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We've met these two. Jonathon and Sarah came across them during a vampire pilgrimage, deep within the Carpathian Mountains. The old continent of Europe has many nooks and crannies. Some hide forgotten clans of Neanderthals. You know them as trolls and ogres. Others shelter various witch hybrids and shadow people. Who knows what else.
I suppose since night-folk had to make a conscious decision to emigrate and come to the New World, we have less noxious, animalistic types here. Compulsive, visceral specimens tend to stay where they are, rarely moving on till chased by a shrieking, murderous peasantry.... Lorenzo and Kadeema are noxious vampires. A condition usually caused by a hard, vampiric 'birth.' Maybe they were buried too deep, or the soil was excessively heavy and clay-like. Escaping the grave is horrific... Being trapped, or almost trapped is maddening in a very real, dark and damaging way. Some never heal.... Some never escape. God knows how many conscious souls lie bound within the earth.
Now our two were buried the same night, in a remote wooded, damp corner of Wallachia. Each had an opened Bible placed over their face. Each lay upon a hard, jagged bed of faith symbols. That's what they did to suspected night-folk in those parts... Oh, some had their bottom jaw hacked out. The town butcher did it, thus mercifully killing the innocent and assuring them a place in the world to come.
Before we go on, allow me to clarify something. There is little room for movement in the grave. Think of the casket as an individual cigar case. The human remains are prepared and positioned. Survivors take a look... and then the heavy lid comes down, leaving perhaps two fingers worth of space between the nose and the interior surface. Should the occupant wake up, repositioning, or movement of any kind is futile. Stories of blood stains and frantic scratches on the inside of the lid are fiction. No one turns over. In the case of Lorenzo and Kadeema, they also had those thick Bibles resting on their faces, not to mention the sharp, pointy bed of religious charms under them.... And something else... the dirt packed down upon a coffin weighs more than one thousand pounds. The lids usually crack and cave in. Even the metal lids buckle. Exhumed bodies, for any reason, often have shattered faces. Corpses don't care. The soul's long gone. Newly made vampires, with all the left over fears of mortality are another story, for they're conscious through it all. They scream and shriek and rail like babbling fools in hell... Kadeema did.... She was a tavern girl, you know... and one night in a blizzard she slipped and cracked her head upon the icy cobbles of the town....and she lay there in the storm, half way between this world and the next. The rats never came to taste the feast. That's how cold a Wallachian winter can be.... But in the doorway to a small, shabby handful of flats crouched a 'noxious' vampire silently washing the blood from his face with handfuls of sleet and snow. He inhaled the rich, dense scent of the almost dead 'she meat' laying before him... thought for a moment then crept over. Noxious types are often gluttons, so he tore off her scarf and ripped into her throat. She barely moaned.... He pulled back from the font and thought for a moment, as the blood dripped down from his chin onto her smooth. white skin. Then he quietly chucked a bit before soundlessly dragging her into an alley...
True death never claimed her, but the dark burden did. Kadeema was a vampire now...
We'll witness her ordeal... Lorenzo's too, next time....
Ah, how the nights grow long. Autumnal Equinox is almost upon us. Night folk revere that event. September twenty first is special to them, for after that date, the night overtakes the day and the pain of spring and summer temporarily ends.
A rich culture they have. The night-folk, I mean...
A whole other world...
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