Rothilde wrenched Yvan’s heft from the hook on which he hung. No longer held aloft by his chains, Yvan crumbled to the cold stone floor like a corpse. Face flat in the small puddles of blood pooling in the grooves of the stone slabs, the knight gurgled on spilt sanguinem with each aching groan. Its copper taste stung his tongue just as the heavy air stung his open wounds. However, his quaking calves and trembling thighs refused to let him stand under his own strength. For but a moment did Rothilde allow the knight to rest there, and soon she hoisted his broken body into her arms. With each step, Yvan felt the flexing of the taught ropes of muscle in her arms. He sank deeper into her hold, weary head collapsing into her bosom. Yvan began to drift into unconsciousness, until he was shocked to alertness by a new pang of pain when his body was unceremoniously strewn across the floor of his cell.

With neither a word nor glance, the lady knight departed, leaving only the vampiress looming in the threshold. Under her scrutinizing gaze, afraid, Yvan inched back against the wall of his cachot, curling in upon himself atop his bed of course hay. Kalina entered the dank and dark dungeon cell, gliding with such grace as though her feet only faintly skimmed the floor. The dust and grime of the room did not dare to dirty her skin or stain the train of her bliaut. Swiftly, she was upon him. She crouched to meet the man face to face. Her penetrating gaze softened; her eyes dark like hearthstones felt with fiery red now filled him with an unnatural ease. Yvan’s pounding heart quieted itself, and his quivering ceased. The Countess’s hand came to the knight’s cheek, combing and appraising the sparse wisps of hair on his unshaven face.

“Poor Yvan,” she cooed as her hand slid down the knight’s neck, tracing the perimeters of the deep lacerations in his back and shoulders. “I would apologize for Rothilde’s rough treatment, were it not the case that they are a necessary cruelty.”

“Spare me your lies and false pity, sorceress.” Yvan spat weakly. “Tell me only what spell you have cast over Sieur Rothilde’s conscience that she has been so corrupted. I know in my heart that my loyal and valiant lady would never do or say such wicked things without your witchery. Such malevolence could only be the handicraft of your malicious, immoral mind.”

“No potion or ploy moved her punishing hand. She heeds my commands, yes, but she obeys me only so far as she loves me. I am her Mistress, not her puppeteer.”

“I cannot believe it. You must have bewitched her mind, demon virago, and filled her with unnatural desires. Fair Rothilde even claims to love you, not as sisters or friends love one another, but as woman should love man and only man—claims to copulate with you. It is almost too foul to recount. That a Christian dame should succumb to such seduction, to submit to such depravity, it is unconscionable!”

“Neither she nor I have told you falsehoods. She loves me, and I her, truly, ardently. I lived many lifetimes and loved many maidens, but Rothilde is special to me. She is mine and shall be mine for all her natural life and the new life that awaits her. She is my possession, and I shall never be parted from her. I live in her and, in living so, have been changed. Where I have, in years past, been generous, she makes me selfish; where open-hearted, now jealous. For love is often cruel and makes one cruel in turn. The more ardently one loves another, the more inhospitable they become to all else in the world. In loving me, Tilda too renounces the world.”

“So it is your appalling aim to enslave her and make her the mirror of yourself. You do not live, but  only wither and multiply through her, through corruption as fiends do.”

“She came to me as a kindred soul, even if she herself did not know it at first. I have only sought to free her from her misery,” the vampiress corrected, through curled lips, “… and my kind does not wither, Yvan.”

The young knight scoffed, “You talk of freedom, yet you desire her death!”

“I desire nothing for her that she does not desire herself.”

“But is it not the nature of your kind to reproduce itself, to spread its evil throughout the lands of God?” he asked his unholy hostess.

“No, it is not in my nature,” she replied sternly, “I do not wish to play mother, making more of ‘my kind’. I am loath to share my undeath with those undeserving. It is cautious not to kill those from whom I slake my thirst, for none who die, ravaged by the vampire, may rest easy in their graves. And this is why Rothilde is so dear to me; in centuries, she is only the second with whom I’ve desired to share this so long life.”

“And the first? Are they, too, a member of your accursed congregation?”

“Some day, I shall perhaps tell you what became of her,” she said, “As now is certainly not the time, good sieur knight.”

The finger that still traced round the rough edges of Yvan’s rent flesh slipped between the sinew, swirling the blood pooled in the great gash on his shoulder, and pressed its sharp nail into the pulpy brawn.

