Sanguis Pax

Antonio chewed on an idle curl of hair and gazed around, bored. He
was sitting in the head office of a leading Italian Publisher in an
area of Rome known as the Piazza de Spagna. He had sent a manuscript in
less than a week ago, and now the manager wanted to see him! As he
waited, he stared around. The outer office where he sat was very large
with white walls and a wooden floor stained black. Across the walls
were sayings and proverbs. His favourite was 'For every mile the feet
go, the heart goes nine.'

In daylight the outer office would be full of light, airy and spacious,
due to the full-length windows along one entire wall. During the day
anyone sitting opposite them would have been blinded, but now, late at
night, the view was captivating. Rome in its entirety was spread out
before him. Beautiful and utterly entrancing, Rome was the home of the
Renaissance and of Antonio himself.

He looked out across the sparkling city, drinking in its splendour,
listening to the many bells chime in the beginning of a new day. Even
though he had left Rome many, many years ago, it still seemed to him to
retain that Italian essence he had grown up with, lived with, died
with. His mind wandered...

* * *

He had danced. He had been hypnotised by the to-and-fro, the
back-and-forth, the swaying and the twisting and the turning, by the
essence of the dance itself. It had been a beautiful night in 1527. He
had congratulated himself on his best beloved, his sweetheart, his
fianc?e, his Maria. She had easily been the most beautiful woman in the
room. Her hair had been pinned up simply though elegantly; her jewels
had been delicate but fine; her dress, the most fashionable in the room
and easily the most expensive, had flattered her figure so perfectly
Antonio had felt flattered himself.

He was not unattractive himself, rather the opposite, and had received
many compliments and admiring looks from other guests throughout the
evening. His long dark hair curled across his shoulders and down his
back. His lithe figure danced elegantly. Large dark eyes, a Roman nose
and full lips that smiled at the slightest provocation were set in
smooth olive skin, all betraying and enhancing his Italian descent.
Perhaps if hadn't known it so well, he might have been more bearable,
less arrogant. Perhaps not though, he did come from one of the
wealthiest remaining families and had been brought up with a sense of
his own importance.

"Might we get a drink, best beloved?" Maria had begged in a manner
befitting a Lady.

"Certainly, my sweet." He had led her away from the dance and taken two
glasses of the finest imported wine from a slave. They had walked into
the garden and he had just raised a toast to their upcoming marriage
when she had given a faint gasp and the glass, slipping from her
exquisite fingers, had shattered at their feet, the spilt wine looking
like blood in the moonlight.

Maria had bowed her head, blushing, as Antonio bent to collect the
pieces. He hadn't been particularly bothered by what had frightened
her; 'women fear so many things' he had thought. He had winced as a
large shard sliced deep into his thumb.

"Oh beloved! You're bleeding!" Maria had bent, a little awkwardly due
to the dress, and taken his hand in hers', kissing the blood from his
thumb. "You must for..."

"I never 'must'." Antonio corrected her sternly. " A lady has no right
to say to a man: 'must'."

"Oh, forgive me twice over, I beg of you. I only wished to beg
forgiveness for dropping the glass that cut you so. Only, you see,
beloved, a woman is watching us. I," and here she had paused, trying to
find a polite way of putting what she had wanted to say, "I don't think
she is the sort of woman to have been invited, beloved. To
anything."

"If she disturbs you so, I will deal with her myself." Antonio had
glanced around and had spotted the offending female. His instinct had
told him to flee, but 'modern logic' had told him he had nothing to
fear. Instead he added, " Pray, sweetness, fetch some of the house
slaves, in case she becomes difficult to remove."

"Oh thank you, beloved. I shall immediately." Maria had left swiftly,
leaving Antonio and the strange woman alone in the garden.

Antonio had never meant to be so chauvinist towards Maria, so
persistently condescending, but it was the only way he knew to behave
towards women and Ladies alike. The sheer notion of treating a woman as
an equal had never even occurred to him or any of his contemporaries.
Women were silly things, to be tolerated for only three things: their
beauty, their fathers' wealth and their ability to bear children. That
night, Lucia taught him better.

His memory was hazy at best. He could recall asking her to leave, and
her puzzling lack of response. He could recall her outfit, something
more likely to have been seen at a brothel than at a ball, at this
ball. Pain and pleasure, the inability to tell one from the other.
Blood in his mouth. He could recall darkness enfolding him.

