Heart of Shadows

 Heart of Shadows: A Gothic Romance

By Graham Swanson

I

The Dark Command of Captain Voss

A silent dread seeped through the cracks in the cement. The hanging lightbulbs flickered over the heaps of wasted Gatorade bottles, soiled blankets and used tissues. The soldiers inside slept without sheets on narrow mattresses pocked with sharp springs. Not one spoke to the other. They hung their heads, scrolled on their phones, pulled hard on beer bottles, and stared at the rusty stains between the floor drain and the broken toilets. 

One bed remained empty. Unclaimed dollar bills lay folded on the hard pillow. Below the bed frame lay a melted chocolate shake. Drowned flies floated atop the creamy slurry. Notches on the wall counted how many days they spent in the service during the super plague. 

The rumor crossed amid the soldiers since the beginning that young Private Hale struggled with depression and false friendships. When he killed himself it came to a shock to all except for 1st Class Elena. She held her tears in. Army guys are not supposed to cry, especially when they are females with nice teeth and pretty faces. Yet she still held onto his secret, and the memory of the trust they shared drove her deeper into the bottle. 

Elena turned up her music, pressed the headphones into her ears, searched her phone for anything to amuse her but not even her favorite childhood cartoons soothed the sadness. She shivered as the night brought freezing rain over the grounds of the base. The last time shew talked to Hale his once free spirited friendliness twisted into a foul rage. He didn’t tell her what bothered him, but he dared her not to speak of “it.” She pondered the meaning of his last word to her. “It”. 

The drains gargled again. The boys in the regiment sighed and dreaded the overflow of the plumbing. When the putrid smelling water rose and spilled from the toilets and sinks, Elena put on her boots, wiped the sadness from her eyes and marched in with a plunger hanging from her shoulder. Since the super plague struck their city, they’d been bagging up old ladies, homeless people, infected soldiers, and dumping them by the truckload into mass graves under the baseball fields. She rolled up her sleeves and started to plunge. 

The barrack door crashed open. Captain Voss strode in with his gleaming boots, his golden badges, firm hat embroidered with a flaming skull. At once the veins in his neck popped and his jaw tightened so firmly that in his anger his mouth failed to create words. At last an ugly tirade of curses and outrage dislodged from his chest. He stamped his boots and kicked trash from the dirty water. 

“Maggots! If you don’t pay up I’ll tell the officers about the condition of this pigsty and they will beat you all with a hose!” 

The soldiers handed him their envelops stuffed with cash. Voss ripped through them and broke the rubber bands. He counted the money from each subordinate except for Elena. He told her to meet him outside in the usual place at lights out. Despite his rash behavior and the utter corruption he squeezed out of his men, when alone he had nothing but tender, sweet things to say to her.

One time Voss even took Elena to his farm upstate. They watched forest animals, rode with him on the back of a 4-wheeler, they laughed over fads they enjoyed as kids, and no matter how sad or frustrated he felt, he found comforting words to ease her mind. He ran marathons. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink.  Her sympathy for him swelled as she felt that no other woman in the world could understand his pain but for her.

Little did she know Voss worked hard to manufacture a peaceful facade to disguise his real intentions. He never cared what fads she enjoyed. Who would? He only took her out to the woods so she couldn’t escape. He only told her those things because he wanted to touch the softness of her skin. Of all the pleasant things he did share, he never told her the truth that she looked just like his mom did when she was younger, and he knew a host of men living in the underground of the city that would pay good money for a suit made of her skin.

Once alone in Voss’s barracks, he began to strip Elena naked, while he didn’t allow her to touch him, until he slipped on the gown that she recognized. It once hung up in the closet of Hale. Voss talked on and on about how Hale and him would hook up and how bad the young man was at pleasing his superior officer. 

“That boy couldn’t find it with a periscope.” he laughed so hard spit foamed from the gaps in his teeth. “I told him I’d cut him if he ever told anyone. Never thought he’d do something that stupid.” 

Voss tightened the cuffs around Elena’s wrists. He tied knots in the tethers that confined her to the bed. In the lamp light of his desk, he took his glasses off and the furtive ruggedness she once saw in the woods faded. She now saw a wide bald head, tiny eyes buried under the bridge of a flat, bulbous nose, when he smiled, his fat lips swelled up with spit and blood. The dress on his shoulders stretched over the bulk of his shoulders and back, while his hips and legs still looked slender and neglected. 

The captain held Elena’s phone and flipped through communications she had with some college kids she met at a bar over the holiday. His smile went away as he sent after another a sabotaging message. “Hey its me, fuck you and kill yourself.” He laughed and laughed until one actually responded.

“Well well, guess I’ll report this one to the telecommunications boys. Let them shut off his service for a few days.”

Elena watched him smile as he scribbled more hateful messages. Not two weeks before they’d shared a romantic vacation to the glimmering bays of Singapore. She was telling all her friends what a kind soul he had. Even after they assured her that he was stalking them, stealing their pets, and breaking into their homes. She went over the pledge of loyalty she took to the state and governor while noticing a finger floated in the flower vase on his desk. 

As Voss etched the cuts he wanted to make on her skin, she planned her escape. Once he left for work, she’d hope on a plane and escape the plague ridden city and dwell in a quiet place far from the gunfire and riots overtaking the street day by day. Even if he decided not to go through with his operation, she’d soon be beating down the very people she pledged loyalty to in the burning streets. It all depended on if he decided to untie her. She knew if he untied her, then he’d assume she’d follow him onto the next assignment like a happy lapdog like usual. 

He did not. As the morning rose, he came back with a diagram he drew of her. He broke his glasses in his fists, and snarled at her. “What is that?” He stabbed her ribs with his thumb. A fresh tattoo smiled at him. 