The knight winced, through gritted teeth, though let no sound loose through his lips.

“So you shan't kill me, but you shall feed upon me? That is the wheat I have threshed among so much chaff.” 

“Well reaped, mon batteur,” she bit back with a smile, beginning to enjoy their banter.

“And while you keep me, do you expect to convert me to your nefarious ways? To convince me to renounce my creator and join your coven?”He sneered.

“How could I when no coven exists?” The monstrous woman affected an air of innocence.

“Then do you expect to enslave me, as you have Rothilde? I think I would not be of your preference,” the knight conjectured, “Though if you have grown tired of knowing only maidens and desire a man, I am afraid you have found an unfitting one. I am a chivalrous knight—”

“Cast the thought from your conscience. I certainly do not desire you as you are now,” the Countess scoffed, “Though I pray you remember what I pronounced to Rothilde: you have promise.” Those final syllables slithered off her tongue. “Besides, Yvan, I know better than any that you are not up to the task of pleasing any maiden. So much pain in thy person, yet I’d speculate, not a single sensation stirring in thine loins.”

“You filthy tribade! You know of this?”

“Of course, my cowed little creature, it was I who made it so.” A devious glint flickered in Kalina’s dark eyes.

“What have you done to me?” Rageful tears formed in the young knight’s eyes. “Did you, serpent that you are, by your bite, inject me with some paralyzing poison?”

“Not by bite alone.”  Kalina’s finger pressed slowly deeper in the knight’s wounds; her remaining fingers clutched round his shoulder, constricted, poking fresh punctures into his flesh. “They say, Yvan, that ‘one sign of the vampire is the power of the hand.’ My slender hand grips like an iron vice. ‘But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes which is slowly, if ever, recovered from.’ And in your case, M’sieur, I shall make sure it does not. Your manhood shall never again rise to its full might, meager though it was,” she tittered."^[1] 

“I cannot bring myself to believe that is true. You are deceitful and duplicitous. I will not heed your lies.”

“I have not now, nor shall I ever tell you any falsehoods.”

There was an earnestness in the evil woman’s words that cut the knight more deeply than any lash he had received from Rothilde. Face ruddy from fury and tears, he cursed the Countess.

“Damn you, demon virago! Damn your vindictive and unnatural torments! Damn your witchery!” Yvan swore. “If you sought to wound my pride, you have succeeded. You have snuffed out my lineage and condemned me to life as a gelding. Still, far better a fate than the fires that await you. And note well, too, that the form of your cruelty gives you away. Your scorn for the stronger sex, its inborn potency and God-granted powers, is nothing but envy.  Half fiend and half woman that you are, you can never rise to the level of man’s esteem, and so you endeavour to reduce men down to the level of your own debasement through devilry instead. But failure is written in your fortune. Those needles in your mouth are nothing next to the lances of men. You are but one lowly fiend standing against the powers of God and man.”

“And do you feel powerful at present?” She asked, giving the knight no outward sign of perturbation.

“Vile bitch,” he sniffled and spat.

Kalina’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I grow ill-humoured from these insults, knavish knight. Stay your tongue, or I shall not stay my hand.”

At that, Sieur Yvan merely smirked, glad to have gotten under his tormentor’s skin. His nerve, however, fled as quickly as it came. He looked upon the vampire with watery, bloodshot eyes and felt himself begin to fold under the weight of Kalina’s gaze.

Silence hung in the air for a brief moment before it was broken by the boyish knight: “You said before that I ‘have promise’, will you permit me to ask what you meant by those words?”

“I shan’t,” she replied, “it is too soon that you ask, though soon too shall you know, so fret not, Yvan.”

“Fret I won’t,” the Yvan spoke, “for whatever malicious machinations you have planned, I am protected by my Lord and Saviour. No matter how long this travail of torment lasts, how many moments of weakness I succumb to in my agony, Merciful Christ shall stay with me. His might far outmatches whatever powers you have been granted by the wicked fiends to whom you whored yourself out.”

With those words, Kalina’s countenance of cold steel cracked. She remained still, and yet some ineffable transformation made her suddenly into something horrible. The room too seemed to darken. Yvan, petrified by this dreadful presence enveloping him, was wholly unprepared for the strike of Kalina’s palm, which sprawled him out across the stone. A harder hit he had never felt.

