They talked about her. She knew of their wide ranging speculations and their
over-active imaginations. It has always been thus and would remain so throughout the
generations that must, inevitably come. She, the Countess, heir of an imperial blood-
line, stirred on her bed, uncrossing her arms, breathing in deeply the scent of basil and
jasmine that rose like sweet perfume on warm, glowing skin in the viscous air of this
hanging Cretan night. September. A small studio room in a cheap block of identical
rooms just a little way off the coast to the east of Rethymno. Simple pleasures. Great
risks. The joy of the chase.
The Countess stood up from the low bed and walked slowly around the small
room. From the tiny bare metal kitchenette she took a bottle of the local, thin, dry red
wine, unscrewed the cap, and poured herself a small glass. Thirst was a strange
companion and one that she understood only too well. For her it was a ravening beast
as well as a simple, pleasurable act that might slake a dry throat. The wine was too
warm, but it would do well enough for now. It would bring a little colour to her pallid
cheeks, although she would only permit herself one glass for now. She prided herself
on the almost mineral paleness of her skin.
How odd, she thought, as she picked up a brush from the bedside table and
started to pull it gently through her sleek, long, black hair, how odd that they still
gossip so. If only they knew the truth, poor lambs. Always they gossiped. Never did
they ask. It had been the same for her and her mother back in their ancestral home.
People talked, people feared, and slowly the fat faced peasants dwindled away leaving
only the meek and mildewed behind.
Her hair fell in thick, straight waves across her pale shoulders, her skin being
almost translucently white, like a moon veiled by the lightest gauze of a high, grey
cloud. The only light in the room came from a lantern strung up on a pole outside to
help guide tourists along a winding path from these studios to the taverna that
occupied the frontage of the building. With the curtains drawn across the large glass
door to her balcony, the Countess could drift through her evening rituals in that sweet
and comforting half-light that makes the world enticing. She lived for the dusky
anticipation of each evening.
The Countess ran her free hand along the contours of her body, tracing the
curve of her firm, full and neatly upturned breasts. Entranced, lost in the revelation of
change in her body, she ran her fingertips over her taught stomach and down to her
groin. It was time. She could feel the need, could sense the exquisite pain of that once
in a lifetime craving, a passion that inflamed her entire being beyond anything that she
had known in all these years of absolute and necessary thirst.
All these years. How many years more, she wondered. Not many. She would
hand on the challenge of her line soon enough if she could but find the right one, the
right boy, strong and beautiful, but preferably not too bright, who might join with her.
She would kill two birds with one stone.
The Countess rose and walked over to the rustic, blue painted wardrobe and
pulled from its hanger one of a number of simple cotton summer dresses, long and
plain, cream in colour, with just a hint of flow and swirl towards the hem. Unlike her
mother, a poor and feeble creature tied to the old days, a woman who shimmered like
a pallid ghost among the ruins of their estates in the mountains, a woman who wore
the same, disgustingly stained gown throughout her long and decrepit life, this
Countess had broken with those dusty traditions. Her dresses were simple, worn only
the once, and never stained when she put them on.
She liked to think about change while she dressed for the evening. The
breaking of the taboos that had dogged her line down the centuries gave her a strength
and a purpose. She was the first to see that the old ways need not be the only way.
Ever since the great patriarch had sworn a pact with the dark stars, ever since he had
fought the Turk and the Christian, drinking their blood in his fury after battle, they,
his progeny, had never let off the work. He changed the world in making them what
they were, so why, she thought, couldn’t she do the same. She was of his line. She
embraced the same arts and wielded the same powers. This heritage was too precious
a thing to betray. So far they had been lucky, perhaps, or fated. She would not be the
one to let it all end.
Her great and fell ancestor made the world anew and in so doing left them to
live with a curse, the price to be paid for greatness. Each generation could breed only
once, and in so doing, in the raising of the child, the parent was doomed. Each child,
when they reached puberty, took their first drink of life from the parent, a fatal drink,
laced with power and death for ever more. So had it been when the great one’s son
was born of a strong peasant girl chosen for the task and then discarded, a dry husk
blown away on the winds of maternal fate. The boy child had, when the time came,
embraced his father, told him he loved him, and then sunk his mouth to the old man’s
neck to taste the acrid, metallic taste of heaven for the first time. The second Count of
long years had been her grandfather. Her mother had performed the same ritual when
coming of age, although for her it seemed the bitter pleasure of awakening touched
her mind. And finally she, the Countess, had rejoiced that she could end her mother’s
suffering and then fulfil her own destiny.
