Full Blood

Chapter One

Daniel loved watching Katarina's peaceful face when she slept. A deep purple hue, the colour of deadly nightshade, decorated her crescent eyelids during somnolence. Her pretty head deep in his pillow soothed him beyond comprehension. Daniel experienced new heat within his cold body through her serenity. Whether warmth or passion, he could not tell. A prominent part of his life now, Katarina had become an integral part of him. Sleep was difficult for him on weekdays when she was not there. But Silviya had her limits. His mother allowed Katarina to sleep in his bedroom and turned a blind eye to the girlfriend's weekend presence. As far as anyone was concerned, including his mother's conscience, their visitor always used the sleeping bag. Katarina rumpled it out of courtesy and warmed it with her body for at least five minutes, a gesture appreciated by Silviya.

Daniel traced the edge of her face with his forefinger and watched a smile tweak the corners of her lips. Her eyes fluttered open like, butterfly wings and her pupils dilated in a sudden rush of light.

Good morning, he whispered in a husky morning voice.

Morning. Katarina stretched like a feline as Daniel stroked the soft, tender skin around her collarbone. I always feel cold when I wake up next to you.

Sorry, he pouted and cursed his dhampir nature.

Don't apologise. She pressed a finger to his lips. I like it. It means you're nearby.

How did you sleep?

Deeply. I always do when I'm here. Katarina turned onto her side and faced him. She took his chin and kissed his lips. How about you?

Yes, very well, Daniel lied through his sharp teeth and pushed a wedge of Katarina's hair behind her ear.

For some time now, his sleep had been troubled. Disturbing dreams paraded through his nights. Always the same image. A boy the same age as himself, seventeen. The stranger had a pale face and smiled. Shadows and darkness surrounded him as he walked mid air. Daniel sensed a singular purpose drove him. What it was, he could not fathom. Each night, the same dream taunted him. Each morning, the same questions demanded answers and evaded him. Daniel's bloodless lips sealed tight about the whole thing.

Daniel mentioned his nightmare in confidence to Mr. Underhill, but not even he provided any answer. He made Daniel promise to update him on the frequency and changes about the dream. Both knew a dhampir's dreams were complicated and often premonitions. Both were disconcerted.

Daniel looked with adoration at Katarina and his resolve to protect her from his nightmare crumbled. Daniel opened his mouth to explain his burden, but Silviya interrupted and left the words wedged in his throat like the result of gluttony.

Breakfast! Silviya screeched from the kitchen.

Katarina plunged into the marshmallow sleeping bag.

* * * *

Silviya had not slept for a week. During midnight pacing to and from the kitchen, she had realised she was not alone in her twilight disturbance. Daniel, too, was troubled and not sleeping. Though he never showed his face or came out for companionship, she heard him toss and turn, coughing and opening drawers for books to read and aid his rest. Silviya had let him alone, deciding not to question her son as her scarlet ringed eyes begged for sleep, her tongue too weary to query or fight. Their family kept enough secrets. One more did not seem out of place.

Like her secretive son, she kept the insomnia to herself. Silviya sipped thick, black coffee and frowned away the implausible idea of broaching her recurring dreams with Daniel. First of all, Silviya dreamed about waking one morning as a young girl, pregnant once more. Straight away, she had known what the feeling meant. A frozen bean had burned her stomach with its bitter presence. Immediately, Silviya had realised this pregnancy was different than her first and sensed the presence of evil encapsulated within her womb, which was dissimilar to carrying Daniel. Her morning sickness had lasted all day and all night. The very thought of the evil thing within her body had nauseated her. Now, in her later years, she woke with morning sickness as she remembered.

Her dream changed into tormenting visions of the baby she had bequeathed the gypsies and those actions plagued her nights. Horrible remembrances of its fiery yellow eyes, which had squinted at her in the darkness of the old caravan, accompanied a creeping feeling which insisted she would meet this child again under despicable circumstances. She decided to keep these apparitions to herself, uncertain whether they were true or false. Daniel was not the only Otovic keeping dangerous secrets from his loved ones. He was not the only member of the household kept awake by closeted skeletons as dust loosened upon the bones and dropped to the floor around their feet, ready to trip and bury them.

Chapter Two

Vladimir woke prematurely inside his musty, splintering, but sumptuously decorated coffin in the wine cellar of his Borovanian castle. He winced to see narrow slivers of light around the edge of the lid. A strong sensation of disquiet woke him. Something was wrong and he discerned murder. A five hundred year old vampire, his senses were sharp and strong. Dry eyelids closed like a roll top desk over yellow eyes. Vladimir induced a trance which allowed his mind to wander and find the truth.

His son was dead. Niko was gone. Murdered.

Traces of the vampire son's demise remained visible in the ether to his undead eyes. Niko left behind a tell tale story. Vladimir saw the terrible fight in the old gymnasium and the visages of all those responsible. He cringed to see his son's bones tumble like a xylophone onto the concrete floor. To finish the vision, the moth splattered like a psychiatrist's ink blot against the barren wall.

