Nocturnal Bloodlines Main page | Main story Page Nocturnal BloodlinesFEEDBACK - Oh Yes Please -You can email us docwho2000@hotmail.com author: docwho2100 and mightygupo Consensual relationship depicted between adult women in this story. If you have a problem with that or are under 18 please do not read. ------------------------- Chapter 5 Giles was sorely vexed at his charge's sudden leaving with... well at least to his way of thinking, the enemy. He went back to his research, trying to put it out of his mind, trying also not to wonder at what the Council was playing at. Why didn't they tell Buffy of her Belmont heritage, why didn't they pay heed to the legend and the folk lore. "She be a Belmont, so we should be safe now." The young man tending the bar said quietly. "Aye. But she not be trained." The old man sipping his soup spoke from the table next to Giles. "If anybody be saving us, t'will be the bastard childe of the dark prince himself. But... but can she carry them both? Or will the Belmont get them both killed?" " Elizabeth is a trained Vampire slayer!" Giles burst out, angered at the thought that Buffy was thought not to be able to carry her own weight and would have to be babied along with a half vampire. "Aye, mayhap she is, but we aren't talking of any vampire. E'ry child here knows a stake to the heart, a strand of garlic, and to wear the silver cross of our lords protection. But we are talking of Dracul Vlad Teppes, Impaler of thousands." The old man continued as he contemplated his food. "The Dracul who made evil stand up and take notice, and grant immortality to him. The man who always returns. No matter how many times he is "killed", he always returns." The old man calmly countered. "Now we have a child, a girl of flesh and bone who knows how to kill a vampire, but knows nothing of her own lineage following the dark one's half heathen daughter on a quest to reclaim her birthright. I'll not put my money on the girl, but upon the heathen who has helped send her own sire to the abyss, and knows the secrets of the Belmonts." "How can you put so much faith in one of them?" Giles spat out. "She is a creature of that darkness as well." "Aye. Once again you speak true words, but she is also a creature of the light as well." The old man said gravely. "She has murdered hundreds." Giles countered. "And saved thousands." The old man said, before taking another drink of his soup. He then turned back to Giles. "I will be 60 winters in this month of our Lords birth. I was born 4 days before Christ's Mass. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the woman. She saved my grandmother, she did." " Petra?" The servant girl asked. "Tis a story ye've never told before." "No, I haven't. I guess tis the fear we have of the name Teppes. To speak of him is ill tidings, and to bring doom upon yourself, but now... well I guess that we are already under his shadow, so it no longer matters does it now?" Petra said quietly, staring at his soup. Giles wanted to argue, but he was more intrigued by the mans story at the moment. Without even thinking about it, so long it had become custom, he pulled out fresh paper and his quill to make notes. The serving girl brought over another ladle of soup and bread and sat it in front of Petra. "Here my lord." "Thank ye, girl, now sit yerself down, cause I will need to start about some 300 years ago for this story, and t'will take awhile. Gather round, and I shall tell it as it was told to me, and his father before him." Petra said softly, then put up a finger as he took a long drink of his ale. "My voice isn't as strong as it used to be." He apologized. Then he began "The red priest came to teach our lords word. He was an angry man and carried a deep hatred for heathens of the world. Most of it carried from his fight in the east. The crusade against the Crescents in their empires of sand, and their worship of Allah and the prophet Mohammad. And it was here that hatred would have him meet face to face with Dracul Teppes, the scourge of the earth." Petra shook his head. "But that wasn't the case when the red priest first came, for Teppes had done something that no man believed him capable of. He, the man who watched people die, impaled on spikes, for the sheer joy of it, had fallen in love. In love with a human woman so beautiful and light, that she could turn even the coldest heart. And in his love, he began to find goodness, and in his goodness, he began to see the road to redemption." "Now the spawn of hell was found to be turning to the light, but the dark forces that plague mankind didn't want to lose so powerful a servant of darkness. So I believe, yes I do believe, that they were responsible for the red priest coming here, and not our own lord. No matter what side the priest said he stood for." "It had been seventeen years since Vlad had found his love. Fifteen, almost sixteen years since he had borne two children with his woman. Their blood a mix of vampire and human, dampyr both, twins... a boy and a girl, Terran and Tara." He paused, taking another drink of ale. "Vlad was finding joy and contentment in having a family. He ceased his attacks on the people. He lived apart, doing no harm. He... mellowed. Oh I am sure he could still be cruel, I don't believe that one could change their true nature that much, but he also wasn't... true evil anymore. "Now the red priest came, and began his preaching. He preached against infidels and heretics. Everyone had the possibility of being in league with the devil, and taught that if one lived amongst devils then they too were to be treated as such, and deserved the cleansing fires from turning away from the light." "Almost overnight he had his followers. Many innocent villagers were burned, for doing nothing more than following tradition. Gypsies were hunted down like dogs. Girl's were told to be watched, as they were more susceptible to the devils ways, much like Eve was in the garden of Eden, and they should be beaten on a regular basis to keep them pure. Even with all this, more came, taking up the banner of the Priest." Giles couldn't help himself. He asked. "Did the priest have a name?" "Aye... he did, my forgiven friend. He was called Domenici." The old man answered, sneering at the name. "And as much a devil as those he sought. Soon he heard the legends of Dracula and began to learn all he could. He sent spies, collected information, and all to quickly he formulated a plan. He would strike first at the children and the wife. He hired soldiers from the Tartars. He gave them maps of the area, and where to grab them. He set up a special dungeon, prepared with implement of torture and sealed with magics. When he was finally done, he put his plan into motion. "Dracula was away to prepare for the celebration of the 16th year of his children's lives. While he was gone to get them presents, his wife and children were taken to