🚀 go-pugleaf

                               ^v^v^v^v^v^v^


                               BLOOD SEASON
                     The Origin of Chalandra Harkness

                           Chapter Five of Five
                                 "Turning"
                                    by
                               Gary W. Olson


                            A bit of a warning:
         This episode is a tad...um...racy.  Steamy, even.  Not really
           explicit, per se, but...erhm...well...you know.  At least,
                   part one is.  Part two's kind of boring.

           Oh, there's a bit of violence, too, but I've never warned
                   you about that before, so why start now?


                               ^v^v^v^v^v^v^

     She felt as though the wine had gone to her head, conveyed by the mad
rush of blood through her arteries and veins.  Tonight, she could feel it as
she never had before, the beating of her all too mortal heart, the engine that
propelled her diminished blood through her now-pale body.
     What would it feel like, when that great engine lay dormant?
     She didn't drink wine, typically.  It's taste was always a bit too harsh
to her, a bit too dry afterwards.  She would participate in toasts, on
special occasions, but would never take more than the first sip from her
glass.  Tonight, she drained it, while Dracula and Little Fang watched.
     "Chalandra," Dracula said, after several moments of silence, "the
Consummation of the Turning is the most important moment in the journey from
mortality to death to unliving.  Even in the quickest, dirtiest turnings, it
must be handled with care and delicacy, else it may fail."
     "I understand," Chalandra answered.
     "Perhaps you do," Dracula replied.  He turned to regard Little Fang, who
had finished her wine, as well.  "And what of you?"
     "I understand your philosophies on turning quite intimately," Little
Fang answered.  "When the moment arrives, I shall not bar your way."
     He looked at Chalandra again.
     "Ordinarily, I would not assent to this," Dracula told her.  "Though I
am young, compared to many of my peers, I have initiated numerous turnings,
and none of them have featured any third participants."
     "Isn't there a first time for everything?" Chalandra asked.
     "Indeed," Dracula said.  "It would appear that this is to be that time,
for myself and for you."  He lifted the bottle.  "Would you care for more
wine, before we ascend?"
     "Please," Chalandra said.  Dracula refilled her glass, and looked to
Little Fang, who politely declined.  "So...where is the Baron, this
evening?"
     "He is sleeping," Dracula answered.  "I had one of his servants put a
sedative in his pizza, to ensure that he would not intrude upon our night."
     "Clever," Chalandra said.
     There was a noise by the door.  Chalandra and Little Fang turned to see
Waits, peering in from the doorway.
     "Everything is prepared," Waits said to Dracula.  "I'll be napping out
in the hall if you need me."  Dracula nodded to him, and he departed.
     "Preparations?" Chalandra asked.
     "Necessary preparations," Dracula told her.  "It must be insured that
everyone is aware that you are dead, and not simply run away."
     She would have asked him what that entailed, but the second glass was
working its way into her thoughts and her blood, and she bit her lip,
instead.
     The clock above the fireplace indicated that it was twenty minutes until
one o'clock.  Dracula set down his wine glass and stood.
     "Are you ready, my dear?" he asked, a red glint appearing in his eye.
     Chalandra took a deep breath.  The engine inside her was pumping faster,
the delirious excitement of death propelling its motion.  She could feel the
fear, but also the fire.
     She was being called to the edge.
     "I'm ready," she said, quietly.  She set her half-emptied wine glass
aside, and stood.  Little Fang stood as well, moving to Chalandra's left
side, as Dracula moved to her right.  They took her arms, and guided her
towards a hallway, one that led into the interior of the villa.
     There was a stairway at the far end of the hallway, barely illuminated in
the dim candlelight.  As she walked towards it, she imagined it was getting
farther away, that the candles were shrinking, that the darkness was already
moving in to claim her.  The anonymous portraits that adorned the walls melted
into her peripheral vision, a gallery of onlookers come to silently witness
her departure from the mortal world.

