'Did he drink your blood?'
'Sometimes.'
'How…how was this done? Did he bite you?'
'Of course not!' she said, feeling the tension building in her. 'We would make cuts on our arms and legs, each person in the village taking a turn, and would provide a tin cup every day and he would drink that. It kept him alive.'
'Why, over the centuries, did the villagers want to keep him alive?'
'Because it would be bad luck to kill him.'
'But he'd brought disaster to the village, or so everyone thought?'
'But more disaster would come from killing him. He was a Gypsy. He had been in touch with the most evil spirits. They had come to him, heeded him, given him what he asked for. The villagers did not know what would happen if he were killed or released, but they knew they would be cursed and harm would come to them. They just did not know the nature of that harm.'
'But you didn't believe that, did you? That his curse would bring disaster. That he was ancient. That he had brought back his dead wife.'
A small sound slipped from Nita's lips. She felt a tear form in one eye and tried to brush it away but the sparkly multicolored drop slid down her cheek. Maybe… maybe he understood! 'I…I… The university. They said it could not be so. That he was not old. That he was just a crazy man that everyone kept caged and starved, and that his dead wife had not returned but a woman in the village-my grandmother, and my mother-had slept with him to get pregnant.'
'How did your mother die?'
That was too horrible. Nita could not bring herself to admit the suicide. Instead of answering his question, her mind raced on as if he hadn't interrupted. 'The university professor said it was an example of a mythology that had gone terribly wrong, and the people wanted to blame someone for all their problems, and to torture him.' She looked up at the grey man. 'I went home to make it right.'
The man nodded imperceptibly.
Now the words spilled from Nita, like the scorching lava that had formed the mountains. 'I tried to tell the others. I told them that he could not be ancient. That he was not responsible for catastrophes. That the gods had not returned his wife to him. I explained that my grandmother who kept him, she was his wife. They would not believe me.'
'What did you do?'
'After the sun set, I cut his chain and took him far from the village, up into the mountains, a night's journey by foot. I gave him food I had brought home with me, liquid food with nutrients, some blood because he was used to that, but other beverages, because he had not eaten solid food that I knew of. I tried to feed him grains but he could not digest them. And then I pointed to the much larger village just over the mountain peak and told him to go there, to begin a new life. That he was free. I told him that he would be caged no more.'
Nita shook her head. Tears streamed down her face and though her voice wavered, she needed no encouragement to finish her story. 'I returned to my village the following day. My grandmother was furious with me. She struck me and called me a fool, ranting that I had brought down the curse and put them all in danger. The villagers were angry and afraid. Some wanted to run away, others found weapons to defend themselves. One suggested I take the place of the
vechi brbat in the cage, as if that would make things right. I told them they had nothing to fear, that the old man, the vechi brbat, was gone for good, and they were all free now. Just as I was free from the life that had awaited me. No more wrong legends to rule their lives, or mine. I could return to the university. I would not have to marry the vechi brbat, or spend my life taking care of him.
'But the people were not pleased by this; they were so enraged. And terrified. My grandmother struggled to keep them from hurting me.'
After a moment, the man said, 'And then what happened?'
'He returned. Two nights later. He murdered people in their beds, outside their homes, as they fled into the forest. Women, children, men-even the strongest who tried to fight him off. My…my grandmother. He had been strengthened by the nourishment I'd provided, and he took blood until he became bloated, and then took more. He killed everyone, and it was my fault!'
Her body trembled uncontrollably. The room had become icy. The colors surrounding her, even the white, paled as if glaciers had formed over everything, and the opaqueness that reminded her of the
vechi brbat's eyes as he stared into hers began to spin and swirl like a snowstorm.
'But he didn't kill
you,' the man said.
'No,' she gasped. 'He spared me.'
'Why?'
She stared at him, watching his grey features shift and twist and the shape of his face change from human to animal then change again from animal to something dark and otherworldly until the images that formed petrified her.
'Nita, they found you covered with blood.
You, not the vechi brbat. You killed the villagers, because you felt trapped there, destined to a life you did not want.'
Her head jerked from side to side.
'Nita, if there were a
vechi brbat, why wasn't he found? Where is he now?'
She screamed, 'I-don't-know!'
'Take it easy. You're safe here.'
But his words could not quell the horror that gripped her heart. 'He disappeared. And I remained with the bodies, the blood-red bodies, stained by color that seeped into the hungry brown soil as if it were a mouth that had longed for this nourishment. The land of my foremothers, of the villagers, those who imprisoned the
vechi brbat. Don't you see? The blood went back into the earth. Where it should have gone centuries ago! Because they imprisoned him!'
Her raised voice brought Dr. Sauers storming into the room. 'What's going on here? You're upsetting my patient!' She hit an intercom button on the wall and told a nurse to hurry with an injection.
'No! No more drugs! Let me be free!' Nita jumped to her feet. 'Remove these chains! I did nothing to you, why are you holding me prisoner! Help! Someone help me!
Vechi brbat free me, as I freed you!'
But Nita's cries faded soon after the needle pierced her flesh. The world around her receded, the colors dimming and fading to nothing, until she could neither see nor hear those outside her with their demands and judgments and limitations. But she clearly heard the
vechi brbat, for now he could speak and he spoke to her, calling her his bride, assuring her that he would be with her always. That she would not be a prisoner forever. 'One day,' he promised, 'you, too, must dance with me.'
The Beautiful, The Damned by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's most recent novel, Diving into the Wreck, will be published by Pyr Books in November. She is the author of more than fifty novels, including several in her popular Retrieval Artist series. Many of her novels belong to the mystery or romance genres and are published under the pen names Kristine Grayson, Kris Nelscott, and Kristine Dexter. Rusch is a prolific author of short fiction as well, much of which will be collected in the forthcoming book Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award thirteen times, winning twice-once for writing and once for editing, making her the only person to ever win a Hugo Award in both categories. She has also won the World Fantasy Award, the Sidewise Award, and numerous Asimov's Readers Choice Awards.
Rusch describes this story as a kind of sequel to The Great Gatsby-with vampires. 'For some reason, I reread The Great Gatsby every two or three years whether I need to or not,' she said. 'Like Nick Carraway, I am a child of the Middle West, a person who has moved away to a land that's not quite familiar and people who are a bit strange. I have always seen ties between vampirism and alcoholism (and I am the child of two alcoholics). I dealt with that tie in my novel Sins of the Blood, a vampire book, and I deal with it here too.'
On one rereading of Gatsby, Rusch realized that the characters were metaphorical vampires, and that was all the inspiration she needed to come up with the tale that follows.
Chapter I
I come from the Middle West, an unforgiving land with little or no tolerance for imagination. The wind blows harsh across the prairies, and the snows fall thick. Even with the conveniences of the modern age, life is dangerous there. To lose sight of reality, even for one short romantic moment, is to risk death.
I didn't belong in that country, and my grandfather knew it. I was his namesake, and somehow, being the second Nick Carraway in a family where the name had a certain mystique had forced that mystique upon me. He had lived in the East during the twenties, and had had grand adventures, most of which he would not talk about. When he returned to St. Paul in 1928, he met a woman-my grandmother Nell-and with her solid, common sense had shed himself of the romance and imagination that had led to his adventures in the first place.
Although not entirely. For when I announced, fifty years later, that I intended to pursue my education in the East, he paid four years of Ivy League tuition. And, when I told him, in the early '80s, that, despite my literary background and romantic nature, I planned a career in the securities business, he regaled me with stories of being a bond man in New York City in the years before the crash.