“You ruined your skin. Your meat will taste foul. ” He drew a knife and held it against her throat. The torment went on and on, each threat, each forced bewildering confession, becoming more obscene and vulgar. Ever since that night he gave up on his sweetness and nice behavior. He let her know just how disgusted he was by her body, her face, her legs, her hands and feet. He made her pay more in bribes than the others, while holding her in captivity each night. 

One morning she hid a razor blade in her lips, and before he could tie her up, she spat it out and sliced one of his eyes open. Blinded in his left eye, he kicked over his furniture and hurled his knife at her as she leapt out a window. As she hurried away he heard gunshots and it occurred to her that he could report that she died in an accident, or just one day she leapt off a bridge, never to be found again. 

Elena ran and ran until she found a truck stop along the highway. He paid a trucker to carry her into the city, where travelled on foot to her apartment. Decorated in cartoons, Disney princesses, and Christmas decorum, she felt safe for a moment. She ate sugary treats and over sweetened her coffee. She purchased a bus ticket and took a shower with the curtain open. She slept for an hour, woke up shaking and nervous, then slept for another hour, waking up at the slightest footstep in the hallway. 

At sunrise she carried her suitcase out of the closet only to stop at the doorway. The locks she screwed onto the door shook. The door trembled as someone kicked it from the other side. He heard him scream at her from the hall. “Open the door and I won’t turn you in for what you did!” 

Elena froze in terror at first, then listened as an electric drill rived against the door. The screws on the locks began to fall out. She tore the burners out from the gas stove and flipped all four on to their highest setting. The gas hissed as she tossed a can of WD40 into the microwave. 

One by the locks fell from the door and rolled on the floor. Elena opened a window and dropped her suitcase out. The door broke open and before she jumped out she caught sight of Voss. A reddened bandage covered half his face. Deep shadows covered the other half. At first he reached out to her in a moment of panic, then his mouth opened as his face twisted into open gashes. 

“Run all you want, but the day will come when you are mine again, then you will be my slave in the afterlife!”

Elena dropped from the window and landed hard on the balcony a few floors down. She crawled down as Voss looked down her with snot bubbling from his mouth and the bandage wrappings blowing in the wind. He barked at her as she sped away. She got away and flames enveloped her apartment. She took a bus to the airport, with no place to go, she watched the news. A huge explosion went off in the city. She hoped it killed Voss, but the thought of him dying made her wish she still had her phone to contact him one last time. In the coming months, she’d find herself missing him.

Little did she know that Voss never forgot her either, and he spent all his free time accessing the Army’s surveillance systems and searching for her. Credit cards, social media, even cell phone use eventually, and attempts to contact friends and family. He studied her movements, her activity, her loneliness, and her idleness, but he didn’t jump to catch her just yet. He had to make a plan first…

II

A New Dawn

Elena changed her name to Helena and travelled around the ancient coastside as a homeless loafer. She had enough money that for awhile she didn’t need to succumb to selling her labor to get by, so she went from hotel to hotel, walking on the frosty beaches, the distant towers of the city became fainter day by day. She bought a new phone, went on dating apps, travelled to meet the handsome playboys and obscure artists hidden along the cabins and autumn flowers. In these decent nestles of vestige, no one lived in squalor and no quarantines rendered their businesses abandoned and looted. One day she walked down a wooded trail through the morning mist, she smelled the honey sweet scent of harvest, and the ripening of the gourds and apples. 

Along the way she passed an old cemetery buried under wild grass, and a belltower on a cliff overlooking the sea. Amid bounties of melons and ponds of swans, she came to a road slick and wet with the rain of the night before. The sign appeared before her, a new town, a fresh start: New Dawn! We Want You To Live Here. She thought almost that it was too good to be true, so she went in to investigate. She found an inn managed by a mom and pop. They sold cool things like beer and cigars, as well as provided lodging for the travelling glass makers, antique furniture restorers, even a crew of Swedish film makers. 

Helena Elena told them that she needed work. The mom and pop usually would never bring aboard a homeless drifter who deserted the army and had two names, but in her case their hearts just burst at the thought of leaving her out in the cold for the bears and wolves. They gave her an apron and showed her the room keys and the safe they kept all the important documents and high valued items. She reminded them of the daughter they never had, but always dreamed of. She didn’t know anything about the town or the job, but she learned fast and quickly become a popular member of the community among the many gruff and curious locals. 

Helena Elena learned the job fast, took to reading every night, and soon enrolled in the small New Dawn College to study literature and art. In between her visits to the library and work she met other men and women exiled from their homes. Many came to know her as a kind and caring person who gave her shoes to a young child with none. Once she saved up enough money she rented a room inside of a restored mansion originally built in the 1700s. It used to belong to a count who perished across the sea in the European Wars of the early 1900s. His portrait hung in the main corridor. Now it had indoor heating and Wifi. She cooked hot food and gave it away to the exiles, and eventually made several friends in town, and brought many boyfriends into her room. 

The escapades stopped once Helena Elena met with the town doctor. He charged her nothing for the pleasant appointment, and told her that her nausea and headaches were caused by a pregnancy. She spent her pregnancy planning for her baby, and hoping for the best life for her child’s future. Once night she awoke in the dead of night under the full moon to see a shadow standing in her room, his pale face looking out to the garden. He turned to her, draped in black, wrapped in belts and chains, he held a rose in his hand. 

Helena Elena thought she saw him before in her early days when a gaggle of men came into the inn to celebrate their successful hunt. They drank too much, started to fight each other, and more than one grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to kiss her. He was a large guy who made his fortune hauling lumber, and he demanded respect from the damsel. 

“I can  restrain my affections no more! Give yourself to me, wench, and I shall make you and your babe an heiress.”

When she smacked the florid man across the face he persisted his rowdy handling and sloppy kisses.

"No one says no to me!" He declared as he wrestled for her wrists.

