For The Sake of Revenge: An Alaskan Vampire Novel Page 2

  “I daresay the vampire is quite striking, even more so than when he lived as a man. The hair of his head is thicker, blacker. His eyes are the bluest I have ever seen, and his lips so full that even I can feel my heart stir. His limbs remain heavily corded with muscle and have lost none of their robustness. But I labor over his appearance too much to avoid describing the desperate tasks that had to be completed.

  “I began first at his head. Into his mouth, I packed unpeeled garlic as deeply into his throat as I could. His form jerked for the first time, and I nearly cut my hand on the razor quality of his fangs. I took a deep steadying breath and pressed on until not another bulb would fit and his cheeks bulged with the herb.

  “Moving to his chest, I inspected the blood that issued from around the stake. It was garishly bright red against his white skin, and it did not clot but instead remained fresh and living in appearance. What a shock to see blood so healthy oozing from a man I pronounced as dead a fortnight ago.

  “I could not resist the chance to study such a medical anomaly, and glancing at the archimandrite, our highest ranking Church official, I gratefully found him occupied studying the stitching of his clothing. I took advantage of his preoccupation and sliced a scalpel deeply into the vampire’s elbow. Blood flowed freely, and I collected that which flowed out into a basin. I will examine it later when I have more time as it does not seem to clot, and even now as I write this, a few hours after I collected it, the substance remains unclotted. The basin filled, I then crossed his arms over his body, securing his wrists with twine.

  “Next, I rubbed his body down with garlic oil and his skin split and bled. He shuddered underneath my hands and even managed to hiss once through the garlic bulbs in his mouth as I placed ropes of garlic between his legs and bulbs between his buttocks and under his scrotum. The pain must have been excruciating, for his body shook like a man dying of tetanus, and at one point, large blood-filled tears ran down his cheeks.

  “I checked once more that the stakes were secure and that they passed completely through the breadth of his body. And with nothing left to do, I looked deeply into the eyes of the gentle man that I had once known him to be. Despite the animal that he has become, I will always remember him for the quiet and kind manner in which he conducted himself. I daresay that had I been born a serf, it is doubtful I would have bowed so graciously to the yoke.

  “I, for one, do not believe the charges that were brought against him. It bruised my heart to cause him such pain tonight, and it is only with the knowledge that his suffering will keep the fort safe that I was able to perform these acts against him.

  “I begged the archimandrite to reverse his excommunication, to let his body decompose and his spirit find rest. The priest only smiled at me, saying that he could not re-communicate a reprobate, unwilling to confess. I say that the priest is an unnaturally cold man who knows little of mercy.

  “The vampire now bound and his body delivered back to the grave, I have poured the blood that I collected into several small bottles for further study. I shall examine the contraband fluids when the memory of tonight is less vivid. I pray that I find a dreamless sleep this evening, if I am able to find sleep at all. I have no desire to meet this aberration again whether in the harshness of reality or the terror of nightmares.

  “I performed the same rituals on the Duchess Irena. I am asked by the Baranov, now an unwilling believer in the legends himself, if she could rise a vampire, but as I am a surgeon of the living and not the dead, I honestly cannot say with any certainty.

  “Irena appeared dead, her blood clotted thickly around the stake that pierced her heart and lungs, so I suspect that she is indeed dead. I remind myself that it was her father, the duke, by whose hand she died. The vampire, Adrik, had marked her, but she was staked while she yet lived. So perhaps she will be spared the curse. However, given our experiences tonight, I recommended that we take no chances and performed the rituals on her as well.

  “Her father, who has certainly gone mad, was carried away to the warship that even tomorrow was scheduled to transport both he and his daughter home. Pity fills me for the man; he seems as stunned at the act that he committed against his own child as the rest of us. He will undoubtedly remain a broken man, and I suspect he will not reach Russia alive, so deep is his melancholy.

  “As for myself, I shall never disclose these events to any living person. Without a doubt in the circle of men in which I acquaint myself, I would be called a fool or a heretic at my securing of his blood, if my peers believed my tales at all.

