bisclavret's blog: "Writings..."

Title: What Chyld is This?
Characters: Virginia Matheson, Gavin Draegun, mentions Marie d'Aquitaine
Time: Wee hours of Monday morning, January 17, 2005
Location: The docks of Crescent Cove, and aboard the fishing boat 'Glastonbury Tor'
Writers: Dano


Virginia stopped in the shadows at the corner where the alley met the main street. The breeze off the water was warm and moist, speaking to her of distant rains. She could hear the dark waves lapping against the quay and the creaking of the fishing boats against their moorings. From somewhere down the docks she heard distant singing and sounds of revelry in the night. If she waited here in the gloom, prey was sure to pass by sooner or later. Her thoughts drifted to Marie and the prey she was toying with tonight.

Her mistress, the master vampire that had created her, had sent her out earlier in the evening to bring back 'dinner and a show'. To Marie this meant a pretty, naive young man to torture and eventually feed from. The man would not survive his ordeal. His screams still echoed in Virginia's head, mixed with countless others.

Virginia herself was not outside of her mistress's cruelity. Although she had to feed, Virginia didn't feel the need to toy with a victim first. Marie knew this, and used it to torment the younger vampress. Her absence tonight would not go unpunished, and she fully expected to awaken tomorrow at dusk with some dismembered part of tonight's victim violating her. It had happened before. Over a century and a half she had suffered everything Maries twisted mind could devise.

Virginia sighed softly.

It wasn't long at all before her quarry staggered toward her ambush. He was a fisherman, perhaps a crewman or even a fishing boat captain, and he was quite drunk. She knew the type, they had few family or friends to ask embarrasing questions, and the police were far too busy otherwise. This one was perfect prey. As he neared, Virginia heard him singing. It sounded like an English folk song from her memory, but she couldn't quite make out the words because of his inebriated state. He stopped a few yards from her and did a little stagger, close enough that she could sense the blood rushing through his veins and smell the taint of dark rum.

Virgina suddenly realized he didn't stagger, it was a few steps of a old reel. He wasn't as drunk as he first appeared. His singing began again, to the tune of 'Away in a Manger', but the words were all wrong, and only a few in English. Hunger knawing at her but curiosity piqued, she silently followed him instead of simply ambushing him.

He stopped next to a decrepid fishing boat which had seen better days a long time ago. Since it was far too late, or early, to be going out fishing, Virginia waited for the sound of deep breathing. Her assumption proved right, he was sleeping on his boat tonight.

Her heart was touched with a bit of sadness, and she wondered why this one wasn't home. He didn't seem that poor, perhaps some trouble at home had brought him here. No matter, the dawn would find him gone, and whomever had driven him here would probably blame themself. She smiled at the poetic justice and slipped onboard the boat.

She found him passed out on a small cot in the tiny cabin, the nearly empty bottle beside him. Hopefully the fool had drank enough to deaden her own pains. Virginia brushed aside the coarse red hair and exposed his jugular. With a quick movement from long practice, she sank her fangs deep into the warm flesh. The blood was salty and tart, laced with the potent rum. His heart slowed, and then stopped, as she quenched the hunger that burned within her.

Finished, she looked at him lying there. The people who found him would suspect alcohol poisoning or heart attack, they always did. He had a silly grin left on his face that made her smile. Virginia backed out of the cabin and walked to the gangplank.

A pain struck her in the stomach. At first she thought she was being attacked, but no one was around. She doubled over, attempting to wrap around the pain that now wracked her abdomen. Virginia's whole body began to shake, and she wretched. She hadn't been sick in almost two hundred years, since her change. The sailor's blood was ejected forcefully as she fought to quell the spasms that overwhelmed her.

*What had that fool been drinking!* Finally the spasms stopped and Virginia looked at the brownish green mess on the deck. Upset, disconcerted, and still a little nauseous, she hurried into the safety of the night and her mistress's lair.

***

Gavin awoke long after dawn. Hell, it was long after noon. His head was splitting and he could barely stand he was so weak. The deck swayed lightly as if to torment him. Bracing himself against the bulkhead he stood to face his most sadistic foe; sunlight. A sound left his lips halfway between a moan and a curse as he stepped into the daylight. Funny, he didn't remember being this hung over in quite a while. One look at the deck told him why.

He must have really been sick last night, it looked as if a wyvern had shit on his deck. Moaning softly in sympathy with himself, and glad he didn't remember it, he got out the mops and began swabbing the deck of the Glastonbury Tor.