A quiet man blew into the door as swift as the wind. Long black hair aflutter, his arms a mass of veins and muscles. With one swift fist he pounded the counter and dug his eyes into the lumbermaster. The drunken man took his hands off Helena Elena, and he backed off with his boots quivering. 

“Who are you?” She reached for the dagger under her pillow. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s just that I saw someone prowling at your window and I was afraid they might return.” 

“Tell me who you are! What do you want?” She drew the dagger and pointed it at his throat from across the room.

“I know how it looks! Please don’t, it won’t hurt me.” He stood up, smiled upon seeing her awoken face, and got up to enter the ray of moonlight. He undid his buttons, and bore his chest in the light. Scars and bullet holes marked his chest. “My name is Luca, I’m the street commissioner.”

Helena Elena kept the dagger in the air, but she removed her covers and shifted from the soft mattress to stand by his side and glance down at the soil below. Heavy boot marks left imprints in the mud. 

“I scared them off. They won’t come back tonight. I can leave if you prefer.” He stepped back giving her enough room to whirl her dagger back around. His gaze on her warmed her nerves.

“Why would you protect me? You barely know who I am.”

“It seems strange but I’ve known this mansion since… well, since I was a child. This room used to be mine, you see. There used to be a fireplace right there, and sometimes I feel nostalgic and I miss those days reading by the warmth of its fire on snow evenings. I always felt safe here. I want everyone in my town to feel safe.” Luca kept rubbing a ring on his finger. He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, and for the first time he stared directly into Helena’s. “And I couldn’t ignore the chance to meet the mysterious vagabond who is boarded in my former bedchamber.” 

“Are you… are you related to the former count?” 

“You can say that. He was a funny man. He used to tell jokes every morning like ‘See here, wait, I've found a button in my salad." "That's all right, sir, it's part of the dressing.’ He loved this house, and he had secret passages built so when we was playing hide and seek with his children and grandchildren, he could sneak up on them and scare them! He even had that bell tower built so he and his wife could watch the sea. She loved that place so much and whenever I look at it, I feel like she’s still there waiting for him to return home.” 

“Did she ever remarry?”

“No she did not. But they say her spirit rises from the crypt on nights when the moon is full. She is waiting for him to join her.” 

“How did she die?” Helena lowered the dagger and poked her palm with the tip.

“That would be a secret the family took to their graves. She’s interred in a mausoleum on the hill.”

“Can I see it?”

“Right now?”

“Yes. I want to see if she rises from the dead like you say.” Helena pulled her boots on, tied a belt around her waist and stuck the dagger inside. 

On their way out he showed her where a few of the secret tunnels were hidden. He explained where they lead. To the garden. To the library. Some even went as far as the bell tower, the bank, and even to the caves on the shore. 

They crossed over through an open cave, with a heaven of stars above them and clean watery air cascading over their heads, they made a sneaky entrance, and by the lift of a vault door, he brought her up into the mausoleum of his family crypt. 

There lay two stone caskets. Etchings of saints and knights decorated the walls. In small cabinets the ashes of the family sat. One window up above glowed in the moonlight and shot a ray of pale light that lit up the entire chamber. Helena pushed the lid off casket, then lifted the wooden cover. Inside sat the bones of an elegant corpse decorated in jewels and fine garments. 

“Oh, how beautiful she was. It’s been so long since I’ve visited this site.” Luca leaned over the open casket, breathing in the ancient dust, he bowed his heard and crossed his chest with his arms. He looked at the ring on his finger, and he began to open and close his fist.

“I’m sorry. I should've known. Your family means a lot to you.” 

“It's okay. I’m glad I came back.” He turned to her, his smile radiating in sadness. “Want to see something cool? It’s a little trick she used to do.” 

She nodded, and he placed a finger behind her ear, and pulled out a gold coin. A long forgotten emperor was cut into one side. She giggled. 

“Maybe you're not all bad.”

Luca walked her back to her room, and they stood smiling on the porch. Neither one knew how to end the evening. Perhaps neither one wanted the moment to end. Luca took her by the hand, “I promise, I am the guardian heart of the shadows. If you need anything, day or night, I’ll be around. Just call with this.” 

He gave her a moonstone pendant. 

“I’ll hold you to that.” She looked up at him, covering her arms, swaying against the wind, her blackened hair flowing down her shoulder as she attached the pendant to her neck.

He ventured into the dark, and she lay in bed all night pressing the moonstone into the flesh of her palms, looking at the strange etches, pondering the original origins, falling asleep deep in mystery.

As time went on, they visited more often, drinking coffee or taking walks on the rocky shores. The more time they spent together, the more strange looks the locals gave her. Rumors swirled about his nocturnal habits, the obsession he had with his deceased family, and the dreadful things he did to lost people who were unfortunate enough to cross him. One wild eyed homeless woman pushed her cart in front of Helena and threw a cross on her.

“Don’t let him take your soul like he’s done to so many others!” 

Even the mom and pop advised that Helena Elena keep her wits if she was determined to continue a relationship with the street commissioner. “We vote for him, sure, but doomed fates befall those who are taken into his embrace.”

On lonely nights she stared at the moonstone and held the growing infant within her. Whenever she thought about Luca it glowed. On some sleepless nights she’d take long walks around the gates of the cemetery and she thought she saw him visit the decayed headstones and talk to them like they were old friends. He drove around town in black truck with tinted windows, and none of the street department workers ever met with him, their assignments came letters left on their doors. He possessed many talents, skills that would take a normal person a lifetime to master. Writing, Boxing, French Cooking, sewing and costume making, skydiving, ice skating, soldering, climbing. Not only did he performs these feats to perfection each time, but he had a talent of listening, empathy, time management, sound sleeping, minding his own business, and staying positive in the damnest of times.