                               ^v^v^v^v^v^v^

     The bedroom was immaculately white, from the silken sheen of the
wall tapestries to the covers of the bed to the fine rugs on the floor.  It
was impossibly spotless, and was without windows.
     Chalandra tried to remember how she had gotten to this point.  The stairs
had been receding from her, as she walked towards them.  The paintings...
something about paintings...
     "We are here," Dracula told her.
     Her head turned, and she saw him, his face blurred and softened,
blending with the whiteness of the room.  His outer coat was gone, and the
white, ruffled shirt he was wearing now seemed out of place.  She felt soft
hands upon her shoulders, and knew they belonged to Little Fang.
     "Your vision will dim, as the consummation progresses," Dracula told
her.  "Do not be alarmed as it happens."
     Moving forward, he kissed her, softly, the stain of red wine still on
his lips, burning and mixing with his strong, musky breath, which did not
seem so foul as it had when she had first met him.
     She felt lips, quiet and wet, touch her neck, and tilted her head
slightly.  Fingers caressed her shoulders, and Little Fang's teeth grazed
the holes opened earlier by Dracula.
     The ground was moving...
     ...no, she was being lowered...onto the bed...
     Blood muted feeling.  That was what Dracula had told her.
     She could feel the hands upon her; Dracula's hands, strong and large,
holding her like a fragile flower; Little Fang's hands, dancing upon her skin
with the grace of ghosts.  There was a mouth on her neck, and the fangs were
sinking in...
     Her blouse was gone, disappeared in the miasma that had become her
world.  She could feel...skin...brushing against her own, and she could feel
the blood that was underneath, motionless, without a heart to drive it.
     It was the stillest thing she had ever felt, and it frightened her.
     Blood muted.
     She was losing blood.
     She heard whispering in her ear.  The voice belonged to Little Fang, but
she couldn't make out the words.  They were trying to calm her...had she
grown hysterical?
     Lips...moistened with her blood...began moving down her body.  Fingernails
glided across her abdomen, long fingernails moving...down...
     There.
     The blood was rushing out of her body, into the bodies of her turners.
When one left her neck, the other would enter, rhythmically, as though they
had been born to it.  She had thought it would feel more like a war, but, when
it came down to it, they moved in tandem, like one mind with two bodies,
pressed against her own...
     The city...
     She could see the city in her mind, shimmering in the white silken canopy,
burning in the night...
     Thousands of hearts.
     Thousands of engines, all of which had to stop.
     The blood was the physical means of energy transfer...
     The energy burned, white with heat...
     Touching her...there...
     Lips...on her skin...on her breast...
     The reaches of time were vast...
     Past...present...future...
     Thousands...millions...of hearts, burning with the acrid smell of lamp
oil...
     Energy rushing through her...
     Skin...touching her lips...
     She opened her mouth, and buried her fangs deep into Little Fang's neck.
Somewhere, in the corner of her mind, she heard screaming, but it wasn't
Little Fang who was screaming.
     It was Vrik.
     She was drinking Vrik's blood somehow, and it would kill her...
     She retracted her fangs, and the skin was gone, disappeared from her
sight.  But the energy was surging within her, the energy they were stimulating,
buiding to critical mass with the artistry of the finest portrait painters...
     The fingers drifted up her body, leaving a trail that stung her skin.
She felt Dracula's breath in her ear, and heard a single word, as though out
of the furnace of hell...
     "Now..." he told her.
     Time...stretching back...
     Warriors on a battlefield, dying, as Gilgamesh strangled the child-
goddess Tara...a strange smile on her lips, even as the blood seeped out of
the corner of her mouth...
     Skin above her now...Dracula's skin...the veins in his breast full,
with old blood and new...
     She bared her fangs and sank them in, deep and hard, tasting the blood
as it rushed into her.  It was working a subtle magic in her body, washing
through her blood-starved flesh, through her blood-starved brain, weaving
small changes in its wake...
     Fingers still moved across her, but they were muted now, muted by the
blood that was running through her again...
     Fingers were massaging her jaw, getting it to release...the blood
trickled down her chin, as she tried to move...
     Her muscles were not responding, but the fingers kept moving over her,
and the lips trailed steadily down...
     ...there...
     The moment of death was rushing towards her, on mighty wings...
     Time, stretching into the future...
     The ecstacy was building, past anything she had ever imagined...
     She opened her eyes, and could see, with perfect clarity.  Dracula's
teeth were in her neck, but he was not drinking...Little Fang was kissing
her...there...and...
     They were not alone...
     They were lowering her husband into the cold ground of Fiddler's
Green.  She had loved him a lifetime, but he had only one to give...
     Mirabai was watching, standing in the doorway, eyes smiling with the
clever secrets that her Dark One gave.  Behind her stood two people, in thick
brown robes.  One had a gold chain, from her ear to her nose, and seemed
vaguely bored.  The other was tall, and somewhat thin.  His eyes were hidden
behind darkened spectacles.
     Her vision was blurring...
     Death was at hand.
     Feeling fell away, replaced by overwhelming cold.
     Perception was no more...
     But she could see...
     Could see...
     The Dark One.  Krishna.  He was appearing to her, standing where Mirabai
had been.  His robes were rich with blood, and a devil's gleam was in his
blackened eyes.
     He smiled a cheshire smile, and vanished.
     No more burning.
     The engine had stopped.
     Good...
     ...bye...