Domenici." "For the next week they endured tortures unimaginable by humans, other than those that invented and participated in them. They were beaten, degraded, and..." The old man halted for a brief moment. "Taken... human and objects used alike. Not even the boy was spared the violation." " Petra, how... how do you know of this?" The barkeep asked. He took a deep drink of his ale, and sat down on his stool. "Because my grandfathers, grandfathers, father was a follower of Domenici. He had a special job. He was a scrivener ordered to keep detailed notes of this... for posterity for when Domenici was elected to high office within the church, and his eventual sainthood. My ancestor kept copious notes in his journal..." He raised his voice slightly. "I have read them. I know every blow on their body. I know every humiliation, every violation." Petra shut his eyes for a moment. "Every screamed word uttered. He managed to escape with the journals, but I'll not get ahead of myself." "After Domenici had them begging for death, cursing both god and the devil alike, he decided then was the time for the purifying fire. It was determined by chance, lots thrown, the mother first, followed by the son, then the daughter. The children would get to watch their mother die, then the sister, the brother." "What Domenici didn't know was that Dracula had come returned home a full two days before he was scheduled. And that he was on his way there as they were preparing the fires." "He was on league away when the flames consumed his wife, and she uttered her last mortal words. He was crashing into the stronghold when Terran, far to tired to even scream as the flames took his body. Then as Tara was tied to her pyre, to far into herself to even care anymore, the blood trail of tears dried on her face, no longer even struggling against her own death." "Vlad himself tore through the door, rage and hatred mixed with his desire to kill every living thing. Gone was whatever kindness that had come into his heart. Body after body, man after man, he cleaved to get to Domenici." "In the flurry of confusion, my ancestor took his accounts and fled into the hills. Domenici was caught, and from there, all the things that happened between that night and the time that Tara once again encountered my family is legend." "Do you know these legends?" Giles asked. "Some of them. I know that it took months for Tara to heal from her wounds, so the tortures in the accounts must have been fact. I have heard that she still bears scars. I know that the fire meant for her body, over took her heart for awhile, and that the hatred for humans burned hot." "I know that eventually she met a Belmont, and in battle she was defeated, but instead of killing her, he stayed his hand and made her remember the words of her mother." "For the mother had never given up hope that her children would make it out alive somehow. Even in death certain, am mother always clings to hope for the salvation of her children." Petra said "What did Tara's mother say?" The washing boy asked. "If you can't live with humans, at least do them no harm. For theirs is already a heavy lot." Petra said from memory, having read the passage so many times before. "I've wondered if he knew of Tara's pain, or if he could just see it in her soul, and that is why he stayed his killing blow." "Whatever the reason, he made her pause and made her feel her pain, her anger, her emotions, the good and the bad of them. And what he found was not a demon, or a dampyr, or a creature of darkness, but a wounded child who had been abused and forced to watch her family burned alive. He chose to see her human side, for as much as she has her father's blood in her veins. She too also has her mother's." Giles paused in his writing of these words. Could a vampire hunter, much like the ones he trained actually see a human in this woman? Had he been wrong? He thought back to their brief encounter. Was there anything human in her at that time? He replayed the scene in his mind, looking for one small detail that would make her at all human. Then he saw it, the brief flicker when Buffy had called Tara a thing. Just a flicker, not even one tick of the clock, Tara had shown emotional pain. Buffy had hurt her with words, and just before the mask of cold indifference could resettle on her face, she had shown a very human emotion. Giles began to wonder what else went on behind that mask. He was so deep in thought he almost missed it when Petra started speaking again. "She went to stay with Belmont for awhile. He felt that he couldn't leave her to herself, not after he had broken her. Not like Domenici had broken her, mind you, but he had still taken away her wall of safety." "Where anger and hate made her feel nothing, made her safe. He helped her, gave her someone to talk too, became her friend, and slowly they built trust with the other. The years passed, and Tara once again needed to be away from humans, and she went once again to a place of solitude, hoping that her father was truly dead." "What about your grandmother?" Another patron asked, drinking their now long cold stew, having forgotten about it during the story. "Everybody knows that Dracula has his human minions. After Dracula's last appearance 100 years ago, one of his dark priests found a spell to resurrect him with sacrifices." "They had captured 100 virgins. Among them, my grandmother was taken to the alters. Placed up a giant dais, with groves cut into stone, five parts of Dracula underneath, they began sacrificing the women, the blood dripping on the body parts below. Unfortunately many had been killed when Tara got there, and killed the priests." "But she rescued more than were killed, and luckily my grandmother was one of them. This a year after she married my grandfather, and the rest is history. The romantic in me... wants to believe that she knew that my grandmother was the descendant of a man who had wronged her in the past." "That the act of saving one of that family was her way of coming back to where it all began. That finally she let go of her hatred by saving my grandmother, but I guess I will never know if she did indeed know who my grandmother even was." Petra said, then stood up, bowing slightly. "And now I grow weary and my voice tired. I bid you all a goodnight." He said, then took one last drink of his ale, and left the building. That seemed to signal the end of the night as others began to leave as well. Giles sat a little longer, finishing his drink and gathering his belonging. He sighed knowing the hour was late, and that he was deeply tired, but he would have to fight it. There was so much to do in a short period of time, and much to contemplate, such as a certain young dampyr and just whatever became of Domenici. The old man had never said. contact: docwho2000@hotmail.com page last modified - March 18, 2008 graphics from www.eosdev.com |