The manor, on the other hand, had frightened me almost instantly. It was deafeningly quiet with far too few servants. Entire wings were shut away behind locked doors. Meals were only taken after sundown.
Bogdan had watched me constantly. At first I thought I imagined it. Then I realized I could physically feel when his attention settled on me.
I fascinated him. Which should have terrified me more than it did. The problem was that he was lonely. Or at least he wore loneliness convincingly. He asked me questions no one had ever asked before.
What books did I like?
Did I enjoy music?
What did I think happened after death?
Did I resent God for letting me be born into poverty?
Did I want children?
No one had ever cared what I thought about anything. Certainly not men. Certainly not wealthy ones. I was so young then. So painfully easy to impress.
Bogdan showed me libraries larger than churches. Taught me French badly on purpose because he liked hearing me argue with him. Played piano late into storming nights while the sea battered the cliffs. Sometimes I forgot to be afraid.
His attention and care had been the trap. The terrifying intimacy of being seen after a lifetime of invisibility.
But there were tiny moments where I recognized the wrongness of it all. I noticed mirrors never reflected him correctly in dim light. I noticed the servants never lasted long, and that the butcher delivered livestock at odd hours.
Once, I woke during a daytime nap because I heard screaming below the manor. Human screaming. By the time I reached the corridor, it had stopped. Bogdan stood at the end of the hallway in bloodstained shirtsleeves, smiling pleasantly at me. “Go back to bed, poppet.”
I should have fled then. Should have fled the first four years in his care. Instead, I stayed another six years. That was the thing about survival. You convinced yourself danger was manageable if leaving meant starvation for you and your younger siblings.
Then, on a winter’s night, he kissed me. And I remember standing there afterward, absolutely terrified because some foolish part of me had wanted him to do it again.
Bogdan noticed it. “You are very alive, Winifred,” he had murmured against my temple. “Do you know how rare that is?”
I hadn’t understood what he meant until much later.
The night he changed me, storms had nearly swallowed the island whole. Rain hammered against the windows hard enoughto sound like rocks. Bogdan had been… different all evening. Restless. Distracted. Hungry.
I knew something was wrong immediately because he kept staring at me for far too long.
“You should sleep,” I’d told him nervously.
“I do not think I can.”
I remembered backing away slowly. I remembered finally understanding. Predators had a look moments before attacking. Humans knew it deep in their bones.
I ran.
God, I ran.
Straight through the manor. I was barefoot, terrified, and could hear him behind me without hearing footsteps. He moved impossibly fast then, floating just above the ground.
I made it all the way to the chapel ruins near the cliffs before he caught me. I fought him like hell. That memory was still important to me, even now. I fought until my hands bruised and bled, until my throat tore from screaming. I grabbed a candlestick from the ruined altar and cracked it against his face hard enough to split skin.
Bogdan had laughed. He was elated. “You magnificent creature.”
Then he bit my neck.
The memory still lived inside my body. Cold agony pouring through every vein. Hunger so enormous it erased language. Dying while remaining conscious enough to understand it was happening.
When I woke afterward, everything had changed. The world smelled too alive. Sounded too loud. Blood beneath skin. Salt beneath tears. Heartbeat beneath silence.