  “At the very least, my sanity would be questioned. I shall only talk of this in the confines of my journal, now my only confidant in this matter. The men whom I experienced this with will, no doubt, seek the most expedient transport away from New Archangel, or possibly from Alaska itself.

  “I cannot blame these men. I would leave if I were not the father of three half-breed children whom I am now unwilling to live without.”

  Chapter 2

  I laid the journal aside, carefully replacing the ribbon in between the pages I’d finished and leaned my head back against the couch behind me as I tried to wrap my head around what I’d just read. My grandmother gazed down at me from her portrait hanging above the mantle. Homesick for the days of my childhood, I wished both she and Mom were here to help make sense of such a story.

  I suppose normal people would have never given this tale any credibility at all. But then again, I am Russian. And Tlingit Indian. When you combine the two cultures, a new plane of superstition is reached. Which was why I didn’t just toss the book in the trash immediately.

  I’d grown up in a house where superstition was the norm. In our home, we celebrated our birthday the weekend after; that way you didn’t count your chicks before they hatched. As a teen, I couldn’t sit at the corner of a table because that meant I wouldn’t get married for seven years. We absolutely did not put our keys on the kitchen counter. I can’t even begin to explain that superstition, and whistling in the house would have brought on a spit over the shoulder by my grandmother.

  A vampire wouldn’t have been that out of the norm in my mother’s world, and certainly not in my grandmother’s. In a town where oddity was widely accepted, my family still managed to stand out. Grandmother’s chants were legendary, and Mom never went anywhere without salt. I didn’t have many friends because we only spoke Russian in our house. Try explaining that to your second grade class.

  But looking back, I realized just how wonderful and peaceful my childhood had been. If only I could have appreciated the simplicity of it before it was too late. But like a typical teen, I’d been embarrassed by our meager life and our ties to a past so hopelessly outdated.

  Mom had been what most people call a ‘tree hugger’ or a ‘hippie.’ We spent much of our free time in the forest harvesting herbs and plants. She tried to teach them to me, but I ignored her lessons, rolling my eyes as I stuffed the earphones of my Walkman deeper in my ears.

  I didn’t appreciate our cramped but paid-for home or the hand-me-down clothes from distant relatives. I complained about my no-name pants and how we didn’t have enough potato chips and cookies. I never missed an opportunity to point out how poor we were but failed to notice the true gift of the two women with whom I shared a roof. Two generations of wisdom and experience, and I missed it completely.

  Somehow I’d overlooked the fact that these two women were steadily in touch with the world, both what could be seen and what couldn’t, and I had discounted Mom’s specific gift to see through people.

  The cost of my disdain was her life.

  Ten years had passed, but the thought of what I’d put Mom through made my skin crawl, made my breath catch in my chest. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and suddenly the hot tea I’d been drinking all afternoon wasn’t that appetizing.

  I was a child the last time I saw my mother. Eighteen years old and an adult by society’s standards but a child still. Naïve, innocent and completely unaware that
I was all of these things.

  I’d just graduated from high school. The ink wasn’t even dry on my diploma, and I was itching to blaze a trail out of Sitka. I was sullen as I helped my mom load our folding table into the back of the truck. I was even more sullen as Mom and I sold homemade native jewelry to cruise-boat tourists on a street corner across from the school park.

  It was July. The skies were partly clear, and the mountains surrounding Sitka reached up their snowcapped peaks to bask in the sunlight. Along every fence line and unused space, the uncultured but flourishing salmonberries were ripening. I’d just popped a few into my mouth, bursting them with my tongue and reveling in the sweet tartness spreading out across my taste buds when a handsome man in a heavily starched uniform stopped in front of me.

  I was busy folding tissue paper around a necklace that a dangerously thin woman in high heels had purchased, so I didn’t see him at first. My head was bowed as I put too much work into intricately folding the thin peach-colored paper that disguised what I was certain was inadequate craftsmanship.