* * *

Antonio had woken in the Mausoleum of the Castel Sant'Angels. No light
had filtered through from the world above, and no lamp had been lit;
yet he could see perfectly. And he was hungry. He noticed a girl, bound
hand and foot on the floor in front of him, and he had pounced. Between
one heart beat and the next he had drained her of blood. People were
discussing him, among them a Briton, a Spaniard and a Frenchman. They
spoke some Latin together at first, apparently the only language they
had in common. As a nobleman, Antonio had been well versed in it.
However, they had chosen to speak in their own languages as he stared
up at them, so that he had understood not a word. He had wondered is
they did.

"Hungry blighter, isn't he?" the distinctly British voice had
chuckled.

"Il a un app?tit. Il a tres faim." The Frenchman had added
quietly.

"No. Pero, tiene muy sed." The one with a Spanish accent had corrected
dryly.

"He is mine, my childe." the first woman to enter the conversation, in
Antonio's Italian. Antonio had raised his head and looked around. A
group of not-exactly-people surrounded him. He had known immediately
what they were, in the same way he knew what he was, but he also knew
he was very different to them.

"Child?" He had asked cautiously.

"Childe." The female corrected. "I made you a vampire. Nosferatu,
Verdalik, Lamia, whatever."

Antonio had risen from his crouch slowly and had turned in a full
circle. From now on, this was to be his family in the loosest sense of
the term. They were to teach him everything he would need to know to
prosper as a vampire. He did not notice the Hungarian, almost as young
in immortal terms as Antonio himself. The Hungarian had noticed him
however.

Antonio had questioned everything, both in life and death. Now he
questioned the rules and traditions that governed vampire existence.
Why, he asked, did crucifixes affect vampires if vampires themselves
had existed before they had? And why did water blessed by a member of
the church burn them, when so many priests were the least holy of
people? He understood sunlight, a mere photosensitivity, and stakes
through the heart, that would kill anyone, but garlic? Why not onions,
why not shallots? Why garlic?

And why must they drink the blood of humans, of mortals? To live, to
exist forever, the consistent reply had been. But why not animals?
Because it is not done, he was told. We feed each night on human blood
and it has always been so.

His questions had not been welcomed.

* * *

The Hungarian had kept him alive. He had listened patiently and had
kept the other's from losing their patience. Antonio had never thought
to learn his benefactor's name, something he regretted in later life.
The Hungarian listened to the questions, and to Antonio's delight
seemed even to think them over. But whenever Antonio had tried to speak
to the Hungarian he feigned confusion over the language. It seemed that
none of the others had known who this Hungarian was either. He had
joined them in central Europe and spoke minimal Latin, and as none of
them had spoken Hungarian, as long as he didn't cause trouble they had
ignored him.

* * *

One day, when they had been sleeping, the soldiers had come. Charles V
of Spain's troops were pillaging Rome, stripping it of its great
treasures, great works of art. They would have passed over the coven of
vampires, except for one thing. Pope Clement VII had taken refuge in
the Castel Sant'Angels. The soldiers had come.

The vampires had no fear of the soldiers, the soldiers could not have
possibly guessed what they were, but the Pope did. He had been
descending the Spiral ramp into the Mausoleum with his followers, and
the Vampires had woken. The Briton had been the first to guess what was
happening, and accusations had rung out against the Spaniard. The
Spaniard had protested, claiming he had no knowledge of the troops, and
that the Italians must have done something to annoy his people, and
besides, it was their Pope. Attention had immediately turned to Lucia
and Antonio, or rather, to Lucia. Antonio, on discovering their danger,
had done what had seemed to him the only prudent thing, and had fled
along the Vatican corridor, under the terrified city, to the Vatican
palace.

He had slept there, in the cellars and basements, until night came. The
city that greeted his eyes as he had made his way out from under the
Palace was vastly different form the city he had left as the sun rose
the day before. Fires had raged in some areas, ships had thronged the
Tiber, still trying to escape. He had wandered the almost empty streets
until the early hours of the morning, mourning the loss of the city he
had held most dear, avoiding scrupulously the soldiers who had caused
this damage. He had known that his coven had most likely perished but
what of that other of his kind, wandering the outskirts of the coven.
Antonio had had the strange suspicion that the Hungarian had escaped
even before he had himself. He had started as a voice broke into his
reminiscence.

