Rebirth

At the age of twenty-four, Elizabeth had been Lady Dermott for six years, married to Sylvian less than two years after their first meeting had been arranged by "Alonzo Del Volpe". She had seen the oddly compelling Del Volpe several times over those years, but he remained mysterious and elusive always.

Elizabeth's marriage had been peaceful, and full of not love, but at least affectionate tolerance, until time had shown that she was barren. Lord Dermott was resentful of his young wife's inability to bear him heirs. Elizabeth herself was not sure whether it was some lack in his manhood, or something that had gone wrong perhaps in her quick termination of her long-ago one and only pregnancy. She herself had little regret of never having had a child - or so she assured herself. Children were a great deal of trouble, painful in the birthing, and that was just the start of the difficulties involved. She was not comfortable around them, tending to either treat them as small adults or as imbeciles, unable or unwilling to reach inside herself to the child within, that is within everyone, to see how to connect with them.

So it had been a long while since Sylvian approached Elizabeth with a desire to consummate their marriage vows. This night was the first time in half a year, as he, tipsy from wine but not so drunk as to be unable to perform, lifted her up and carried her to bed. She found herself enjoying the coupling more than usual, her husband's spirits higher than she had seen them in a long time. After he had spent himself in spasm after spasm, she nestled close. He seemed half asleep, and she was drifting off, when she heard him begin to speak. She turned a tender gaze on him.

"Lizzy, I have the most wonderful news. Lizzy? Are you listening?" He waited, and she nodded. He went on, "Louise is with child, and we will adopt it - we will have a child after all."

Elizabeth was puzzled - Sylvian had seemed set on having his own heir, not adopting an orphan child... or a bastard, as this one sounded to be. "Who is Louise?" she asked.

Sylvian flushed a bit - shocking Elizabeth somewhat, since she could not recall ever having seen him do that. "She's a girl... I met her at Brit's," he said, a bit defensively.

Elizabeth felt cold - she thought she understood. "This child, she's told you it is yours, Syl?"

He nodded silently, his ebullience gone at the sight of her chilly reaction. After a pause, he said, "I thought you would be...." his voice trailed off, as he realized how unlikely it was that Elizabeth would have been pleased at this news. Even in his somewhat drunken state, that had finally sunk in.

"I'm very happy for you. Congratulations." She looked at him icily, then turned away from him and lay on her side, eyes closed as if she slept, muscles tense enough to betray that she did not.

Elizabeth did not sleep at all. Her thoughts whirled, emotions of anger and betrayal and hurt smashed through her violently, though she hardly moved an inch. She was still awake an hour later, when Del Volpe and his companion entered the bedroom, their footsteps hidden by the sound of Lord Dermott's snoring. She opened her eyes when she felt that inner whisper she had become accustomed to recognizing as Del Volpe's "voice".

She saw him, and when he caught her eyes he smiled at her, and his companion seemed to step from the shadows and become a presence, a young woman with oddly shifting features. As Sylvian's mouth opened in a snore, the girl slipped a gag into it and tied it deftly. He awoke and sat up in bed, reaching to pull the gag out.

Del Volpe caught Sylvian's arms fast. The intruder pulled the Lord's arms behind his back, and the girl who had accompanied him wrapped cord around the wrists and knotted it securely. She whispered, "his feet, Alonzo," and Del Volpe moved to grasp them, the girl tying Sylvian's ankles the way she had tied his wrists.

Del Volpe turned toward Elizabeth. "Must I bind you as well, dear?" he asked her.

"What are you doing?" she asked, feeling a numb calm instead of the fear she knew she should be feeling. Or was this numb calm a kind of fear in itself?

"I am relieving you of an impediment. This lump," he shoved Lord Dermott with his foot, causing the man to topple onto the floor with a thud and a groan, "was about to buy himself an heir. I could not allow that." He moved close to Elizabeth, and sat next to her. One of his arms went across her shoulders and cupped the back of her head. She did not dare to move. "After tonight, you will understand that you are mine, and none other's. You have been, unknowing, since I first saw you a short decade ago. Tonight we will consummate that meeting."

Elizabeth whispered, "What are you going to do to me..."

Del Volpe answered, "I shall kill you." He leaned back and she saw that his mouth was full of fangs... a moment before he sunk them into her neck.

A thrilling sensation filled her entire body, and she pressed herself to him, all thoughts banished in the flood of pleasure. He drank, and drank, and drank, the pleasure going on and on. At length she felt herself growing weak, yet she did not want it to end, and it did not end. A blackness washed over her, dimming the red vibrancy of the feeling, and she felt paralyzed... she felt her heart stop. "Yes, I am dead," she thought, and then something intensely delicious filled her mouth, and she drank, and she felt burning fire course through her, and she would have screamed but her mouth was full of his wrist, and she drank.