"Don't expose me without cause, don't dominate me without valor"

Medieval Combat Manual

III

The Street Commissioner’s Secret

As they saw each other more and more Helena Elena and Luca found themselves together at the carnival, the pier, the grocery store and even at the movie theater. To her curiosity, he never wanted to meet up until after 5pm when the evening sun began to drift beyond the horizon. Even then he carried an umbrella and wore sunglasses until complete darkness took its rightful place as master of the everlasting sky. While they walked on the cloudy beach she asked him why he never allowed the street department workers to see him. He laughed and explained, “the street department is ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak. I let the mayor and the prom king kinda guys do all the front and center stuff.” 

While they talked a screeching vulture of the sea kept interrupting them. 

“Poor creature. She can’t find anything to eat.” Luca whistled, and the vulture dove down from the cliffs and landed on his shoulder. She licked his ear and he caressed her neck feathers. He reached into his pocket and produced a small zip lock bag of rotting grapes. He opened the bag, the vulture stuck its beak in, swallowed a few, then stuck its head back in, and flew off with a vine in its mouth. 

Along their walk they stopped into the local history museum. 

“You can’t tell but this was actually the first erected structure of New Dawn. No one knows how old it really is. When the courthouse  was burned down all records burned with it. Perhaps  it is older than New Dawn itself.”

“Who burned down the courthouse?” 

“Some say it was witchhunters led by the feared Inquisitor Horatio Del Castile. Smart man. Terrible man. Ruthless and reckless in his pursuit to cleanse the world of evil. He burned many a building if he thought they harbored wickedness. Which as it turned out, many did. His crossbow is inside.” 

They entered the museum and walked around its restored corridors and parlors looking into the frames of worn out paintings. The eyes of the portraits followed them. The floorboards rattled under their feet. Elegant dresses seemed to sigh. Then they came to narrow, twisting staircase, that carried them down and down, until they felt the damp air tangle their lungs, and the solid floor of stone beneath their feet. 

“Down here they keep New Dawn’s dark secrets.” Luca said. “They want everyone to think its a rose garden, but every rose garden has thorns and vines that strangle the young flora. The beauty of nature is a disguise you see, to hide a very real danger.”

“Oh Luca, I’m afraid of nothing!” 

“Then let us proceed. Prepare yourself, for what you see here, is the fearful truth of New Dawn’s cursed history.”

He showed her the cut wires, the broken windows, the illustrations of the morbid and the obscure, rings for magic rituals, zodiac charts, books of demons, 

“How do you know so much?”

“Here is the poisoned dagger used to slay the evil wizard that landed here from across the ocean. He believed he could build an empire of coal and cruelty and necromancy all the way across the mountains to the golden shores on the opposite side of the continent. He failed, and they scattered his bones across the coast and fed his heart to a shark.” 

“Did you learn that in a book? I don’t see any plaques.” 

“Come with me, my love. These spoons were used to stir potions. They tasted terrible. And these shackles were too tight. These books are handwritten by truthseers from the age of Constantinople don't make sense unless you cover one eye. But this is something you must see.”

Helena Elena stood in the back as Luca lit a candle and used it to light a dozen candles hanging over the end of the room. A huge tapestry depicted knights battling demons, of castles falling into the sea, and of naked women dancing in a circle. In the middle of the gallery stood a box of locked steel. He flipped through the combinations on the locks, and one by one they dropped to the floor. He threw the chains aside, and tore open the safe door. He placed the candle inside. The crosses and scriptures turned red. Deep inside sat a cross bow.

“This weapon belonged to the feared inquisitor Horatio Del Castile. It’s sanctified by the fallen sainthoods from across the sea to purge this land of the curses the almighty has placed upon the remaining houses of…” he turned to Helena Elena with both hands high in the air grasping and throwing down with heavy stomps and snarls. “The battles that ensured here between him and the children of darkness! How the count used to tell me, the sleepless nights, the everlasting illness, his painful transformations, he still remembered the combat as if it happened this very day.” 

“Why have you shown me this?”  She cowered away only to find the way out closed by a fallen gate. Her lover stood silhouetted, his back facing her, his jacket loosened so it hung from his shoulders like a cape. When he turned the color drained from his face and his eyes began to bleed. He turned a crank in the wall, and another vault door twisted open. The wall decorated with two suits of armor grinded and turned, opening a new tunnel. This one smelled like the bottom of a trench. With one step he crossed the chamber and stood on the stone floor so close she smelled the copper secreting from his eyelids. Even his eyes turned red and saliva dripped over his thin white lips.

“My love, there is no time. Come with me.” He grabbed her by the arm and ushered her through the tunnel. It went up and down, corkscrewed around and around, lifted and dropped, getting darker and darker, as the hollars of long imprisoned chants hollered for them. When finally the tunnel broke open, he guided he through the starry night, and tall weeds that reached the chest of Helena Elena. Though she struggled to march through the overgrowth, Luca moved swiftly, his feet barely touching the ground, almost as if he flew over the ground. The vultures cried out as they passed crooked trees and burned down houses. 

He took her through the cemetery, between the stones, over the pools and fountains, the decapitated statues, where in the moonlight she heard whispers of the soil, and the marching heads of roaming skeletons. The cliff side appeared from the eclipse of moonlight against the falling sky. Against the crumbling cliff and the roots hanging from its jagged lips the belltower stood high. He scooped her up, and carried her up the stairwell, the hallow moan of wind beckoned them, a host of bats swirled around them, and the top he finally let her rest against a pillar.

Hot and sweaty, she undid the buttons of her blouse. It did little to relieve the pressure building up in her ribcage. No matter how she tried to control her breath the weight in her lungs grew heavier. Heave after heave, her face red, her ankles and arms cut by blades of glass, her knees weakening in the scowl of the moonlight shining off the black ocean. Luca tore at his clothes, ripping off the buttons and laces, exposing his scarred flesh to the silver moon as the cyclone of bats raced to the sky. 