  Lifting my head to thank the lady, my gaze caught his, and with that simple act, the world reversed on its axis. Or at least that’s how it felt. Unintentionally, I caught my breath and held it as if I was falling and bracing for the impact. The sky above my head whirled into a mixture of blue and white. I felt faint as I realized my knees were locked the same as if I’d been standing in front of the entire church congregation.

  Mom bumped me with her hip to bring me back to reality, causing me to unlock my knees and take a deep breath. The blood returned to my head, and I was a tad bit clearer. I looked questioningly at Mom, and she nodded her head at the man. He must have said something I realized, but I’d heard nothing after my eyes met his, not even the noise of the cars rolling by or the clanking of the boats in the harbor.

  In one hand, he held one of my bracelets. His other hand rested lightly on one lean hip. His dress uniform was crisp, his shoes polished to a high shine.

  Swallowing the salmonberry juice, I managed to mumble the price, looking down at my feet while I answered. He laughed, thoroughly amused by my reaction to him, but he bought the bracelet—didn’t even try to talk my price down. As he counted the money from his wallet, he asked my name.

  “Tamara,” I managed to say. It was just above a whisper when the sounds at last made it across my tensed vocal cords.

  “Joel,” he said, answering the unspoken question on my face as he turned to walk away.

  I watched him and his fellow soldier walk down the sidewalk towards downtown, past a little girl’s lemonade stand where he stopped and bought a cup of the sour liquid. I think he was pretending, but I heard him tell her it was delicious. Tossing the drink back, he winked at me over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner.

  If I sold more jewelry the rest of that day, I don’t remember it. What I do remember was the perfection of his green eyes and how they stood out from his dark skin. The moss that carpeted the forest floor would have been jealous of the color. A deep green with highlighting flecks that matched the wispy lichens hanging from the trees; I’d blush whenever he roamed that cool gaze across my body. It was like being dipped into a cold mountain spring; my skin would tingle with the thought.

  Joel returned the next day and then the next, and despite the warnings of my mother, I lost myself completely in him. I lived for his furloughs and those stolen hours when he was AWOL from the military base in Kodiak. Just a few short months later, he asked me to marry him, and I didn’t hesitate even a split second in saying yes. Mom tried every way short of force to change my mind, but I was headstrong and impulsive, so nothing she said made any difference.

  My decision made, I turned my back to her and climbed aboard a ferry that would take me away from Alaska, my mother, and everything familiar. Her tear-stained face watched me through the glass windows of the boat while the crew readied the ferry, and I turned from that too.

  It was cruel the way I ignored her as Joel and I waited for the boat to pull away from the harbor. She didn’t leave me; I could feel her back there, willing me to see reason. But it wasn’t until the ferry pulled sluggishly away from the bay and we began to melt into the rain that I looked back at her one more time. I could barely make out her lone figure, shoulders drawn forward and hunched against the rain.

  It was the last time I saw her alive.

  I gave up a lot that day for Joel. My mom and grandmom, my best friend and sometimes boyfriend Peter, my way of life and even my future. I’d had a scholarship at a small college in Juneau for a nursing degree, and I kissed that goodbye too. A little niggle of doubt had fluttered at the base of my belly. Maybe it was the way Joel held me too tightly at times or the way I caught him looking at me out of the corner of my eye when I laughed too loudly or took too long to order at the drive-in. But I wanted him so badly that I ignored that tiny voice at the back of my mind that whispered to be careful.

  Whatever misgivings I had were erased as the ferry pulled into Seattle Harbor. I’d never been anywhere except the villages that dot southeast Alaska, so the view of Seattle with its sparkling cascade of lights shimmering on the waters of the harbor seemed to vindicate my decision to leave Sitka. Mom was wrong about Joel.

  She’s just jealous because she never escaped that island, I told myself.

  In less than a week, Joel and I moved into a cramped apartment in a bad part of town. There was only one bedroom, a tiny living room, and a battered kitchen. The paint that clung determinedly on the walls consisted more of smoke than anything else. The walls were thin and the neighbors talked too much. I didn’t care. I was happy.

