The Dragon's Blood (Part 32)
In which we return to the past....
32
1588
The New World
Elizabeth Viccars watched him from a distance. A stranger, someone Bishop had not told them about. He strode into the colony with the wind, dark and foreboding. He shouldn’t be here. Her former life told her that, but neither should Cocheta. Both were creatures of the Old world just as the meek little weakling she had been was.
His dark cloak flapped behind him exposing his lean powerfully built figure. Under the hat he wore he had eyes not unlike the ones she now wore, shining with their otherworldliness. They were colored different though from the ones she saw in her mirror, his glowed blue while her’s and the others’ glowed pale yellow. Perhaps that signified a different clan, perhaps it was something else altogether, she’d have to bring that up with Bishop.
Whoever he was he didn’t move like a man, didn’t smell like and thus was not one. He was intriguing though and powerful. Oh yes, power emanated from him and it excited her, kindled the blood she’d just taken from that Jane Jones bitch.
Yes, vengeance for the treatment the wretched bitches had bestowed upon her former self was common practice nowadays for her much to Brian Wylde’s chagrin. It was beginning to limit his choice of whores.
“Now who do you reckon might this be?” The aforementioned Wylde asked noone in particular though he hovered right next to her in the shadows bordering the Dare home.
They spent quite a lot of time here as of late, the cries of little Virginia calling them like moth’s to the flame. The babe’s lifeblood promised to be eloquent, delicious, luminous. They each craved it, all seven of the Cocheta’s chosen. Bishop though, that righteous old devil, forbade them, claiming Cocheta’s right to the child.
“Our lord has special plans for the first born, my dears.” The smug old monster had sneered, clearly enjoying himself far too greatly.
She felt a ripple in the shadows all about them as the stranger entered Roanoke. They all sensed him, his wrongness, his power. There was something completely different about him, something like them and unlike them. Something she’d not felt since the day---
“Not one of us.” Wylde’s moronic words continued.
“Well, that much is clear, idiot. He didn’t come with White.” She decided to indulge him.
“From another group then? Perhaps Raleigh has come, settled to the north. Perhaps this is the aid we had been waiting for.”
She heard Wylde lick his lips, excited at the prospect of more killing. Not for the first time did she wonder if he had been as monstrous as a man as he was as a Vampyr.
The stranger stopped at the very center of the square, standing there alone and silent. None exited their homes to greet him. No mortal in Roanoke came out in the dark anymore. They knew who ruled them now. If not consciously then on some primal basic level. They knew what awaited them in the darkness.
It was in the darkness that their true power came out. The day brought weakness, mortality, but night, night was when blood ran.
The stranger’s head turned and for a brief incomprehensible moment, she swore they rested on her own. Then they went to Wylde’s, then across to Jourdan’s perch, then Pattenson’s.
He saw them.
“W-we have to tell Bishop--- this is s-something new. That is no man---” Wylde blabbered nervously, almost dropping from his hover and revealing them.
She turned to him, sneering, practically laughing at him.
“For one who questions Bishop’s leadership at every chance, I would have never expected you to leap to bury yourself under his protective wing quite so quickly. I shall add cowardice to your long line of sins, Brian Wylde.”
She flashed her fangs at his snarl before dropping from her own hover and revealing herself to the stranger.
She knew what was so different about this man, what it was that unnerved her and Wylde so much. And with that knowledge she saw the opportunity to attain the true power she did nothing but crave since her second birth. To hell with Bishop and his secrets. To hell with Wylde and his madness. It was time for Elizabeth Viccars to claim what was rightfully her own.
She’d seen the creature they called Cocheta, had received his gift and become immortal and powerful. She knew he was more than they were. Not just a Vampyr but something more, something greater. Something even closer to God than they had become.
This man was like him.
End Part 32
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you know your writing is really lovely. I find it so poetic yet real !! goodstuff !!??
Thank you again, sir.