“And yet there is one more thing I must tell you.” Long fangs extended over his bottom lip. As his claws sank into her soft fattened flesh, she smelled a hundred years of clay and graveyard dust. The moonstone necklace burst into flame on her chest. 

“The Count…” She whimpered under her breath. “He was a vampire.”

“Only part correct, my love,” Luca said with his pointy ears now revealed. The long black hair blown back behind his shoulders. “I AM the Count.”

“Noooo!” 

“I hunger for your flesh. I hunger for your blood. I’ve thirsted for your veins against my fangs and tongue since that night I saw you enter the threshold of New Dawn. Yes, I watched you from this very tower, and was determined to make you my dark bride.”

“This can’t be!” 

“Oh, but it is. I have taken you here to see for yourself why I must hurl myself into the sea. For I cannot resist my temptations any further, if I do not perish tonight, I will spill your lifeblood.” Luca pushed her away and he climbed atop the rails. 

“Luca, when I came here last week I had nothing. Now I have you, a child, and so much to hope and live for. I want you to take my mortality, and bring me into the ocean of shadows.”

“You’d give yourself to my thirst? Tempt me not, for I shall lap every drop of your lifeblood without hesitation! You will know only the beauty of darkness. You will know only the tranquility of night. There will be amazing powers, everlasting youth, unsolved mysteries will reveal themselves, but at a strict cost. I think you know what I mean.” 

“To feed on virgin blood… to take residence in the crypt…”

“And by the sanctity of the righteous Inquisitor Horatio Del Castile, we are forbidden to ever leave New Dawn.”

“Did you murder him?”

“If I have ever been a murderer, it was the other creatures of darkness living here. I knew about the covens, the vampire lords, and the dark wizards who arrived to escape the purges in the mystic lands across the sea. I told of their hiding places to the Inquisitor, of how they made their money, and where their houses dwelled. I even delivered the names of my own kin to him. Indeed I am a murderer. So I volunteered to be under his spell.”

“What happens should you leave?” 

“I will lose my powers and heaven itself will open up to smite me to the dust.”

“Dear Luca, I care not for this terrible curse! In the week since we’ve met I have known nothing but affection and devotion. Take my blood, and I will share this vampire’s curse with you.”

“Do you understand, under the peril of demise, that you shall share this soul torment with me now and forever?” 

“Yes, I see the consequences, and I accept their terrible terms.” 

“Under the light of the unholy moon, and the divine overstars? As the crimson dragon as your witness, and the ancient powers of my ancestors?” 

“I cannot offer you the moon or the everlasting night, nor can I promise my life to the forces beyond our comprehension, I commend my blood to your lips, forever, and yours alone. Thus is my love for you, and if you dare hurl yourself into the sea, I shall follow!” 

Luca flew down from the rails and lifted her into the air. He held her with the strength to dismember her, his jaws so tight they could rip a bear to pieces, but his gentle palms wrapped her tight around her chest and back, his bite did not come as a brutal thrust, but a mere poke. Blood tricked down her neck as his lips reddened. As her blood filled his mouth, his pale skin became supple and colorful. Bony limbs became strong and meaty, the the veins of his neck throbbed. Helena grabbed hold of Luca and pressed her neck into his mouth, only to swoon and let her head fall back as her consciousness passed and a deep sleep overcame her. 

Luca scooped her up, and took her in his arms as he walked with her into the light to admire her striking beauty. He then flew away with her, in the direction of her home and her bed, unaware of a third presence observing them that night. From his hiding place in the bushes, the lumbermaster, Luca’s rival for the Street Commissioner position, lowered his opera mask and hurried away to meet his master. A generic burner phone rested in the fist of a gloved hand. When the lumbermaster’s call came in, aggressive finger wasted no time in accepting the call.

“Speak.”

“I have found them, master. It is as you feared.”

“Then I shall fly there tonight. You know what to do. Our plan is now underway. Once the rule of that fiend is over, you will be rewarded with the rulership position you’ve sought for so long, that which is rightfully yours.” 

The tyrant hung up, his identity of Captain Voss long forgotten, he still had captured pictures of Helena Elena on his secret phone. 

“And you, my love, shall return to the onyx towers of the everliving city, to bare my progeny, my little soldiers, who are destined to conquer this land and name me it’s eternal Pharaoh!” 

IV- The Haunting Past Returns

Helena awoke to the cadence of morning birds bowing over the creeping branches outside her window. A rickety work truck pulled a wagon of fiber optic reels down the brick track of street. She looked at her clock and began to wonder about the plans ahead. Her head spun as if hungover, but she felt as relaxed and well rested as ever. She smelled bacon and pancakes cooking from the kitchen of the inn. A well earned day off awaited her, so she stretched her arms out and nestled into the soft cushions of her pillows. Then the sore wounds on her neck scratched against the fabric. She pushed her head up to look. Small blood smears ran down the white cotton. 

Helena wiped the wounds with her fingers. Wet, slick flesh, smooth against her touch. She stared out the window at the sunbeams through the curtains, cascades of dust danced in the light. A wad of cash lay on her nightstand. Money she made at work, enough for her groceries and coffee in the morning. As she rested the memories of the night before slowly developed in her brain, and depicted visions as chemicals ran through her neurons. She held her chest as a tear went down her cheek. Then she bit her pillow and punched the wall, hurled her clock against the room, then she sat still, a wide smile cross her face. 

Luca marked her neck and drew her blood, but he did not kill her as he desired. Nor did he enthrall her with his phantasmal powers. She searched her chest for the moonstone necklace, and her heart almost leapt from her ribs until she found it wrapped up under her blankets. She squeezed it in her palm, and then held it to her chest. With each heartbeat the moonstone pulsed with a dim flash. 

