Bleeding Heart

Bela awoke feeling as if he had drunk copious amounts of Băbească Neagră wine. His neck was stiff, he felt out of breath and saw flickering, dancing lights when he shut his eyes; his throat was parched, and his abdomen was sore. The rumpled sheets on his bed gave no indication that he had not slept in them the whole night. He pulled up his night shirt to inspect his belly, there was a slight scar from what looked like an incision, which was already on the mend. Then he caught of a glimpse of the dazzling green eyes on his watch… and it was daylight.

He was ravenous, he normally did not eat breakfast but made himself a great meal of balmoş, cornmeal boiled in sheep’s milk with butter and sour cream added to the mixture, cheese, tomatoes and onions for an omelet and goat’s milk to wash it all down. It did not satisfy him, he needed blood.

He was new to the vampire thing and fumbled most of his attempts with small animal prey. His need for blood drove his determination to find suitable sources; eventually to humans. His need for sex was equally as strong.

The village experienced a rampage of bloody deaths... and pregnancies among unwed young women. Many women and girls were attacked savagely, raped and oft left for dead. Those who were not killed would not divulge the identity of the man who had gotten them pregnant. When questioned, they said that he was an angel, a tall, beautiful angel of god. The holy men could not keep up with requests to cast out demons. And they had a difficult time convincing the nuns not to offer themselves as sacrifices to this “angel of god.”

The Cojocaru’s were looked upon as the source of this evil. The villagers met and decided they must leave or they must die; without the consent of the clergy. The adults gathered their axes and scythes, while the children gathered stones and they marched, torches blazing to the Cojocaru home.

As the noise and the crowd grew closer, mama and papa Cojocaru tried to run for the clergy. The mob hurled their stones at them and torched their home. They pleaded for their lives as the mob built fires to burn them. They dragged them, screaming to their awaiting funeral pyres. As they tied them up, they prayed… as the mob… and the priests watched burn.

Brother Ben spent nearly as much time hunting for Bela as he did random victims. He and his brother did their fair share of ravaging the village, but Bela had moved on. Bela was always two steps ahead of Ben, he knew he was looking for him. He had the advantage of daylight to put distance between them.

Roving, raping and finishing off the populace were reasonable goals for a vampire, but Bela longed for companionship. He moved north, there, he met and married his first wife. They had two daughters. He continued with his experiments and made progress in his efforts to sustain himself for longer periods without the need for blood. He was happy in his marriage, but the inevitable obstacle of his wife’s mortality became apparent so Bela, again, moved on.

He found himself drawn to an area in southern Hungary. The green eyes on the serpent watch glowed ever brighter and squeezed tighter around his wrist when he would reach certain coordinates on the globe. He continued his way, when he suddenly felt a curious vibration course from his feet to his head. He shivered with cold and clammy skin, his vision blurred in an increasing darkness, his chest tightened, his breathing began to slow. There was no sound, the air became heavy. Then, what sounded like a crack of lightening pierced the eerie calm. A blinding, green, glow followed. All around him, colors ran like paints on a rain-soaked canvas. He felt compelled to move forward through the oozing, dripping rainbow. Haltingly, he took a step and everything around him transmuted; there were trees, roads and buildings where there had been none. He was startled to find a horse and buggy coming straight for him. He jumped aside and was nearly knocked over by a young woman. She was running. Everyone was running. They were screaming and pointing at the strange, ominous rolling cloud coming their way. Strong gusts of wind and heavy rains forced everyone to scatter like mice. It would later become known as a shelf cloud. Her initial annoyance became a broad smile at the sight of the handsome, bewildered young man in front of her.

“Oh, my! That’s an old suit! Hurry, we must get out of this storm!” the woman said in Hungarian.

Bela swallowed hard, his head was pulsating with words and images. She ran with her to a store front for shelter.

“Îmi pare rău, s-ar putea să fiu pierdut (I’m, sorry, I may be lost.) Bela’s heartbeat quickened as he heard the words come out.

“Where is it you are going?

“Lodgings, I’m looking for lodgings.”

“I can show you, I am on my way to my father’s shop, he is a very fine tailor. We live above the shop and you are in luck, we have room for a boarder. He can also fit you for a new suit.”

“New suit? My suit was tailored for me, not a more than a year ago,”

“No gentleman wear suits like that anymore, but, no matter. First things first, we will talk to father about a room.”

A boy approached him with pleading looks, ’Paper, sir? Sorry it’s wet, I will sell it to you cheap.”

“Well, I don’t know, let me see it.”

The date on the paper was 1632. aug. 1

Bela glanced at the storm behind him, the menacing cloud was retreating; like a rolling carpet of black and illuminated green, releasing parting shots of lightning bolts, while a haze of hues contorted in the landscape. The grip of the serpent relaxed on his wrist as the storm moved further away.

Images and words would continue in a torrent in Bela’s mind. A globe with land masses he never knew existed, covered by a grid with green lights at the points of intersections spun wildly. People in strange costumes, speaking unknown languages paraded passed. Soldiers charging, strange weapons and machinery; explosions jostled him. Flying machines bewildered him. The Africanus would continue to invade his thoughts and dreams with the message of ‘sowing the seeds of our people is the prime directive’ persisting throughout. He was beginning to understand their plan and his role in it.

Bela had reached the 20th century; he was a professor of Genealogy at Husson University in Bangor, Maine, USA. He had decided on the name, Collinson; he had been a Carl, a Capello and a Chikelu, to name a few. He was also in search of a new partner; he found her at the university, her name was Angela D’Costa, she was a student in one of his classes. He was very taken with her beauty, her sexuality and her intelligence. Their courtship lasted two months before they decided to get married in 1955. Angela was already pregnant with their first child, Victoria, when they married. Their second daughter, Daphne was born two years later.

Bela spent much of his time at the university where he would continue with his experiments. He kept the samples he took from his brother encased in a locket which hung from his neck. He took small bits to run tests, of which the results were kept locked away and shared with no one.

The Africanus would inundate his mind when he went in search of victims for blood lust, ‘remember the prime directive; sow the seeds of our people’. But his urge for blood persevered. He learned to concentrate and interject his own thoughts; ‘I can proliferate procreation if I can overpower the females and, use their blood to continue my experiments to strengthen our blood lines’. This seemed to pacify the Africanus and there were plenty of pretty college coeds willing enough to give Bela what he required. He spared Angela the physical necessity of the feed, as he did all his wives. He told himself he truly loved them all… while he was with them, though they would eventually become collateral damage.

There came that day in 1963 when Bela sensed his brother’s presence. And this time his presence was red hot. He had let his guard down. He had been basking in his successes with his plasma and DNA experiments and the happiness of his marriage and family. He knew there was no time to make an escape with an explanation. He had only glimpsed the potential of his daughters and knew there could be so much more with time but there was no more time. On an early winter morning, he kissed his wife and daughters the way he always had before he went off to teach at the university. The greeneyed snake was again beckoning him to new coordinates.