                               ^v^v^v^v^v^v^

     Hunger.
     She realized it had been there for quite a while, dragging her from the
depths of sleep.  It wasn't just in her stomach, though.  It was in her body,
in her mind, in her blood...
     She felt very still.  It dawned on her just why that was.
     Her heart was dead.
     The blood within her wasn't moving.  It rested in dark pools under her
skin, pulled by gravity, stagnant and contaminated.  She was afraid to move,
to disturb the pools, fearing the feeling they would generate when she did.
     Dracula had done it.
     She was turned.  She was what he was, now.
     The hunger grew stronger, and she opened her eyes.
     The white canopy was still above her, though it looked somewhat
different than before.  It was stretched differently, as though it had been
taken down and put back up.
     There was breathing in the room.  Cautiously, she moved her head, to
see its source...
     "Dracula..." she whispered, in a voice that felt raw and scratchy.
     "Good evening, my dear Chalandra," Dracula said.  "Welcome to your new
life."
     "How long...have I been out?" she asked.
     "Three days," Dracula answered.  "Your body required that amount of time
to fully change into its new state of being.  I imagine you must be quite
hungry now."
     "I...need blood..." Chalandra told him.
     "Yes, you do," he said.  "Waits!"
     There was the sound of struggle in the hallway, and Chalandra recognized
a familiar voice.  Moments later, Mandrake Harkness was thrust into the
room, held securely by the more-massive Waits.
     Mandrake's face was scarred, but the skin on his neck was unbroken.
He looked at Dracula defiantly.
     "Drain my blood if you wish, demon," he spat, with what voice he could
manage.  "I'd sooner die than accept your immortality."
     "I am already sated, sir," Dracula answered.  "Though I thank you for
your kind offer."
     "Then, why, in the name of God..."
     His voice trailed off, upon seeing Chalandra.
     "...Chalandra...oh, God..."
     "Enjoy your banquet, my dear," Dracula said to Chalandra.  "Waits and I
will be downstairs, preparing."
     Mandrake yelped as Waits lifted him up and threw him onto the bed.  He
landed on his stomach, next to Chalandra.  His smell was rough and sweat-
ridden, and Chalandra suspected he had been Dracula's 'guest' for a while.
     She sat up, letting the sheets slide down to her waist.  Moving to one
side, she turned him over.  His wrists were not bound, and he was attempting to
fight, to struggle away to the edge of the bed.
     Her fingers caught his throat, and she slammed him back down, as she
rolled atop him.  He froze.
     "No..." he whispered.  "Fight him, Chalandra..."
     "Why?" Chalandra asked.  "Give me a reason, brother."
     "I...I...Becca..." he said.  "If you kill me, Becca will be alone..."
     "She has will have her children," Chalandra said.  "And the family will
help to raise them."  She wrapped her arms under him, under his back, and
kissed his neck.
     "They need...a father..."
     "Bertrand can take that role," Chalandra told him, softly.  "He's not old.
And your children are both males - the Harkness name and fortune will survive
just fine without you...or me."
     "But...do not do this...please...I don't want to die..."
     "Don't you?" Chalandra asked.  "You're quite aroused."
     "No..."
     "Trust me, it's evident."
     "But..."
     "Shhhh," she said.  "Enjoy it while it lasts."  She left a light kiss on
his lips, then moved down, trailing her sharp teeth on his neck.  He was
paralyzed with fear, and the engine within him was driving as fast as it
could, racing towards explosion...
     She bit into him, her teeth slashing viciously into his throat.  The blood
was spurting now, and with it came strength, and fire, and life.  She squeezed
him with her arms, crushing her to him.
     He was screaming, and the sound vibrations echoed through his blood as
she drank it, forcing her fangs deeper and deeper, rending his flesh and
drenching her chin and throat with red.
     There was a cracking sound.  His spine, most likely.
     He was screaming, and the force of his terror was more than matched by
the depth of her ecstacy.  She was drunk on his life, a flood of memories and
petty hatreds, suspicions and arrogances.  His body was breaking, as his arms
separated from his shoulders, pushed outward by her violently strong hands.
Blood was rushing from multiple points of his body, from his mouth, from his
shoulders, from his back.
     There was a final crack, and he stopped screaming.
     The engine died, and she lifted her fangs from his neck.
     She felt wild, and feral, and immortal.
     The world was hers to take.
     She stood at the foot of the bed, in the clothes that Dracula had
provided.  They were a bit conservative for her tastes, but she could get
others, she guessed.
     Chalandra looked at the broken body of Mandrake Harkness, stretched out
on the bed, arms sprawled to the sides, blood soaking into the pearl-
white sheets.  Some nails would have made the scene complete.
     She closed the door behind her as she left.

(continued in part two, following...)

        Gary W. Olson         <^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu  >  "If you're so special, why aren't you dead?"
     swede@drycas.bitnet      <      - The Breeders, "I Just Wanna Get Along"