 Helena lay in bed and read her school books while water bubbled in the coffee maker. She pondered names for her unborn child. Max or Felix for a boy, Isabella or Selena for a girl perhaps. Her air conditioner hummed. The phone sat with no notifications to distract her from the serenity of the sunrise. She thought of a little plot of vacant land for sale on the outskirts of New Dawn, and she imagined herself reading on the porch as her kids frolicked in the grass. 

The big old house sounded oddly vacant. No neighbors, no loud music, no footsteps, no cleaning, no one leaving for work or yelling at their kids. The coffee finished brewing. Helena planned a whole day just for herself. Coffee and meditation, then reading her school books and finishing her essays. Then a long walk around the gravel road, the pond where the ducks swim, the softball field, then finally to the fish market for dinner. 

Helena carried her books and cup of coffee and headed down the hall towards the porch. To her amusement the front door was wide open. Soft warm wind blew in debris from the fields and bugs from the front yard. She walked down the hall, sunlight and summer air brushing her hair, shoulders, and the laces of her robe. She felt the dust of the hard wood on her bare feet. She almost gasped when she smelled the beauty of the harvest and the falling flower petals. 

However Helena’s glee became interrupted by the site of heavy muddy tracks on the floor. The flower in the vase not only lost its petals, but on the loveseat below the picture window sat a heavy shouldered silhouette with no hair, large hands, a knife in one hand, and the flowers in another. One by one he pinched the petals, and cut them off. He kept himself concealed in the shadow below the ray of light. However she did not mistake the combat boots on his feet, and the medals on his chest. His voice, inconceivably scarred, now sounded rough like a man who had smoked a hole in this throat. Despite the damage, it still possessed the deep and low tones of Captain Voss. 

“Do not run, dear Elena, for I am here to rescue you.” He sank the knife into his belt and let the flowers fall to the floor. He reclined in his seat, and raised both his arms into the sun. “Though I do not expect you to be happy to see me.”

Helena looked out the doorway.

“You can try to escape me again. You can run all the way to Cairo. But I will follow you even to the bitter ends of the earth and beyond. Sit down, and hear me out, and I shall leave you be.”

Helena collapsed on the cushion across from Voss. He leaned his head into the light and put his hands on his knees. Gauze wrapped around the entire length of his head, and one half of his face remained hidden under an opera mask. She could see through the slit in the mouth of the mask. He had no lips, and no cheeks to show her. 

“I want you to know that I have your best interest at heart, though you may not always understand. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. I am a changed man. I see the error of my ways. I’m sorry for what I did to Hale and to you.” He drew a pistol from his coat and set it on the coffee table, then drew out two clips and set them right besides it. “Take it. Its yours. Should I ever do anything you don’t like, you may shoot me. But be warned, as true as the sun rises you will come with me tomorrow when the helicopter arrives. Right here in front of this building. If you give us trouble, I will shatter your spine and tear your limbs from your body, and STILL you will come. Verily, the child growing in your womb is mine, and he will return to the City of Onyx Towers where you both belong!” 

Voss arose from his seat, cutting the sunlight into pieces with his swift shadow. He cast the tails of his heavy coat aside, the straps and buckle tight, and stormed out with each heavy bootstep collapsing like a thunderbolt. He stood outside, raised his hand, and a helicopter dropped from the clouds. He grabbed the ladder, and it carried him off. Not once did he break his eye contact with Helena through the eye gashes in his mask. 

No longer brown and warm- but strained and red. The corneas waxed over and pale. Even his gloved hands seemed to quiver in pain. Helena rolled back and forth on the floor in fear as she thought she heard his voice in every phone, and thought she saw his shadow at every window. She looked anyplace for an escape but her gaze only found safety and relief at the sight of the .45 caliber pistol on the table. 

Helena reached for it, and took a clip, loaded a bullet into the chamber. At first she thought about shooting herself, then she went out to the porch. In the far distance over the sea she saw dark storm clouds coming in fast against the rising morning. A dark stormy night approached. She reached both hands out to the storm, the gun at her waist, tears streaming down her eyes as the helicopter blades whirled high over New Dawn. 

Helena smelled sizzling meat, but it didn’t smell like pork or beef. It smelled rotten, like a dog or some other carnivore. She saw Luca’s truck at the driveway. The door flung open, and Luca came climbing out. He lifted the umbrella over his head but it wasn't enough to keep the sun from melting his skin. 

Even in the shade of the porch, his hair looked matted in blood and his skin flaked away. He reached down and ripped the gun away from Helena. He tore the slide apart, and broke the pistol in half. He showed the components to her. “There’s no firing pin.” 

Helena swooned and fainted. Luca brought her to the one place he believed to be safe- his family crypt. He lifted the lid of his coffin, and laid her within its soft confines. Then he called on every member of the Street Department to come to his aid. He assigned the strongest veterans of his task force to stand guard over her and make sure no one gets close. He sent the rest to secure the roads entry ways into town, and for the rest to come with him as they inspected the Count’s boarding house. 

Sure enough, they found the cleaning staff gagged, tied up, and murdered in the basement. Someone strangled them and then cut their throats. Searching room to room, they recovered corpse after corpse of the building inhabitants. For what purpose or reason Luca didn’t know other than to frighten the good people. A call came in from a team searching the museum. 

“Street Commissioner, The Crossbow is missing” The radio said.

“What do you mean it's missing? It's been locked up for centuries.”

“The locks are all broken. Someone pried the vault open. It’s gone.”

 

V- THE FINAL RECKONING 

Luca dismissed the task force. They insisted they do more in the name of New Dawn, but Luca warned them to stay away. He went back into the stained glass isles of his saint’s cathedral carved into the cliffside by the sea, and recovered his battle gear. He took out a one handed sword from a moldy chest,  in Latin, inscribed on the blade, it read “DRAW ME NOT WITHOUT VALOR. DRAW ME TO BE DELIBERATE” He used the blade to shave off his long locks, then he used a knife to buzz the hairs down to fine points. 