  Joel got a job, and I was a good housewife. A fresh coat of paint and some thrift store furniture, and we had a great little place. Every morning, I woke him up early for work, laid out his clothes while he was in the shower, and packed his lunch.

  The world was perfect, and Mom’s concerns had been swept firmly into a corner of my mind until one morning, I woke up late and got a little behind in my morning routine. Joel’s work buddy was lying heavily on the horn as I struggled to get his lunch packed. Kissing him quickly on the cheek, I pushed the lunchbox into his arms as he grabbed his coat.

  “Sorry,” I whispered as he walked out the door. His mouth was set in a tight thin line. It was the first time I’d ever seen him angry.

  He’s irritated that his friend is blaring that horn so early in the morning, I convinced myself.

  About an hour later, I noticed his sandwich sitting on the counter. I wasn’t worried about it; he had plenty else to eat in his lunch. But that afternoon when he walked in the door, he busted my lower lip as I leaned in to give him his usual welcome-back peck.

  It was hell after that day. There were stretches of time when things were okay, but they always ended in more punches, followed by a few meaningless apologies and a few I love you’s.

  The police didn’t come the first night he hit me, or the next. It took over a month before the neighbors realized anything was wrong. They didn’t say anything, and I didn’t blame them. Those beautiful eyes of Joel’s could slant a threatening jade at anyone who even appeared to intervene. Eventually, the neighbors would just look away. Sometimes they called the cops when I couldn’t hold in the screams; sometimes they turned up their radios.

  We moved a lot, as abusive and abused people normally do. The system is so easily manipulated despite all of the electronics. In reality, there’s little communication between the different districts and counties.

  Once the police became familiar with us, Joel would announce that we were leaving. The first couple of times we moved, I forwarded my new address to Mom and Peter in a short letter, where I bragged that everything was perfect. The two of them could be counted on to produce a flurry of letters or emails on my trusty AOL account, but I didn’t answer.

  Pride was a barrier I just couldn’t cross, and over time, not writing or calling became the easier option. After the first few moves, I didn’t b
other with the change of address, and Mom and Peter had no idea where I was. Ten years with no contact. How could I have been so selfish? Now all of that lost time was my greatest regret.

  So much pride. It had held me from my home, from admitting my errors, and from contacting the people who had always truly loved me. Mom. Grandmom.

  And Peter.

  I’d sit sometimes for hours, while Joel was at work, thinking of Peter’s face, the lift of his golden hair, the feel of his hands. If only pride had let me reach out to him. He would have moved mountains to save me.

  Peter had warned me about the man I was marrying, but I’d thought he was a boy, and a jealous one at that. I’d told him as much the last time I saw him. Smiling at him with pity like a child who’s losing his favorite toy when he told me how much he loved me, I’d brushed him aside for Joel too. I couldn’t call him and admit just how right he’d been and how very wrong I was. I could be as stubborn as I was impulsive.

  Nearly a year had passed before the realization hit that the Joel who drank too much and beat up on women was who he actually was, that the man I’d fallen in love with had been a fabrication from the start. It took another two years to realize that I couldn’t change him, and then it took another five years before I found the strength to walk away.

  Joel and I had been married for nine years when I caught sight of a thin, disheveled girl in a store window. I was waiting at the bus stop, having been to the county health units for some birth control pills—one of the few secrets I was willing to keep from Joel—when I noticed this woman out of the corner of my eye.

  Her back was slightly bowed, her hands picked nervously at her clothes, but it was the lack of luster in her eyes and skin that really made me stop and take a second look. Unhappiness radiated from her; it was palpable and even in the crowded bus stop, no one stood within five feet of her.

  It was the first time I’d seen myself so clearly. Perhaps it was denial that kept me from recognizing in the mirror at home just how far I’d fallen from my former self. Or maybe it was getting a look at what everyone in the bus stop was so eager to avoid.