Her destiny, however, was not that of the cold mountains and the lonely snow
bejewelled passes that brought fitful life to their lands. You could only feed for so
long on fresh meat in one place. The peasants feared you at first. Some fought back,
but eventually they grew weary and resigned. Villages became haunted places, fit
only for wraiths and fools. The pickings became sour and few, you hungered
endlessly and the glories and splendours of your surroundings grew shabby and mean.
You relied on stealth and cruelty to maintain your position and your way. That was
her mother’s choice, the path that lead to feeding on carrion, of chasing down the
rabbit and the rat and vole just to fill your belly and your veins. It was not the modus
operandi of this Countess.
After the joy and exaltation of awakening, the Countess stayed true to her
upbringing for some years, making the best that she could out of the debilitation and
decay around her. Unlike her mother, though, she sought out images and tales of the
wider world. Things had changed there too. Machines did the work of a hundred
peasants. They waged war across continents. Oh, she had thought, if only great-
grandpapa could have seen that. Money flowed around the world in great rivers of
wealth. Why then, was she shut up in the wasted mountains, where winter was the
only season and fresh meat such a dream?
When the blood-lust was done with, when the corpse was nothing more than a
dried out shell, then she studied until dawn, ordering books from cities far and wide.
She learned to control her lusts so that she could meet with the mortals, taking advice
at strange hours of the night from men who knew of the great metropolitan
stratagems. She rarely succumbed to temptation.
After time and knowledge had broadened her view of things she made a
decision. The estates in the mountains, the never visited, decrepit palazzos, everything
that she could lay claim to was sold. The money realised from this fire sale of the
broken and the decayed was sufficient to invest and to bank. She worked out that if
she were frugal for a few years, and given the likely length of her life, then the glories
of compound interest and stock markets might make her fabulously wealthy. And so it
came to be. The Countess through her financial foundations and partnerships moved
in quiet splendour wherever and whenever she wished. Today she wished to holiday
in Crete and live like they did, these people who provided succour, and tonight, she
was sure, would provide the next heir to her line. With the night sky calling forth the
hunter in her soul, she opened the curtains, stepped out onto the balcony and gazed
down the dusty little lane that ran towards the local coastal strip, with its bright lights,
its noise and its scurrying human possibilities.
Another night on the town, as delightful as it might be, just didn’t seem right
to Stu. Rethymno itself was fine, although a little too bookish for his taste, possessing
insufficient an air of debauchery despite Crete’s bloody history. Stu was more a Malia
type of guy. Tonight, though, he fancied quiet and peaceful, which he had to admit
was a bit of a departure from the norm. The rugby boys could stuff their less than
subtle gibes and always rowdy insults where the sun rarely ever shined (you could
never quite tell with one or two of them). He really didn’t care, and being from one of
those hail-fellow-well-met backgrounds, it was all water off a duck’s back. He was,
anyway, the fittest and fastest of the assembled pre-season breakers, playing at centre
with all of the modern power and grace required of a rugger boy. His main claim to
fame in these still relatively tender years had been a youth appearance for Scotland,
although sadly a combination of injury and a tendency towards dilettantism meant that
such early promise remained as yet unfulfilled. As the bus squeezed and wheezed its
way through streets full of bars and girls Stu hoped that his chosen destination might
have something at least a little different to offer tonight.
Stu stepped off the coast road bus at Adelianos, having left the boys to their
beer and their eager-eyed and insatiable game of spot the girlie. This was going to be
a quiet, thoughtful night, which would suit the locale. Adelianos looked sleepy and
quiet and, frankly, pretty boring, providing a thin string of tavernas and bars set back
a little from the beach. Everything looked the same; Souvlaki, Kleftiko, Stifado,
grilled fish, Mythos beer, waiters standing on doorsteps trying to persuade you to eat
at their establishment. He wanted something different tonight, a place of quiet
solitude, where, despite being built like a row small northern industrial terraced
houses, he might not stand out, where he might just sit and eat and while away some
time without having to enjoy himself quite so much as he had during the first three
days and nights on the island. Stu wanted to watch other people tonight.
