Elizabeth returned with a basket of food and prepared it for dinner. She made a pie for the boys. She was not hungry for food. She hadn’t been for a long time. Another delicacy would tempt her, though she knew succumbing was out of the question. Her plan was too close to completion.
“Boys, dinner!”
Jim, Terry and David sat around the table. Simon stood in the living room and watched.
“Why is the Simon the simpleton here?” David sneered.
Elizabeth smiled, “As I said, protection from you.”
“You made me like this, did you not?”
“I did.” She set the plates out in front of the men gently.
“Why?” David smiled.
“It was time.”
Jim cleared his throat.
David looked at him and narrowed his eyes, “Something you wish to say?”
“Shall we pray, Captain?”
“No.” David looked at Elizabeth. “I want that ghoul out of here.”
“You’d have to throw him out yourself,” Elizabeth smirked.
He looked Simon over and grunted. He was endowed with new knowledge, perhaps wisdom once hidden from him. David’s instincts told him a ghoul was a dangerous being. “What have you made for dinner?”
Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. She had been used to David’s more passive, malleable state. She needed to remain calm, the old David had returned, the ambitious one that could kill without emotion. “Pie.”
David frowned as a slice was placed on his plate. Elizabeth had done a wonderful job. She had always been quite the cook.
“What’s in it?”
“Kidney.”
“Who’s kidney?”
Terry looked at Jim and bowed his head low as Elizabeth set the pie out. “Thank you.”
David banged the table and everyone jumped to attention. “Who’s?”
“It’s from a cow, David.” Elizabeth nodded.
“I don’t want to eat a cow.” He looked at Terry. “I want to eat a person.”
Elizabeth shuddered. “David, once you break the seal the thirst begins to consume us. We need to secure a food source. This village could not maintain four of us.”
David looked at Jim. “Why was he turned?”
Jim looked at Elizabeth with wide eyes.
Terry interjected, “I needed help, so I turned him.”
“So you think you’d share out my pantry?” David gestured toward the village with his hand.
“It wasn’t like that, David.” Terry nodded.
“One of you will have to go.”
Jim and Terry looked at each other. “W-what do you mean?”
Elizabeth blinked. “I told you it was not a good idea to sire a man, Terry.”
Terry went pale. “I, you didn’t seem mad…I…”
She shrugged. “I was furious. Perhaps we could make it work, David?”
David licked his lips. “What’s the name of that girl you like, Terry? Hannah?”
Jim ate his pie quietly.
“Yes.”
“The first to bring her to me get to live.”
Terry dropped his fork. “I thought after we secure a sustainable food source, I might sire her.”
“Another?” David laughed and shoved the plate of the pie away from him. “No, Terry. I suspect you cannot do it, so Jim, this will be up to you.”
Terry glared at Jim who wouldn’t pry his eyes from his pie. Furiously he stood and stormed away from the table.
“Well Jimethy, looks like you’re hunting tonight.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Remember David, if you break the seal we won’t have the food to feed you. You’ll become a beast of the night.”
David rose and walked upstairs.
Jim remained seated.
Elizabeth left through the front door where Terry was pacing up and down the garden path.
“He can’t do this. I was to make a future with her.”
“There is no future in this village, Terry.”
“What do you mean? You told me we could be free.”
Elizabeth sighed. “We can be free of this curse.”
Terry stopped and looked at Elizabeth with fury burning behind his pupils. “What does that mean?”
“It means we die.”
“Lying, Jezebel!” Terry was frothing at the mouth. He stormed up to Elizabeth and made to strike her face with his clawed hand. His talons passed through. Her outline dissipated into mist and slipped under the door.
Furious, Terry pulled the door open to be confronted by Simon. The ghoul was in servitude to Elizabeth. He grabbed him by the throat. The vicious strikes Terry brought down upon it were ineffective. Terry was tossed down the garden path and the door slammed shut.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Elizabeth’s mist slipped under the study door where David was brooding. She solidified and placed her hands on her hips. “You have caused a problem, David.”
David let the curtain drop and he looked over his shoulder at her. “You caused the problem. This was to be just us two. I am generous. I let you keep a pet.”
“Terry may be on his way to start enjoying the feeding ground without you.”
David glared, glided toward Elizabeth and took her waist in his hands. “Our hunting grounds.”
She pressed her head to his chest. “I missed you, David.” her tongue crawled at the lies, but lying was a sin she could not escape. No matter how honest she tried to be, she’d find herself spinning a deeper web.
“Fix the problem.” He whispered in her ear and pushed her back.
Elizabeth nodded and glided downstairs to where Jimethy was finishing his pie. “Fetch Hannah.”
Jimethy blinked. “No way around this?”
“Lest you want to be dashed against the wall by, David.”
Jim nodded and stood. “Thank you for the pie.”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“What will you do?” Jim blinked.
“That is no business of yours.”
“Of course.” Jim made his way outside and down the garden path. He’d have to fetch Hannah back and do so in a conspicuous way. He hummed to himself as he descended the path toward the village.
“Where are you going?” Terry’s voice crackled. He was leaning against a tree.
Jim stook out his bottom lip. “A walk.”
“If you think you’re bringing Hannah to that creature—”
“The Captain, you mean?” Jim smiled.
Terry walked towards Jim. “Even if you bring Hannah to him, you’ll be in for much worse.”
Jim sighed, “I don’t want to die.”
“Neither do I!”
“You heard, the Captain.”
