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“This is the last you’ll see of him. Your lips won’t form his name, for your tongue speaks double, and it simply cannot be trusted. You’re unworthy of your flesh. Maybe, now that your tongue has taken a new shape, it won’t betray anymore, be deceitful. Maybe, just for once, you will be able to speak my language,” Valerie said, shoving the speechless man aside, “Now watch.”
Valerie was surprised to see how powerful her hands were, carrying the scalpel so well. The sky was soft and blue, free of the mist and smoke from the chimneys. She closed the distance between her and her husband, looking down at his ghastly figure. He was still holding the skull, as if her sister was hiding in its hollow sockets. He looked too soft, too vulnerable to be a killer, but that was his thing: His disarming smile blended well with the erratic and fierce movements of the townspeople. Deadly when he wanted to be. He perhaps never got on with his father’s commands, but he had to struggle for the legacy he left behind and promised him. He sure learned the sweeping mobility of his people’s favors, and showed no signs of blame. Perhaps that was what drove him to her: her callous disdain for the masses, sometimes needing the drowsy hum of his voice, trusting him with his longing for some greater change in the people.
“I relied on your charity, you know?” she said, hovering over his head. “I never mistook it for love. But with a grateful heart, I came here. Now, look at what you’ve made me. This is your design, your lesson, your curse. I would learn to be better and give you all my strength if you hadn’t betrayed me, so save your tears, husband. Vengeance will serve me better.”
Now people were at the gates, calling her to come out, grinning with satisfaction, for they knew she would never repent or confess. She did not find in her heart to mend anything. First, they made her a saint, then a traitor. Finally, Mircalla made her a lover. Everything that passed did so without any impression upon her. She was Valerie Vertigo no more.
A heavy grating sound revealed the iron gates being forced open. The hands clinging to the rusted bars were free and they were coming straight to her. This was not the aimless crowd she watched day after day, lusterless and smoldering, but they walked briskly to the manor-house. The group dispersed momentarily before merging together. There were two new figures at the front, hollow-cheeked and solitary, following Valerie with a sunken expression. The white-hot sun cast a dejected glow on their thinned faces. By instinct, Valerie touched the puncture marks on her neck, throbbing and itching. They were frothing at the mouth, the whites of their eyes dark and moody. Ethan was saying something but the crowd’s roar drowned him out. She noticed the doctor crawling towards the edge of the forest from the corner of her eye.
“You are lost forever,” he said over and over again, tears running down his cheeks. He was bright and spotless under the sun, wailing in anguish, inhumanly piercing, as he threw himself to his side. His suffering was a prompting she had been waiting for. She was consumed by an unquenchable rage and aversion, the depths of which she no longer tried to disguise.
She folded her arms around his chest, elbows poking through his ribs, unraveling the threads of his mortal flesh. There was the heart; there laid what she was seeking. She lowered her arm and swung the blade, slamming it into his chest, directly against the hollow where his heart was. She thought life was too short to be spent in animosity when death was just as good a medium. It did no good for her to condemn these hapless men, spectators of her doom, or laugh at them. She had to seek more, and she finally did.
There was screaming and the sound of bone crushing. Her soul demanded labor, so she struck again and again. His blood was thumping in the hollows of her palms. Valerie was seized by such vitality that was shaking her body that it extended beyond the limits of her skin. She remembered that love was wild—the earth immense—and she was capable of receiving them both in an embrace with an untiring hope.
Blood painted a bright halo around him. Valerie witnessed his tremors and convulsions growing sparse, and heard the bursts of air escaping from his lips before he died. He seemed to disappear under her weight and only the skull pressed to his cheek remained, reverberating against the soft crease of her thighs. She breathed a sigh of relief as if a great weight was off her chest and fell on her back.
29
She had been insuch a haste for all these months, lulled by the sound of cheers and the chilling air, but now, she had a sense of relief and retrospection, as though she had at last stood up from her shadowed corner and faced the daylight. She feared she might die, the heavy languor soaking her, passing the terrors of disease deeper. She had long felt like a piece of meat at a butcher's shop, unrolled and put on display, ready to be carved and sold. Her limbs and hands were lead heavy and she was aware of a stupor of immeasurable exhaustion; it was, perhaps, the first time she had time to consider herself: weary, thirsty, yet alive.
