. One of them was tall and broad, with long silver hair and scars that crisscrossed his exposed chest, arms, and face. He was the Lord. It was obvious from just a glance.

He was well dressed from the waist down, like Marcel, and the man like creatures would not look him directly in the eye. The man beside him was smaller in every way and looked to be nothing more or less than an average person, except for the leather collar around his neck and the long leather strap which hung from the collar, down towards the ground, then turned up and led right into Lord Halen’s hand where he was sat atop a magnificent stallion.

When I looked closer at the gathering of feeding creatures, I saw that the ‘meat’ was wearing clothes. The fabric was all stained the same shade of deep, dark red.

These creatures, who looked like men but moved around the ground like spiders or crabs, were drinking the blood of my family and playing with their dead bodies like a hound with a bone. My stomach clenched, and my throat tightened, but there was nothing left inside me to expel.

Marcel glanced back and gave me a warning look out of the corner of his eye. I wanted to run to them and search for my mother. I could only hope she wasn’t in there, that she had somehow managed to get away, but who could outrun these animals? I kept walking, my eyes on Marcel’s back, my hands bound, and an empty feeling hollowing out my insides.

Repressed tears stung my tired eyes, and I knew that in the last twenty minutes, my life had gone from happy and peaceful to dark and uncertain.

Annekka was beside me in body, but thankfully, her mind had gone elsewhere. She didn’t look at the slaughtered pile of bodies that had been gathered to burn.

She didn’t flinch when Lord Halen strode up to Marcel and congratulated him on finally taking a prize or two for himself, then looked from Annekka to me. His leering gaze started at my feet, swept up my body, stopping at my chest, then up to my face. The hungry look he gave me that day was the first of many, and my skin crawls with repulsion whenever he finds a reason to touch me or brush against me in passing.

Lord Halen was delighted that his son had captured two innocent young girls and was leading them away to feed upon them.

I wondered for a moment if, by following Marcel’s instructions, I had traded a quick and bloody death for a long drawn out one, but still death none the less. I told myself that what I had seen in my mind was a sign that I was safe, and by extension, so was Annekka.

Marcel led us to two horses, one pitch black, as dark as the night, and the other just as black but with a wide blaze of white from his forelock down his face to his pink velvety nose.

Marcel wasted no time in picking us up like we weighed nothing and plopping us onto the wide back of the second horse. He carefully untied our hands and then rebound them, this time fastening them at our front and attaching them to the saddle.

It took several hours in the baking heat of the midsummer sun to ride to the castle. Marcel led our horse by a rope whilst riding his own, but he never went faster than a walk, most likely out of concern that we would fall.

I didn’t tell him that Annekka and I are both able riders and that we would be more than capable of staying atop our mount with or without the aid of the thin, uncomfortable saddle.

I didn’t tell him because if I wanted to escape whatever awaited us at the end of this journey, I knew that fleeing on horseback would be faster than my feet could ever carry me.

If he knew we could ride, he might anticipate my escape plan if you could call one errant thought a plan.

Halen and his horde of raiders overtook us only a few miles into our ride, and after they had disappeared into the distance and the dust settled, Marcel finally broke the deafening silence.

“What are your names?” He asked a simple question, and the answer was easy, but it stuck in my throat. I knew I should answer him, tell him what he wanted to hear, and hope that he would come to see us as more than prey.

I even opened my mouth to tell him my name, but no sound came out. I was stuck in my own mind, desperately searching the image of the pile of bodies for my mother but becoming distracted by the feel of his lips on my skin.

I remember seeing an arm hanging limply, on its wrist was a suede string with three small, pink seashells. Annekka had made it as a gift for her mother before we left the coast to travel here three years ago.

“I am Annekka. This is Evangeline. Are you going to eat us?” Annekka’s monotone voice surprised me and she sat up straighter between my arms, which were holding onto the reins with a grip that turned my knuckles white, as if they would have stopped me from floating away in the despair which threatened to pull me under.

I wondered then, and still wonder now, what became of my mother? I don’t recall seeing her, but the pile was wide, and she could easily have been lost in the middle. I can not bring myself to believe that she perished that day, until I see her body she remains alive in my heart and in my mind.

By the time Blackledge Castle came into view, I was becoming at ease with Marcel, and Annekka was more present than she had been at the beginning of the ride.

Marcel told us about his father, the High Priestess’ curse, and the vampires that he made in order to grow his empire and how his views on the sanctity of life directly opposed his father.