Still in a daze, the knight roused himself to return her strike but found his snatched up in his so quickly as could not be seen. The fingers of her free hand, as if acting on instinct alone, clenched down into the clotting wound on his shoulder to keep him in his place. She held his hand there, rolling the bones of his wrist in her grasp. A searing pain shot up his slender arm. Though this scream of pain was short-lived and quickly silenced, as, in mere seconds, all sensation in the ensnared limb ceased. Having stolen even his secret reserve of strength, Kalina allowed the man’s lifeless arm to fall back to his side. 

“As I have already said, Yvan, I do not deal in falsehoods, nor do I deal in idle threats.” As she spoke, her ghastly visage seemed to vanish; the marks of her monstrosity masked again by her unnatural youth and beauty.

So easily overpowered by so slight a creature, Sieur Yvan suffered more than a momentary faltering in his steely resolve, a weakness all mortal men are heir to. It was here that Yvan first feared that he had truly stumbled into some desolate, digel land where God had no dominion, warded over only by this wicked woman and the wolves who stalked its windswept slopes. It was as if, so high in the mountains and so close to heaven, that this land obscured by the clouds was overlooked by the Lord’s endless sight, allowing such evil to exist covertly under the Creator’s nose.

At last, Kalina removed her sharp nails from the meat of the man’s shoulder. She pressed her red lips to her first finger, which had sunk so deeply into Yvan’s fresh gore, and with soft and sensuous kisses sucked the dripping blood from her digit, revealing once again the creamy pallor of her skin. Yvan’s stomach turned at the sickening and salacious sight.

“I can sense your fear, Yvan, smell it on you even,” she said, “but I do not want you to fear me. I am aware that Rothilde has told you some things about me, though nothing that was not hers to tell. The rest I relay to you now and in words unadorned or untinged by love as they would have been by Rothilde’s lips. I tell you, so you shall understand who I am, and why it is that I shall do the things that I am to do to you.”

“I have belonged to these battlements so long as to have thrice seen the changing of centuries, and by birth do these battlements belong to me. Before me, they belonged to countless generations of my forebears, bearded men, brutish and boorish, my father among them, who now crumble to dust in their crypts beside mine. However, this heritage, which I claim by law, matters little to me. I respect only the heritage I claim by blood, by milk, by water of the womb, and that of my mother and her mother before her. 

“It was she who reared and raised me, fed me from her own breast—only dry nurses were I to have—she was who I adored above all else in the world. A woman of phenomenal beauty, whom I flatter myself to say I resemble, though I lacked her warm, olive skin. How fondly I remember the tawny expanse of skin that was her beauty-marked bosom, as she held me close; her softness, her heat, her heartbeat. How fondly, too, do I remember the way she spoke of her home in Pannonia. Bound to my Frankish father, she yet remained forever a foreigner in this land. She taught me her mother tongue and the traditions kept by her kin, their double faith. She told me old stories of Goddesses, of witches, of the monsters that dwelt among the Carpathians. She taught me the names of all the weeds and herbs of her home and their uses, how to make remedies and potions. All of this was done while my father was away at court or else out on his steed, with his sons and retainers, skewering and gutting the wild game of this land—its coarse-haired boars, its crowned stags, its cunning foxes—for such things were strictly forbidden in his halls. There were those who would have called her witch, were she not so beautiful, had she not borne strong sons for her lord. Those same fools would never recognize the ogre who ruled this castle; their ears were deaf to drunken roars, their eyes blind to the bruises that besmirched my mother’s cheeks. How often I wished my mother were a witch, true and terrifying, that she might have taught me some foul hex to harrow that man.

