Strigoi Page 6

  I glanced around the room, looking for Petru and Razvan. I saw a dried carcass on the ground and screamed.

  Behind me, I could hear laughter. I turned around and found Razvan standing behind me, laughing. “Well, well, this is a strange development.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand, what is going on?”

  He gestured to the broken mirror. “You destroyed my masterpiece of a story. You broke my mirror that I had been using to lead you to believe everything was real.”

  I tried to understand what he was getting at. “None of this was real?”

  Razvan laughed. “No, no. It was all in your mind. The mirror gave you the illusion of everything that was happening. Just a little trick I picked up over the years. Your grandmother wasn’t the only one who knew magic.”

  I couldn’t believe it, yet it answered so many questions that were in my mind. It answered all the doubts I about what had been going on, it was because it wasn’t real. There was only one question that was still going through my mind. “Why?”

  “To get you to break this stupid curse. You were supposed to repeat the lines ‘Prin voința mea și viața mea, aceste creaturi vor fi praf’ while holding the candle stick, just like I knew you would, and it would have broken the curse and I could have exacted vengeance on your little camp and throughout all of Romania.”

  I shook my head. “But everyone...”

  “Is dead? No, that was all part of the trance I had you in. Seemed real didn’t it?”

  “So you are saying that I never went back to the camp? I never became a strigoi?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, none of that happened. You have been here for almost three nights now. You aren’t a strigoi, believe me the process is far more painful. You wouldn’t have woken up not knowing.”

  “But...” I glanced down at the carcass. “Who is that?”

  “Oh him?” he nudged the body with his foot. “That was my father, at least that part was true. We haven’t had a human come in here for a very long time. I got lucky with you. Had to devour my entire family. I am the one the story in the scroll talks about, not him,” he let out a slight chuckle. “Funny how I can get you to read it however I please.”

  We stood there in silence for a moment. So I was still human, my family was still alive, and they probably all thought I was dead, which was probably going to happen soon. After everything, I didn’t know what to do. I thought I could trust him; he made me believe I could trust him. I wanted to slap him but I knew he was much stronger than me.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “You are going to finish breaking the curse and let me out of this prison.”

  “I’d rather die than help you,” I shot back.

  He smirked. “I’m not going to kill you. No, I have a better plan than that,” he grabbed me by the throat. “If you don’t help me get out of here, I will turn you into a strigoi for real this time. Then we will wait and see when you will break this curse. So, what is it? Will you save me the trouble and break it now? Or do you want to suffer my fate?”

  “I won’t betray my people,” I gasped.

  He shrugged. “If you insist,” Razvan bit down into my throat. I let out a shrill scream. The pain was unbearable. Tears were running out of my eyes and down my face. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was feel the pain and feel as my body began to die, yet I was conscious for all of it. My body was dying but my spirit stayed. I screamed out more and more, but it didn’t help. The pain was still there and it wasn’t going away.

  Finally, he let me go, and I fell down to the ground. I tried to move, but couldn’t. I simply lay there, conscious of everything, but not able to do anything about the pain that still coursed through my body. I felt my heart stop, the air from my lungs go away. Blood stopped moving through my body and everything was shutting down slowly.

  I was dying and I could feel it all.

  Razvan sat down on his half ripped-up cushioned chair. “Gets worse as time goes by. Takes a day or two for the pain to go numb but then the body starts to get hungry and there is only one thing to satisfy it. Blood. Nothing else, not all the food in the world, nor any drink to numb the effects. That is what it is like to live with this curse every day for a hundred years. Now, you and I, we get to live through this together. Until you decide to end it. The longer you wait, the more it will hurt. So really, you are the only one who can save yourself now.”

  One last tear fell from my eye that night. The last tear I would ever shed. He was right, the pain would numb after a while, but it didn’t make the hunger go away. Do you know what it is like to starve for hundreds of years? Slowly, not being able to die from it, but not being able to live with it either? It’s pain beyond your wildest dreams.

  Time came to pass when the world began to develop around us, but no one ever noticed the castle that came out at night. We were still deep in the woods, and the only people who came by were those traveling through the area. They never stopped or took notice. Razvan played his violin every night, but none ever came to listen. None were ever anywhere as entranced as I was on that not-so fateful day.

  My camp left the area centuries ago, probably moving to some new woods. I saw them search for me, but there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want them to find me in fear of what I might do to them, and what they would do to me. Of course, after years as this damned creature, I got to know more about Razvan. He was the bastard that the scroll had made him out to be. I had found so many drained strigoi through the castle; it made me sick to think that for even a moment that I felt close to him, even though it was the mirror that persuaded me. I am still surprised he hasn’t killed me.

  I can’t imagine what he would do if I broke the curse now. There are so many people in the world now, and I don’t think any of them could stop him. He is an intelligent man, even if he is beyond evil. He would figure out a way to never get caught, to never see the day of his own death. I thought about trying to kill him myself, but I would never be strong enough and I had this urge not to die. It is an internal instinct that I don’t quite understand. I hate it, really.

  So here I am, looking out into the world that doesn’t believe we exist. A world of science and destruction, a world where people think what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Well, believe me, what you don’t know can hurt you, and it is I who stands between you and him.

  And I am beginning to think that even the smallest drop of blood would be worth leaving this place for.

  I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me in writing and in this story. A special thank you to Desiree DeOrto and Justin Boyer for helping me edit and make this story so much stronger, Daniel Somerville for an amazing cover, and Marcy Rachel for formatting and getting the novella ready to publish. I also would like to thank my friends and cousin Earlene for helping me create this series and letting me bounce ideas back and forth with them. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and my husband for always supporting me and helping me out when everything feels overwhelming. I love you all!

  Dani Hoots is a graduate from Arizona State University with a Bachelor’s in Anthropology who loves anything with a story. She travels around the west coast working at comic conventions and selling her stories and murder mystery party kits. Currently she lives in Arizona with her husband and two cats.

  Check out her website

  http://www.DaniHoots.com

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  * * *

  [1]

  Craig Hoots 10.11.14 17:24

  the health and spiritual properties of what?

  [2]

  Hoots 10.11.14 21:10

  By the full moon and by the stars of the night, the wall shall be no more

  [3]

  10.11.14 14:52

  10. November 2014 22:57

  10. November 2014 22:57

  by my will and b
y my life, these creatures shall turn into dust