Luca rose with both hands raised to the sky. He whispered sacred verses, it summoned a flock of ravens that each rested on the arches of the Cathedral. They watched with glowing eyes as a red fog rose from the sea and covered the entire town in a crimson perfume. He repeated the ciphers over and over until the stink of the sea and the mists of the graves covered the sun and darkened the land. All the ghosts went free from their confines, the forest animals fled, and large cracks broke the streets apart. 

The channels of the empty cathedral opened and from the sweltering depths arose the skull like mask over the disfigured face of Voss. The lost crossbow guarded his chest. His heavy strides swept the fog away. He smiled as he approached Luca. A row of bolts crossed his chest, the wood of the crossbow gleamed in the light from the holes in the ceiling as he stepped up to the dais between the great windows. 

“I’ve come to claim what is rightfully mine.” He announced across the isle.

“You will not lay a hand on Helena. Monsters like you have caused enough pain.” Luca stood up and stepped forward. 

“You’ve terrorized this land for long enough, fiend. Have at thee! And we will see who the real monster is.” Voss raised the crossbow and fired a bolt. It burst into flames and sliced through the air, but landed safely in the ocean below the cliff. 

“Is that all you can do, tyrant?”  Luca chastised while shifting back and forth so fast that he seemed to vanish and reappear in the waves of fog. Luca whispered to the ravens above, and a shroud of feathers and darkness covered him. With the speed of conjured lightning, the shroud of darkness struck Voss who stumped back against a fallen cross, snapped a rib, and caused a small amount of blood to pour from his mouth. “Don’t underestimate me, mortal.”

Voss pounded the rib back into place, loaded another shot. Flaming bolt after flaming cut cut across the air as Luca danced between cyclones of fog and shadow. More bolts went flying as Luca dove behind columns. The ancient stone disintegrated with gaps so wide Luca could see Voss load his next shot. The Tyrant of the Onyx City destroyed column after column until the arches collapsed. The floor broke open and noxious gasses escaped into the air. Luca leapt high over the wreckage and landed on a stone ledge where the decapitated statue of an angel once stood. 

Far far away in the crypt Helena Elena awoke to feel a burning on her chest. She looked down at the moonstone. It burned so bright that blue sparks sputtered from its clasp. The tremors under the casket shook the walls and she tore off her veil and awoke. The ardent guardians watching over her gasped when they saw her rise from the casket. She tried to escape but they both grabbed hold of her and held her down. 

“Luca, watch out!” she cried, her voice lost in the chaos.

Voss fired another bolt. Luca lost his footing as sunlight from the drifting cloud cover revealed a striking beam onto the headless statue, and the flaming arrow struck him in the collar bone. Luca snarled in pain as the centuries of his life seemed to crash down on him. He felt his very blood weaken as his grasp over the darkness slipped. He tore the arrow out and hurled it to the floor below. His own blood splattered his hands and cheek. He tore his shirt off, revealing the scars and bullet wounds he suffered over the rise and falls of numerous dynasties.

With a barrier of swirling shadows, Luca pounced from the ledge while Voss loaded another bolt. The ravens hovered in the air. The dust particles rose to the sky. Drops of blood smashed onto the cathedral floor. Luca roared and charged onto the dais. 

Voss hesitated, stunned at the ferocity and the bestial features revealing themselves before him. Never in his life, in all the horrors of war, in all the torments he experienced in this life, had he ever seen the monstrous vampire up close. 

“This ends now!” Luca tore the crossbow away and broke it into a million pieces on the floor. His blood kept pouring over his bare chest, his arms, his legs, small pools formed around his feet.

Voss cackled as he noticed wanes in the vampires appearance. Wrinkles, white hairs, the old wounds slowly broke and reopened. The wound caused by the cross bow turned black as the throbbing veins in Luca’s neck and forehead turned black as well. He reached into a secret sheath under his coat and stepped forward with a secret dagger thrusted high in the air. He forced it down and Luca’s sword bit it’s steel edge so hard that the stain glass window behind them shattered into a blowing storm of shards. 

In the crypt, Helena sumped and pulled until the honorable veterans heard the howls of Luca. All the tunnels beneath New Dawn filled with echoes of collapsed, and one by one they collapsed. The radios and scanners chattered and rang out as all the sirens and bells in town sounded. Helena watched as rocks and trees and cars fell down into the crypt. The two veterans tried to escape only to be caught beneath the wreckage. Helena, still her in her white morning gown, hurried away, passed the gate, and raced out the mausoleum door as the screams of ghosts raced behind her. Following the sparks of the moonstone, he hurried to the cathedral. 

Voss’s helicopter flew overhead. His opponent and he leapt up and down over the fallen columns and ever widening and shifting cracks in the floor. With blow that failed to kill the target, Luca grew weaker. The poison veins covered his body. The wound on his collar bone blazed with infection. 

With a powerful lunge, Voss’s dagger pierced the vampires chest. The fog of darkness began to weaken. With each blow Voss delivered onto the back and shoulders of Luca, the sun shined a bit more. The more light, the more his skin bubbled and popped. With a final blow, Luca’s sword shattered, and Voss kicked him so hard that Luca flew across the chamber. 

Voss put his dagger back in the secret sheath. 

“The former me would’ve cherished this moment. He would’ve cut you into pieces and threw them into the sea.” He lifted the mask from his head, and peeled off the oozing gauze wraps. His sat on a broken stone to catch his breath. He coughed and coughed until he choked out a knot of bile. His scorned facial damage leaked fluid and bled in the exposed air. Black and white scars covered what little flesh remind. His teeth poked through his cheeks and lips. One eye hung from its socket while the other sank into the back of his head. “Instead you shall suffer! Immortal as you may be, you will live out your days in everlasting anguish.”

