Chapter 11

The skirt couldn’t be shorter, the top lower, as it plunges almost to her waist in a long dark V. How to tell my innocent darling that she is committing a fashion faux pas? I hold the door of my car open for her and I’m not sure where the night will take us, but I plan to dazzle her with my wealth and sophistication. I won’t think of Lilly. Carolyn slips into the car and I get a brief flash of thong. She doesn’t realise she is doing a Sharon Stone.

She can’t help it; it’s my fault. How could I have been so hasty after four hundred years? How stupid I’ve been. This is all happening because I have waited too long to feed. Yet my body is warm again and it feels like I’m full. Is this a new level of strength I have developed and just don’t know how to use?

Throughout the years my skills have grown and I have learnt to hone each new power that presents itself; knowing that each time it came with a price. Maybe I am a sociopath. Or maybe I am hardening to the hurt that longevity brings. For whatever reason, I feel different. I am - enjoying my life. I don’t feel the need to hold back from desire. I have denied myself always using fear of detection to justify my abstention. Any man may desire the company of woman, but I - I have refused it until desperation drove me to search out a mate. All because of one fateful night when I woke up to learn that the world held a more virulent form of parasite than the social bloodsucker I was used to. Indeed there were perverse beings that lived on the blood and pain of mortals. And I had become one of them ...

The late air shivered with the violence of the blow and for one moment I hesitated as though floating in mid air before falling back, tumbling down the golden staircase that just a few hours before I had climbed so carefully while admiring the paintings. On the way down the reliefs were white blurs; the artwork a smudge of mingled colours. I plummeted, unable to stop. I threw my arms out to save myself but only succeeded in bruising my elbows and hands as well as my head, back and face. Terror coursed into my limbs freezing them with shock as my whole body rolled unchecked until I crashed down at the bottom, cracking my shoulder and head loudly and painfully on the mosaic tiles of the veranda. I stood, stumbling back as the guards rushed me and I fell back over the balcony. I plunged forever into nothingness before crashing down into the courtyard. Intense pain shot through my jolted limbs and I cried out. I lay stunned. Pain beyond pain numbed my senses and I drifted into a vague consciousness. I became acutely aware of the gentle pulsing of the water from the canal that ran alongside the palace.

And I knew that the palace dock was nearby, perhaps a little to my left. A seagull swooped above my head, cawing in sympathy over my crumpled body. I imagined I heard the tender rubbing of a cloth against silver and for a brief moment I pictured a young servant girl polishing a soup tureen in the kitchens below. The scurry of a canal rat, scratching along the tiles, woke me from my stupor and I twisted my head, cautiously testing the limit of my injuries, knowing that a serious injury could mean paralysis or pending mortality. The rat was several feet away, out in the courtyard, but I could see the twitch of its nose and whiskers as it scoured the floor looking for food. Sickened, I moved my legs and slowly sensation returned. The deadness in my head faded and pain returned in the form of a severe headache; there was nothing broken and I had the full movement of my limbs as I stretched and tested them, but I was sore and battered.

My heart was the clapping hands of the audience at the Doge’s palace and it was difficult to separate it from the slap of footsteps as the royal guard descended rapidly down the service stairs. I sat up quickly. The world was woozy but I wrenched to my feet pulling myself up against a column. I staggered to the bottom of yet another staircase, looked up and terror swallowed me despite the pain in my whole body. I had to stand and face the onslaught.

The taste of blood in my mouth brought a wave of sickness with a feeling of extreme hunger and I almost vomited as my stomach wretched. I clung to the wall, blind with panic as the guards drew closer and the glow of torch light fell at my feet.

I wished with all my might that I could be invisible and a strange tingling sensation entered my fingers and toes and swooped quickly up my arms and legs. My senses turned to ice. I was as arctic as the marble framework that formed in an arch around the entrance to the stairway. My face turned granite. I was paralysed. Dread sunk in my heart. My breath came in heavy gulps.

‘Where did he go?’ the captain asked.

‘I saw him fall, sir. Right here.’

‘Are you mad? No one could fall all that way and live.’

I stood two feet away, breathing loudly, still gripping the wall in the full glare of their torches and they didn’t see me. My breathing began to level as they walked around examining the spot where I fell and they found a splash of blood. I put my hand up to the back of my head and found the damp patch. The flesh was tender and I grimaced as I probed, but there was no wound to account for the blood on my finger tips.