"Get thee behind me, Satan. Do you think I know not what you are,
demon?" Maria had spoken softly, raising a crucifix. "You are not my
beloved, you are the beast that killed him." She had cried
triumphantly, spraying him with Holy water. " The others are destroyed.
I went with the Pope. I knew about the passage, the corridor. I knew
you were one of them, from the minute I saw that hateful women. I
should never have sent you to deal with her. I should have known you
wouldn't have been able to cope," she had sneered, and had tossed a
handful of powdered garlic at him.

"Stay away. I have not fed, and am hungry." Antonio had warned her
desperately. She had advanced. "I mean it, Maria! I do not wish to hurt
you, sweetness."

She had raised a stake, had pressed closer to him, forcing him to back
into an alley. He had bared his teeth, struggling to control himself.
He was Hungry. "I do not know why the other methods did not work,
sweetness. They worked on the others, but this can be no
mistake."

"It can be more of a mistake than you could possible conceive as a mere
woman."

She had launched herself at him, furious. He had bitten in to her
without meaning to, had drained her accidentally, and had killed her
unintentionally. Who was he fooling other than himself? He had fed, and
he had enjoyed it. Her lifeless body dropped to the ground, and he bent
beside it, grief hitting him in a wave, overcoming him. He had remained
until dawn, then risen, and, fleeing to the nearest windowless crypt,
he had vowed never to take another human life. He surrendered to
tears...

* * *

"Enter!" Antonio was jerked out of his mournful reverie by the voice of
the editor within her office. It was almost one AM, and he wondered why
anyone would still be working at this time as he entered the office,
wiping his eyes.

The manuscript of 'Sanguis Pax' hit him full in the face, causing him
to stagger back against the wall of the strikingly windowless office. A
shriek of, "How dare you!" made him wince as he realised that the
editor of the newspaper was a vampire as well. He recovered from the
brief concussion symptoms and stared at his attacker, clutching the
book to his chest.

"Maria!"

"You weren't expecting this, were you? You thought you write this trash
about me, didn't you? You thought no one would care, or even notice, in
this part containing your little autobiography in a book you try to
pass off as fiction, huh? Well, bad news, boyo. I'm still here, and I'm
not happy!" Maria aimed a crossbow at his chest and fired. Antonio was
saved as the arrow embedded itself in the large pile of paper he still
held in his hands. Maria tossed the crossbow away, frustrated.

"You know I fully believed in feminism, in women's rights!"

"Actually, I hadn't noticed." Antonio admitted truthfully. Whatever he
had expected this statement to achieve he quickly forgot under a hail
of pens, paper and other desk paraphernalia. "I'm perfectly willing to
make my most sincere apologies to you and all women in public,
wherever! I am most deeply sorry. I truly didn't know that you would
mind, nor that you lived."

Maria sighed. "Are you interested in how I happen to still be
here?"

"More than you would imagine."

"I know you, Antonio, you are constantly looking for answers to
everything. A Hungarian found me. You hadn't killed me, not quite. He
knew you. Oh, and there is something else I'm not happy with in that
book."

"Oh?"

"How dare you publish The Diaries? Do you know what the others will do
to you? They will shred you, hang you with your own intestines, pluck
out your tongue and make you eat it! You shall be hung drawn and
quartered! The Diaries are not to be published." Maria's teeth showed,
but her voice remained calm, a sure sign she was beside herself with
cold fury. "Understand?"

"You have no right to claim to know..."

"No, you have no right. They clearly state that they have no wish to
become, how is it put, some Lestatian Fairytale. This is not 'Interview
with a Vampire'. We do kill. We do not, I repeat not, mourn death. The
older ones, they may delude themselves with this fancy, but they still
kill. You know that as well as I do. There is no 'little drink', no
'evildoer'. You have killed almost every night of your immortal life.
Thanks for leaving that ambiguous at the end of your third-person
entry, but we both know better. How many have you killed? How many
times have you broken that vow? And you know you enjoy it as much as
the rest of us."

"No!" Antonio turned and fled from the room, Maria close behind him. He
launched himself through the windows of the outer office, landing
safely seven floors below and seemingly fleeing into the night, still
carrying the manuscript. In fact, he leant back against the wall,
listening to the woman far above. He still had a little paper left, a
little disc space, before he sent The Diaries on.

"Never return to Rome, Antonio, ever. Never return to nay place where
our kind dwells. I will let them know of this betrayal." A smile tugged
at the corner of Maria's mouth. "Dracula wannabe." She stared out of
the shattered panes, then turned back into the building, disgusted with
her ex-fianc? and as hungry as Antonio had been that night, centuries
ago.