Voss took Luca up on his shoulder like he had carried so many wounded soldiers, and walked carefully out of the sun light, and into the shade of the cathedral, where he strapped Luca to the cross to face the ocean.

“Or maybe, just as the sun rises over the eastern shore, you will finally find rest.”

“Helena….” Luca muttered, his youth leaving his body as he aged two hundred years in just a few minutes. 

“She is to be my bride, and you, vampire, will find no peace in the afterlife.” 

Luca pointed his finger. “Helena, leave while you can.”

Voss turned around, his long coat over his shoulder, to his amusement, there stood Helena in the daylight, holding the handle of the broken sword.

“Elena, we are free now to be together. How it was meant to be. Your child… our child… will be the bright prince of a new age.” He stepped slowly down the isle with both his hands raised. 

Helena listened and trembled as the helicopter lowered from the sky. She remembered how sweet and kind he used to be. How when she had no friends, he reached out to her. How he promised to share dreams with her, and to protect her from the demons who torment the world. The orphaned girl lost on the Onyx streets of the city still existed within her, unable to cope with the hatred and violence embedded into the hearts and souls of mankind. She turned the handle around and held the blade against her own chest. 

“I don’t need you. You have no power over me!” She thrusted the sword into her heart. A fountain of blood sprayed over the destruction. She fell backwards with the sword’s vibrant steel gleaming in the glowing sunlight. Voss stopped in his tracks, his triumphant smile become a scowl of confusion and disgust. 

Helena’s blood, though flooding the stone beneath her dying body, trickled up the blade of the sword. The etching, draw me with valor, glowed red hot. Voss reached down, checked her pulse, then signaled for the helicopter to land. He tried to pull her body up, but the weight of the sword kept her pinned to the ground. He took hold of the handle, and tore it from her body. 

Voss examined the blade when from the corners of the sky, a ray of light pierced the helicopter. It exploded and it fell to the rocks below the cliff. The fiery wind blinded Voss who dropped the sword and covered his eyes. When he opened them he saw a huge golden face in the clouds. One he had never seen, but who looked down on him, not as some guardian angel, but an interrogator. 

First the great golden face looked at the destruction of the cathedral, than the broken crossbow. 

“You dared taketh that crossbow from its resting place?”

A blinding light enveloped Voss, who screamed in pain as the light beat him until his spine fractured. Voss bent backwards and fell to the floor, then bent again as his spine broke in the other direction. His screams of pain rivaled the carnage of a slaughter house, as he twisted and contorted, his head spun all the way around, is hips pivoted until his femurs popped out of their sockets, and as a monstrous force stood before him amid the smiling faces of everyone he ever hurt and who ever hurt him, let out scream from the depth of his guts. An unfathomable terror of beauty and hate floated over him with chains and wings slowly began to take shape. A long slender body, inky black, with a wild forest of flaming blue snakes as hair on their head in the shape of a mohawk. Nine penis’s along their chest around several pairs of breasts that leaked hot wax. Their eyes blazed like a furnaces and infinite mirrors.

 A burning hole opened up underneath his feet, and little imps with cruel smiles and long horns took the chains from the monster, tied them around Voss, and wrapped him up until they covered his limbs, his body, his neck, his chin, his eyes, his ears, and finally his mouth. 

The imps leapt into the flaming hole in delight and ecstasy, and they pulled Voss down with them. 

The veterans of the street department finally arrived, out of breath, exhausted, covered in soot and burns, but they came too late. One ran to Helena, but her body felt cold, and her hands lay lifeless in her own blood. The other unstrapped Luca, and dragged him to lay besides the fallen maiden. In Luca’s dying breaths, he reached for her hand, he held it tight, and then brought it to his fangs. They sank into her veins, but he found no heart beat, no pulse, He dug them deeper, jabbing in all directions for any sign of a heartbeat. 

“Take out your knife.” Luca asked of his men. “And cut my wrist.”

“No, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“It won’t save us. Cut my wrist, cut my throat, slash my forehead, and spill the blood into Helena’s mouth. Make her swallow, and it will revive her.”

“My dear Count, that will kill you!” 

“I died a long time ago, my good men. Commend my spirit to the afterlife, and spare her its eternal torments. She is the Street Commissioner now. It is my dying wish.”

Luca fell back, the last of his strength faded. His men drew a long knife, looked at each other, and did as requested. They lifted his arm, cut down the vein, and placed it over the maiden’s mouth. At first they watched in horror as the blood filled up her mouth and leaked down her lips and chin. Then  her throat gurgled. A light came to life in her eyes and her fingers moved. She gurgled more as her throat slurped. She reached up and took Luca’s arm and pressed it into her mouth. Color came back to her face, and the moonstone necklace shined once more. 

In Helena’s heart, she and Luca soared across the night sky, free, embracing their strength, newfound in the abyss. The stars came out and twinkled over New Dawn. She and him victorious over the evils of the land. When she awoke, she found his bones laying in the sun, and the two veterans petrified in awe. She asked them to flee and not to witness the horror of her revival, but they refused, and pledged their allegiance to her service. 

 Helena's first act as Street Commissioner was to bury Luca in his family crypt, and have it sealed forever. However one lock in the vault door remained accessible only by a key that she kept around her neck. Next she had the treacherous lumbermaster imprisoned in a gibbet hanging over the cliff. The vultures and seahawks picked at this flesh until nothing remained of him but for some hair and a few bones scattered across the sea. Much work went into rebuilding and repairing the damage. All over town the vultures and ravens flew to visit the crypt, and the walking skeletons and ghosts wept for centuries over their loss. Helena spent her immortal days visiting the crypt, opening the lid of Luca’s casket, and curling up beside his remains, caressing the smooth surface of his skull and cleaning the webs out of his eye sockets. where she dreamt sweet dreams of them together ready to create a future of hope and freedom.