He looked around the main square of Adelianos. Nothing caught his eye as
being suitable, but there was a sign, faded and hanging at an angle because one of the
cable ties holding it to a chain link fence had snapped. A taverna. Demetriou’s. One
kilometre as the arrow points inland. Stu smiled. Perfect. Inland meant up hill and that
meant a little bit of exercise before scoff. Stu hoped that the place would be full of
locals, bewhiskered old men rattling their rosaries and maybe playing backgammon,
with their wives, those little old bewhiskered crones huddled in a corner chattering
away noisily.
Even on a September evening it was still warm enough to raise a little
moisture on Stu’s forehead and top lip as he made the gentle climb inland. During the
walk the night sky shifted from the hazy blues, reds and oranges of sunset, through the
leavening purples of dusk and then into the jet black of the quiet cicada hum that calls
forth the first star. With the closing in of the day the air filled with the gentle aromas
of basil and wild garlic. The sounds of the night began to break free as Stu left the
coastal strip and climbed slowly across the ancient Cretan soils; a cat mewling with
excitement at the chases to come, something ferreting in the undergrowth, the whine
of a moped in the distance. He felt strangely at home, like a ripe and powerful
Palikare of old.
Stu represented the epitome health and vitality, walking with all of the
swagger that a broad shouldered and confident young man at ease amid a timeless
landscape should possess. Not that such thoughts occurred to Stu as he sauntered
through those final dusty yards towards the taverna. He was getting slightly concerned
by the apartment complex that he could see set back against the fields and olive
groves. Bloody tourists.
No, such lofty and poetic thoughts were not his, but they did fill the mind of
one shadow-souled creature who watched the world below from her balcony.
As the boy sat at table and ordered half a litre of the house red while he
perused the by now predictable menu his heart sank in converse proportion to the
rising pulse in the veins of the aforementioned lady. While he foresaw an evening of
single mediocrity, she could feel the ravening joy of her twin cravings rising in her
gorge. There would be a little moment of thrill when she stretched her legs out on the
threads of her invisible web, a subtly delicious hour of play as she watched him eat,
and then there would be the ultimate liaison dangereux. She was the spider, this place
and time her hunting ground, and with the primeval urge satisfied she would then
indulge herself within the joyous pain of bestial desire. It would be an evening of
anticipation, frolics and, for the Countess at least, a late dinner. Such fun.
Before leaving her room the Countess took one precaution. Not for her the
mosquito plug-ins, nor the net or the salve. She lifted the mirror from the wall and
stowed it under her bed. Then, wearing simple thongs and clad in her delicate cream
cotton dress, she drifted out of her apartment, cascaded down the steps to the taverna
and voila! She made her entrance.
The locals, Demetriou and his sons waiting on customers, as one made the
sign of the cross as she entered. Such superstition, she thought, in these modern days.
They prattle on because they think that I only come out at night. Do they not see my
alabaster skin? How could I risk the sun?
She spotted the boy at a table looking out onto the road, the only new
customer so far tonight. Trade had been slow for Demetriou these last few days. The
shepherds further up the mountain were talking about a white skinned ghost, a raven
mistress, who called to them under the stars. Local people were staying at home. Only
the tourists came, and now that the season was nearing an end there were only two
apartments occupied.
The Countess appeared to hesitate, looking around the taverna as though
unsure where to sit. Demtriou waved his hand and tried not to look into her eyes, all
the time flicking his rosary beads against his thigh. The Countess smiled at the
balding crown of the man’s lowered head, and then walked boldly up to the boy’s
table.
“Would you mind if I joined you?” she asked in her clear but still accented
voice.
She dipped sweetly into his eye line. It was a Ding-Dong moment, a Bloody
Hell epiphany. The boy looked up. He could almost taste the promise held in the way
that her dress clung to her taught, pale body. He saw how her hair fell straight and
lustrously across her shoulders and down her back. Then he gazed into her eyes. She
had the most amazing, the most beautiful and captivating eyes. They seemed to
shimmer with a moonlight of their own making, set deep into black hearts, and there
too he saw the flame of the candle on the table reflected back at him as if she
hungered eternally.
He smiled weakly and mumbled his agreement. As she pulled out the blue
wooden chair opposite him and sat down he couldn’t believe his luck. He feasted on
her, taking in the rise of her breasts and measuring the beauty of her long and supple
limbs as if he were admiring a fabulous Pieta. Her skin shone in the candle light. She
seemed almost translucent, but deep and ancient in her marble perfection. Stu felt as if
he were falling into a well. She wore a strange perfume that filled his nostrils with
sweet ungents, with jasmine and rose and lavenders and with something else. It made
him think of time, of ages passed under moon light. Bloody hell!