Someone blocked the sun and Valerie cracked one eye open. A few extended arms, reaching for her, crept closer to her face. A tremor ran along her as familiar fingers caressed her cheek. “Mircalla,” she moaned, throwing her head back. The townspeople were wandering in circles, dazed and blind, like a flock of birds that lost direction. The vastness of the hills and swirling veils of clouds over the peaks mesmerized her; to be encircled by the gentle pattern of their overbearing presence was soothing as each with their own personality, their unpeopled totality, the quality of reaching nowhere produced within her a sense of intimacy.
“Get up, darling.”
Her dear Mircalla. Voracious and terribly relentless. She came back to her. Something within her told her that she was going to survive no matter what.
“Are you really here? Speak, Mircalla.”
Mircalla did not rush. She pulled Valerie to her feet and pressed her to her chest. Valerie wanted to describe the loneliness back to her, and bridge the days spent in her absence, but all she could do was fill her lungs with the musky smell of hers, a mixture of smoke and earth and sap. Valerie thought about the tormenting nights she spent in Mircalla’s room, pressing her palms against the moonlit windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of her billowing cape or cascading hair. The warmth of her lips still grazed Valerie’s cheeks even then; moments of passion and sincerity wrapped her like a warm blanket. Hours spent in sweet conversation and tenderness, trust and security were all gone, and days were drained of reason, nights became bottomless with misery. She tossed and turned like a sleepless child, waiting and waiting.
She lost everything because she could not face the truth until it was too late.
“I ruined it all. My lapse of judgment, forgetting I was once their enemy made every error more malignant than it ought to be. I blamed you, exploited your benediction, left you in fear and perplexity. It was a cowardly thing, more than enough to send you away indeed, to accuse you for unchanging and not extending the grace for my so-called friends. How will I ever live, knowing all bonds of familiarity are eradicated from your heart and rightfully so? I’m bleeding—bleeding inside! I had not intended to rise in mutiny against you, the lips that fed me. What will be my worth? Tell me, Mircalla.”
Under the sun, Mircalla’s skin had a blue tinge, a waxy formation like the back of a newborn’s ear. Her lips were parched. All power seemed to have drained from her, the whites of her eyes showing, yet she moved her mouth into a smile, though it lasted for a moment.
“Valerie. My dearest Valerie, look!”
Mircalla was extending her fingers over the drive where the townspeople paused their obstinate circumambulation. Some were kneeling in front of another group and clasping their hands, as though greeting great heroes; others were poised on their toes, arms limp by their sides, like birds about to take flight. In Mircalla’s quietness, Valerie gathered her thoughts. She felt impelled to move towards the crowd to ease the feeling in her chest but Mircalla held her back. Without the shelter of Vertigo Peaks, she no longer felt the eyes following her with indifference.
“You’ll meet them later,” she said. “Stay here with me now.”
“Who are they?”
“You know who they are. You met them in the forest.”
Valerie sucked in a sharp breath. They were silent again: Mircalla, somber, Valerie incredulous and fairly strained. The deeper gust of recognition flashed before her eyes. She remembered the dancing, the howling, faces melting into one another, teeth sharp and wanting.
“Are they like you? Vampires?”
Mircalla gave her an awkward nod, almost curt, and Valerie felt her weight fall dead on her, stealing away her breath.
“We won’t be alone anymore. We won’t churn on our bellies for companionship, my love. They found us. We will leave this abomination of a land behind and write our destiny, root ourselves wherever we want. However,” she paused, suddenly breathless, trembling. “The blood in your veins does not belong to you anymore,” Mircalla began, squeezing her hand. “The transformation had already begun, my venom courses in your veins. I bit you when you still had time. Before the curse ate you alive. I wouldn’t have liked to steal the life you deserve if I had the choice: prosperous and joyful and undecided. I would not have rendered you a beast, a deviation, like me. But I did not have a choice, my dear Valerie. I could not lose you.”
She took her hand and raised it to her lips, softly kissing between her knuckles. “Don’t take my bitterness as yours although I am mad at you.” She sighed. “I am mostly angry at myself for not stepping in sooner.”
Cold tears trickled down Mircalla’s cheeks and landed on her shoulder like rain. Valerie cupped her chin, almost choked on her words, realizing she was on the verge of tears too. “You made me in your image. You carved me and breathed me into life. Where you ache, I tremble in agony. I never had to see where I stood because I was with you, hand in hand, heart against heart, and I am replenished by the same thing that brought you to me.”