My head cleared and I felt well again - the relief was too sudden and I swayed with it, still confused as I watched with amazement as the blood on my fingers dispersed, disappearing. My knees gave and the nausea returned. What was happening?

My arms and legs were intact and I was invisible. Impossible! Perhaps I was dead after all? Or maybe this night was some bizarre nightmare. Why else would I wake to find myself in the bed of the Doge’s mistress when she returned following the night’s revelry? Why else would I have to run for my life from the Palace guard, bowing under their blows and curses?

Within minutes the guard moved away running towards the water at the landing port. They looked out over the darkness.

‘Nothin’ there, captain. Not a ripple.’

‘Yes. There was,’ the captain said. ‘We saw the criminal tumble into the water and drown. Right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Another guard came running, the port watchman I assumed, quickly buttoning up his uniform.

‘Captain?’ He stood petrified.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Needed to relieve myself, sir. My replacement took sick and I’ve been waiting for hours to ...’

‘You abandoned your post?’

The guard prostrated himself before the captain.

‘Sir. Please ... I ...’

‘I’ll deal with you later.’

Unmoving and petrified, I watched as they returned, believing any minute that I would be seen, that it had merely been luck that saved me so far. However they didn’t see me. The captain looked around brushing past me as though I were part of the building structure, before turning back to the staircase.

‘Remember what I said. The criminal is dead!’

‘Yes, sir.’

As they climbed back up the staircase, I moved away from the wall. Feeling slowly began to return to my body and I hobbled out into the courtyard. Without knowing why, I retraced their steps to stand and look out into the shadowy water. Maybe they were right, maybe my body did lay at the bottom. My vision zoomed downwards and it felt like I had stepped into the water and could walk untouched to the sandy base. I roamed through the icy depths that cleared and brightened under my gaze. A shoal of tiny neon whirled and wriggled through me. I jerked back slipping and falling to my knees on the cobbles. I was still on the dry wood of the landing dock.

I raised my head and across the canal I saw a group of masked revellers making their way through the small street to walk alongside the canal. My gaze landed on one drunken man and I saw clearly the leather straps and the miniature scratches in his carved wooden buttons as he staggered forward and almost pitched into the water. By his elaborate, bulky doublet I realised he was a foreign merchant, perhaps from Spain. I could see him as plainly as if he stood a few feet away. I closed my eyes, swaying forward. Something was wrong. My head was clear and I felt along my arms, pinching my skin until it bruised. I’m not dead!

I stood, backing away from the water’s edge, for fear of dropping into it, and without looking back I turned and ran out through the courtyard onto the common streets, anywhere I could go on foot to escape from the terror in my soul. I was changed, but the same.

I ran till I thought my heart would burst with the sight of the palazzi blurring with the speed with which I moved. Then my eyesight adjusted to the pace, and I took in every line and pillar of every structure as if I stood beside them examining every detail: A fly landed on a gargoyle; a hair line crack in a bronze stallion as it split a fraction more; a bird throwing the body of a dead chick from its nest - it landed with a dull splash in the canal; the face of a frightened child at a window.

Finally I came out at the other side of the canal and leapt at it, intending to throw myself in and end my torment, because surely I had lost my mind? For a moment I was airborne. The air hurried around me with a deafening roar and I was suspended by it for a short time before I crashed onto the bank on the other side. I rolled twice before I was halted in the dirt. I had made an impossible bound across at least thirty feet of canal!

The stench of rat faeces drifted from a dark corner to my left as I lay in the mud. I wasn’t hurt or stunned but I had to gather my thoughts, calm the panic that had spurred my exhausting flight. I had to think! I’d been at the Palazzo, as a guest. I had danced. Lucrezia. She had taken my arm, led me - I couldn’t resist her. I remembered. Her flesh ... white and so very cold. We’d ... My God! Her teeth ... She’d ... bitten me.

I looked up into the clear bright night. A full moon beamed down on my head I could see clearly the pitted black cavities that covered its surface; it only took a minor adjustment somewhere, somehow in my vision. I felt its power as it fed me bringing with it my memory. Lucrezia had done something to me. She was ... a demon; a creature of evil for certain. So, where did that leave me? Was I some wicked fiend? I didn’t feel wicked or evil though for certain I was no longer myself. Under the glare of the night I was stronger and more powerful than I had ever been and ... I needed something. Yes. I was some vile undead creature refused access to heaven or hell. A creature of unknown habits. I was hungry. Starving. Then, I saw her ... Ysabelle.