They struck up conversation easily. She declined his offer of dinner, saying
that she would eat later, that she had not long finished a late lunch, but she would stay
and keep him company while he ate. There was something fascinating about watching
these creatures eat, something sordidly gratifying about the way that little dribbles of
sauce might run down their chins. The boy was a fine specimen, vigorous and young,
and engaging in his own sweet and innocent way.
While he ate and drank his wine, of which she accepted one small glass to be
sociable, she talked of her home in the mountains, of how it had all been sold and how
she roamed the world now, stateless but always with a casket of earth from her own
land by her side as a reminder of home and her beloved family. She spun webs of
silver thread through the evening air, always making direct eye contact, always
drawing him in towards her desperate need for love on this particular night.
Once the food was done with they stayed sitting at the table to finish the wine,
and the lady even found the patience to wait and talk idly about his life while he drank
a coffee and a brandy, even though her own heat and lust for the gift of life was raging
like a furnace beneath the demur cream cotton shift.
And then the talking was done with. She asked him to walk with her a little as
she needed some air. She told Demetriou to add the food and drink to her bill and she
would settle all with him the following evening when she was due to leave for her
next as yet undecided port of call. She took Stu’s hand in hers and walked out into the
dark night, heading up into the hills, slowly but surely away from the fetid breath of
everyday life. As the pair left his taverna, Demetriou crossed himself once more and
said a silent prayer for the young Englishman’s soul.
“Here”, she said, “we rest here for a while”
Whilst not always the sharpest knife in the box, Stu’s libidinous sense of what
was possible confirmed the Countess’s assessment of the situation. The olive grove
was secluded, the grass thick and soft, the trees full and weeping heavily with fruit,
and the air was still and calm. With his hand held firmly in her soft, white and cool
embrace he let himself be lead to the far corner of the olive grove. She sat with her
back against the tree, revealing a shapely if thin alabaster leg, and pulled him towards
her. She met no resistance. Stu knelt before her and brushed her hair away from her
shoulder. He leaned forward and kissed the limpid skin of her neck gently, afraid that
he would break her into a thousand pieces if he exerted any force upon her frail form.
He need not have worried. There followed a storm of soundless lovemaking
during which she engulfed him, forcing his penetration ever deeper until they
ultimately found their symphonic tempo, and always, even in climax, their eyes
remained locked together. Now satiated, dripping sweat and smeared with Cretan soil,
they lay side by side staring at the rising field of stars that glistened above the olive
trees. Her snow white body lay naked and revealed to the world of men for the first
and only time, and she found, for a moment or two, that the urgency of her other
bottomless hunger abated. She wanted to talk, to hear his voice one last time so that
she would be able to tell her new born of a father.
She rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand, her black hair
falling dishevelled across shoulders and curving round her breasts. “Tell me about
your family” she said softly. “Tell me about your brothers and sisters and your father.
A memory of a good father is always something that I missed growing up.”
“Not much to tell, really.” Stu paused. Maybe if they talked for a while, maybe
if they got their breath back they could try it all again, he thought. There couldn’t be
any harm in a little potted history.
“One brother, a twin. Funny thing that. My Dad was a twin and so was
Grandpa. In the genes, I suppose, but Mum always said it was one hell of a job
looking after us as babies. I thought it missed out generations but apparently not. Dad
was an archi…”
She stayed his lips with a slender white finger. “Rest now”, she said. “Close
your eyes and rest.”
Stu looked up into her eyes and there he saw reflected twin boys, curled up,
arm in arm, growing by the moment into fine young men, dark and pale like their
mother but blessed with a good, manly physique. He smiled. She smiled too, for in
that moment she knew that she would change the world. There would be two little
ones to bring up, and although it might take centuries, two would become four, then
four become eight, until the line of her great ancestor filled the world in numbers
sufficient to make extinction an impossibility.
At that moment she made the one truly human choice in her life. She placed
her hands on Stu’s eyelids and gently closed them while whispering sweet
incantations. He would sleep and wake refreshed with the rising sun of a new day. It
was a small gift from a grateful mother to this fine father of the race of Nosferatu. She
would drink elsewhere of Crete tonight.