Part One
Origins
1
Oriana
31st day of the Twelfth Month, 1099
Ashrill scream ripped through the air. Oriana opened her eyes. The full moon peered down from above, its blood-red glow casting an eerie haze into the field around her.
Disoriented, she sat up. Tall grass brushed coarsely against her bare arms as a cool breeze whispered its way around her, rustling the field, giving the grass the appearance of rippling water. From her seated position, the blades met just above her waist, sharp to the touch, with frost sparkling on the tips. She couldn’t see where she was, couldn’t remember how she had even gotten there. A robust, metallic tang filled the air, mingling with the pungent scent of upturned earth.
She pushed herself to her feet just in time to see a woman–the one who must have been screaming–standing at the edge of the field, lantern in hand, wide-eyed, and deathly pale. She jerked the lantern in Oriana’s direction, drawing a shaking hand up to her mouth as she gasped, screamed once more, and took off toward a small town gleaming in the distance.
Dazed, Oriana stumbled after her. “Wait!” she called out, “Stop! What is going on?” Lantern flames winked in and out of the swift breeze like tiny fireflies. Chimney smoke pulled above the rooftops of the town, illuminated by the ghostly scarlet beams of moonlight. It spread out as if creating a shield to protect from any terrors the night might have to offer.
Oriana had only made it a handful of steps toward the town and the fleeing woman when her foot brushed against something cold and solid. She glanced down to see a large, dark form lying in the grass beside her. The moon’s dim glow left barely enough light to see. Crouching, she brushed a hand across the form. It felt distinctly like a body. Her fingers met with the rough stubble of an unkempt beard. It was a male body, and it was cold as ice.
She inhaled deeply, and something primal roused inside her. A thrill at the scent. Her entire body tingled with exhilaration as she stroked a pointed fingernail along the dead man’s cheek, digging into flesh, leaving behind a bloodless gash that gapped. She closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of death and feeling a satisfied smile spread across her lips.
“Beautiful,” she purred through teeth that no longer felt like her own.
No! Her mind screamed as she shook off the morbidly blissful sensations that had begun to course through her, gradually coming back into herself. What are you doing? She inwardly chastised, an uneasiness suddenly settling over her.
She felt the man’s neck for a sign of life, hoping that her growing suspicions and nagging unease were false. Her hand came away wet. There was no mistaking the feel and scent of the substance as she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger.
Blood.
She felt the earth surrounding him further. Her hands then traveled over his body in search of a wound from which the blood could be leaking from. She felt nothing, no pool of blood puddling beneath him and no indication of how his body was void of its life source.
Her stomach grew queasy, bile rising in her throat as her mind urged her to move up and feel his neck again.
Oriana swallowed hard as she gently brushed trembling fingers back across his throat to the spot where the last ounce of his blood had been, and there, just where the tender flesh of his neck met the harder muscular structure of his shoulder, was a set of punctures.
This man was not only dead, but completely drained—an empty husk. Yet, the metallic scent of blood hung heavy in the air. More death lingered nearby. What had happened here? Mind reeling, she searched for an explanation other than the one she refused to face. But it couldn’t be. She had always held complete control over her hunger.
Oriana gingerly ran her fingers further along the punctures before snatching them back, gasping in shock. She fell back, the frosted grass crunching beneath her weight. “No, it cannot be.” she breathed, head pounding as she continued to push away the creeping thoughts.
Something, she thought–ignoring the fact that her mind was screaming someone–had bitten him. The marks on his neck were not from an animal. An animal would have ripped and torn through flesh, and the marks would have been larger and deeper. These were most definitely something else. The punctures nearly created a perfect circle with two bigger, gaping holes just where the major pulsing artery along the column of his neck lay. To the unknowing eye, it would have looked almost like a human bite, but Oriana knew better.
She stood, skin prickling as the evening wind swirled around her, and took off for the spot where the screaming woman had been standing. Another dark shape lay just on the outside of the field, this one smaller. Oriana stepped reluctantly closer until she loomed above the figure, breath hitching.
This is where the woman with the lantern had run from. This is what had made her go so deathly pale and had caused her to pierce the night with her ear-splitting scream. A petite woman was lying in a crumpled heap. Her chest rose and fell with weak breaths. Still alive, but barely. The moonlight’s ghostly beams revealed a trickle of blood leaking from her neck. The punctures were a twin to those she had found on the man lying dead in the field. Oriana knelt before her, so close she could almost taste the blood slowly seeping from the woman’s wound. A dizzying sensation overtook her, something like want, no…it was need. An urge so extreme, so insistent.
Oriana’s fingers ached to dig deep into the woman’s chest and stroke her slowly beating heart. The very thought had her arm moving on its own accord, reaching out until her slender fingers hovered barely a whisper above the woman’s weak, heaving chest.
Tears sprang to her eyes. “No!” she wailed, attempting to push herself away from the girl, but the feeling only grew more tenacious. Oriana grabbed her own head, ripping at her face and hair. A guttural cry of anguish burst forth from deep within her. But she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. She pushed as hard as she could against the repulsive force slithering through her body, seizing hold of her limbs one by one. She cried out in torment once more before finally conceding to the monster.
Oriana yanked the small woman up by her hair, placing her other hand on the woman’s shoulder, twisting her head and smiling as she heard the pop of the woman’s neck snapping before pulling the pulsing artery to meet her waiting lips. A satisfied groan escaped her as she slowly sank her teeth into the soft tissue and drank deeply. Closing her eyes, she reveled in the taste and feel of the woman’s thick blood gliding down her throat. An intense warmth coursed through her with each swallow. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt absolute ecstasy like this.
It wasn’t until the poor woman was dry, cold, and white as a clean linen sheet that Oriana pushed back into herself for only a moment. She scrambled backward, fingers digging into the rich soil as she kicked with her feet and forced herself away from the lifeless corpse.
Oriana’s breath quickened. What was happening? Why was this happening? She hadn’t been able to stop herself, hadn’t been in control of her own faculties. And worse, she had enjoyed it, delighted in the life slowly draining from the woman. She felt exhilarated as she heard the woman’s heart pulse out its last beat.
Oriana shot to her feet, racing back into the field of tall grass, the moon still casting the world in a crimson haze. Squinting through the darkness, she pushed the blades aside, searching. She found four more bodies, three male and one female. All were dead, two completely drained of their life’s blood. The other two had their heads severed from their bodies, blood sprayed across the ice-covered grass. She whimpered, sinking to her knees in the center of the field, burying her head into her hands. This couldn’t be happening.
But she knew the corpses scattered like fallen leaves in the field were connected to her. Her teeth had slid far too easily into the exposed ripe flesh of the woman’s neck. It had to be some kind of sick dream. She would never hurt these people, never do these things! This wasn’t her. She had always suppressed the thirst for violence. She had always been able to control the monster that lurked beneath her skin. But it wasn’t a dream. She knew from the gore soaking through her gown, sticking to her skin, and the icy blades of grass beneath her feet like shards of glass digging into her flesh.