Deep seated hatred hissed past teeth sharp as a wolverine's claws. Vladimir wailed the screech of a banshee. His coffin lid rattled under the pressure of his grief and the fists which battered away his wretchedness. Pain caused his withered heart to pound and the pulsation drove a desire for terrible revenge.

At least one consolation remained. There was another son. One sired when he had returned to the desolate remains of the Serbian village where he had fathered many half bloods over the centuries. A year after the conception of Daniel and Niko, he had returned to the same bed as before.

Vladimir remembered the Otovic household with a sinister fondness. He remembered how instinct had driven him there again, to the adjoining room where the less beautiful, but sharper willed sister, Zora, slept. The sister had succumbed willingly and had watched him with sly, narrow eyes while he had impregnated her. Their child, Niko, a year old on his second visit, had crawled upon the floor while his mother slept. His son must have felt his presence in the room since the boy's wide eyes stared with intrigue. Vladimir had put a jaundiced finger to his crusty lips and waved his hand so the young Niko fell to sleep. Hands on paternity did not appeal. He had other business.

Vladimir continued to prowl unseen and reached the side of Silviya, more beautiful than Zora, but petulant. He remembered how she had tried to will him away that night almost a year ago, but she had not matched his forceful willpower. Vladimir had been more interested in Daniel, the boy produced from their initial coupling. A raw energy had surrounded Daniel, strong and powerful, even though he slept snug in his cot with the peace possessed only by the innocent. What he had produced with Silviya seemed to be of stronger stock. Vladimir had craved more.

Vladimir remembered how his masterful shadow had appeared at the foot of Silviya's bed and darkened her woollen blanket for a second time. His darkness had crept over her face. Spiders had seeped from the skirting boards and carpeted the bedroom floor. His chill presence had half-wakened her, but in a thrice he subdued her consciousness to prevent a fight like last time. Vladimir had claimed her mind, her thoughts. He had sensed the fear that rose and had revelled in her alarm before he had seen fit to stifle it.

Vladimir had completed the second deed and impregnated her once more. He had observed her over the years. She had never seen him, but every time she shivered, he had stalked nearby. None of Silviya's family had known about the pregnancy or so they claimed. Silviya had worn shawls and loose wraps to disguise her swollen stomach.

He came to all his victims toward the end of their pregnancies and delighted in their attitudes, whether benevolent towards their sires or otherwise. All was delicious sport. And, as with the other mothers, Vladimir came to Silviya nine months later and was surprised to find, with her iron constitution, that she had panicked. Only vague gestures had given her affected state of mind away, the odd stumble, a slightly raised heart rate, a sharper temper. At the very end of her pregnancy, when the initial contraction had gripped her like an iron claw, she had run into the mountains. Stories existed about gypsies who dwelt there, travelling people who took in girls in trouble in return for possession of their babies. She had sought them out. Vladimir had guessed what sin she was about to commit. He had let it happen. Vampires always have strange intentions and counter strategies. He had thought it an interesting diversion to let this journey unfold.

After half a day's walking, Vladimir had seen her find them by the curling smoke of their campfire. A circle of gypsy caravans, gaily painted in bright colours and patterned with flowers, with rounded roofs and stable doors. Upon a set of wooden steps outside a white caravan, an old woman with a black shawl and withered, leathery face had beckoned her. Vladimir had vowed to remember her face for eternity.

I have been awaiting you, her deep voice had crackled.

Will you take me in?

For what payment, young lady? The gypsy had smiled a toothless, knowing smile and blew pungent smoke from a cigar into her face.

The baby. You shall have it.

And about this child, there is something you need to tell us? the gypsy had asked with a frown.

Nothing, Silviya had replied.

The gypsy had lifted her heavy layers of skirts so she could mount the stairs and creaked open the wooden stable doors. Enter, child, she had beckoned with a treacherous grin.

Vladimir ensured those gypsies lived to regret making such an agreement with the stoically quiet young woman called Silviya. They never knew what ramifications would later dog them down until their deaths for daring to have possessed the son of the most powerful, bloodthirsty vampire of their region, an area known for the voracity of supernatural beasts within its Boravanian boundaries. They had ordered the mother to leave them before sundown.

Silviya had borne a beautiful, healthy baby boy, who had been taken away before the vernix had dried upon his head, and had left the gypsies a legacy of doom. Vladimir had seen his son's life unfold throughout the years. Some had embraced the wicked youngling. Others had fallen to their knees in regret with the last ounce of blood which trickled from punctures in their necks.

A plan had formulated in his malevolent mind after Niko's death and he drew tight the silken and cobwebbed threads that joined his existence with the Otovics.

Life in a castle could be very lonely. Not that Vladimir was unused to the solitary life. In five hundred years, he had grown accustomed to it. At times when he felt pangs for company, he had employed a maid or a butler or sometimes even a cook, but he became annoyed if his sirloin was too charred. He had sated his thirst for fresh blood on the cook rather than the