CHAPTER 4 Velinar: First Bite
Alex was just in time to see the white cat exit the yard and scamper up the mountainside into the forest. She felt the cold and hugged her arms to her sides as she became enveloped in darkness. She would have hated to disappoint her grandmother if anything should happen to her cat, so she skipped across the grass yard and up through the trees into the gloom, a little apprehensive because she was close to the family graveyard.
She was about to turn back — the cold really was a little frightening — when she saw the cat up ahead, its face turned back as if beckoning her onward. Alex's eyes adjusted enough to the darkness to make out a clearing and an outline of a building, a gazebo, she could tell as she got closer. As a kid, she'd played there on an old foundation of what her grandmother described as a once-marvelous structure built by previous occupants. The foundation had been familiar territory, one of her favorite summer reading spots, and now allayed her fear.
This was the one place her mysterious friend would never go.
Her grandmother's description of the gazebo in its heyday had given it a mystical significance that even now the moonlight magnified. She wondered why her grandmother hadn't mentioned that she'd rebuilt it. It cast a pale shadow as moonlight filtered through. She felt less exposed beneath this magnificent structure, lunar beams setting her white blouse aglow.
The cat was nowhere in sight. "Here kitty," she called, but the sound of her voice seemed to make her more vulnerable. "Nălucă, you little moron." She walked to the edge of the gazebo and peered into the trees where he'd disappeared. A foul odor rose up to meet her, and instead of the cat, she saw something among the dead leaves, a body lying on the ground outside the gazebo and at the edge of the family graveyard. Startled at first, she started to run but caught herself. Must be a dead animal mostly covered by matted leaves and tall grass, couldn't possibly be a body. She stepped off the gazebo, approached it and reached to see if it was her imagination drawing a false image in the pale light. She wondered if it could be her mysterious childhood friend come to a bad end. But this was real, and it was a woman, not a girl, the dead body of a woman.
The blood in her veins had turned to ice. Still, Alex held her nose and touched it. Quick as a snake strike, a hand clasped her wrist, and the feminine shape rose up from within the leaves to stand amongst the tombstones. The woman was dressed in a flowing gown, all ruffles and pleats, once elegant but now covered in grime. A delicate shawl circled her neck and fell to her belted waist. She was old, tall and stank as if she'd been dead a while.
Alex screamed and tried to jerk free, but the woman's grip was like an animal trap. She pulled Alex to her, and Alex struggled to push her away, the woman's skeletal frame cold and damp against her. Her eyes were bloodshot and sunk back into their sockets, darkened skin chalky and scaly. Her smell was like the fumes of a rotted animal Alex had once buried.
Alex tried to fight free but couldn't overcome the woman, who brought her even closer with an embrace that scared Alex so much that she thought she might faint. She heard the woman sniff her neck, then felt her push her away to get a better look. "Dear Lord, forgive me," the woman said in a gravely voice, then lunged forward, planting her mouth firmly against Alex's neck. They struggled and stumbled back into the gazebo just as she felt the woman's teeth break her skin.
Alex heard a muffled voice from behind.
"Velinar!" it shouted.
It was a man's voice, but Alex couldn't turn to see whose. The splitting pain in her neck subsided as the woman sucked, as if extinguished by some awful anesthetic. The man tried to push her off Alex, but his hand seemed to pass right through her, as if he were but a nălucă, ghost. The woman held to her neck like she'd grown there and sucked at her ferociously.
"That's enough," the man said. "Her strength is failing."
And indeed, Alex's strength was gone, the world itself fading before her. She faltered, and when the woman stepped away, Alex fell to her knees on the cold hard gazebo floor and looked up into the face of the man who'd saved her. She still felt faint, her vision blurred, but he seemed a marvelous being, luminescent in moonlight.
"My God!" he said. "Marie?"
Heart pounding, Alex crawled on all fours away from them, to sit on a section of stone bench looking up at her assailant. The woman had been transformed into an iridescent being, no longer old and cadaverous, but young, angelic, even seemed to project internal light as did her companion. Alex believed she must be hallucinating.
The woman stepped toward her and stooped to look at Alex's face. She now seemed kind, gentle, and her expression reminded Alex of her grandmother's earlier that day.
"She can't be," the woman said to her companion, then turned back to Alex. "I'm terribly sorry," she said, her voice ringing like an angel's. She backed away and faded into the night.
Alex struggled to her feet, wishing the man would help her, but he did nothing. Still weak, she reached out to hold onto him, but nothing was there. He was an apparition.
"This'll not happen again," he said. "Velinar was simply beyond herself. Terrible, but nothing can be done now. I must go after her. I'll return tomorrow evening, and perhaps I can explain. I'm called Catalin. You'll need help through this."
With that, he also vanished.
Alex slumped to the floor, then rolled out of the gazebo onto the cold soft ground between the gazebo and the graveyard. This time, she did faint, the world fading away in spite of her fear that something else might come for her. She descended into a heavy sleep and dreamed first of a dark shape hovering over her trying to wake her, something wet and sticky in her mouth, then saw scenes of far-off places, had profane visions of Heaven and Hell. Dark, quarreling shapes, silhouetted against a bright background, milled about. Finally, a benevolent light descended on her. She felt love, contentment, peace.
Sometime before dawn, Alex woke, unaccountably recovered although she still trembled. Nălucă was cuddled against her. Most unusual. "You little rodent," she said. "Look what you've done to me." She felt something in her mouth. She removed a small red seed, and with her finger pushed it into the soft wet earth. A fog had filtered in between trees, but she could make out a faint pre-dawn glow in the distance. She'd better return quickly, or her grandmother would find her missing.
Alex staggered back into the house carrying Nălucă. It was still dark and quiet when she entered. She dropped the cat, and he scurried upstairs to her grandmother. She dragged herself upstairs and entered the bathroom, struggled to stand and then washed the blood from her neck and marveled at how faint were the bite marks, two pinpricks four centimeters apart. She had black blood in one corner of her mouth. She shivered at the memory of what had happened. She entered her bedroom, fell between covers and again fainted dead away.