He pulled away, and she felt her own mouth growing fangs... "There is your rightful prey," he said, and gestured toward Sylvian. "He betrayed you. That is intolerable." She nodded, sensing the blood pulsing under her husband's pale skin, needing it desperately. The girl moved in to help, pressing up on the back of Lord Dermott's neck and down on his forehead, the neck arching and Elizabeth fell on it, piercing it with her new fangs, drinking deeply. Yes, she hated him... oh you will be sorry you tried to foist your unlikely bastard child on me, she thought, you will be so sorry... The fury subsided as she drank, curling itself up inside her like a cat in a basket, hidden, but able to wake so easily when provoked. It purred inside her as it slept, the Beast within.

They let her sate her thirst. When finally she slumped over, replete, Del Volpe set her gently in an armchair and spoke to his companion. "He is not dead yet, but he will surely die. We must establish an alibi for my Beth. You shall be he. I will be but myself: his companion. We will go carousing and you will provoke a duel. As you not let them cut off the head, you will be safe, and some rake will hang for the murder anon." The man turned to Elizabeth. "Wait here, childe of mine, and I will return with your dead husband and a heartbreaking tale of woe and mischief. All will be well." She remembered what that meant. All would be as he willed. Yes. There was not a question in her mind of that. The thought still brought her the same uneasy peace it had when she was sixteen.

When she looked again, she saw her husband in two places. One stood healthy where the girl had been; the other lay pale and weak on the bed, with Del Volpe untying him quickly.

"Do not let anyone in far enough to see his condition, Beth," Del Volpe cautioned her. "No servant, no visitor. Your husband," he stressed the word oddly, "has gone out with his boon companion, Alonzo Del Volpe. We shall return well before sunrise. Dead or alive," he added with a strange smile.

With that, the two ... men? two creatures, she thought -- with that, they strode out the door, and she heard Del Volpe's voice calling for the carriage, they were going into town. Amazing sense of mimicry the other one had - even Elizabeth herself would have mistook the doppleganger for Sylvian himself, had the real Sylvian not been lying close to hand. She turned and regarded the unconscious, dying man. I am nearly a widow, she thought, and I have died and been reborn... she put her fingertip into her mouth, touching the newly razor-sharp canines. A droplet of blood formed on her fingertip, and she stared at it, fascinated... lost in the reflections and round smoothness like a gem of the tiny crimson droplet.

She stood like that, completely mesmerized by the sight, so long that she was startled out of her reverie by shouts of alarm. The Lord was sore wounded, she heard someone cry out, and she licked the blood off her finger, not even noticing that the tiny wound closed at her licking, and strode to the door. "Bring him in here," she called out, and Del Volpe strode in, servants trailing him, the body of "Sylvian" in his arms, bloody and appearing dead of a stab in the chest. "Leave us," she commanded the servants, and they left, closing the door behind them.

Del Volpe smiled at her, and she felt it to her core. "Well done," he said. He set the body in his arms down, and it shimmered and stood, becoming the girl with shifting features who Elizabeth had originally seen.

"That was fun!" the girl said eagerly, in a bright, childish soprano.

Del Volpe spared her an indulgent glance, saying, "You did well, my friend. You must leave us unseen." He turned to Elizabeth. "Close your eyes, Beth," he said.

When she opened them again, the girl was gone. Del Volpe put back the cover that lay over Lord Dermott, drew his sword and with one blow, thrust the sword's blade through the man. It pierced him through, blood staining the bed, but not as much as there should have been, Elizabeth thought, because I drank it.... Del Volpe then took her gently to the door, arm around her as though consoling, and Elizabeth thought she heard light footsteps as they walked, that belonged to neither of them. Sounds seemed too loud and clear, then it shifted and sound became normal but her vision was far too bright... then it was her sense of smell that was painfully acute... She began to shake.

The servants congregated around the base of the stairs. "Lady Dermott is not herself, the death of her Lord by violence this night has made her hysterical. I must take her with me to be seen by my personal physician," Del Volpe told them. He finished, "Call the priest, as he has passed on. There will be a funeral two nights hence." He led Elizabeth out of the house, to the waiting carriage, and from that hour forward she was no longer a woman, but a vampire; no longer the daughter of Chitralekha but the childe of the Fox. Fortnights and years would pass for her in his arms, in his house, in his thrall; finished long before this new millennium that dawns upon us at this hour, but never to be forgotten.