I had heard some of the stories before but they were told by the elders who wanted to keep us close to home and fearful of exploring too far from our encampment, or men we met on the road who joined us for shelter for a night, most of whom had imbibed in far too much mead to be considered reliable in their accounts of what they had seen. I assumed they were spinning a tall tale to frighten the little nomad children.

Whatever the reason for the frightful stories, it worked, none of us dared stray far from home and even though as we grew older, we began to complain about our lack of freedom, there was also a comfort in the constant companionship our fears demanded.

It was immediately obvious that Marcel was nothing like the man who sired him, and I hoped his mother was the reason, especially since he intended for Annekka and I to be her maids.

He made it clear that he would keep us under his protection, and that we must maintain the appearance that he was feeding from us and we were his and his alone for that purpose, but he did not want us under his feet or the constant temptation to actually drink our blood. There were other people in the castle who would willingly satiate his innate hunger.

I was young and had no experience of men, but hearing that he wanted minimal interaction with us caused a splinter of hurt in my chest.

At fourteen years old, we were both old enough to know that what we were being offered was better than the alternative.

Marcel had told us that the men they had taken from our settlement would join others in the cells beneath the castle and eventually be turned into vampires for Halen’s army.

He also told us that if Lord Halen tried to turn us, we would die. None of the witches had ever survived the transformation process and despite searching for answers and turning to every magical creed, doctrine and being he could find, Marcel had made very little progress in ridding himself of the curse or finding a way to stop his father from continuing to grow his army.

A life of servitude or a painful death at the hands of a monster, it wasn’t much of a choice, but I knew I needed to survive. I also felt something else that day. A seed of vengeance was sewn, and I have nurtured that seed every day since. Lord Halen will pay for the lives he has taken, and the help I need to exact my revenge has come from the most unlikely of places.

Lady Constance has been kind to me. It is obvious that she is where Marcel gets his humanity from, and I am thankful every day that it is he who found us in the woods.

In all of his wisdom, Marcel remains oblivious to his mother’s internal struggle for survival. It is not that he is blind to her suffering, more that she has perfected the art of hiding it, and I have been drawn into her schemes and plotting. One day, she will be free, but not as long as Marcel remains here. For my mistress to take her freedom, I have to let Marcel go.

“Have they returned?” Lady Constance asks as I slide her along the polished floor. Every time she goes missing from her chamber, I find her in here.

Of all the rooms in the entire castle, she chooses the dining hall in which to hide and seek solitude. Most people would choose the library or the gardens, even the kitchens would provide more efficient hiding places than this room.

“Not as yet, my lady. But I daresay they will return this evening, if not tomorrow morning.” I puff a little as I pull my mistress to her feet. She gives me a look that tells me her patience is wearing thin. She has requested that I call her Constance on many occasions, but if overheard, I would be lashed again. The scars on my back burn at the memory of the one and only whipping I have ever been dealt.

In my naivety, I thought the grindstone was a harsh punishment, but Lord Halen has a way of making my former life seem like something out of a children’s tale.

On our first night here, Annekka and I were stripped of our clothing and tied to poles in the courtyard along with two girls of similar age from another settlement further down the river. The same one that had two boys go missing in the woods.

“You will remember this day for as long as you should dwell within my walls. My protection is not given freely, and I do not suffer disobedience or disloyalty. Should any of you step out of line, attempt to flee, or become derelict in your duties, all four of you will suffer far greater than twenty lashes.” I remember Lord Halen’s words as if he spoke them yesterday, not five years ago.

The lashes hurt in a way I had not expected, like flames licking my bare skin, then a sting that sunk through my flesh right down to the bone. My back tore like it was made of dried leaves, but I made not a sound. I sank my teeth into my lip and focussed on the pain I could control.

The thing that hurt the most that day was lash twenty, but not because of the raw, weeping wounds it came down on.

Lord Halen called Marcel up onto the wooden platform where the four of us were now kneeling facing the gathered crowd. Our bodies had sunk lower with every crack of the whip. The pain was like nothing I have ever felt before or since.

“My son has seen fit to speak on my behalf and bring two of you here, so he will deliver the final strike, as a reminder that he is also responsible for not only your protection but your compliance.” I didn’t need to see the monster’s face to know that he was wearing the signature smirk I have come to see in my nightmares.

I can not wait for the day I get to wipe that smug look off his evil face for good.