“Why should we follow him?”
Jim continued walking to the village as he listened to Terry’s ideas of independence.
***
Elizabeth’s mist crawled through the woods to a clearing before reforming. “Alius!” she wandered about the woods, turning to check all directions. “Alius!”
“You're disturbing my peace.”
Elizabeth growled and turned to look at her dead Husband. He was lying on a felled tree with his head propped up on his hand. “It’s time to end this.”
“End?” Alius shook his head. “It never ends.”
“I have done the unthinkable.”
“I believe so. I think it’s quaint that you seek to solve your surplus of sin by adding more to the well. Then again. You were never the type to think things through.” Alius climbed off the log. He was dressed in the clothes he was trialled in. “Do you seek to try and capture me again?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t.”
“To apologise, again?”
“I have apologised too many times to know it will not bring about your forgiveness.”
“You’re learning then.”
“I am eager to learn more.”
“From me?” Alius chuckled.
“Perhaps you can tell me what I could do for your forgiveness.”
Alius shook his head and tutted, “Elizabeth, my forgiveness has no value here. Tis Gods you seek.”
“Then how can I seek his.”
“Not possible. You rejected God, you demanded he leave you be and so he has. Welcome to a world without his mercy.”
“I’ve heard this speech.” Elizabeth looked crestfallen.
Alius tilted his head, “I remember when you would look like this. I would rush to your side and do anything I could to make you smile.” he rubbed his chin. “Little did I know the only way to make you smile was to die.”
“That isn’t true, Alius.”
“There you go, lying through your back teeth once again.”
“I’ve had this speech, Alius.”
“Yet here you are drawing it from me again.”
Elizabeth began to fade into mist. “All I want is this to end.”
Alius recited the bible, “Matthew 25:41- Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” He laughed as he watched Elizabeth pour away into the trees.
***
Evening came and the stars twinkled in the clear sky. The air smelt fresh. Jim had shaken Terrence off for now. The glowing hearth of the inn beckoned. Hannah tended to the bar and tables of hungry villagers with a kind smile and a busty bounce.
Jim looked around the patrons. They were rowdy in a happy way. The patrons were clapping and singing songs to Peter's fiddle. Jim sat down on a bench by a small table and caught Hannah’s eye.
Hannah approached and bent over the table. “Jimethy! Hullo. Where’s Terry?” She looked to the door to see if he was following behind.
Jim smiled at her. “He’s not feeling himself this evening. He’s decided to take the night off.”
“Oh? That’s not like him.” She frowned. “I do hope he’s well.”
“Oh, he’s fine.” He smirked. “He’s got Catherine in his stead. She makes a fine broth.”
Hannah blinked. “Catherine? In his home?”
Jim nodded. “Yes. She goes often. Has been visiting for the past few weeks.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you eating?” her friendly tone was bludgeoned by the revelations of Terry’s new female friend. Her smile was lost and her shoulders had slumped.
“No, not me.” Jim smiled. “You seem down, Hannah.”
Hannah’s eyes had turned glossy. “I am well.”
“Sit.”
“I can’t, I am working.”
Jim waved away her protests, “I am one of the Captain's hands, Tim will not mind you sitting by my side.” He patted the bench beside him and called Tim behind the bar. “I wish to speak with your lovely, Hannah.”
Tim raised a glass he cleaning and nodded.
Hannah lowered her curvy frame and slid onto the bench beside, Jim. “Terry and I.”
“You were planning a future?”
Hannah nodded.
“Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. I did not wish for you to find out in such a way. Terrence is not the type of man who indulges a single woman.”
Hannah closed her eyes, tears escaped from the corners and trickled down her cheeks.
Jim continued. “If I had a lady like yourself, why, I’d propose before the sun came down.”
“Truly?” Hannah dabbed her eyes with a hanky Jim offered.
“Truly, Hannah. You’d make a fine wife, and you deserve a husband who is well on his way up.”
“Oh, don’t be so silly, Jimethy.”
“Call me Jim.” He smiled at her warmly.
***
Jim watched and chatted with Hannah as she worked into the night. She finished her shift and he offered to walk her home. “You should visit the manor house.”
“Me?”
Jimethy nodded.
“Terrence said he could never take me. Captain Potter might not be pleased to have a barmaid visiting.”
“Captain Potter is a kind man, he’d welcome you with open arms.”
Terry stepped in front of the pair as they made their way to Hannah’s home. “Where are you going, Hannah?”
She stopped dead. “Home, Jimethy kindly offered to walk me. Shouldn’t be home, with Catherine?”
Terry growled low and his top lips quivered. “What do you mean by that?”
Jim cleared his throat, “I think Hannah means she’d prefer that you remain in Catherine's company.”
“I didn’t ask you.”
“Calm down, Terry.”
“I’m not angry.”
Jim stepped in front of Hannah, “It’s clear you are, my old friend.”
Terry unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “I shall show you what an angry man resembles.”
Jimethy blinked. He knew Terry was a more complete pugilist than he was. Terry was willing to shoot and kill. It’s how he gained the favour of Captain Potter in the first place. “Let’s not be ridiculous here.”
Terry smirked, “Do you believe what Jim has been whispering in your ear?”
Hannah backed away. “You boys are scaring me.”
“Come with me, Hannah.” Terry reached out.
“No. I don’t want to.”
Terry’s eyes flashed. “Don’t make me ask again, I don’t want to hurt Jim on account of your poor judgement.”