“But do not mistake me, Yvan, contrary to what you no doubt imagine, I was not marked for evil in those early years. I was a normal girl, joyful and kind, much in love with the world, most of all, with its women. What you call unnatural, perverse, and profane could not have come more naturally or innocently to me. I have been drawn to the siren song of my own sex for as long as my memory serves. I can recall being barely a knee’s height and favoring my nursemaid with flurries of fluttering kisses upon her face, stroking my still small hand down her round and dimpled cheeks, cupping her delicate chin with my tiny fingers. Such were the indulgences she allowed to the strange, half-foreign child, too much indulged by her mother, in her charge. But more sharply than all else, I can recall being seven years of age and meeting for the first time,” and here the woman’s voice turned wistful, “Gislilde, my Lili, the shine of her amber hair in two thick braids coiled in a knot at the nape of her neck, her adorably oversized ears, the wrinkle in her pouting nose as she lugged a pail of water. I remember still the feeling of her skin on mine as I grip the handle of the pail to help her carry it, how yellow my skin appeared next to hers, the little bleached hairs that graced her forearms. We were still the same size then. As young women, I stood a head taller than her.” As if to emphasize her point, Kalina rose to her full height, drifting about the dungeon cell as she told the knight her tale. “Lili belonged to the young widow who worked in the scullery; her father, whom she scarcely remembered, had been a carpenter who split his skull tumbling off a scaffold. When her mother first saw me with her little Gislilde hefting that pail together, she begged a thousand pardons on the part of her daughter and chastised her girl for associating above her station. I, nevertheless, was determined to make her my most darling friend. This was no easy task, as she was often busy with her chores and I was busy with my studies, and during my free hours, much too supervised. We saw each other for brief moments only. But, O, how her face beamed, how her cheeks, tanned and freckled, lit up with cheer. This was, of course, save for Sundays. After morning Mass on the Sabbath day, we would sneak off; we would play and prance. We would pick wild roses, and I would affix them in the twists of her honey-colored hair. Their petals pale pink like her pretty lips. Oft, would she play at being my husband, and I as her wife; that most girlish game. We bemoaned that we could never truly wed. Beautiful Lili became indignant at the idea that I should be betrothed to some boy who would not even know my favorite games or favorite flowers.”

The knight watched as a small pool of red formed in the corner of the Countess’s eye. A large drop broke the levee of her lid, streaking down her face in startling crimson so vibrant against her pale cheek. Any interjections Yvan might have raised died in his throat.

“At age twelve, we began to discover the true depth of our feelings for each other. One day, Lili took me by the hand and, with a playful tug, my Lili led me to a special spot, one I can still espy from this very window, behind the stables,” she remarked, her gaze drifting wistfully toward the outer ward of the castle. “There, in a display of boyish bravado, she hoisted her skirts to demonstrate her mastery over her own anatomy. With two fingers pressing on her mound, she let loose a perfect arcing stream of amber liquid. At her command, I replaced her fingers with my own and watched in stunned silence as her liquid tribute shot some five pieds across the dirt. All the while, Lili was laughing rapturously. Yet even as my body froze, my spirit was suddenly ignited by a fierce and unfamiliar longing to explore every inch of my exquisite companion. I remained motionless as her stream trailed off to a mere trickle, that wondrous moment already passing into memory.

But new memories were made. And we grew more and more intimate as the two of us blossomed into womanhood together. We learned from each other the wonders of philogyny. Tickling and teasing each other’s tender and nubile flesh. Through the years, I descended the valley of her over and over, until neither of us could locate our breath. My beautiful girl.”

A soft smile dimpled her blood-stained cheek until she at last brought up a lace kerchief to wipe her white face clean.

“But of course, the time eventually came that I was betrothed. What you must understand, Yvan, is that truth which mothers must, in their immense love, spare from their little ones: that they live in bondage, that their darling babes are but meager consolation for a life in unseen shackles, that the wedlocked wife is a prisoner in its purest sense and her husband her jailor. ‘Once the knot of wedlock is tied, whether he be an idiot or invalid, whatever he may be like, you must be faithful to him … When he is out, you are anxious, and fear the hour of his return. While he is at home, all your wide halls seem too narrow. His attention makes you nervous; his detestable clamor and his ill-bred shouting frighten you. He rails at you and scolds you and abuses you shamefully, treats you disgracefully as a lecher does his whore, beats you and thrashes you like his bought slave and born serf. Your bones ache and your flesh smarts, your heart within you swells with violent rage, and your outward countenance burns with anger.’^[2]  This is the pain you, too, Yvan would no doubt have wrought upon some poor woman, perhaps even my Rothilde had she ever been fool enough to give you the chance, and it is this pain that you now know firsthand.”

“Baseless defamation!” Yvan interjected, “How dare you make me out to be some scourge upon the fair sex! I have offered womankind nothing but courtesy.”

The Countess simply bid the knight to listen and listen only, and, at once, he found his tongue tied. Satisfied, she resumed her tale.

“I was fourteen when I was betrothed to a man ten years my senior, though war with the Magyars—the very same who plagued my Pannonian ancestors—meant that rite of matrimony was delayed some years. The demoiselles I knew in my youth, who seemed to grow only dimmer with each passing season, spoke only of how fortunate I was to be promised to someone so gallant and good-looking. Or else, how worried I must be with him at war abroad, over the thought that he might not return, or return dearly wounded, his handsome face disfigured. These things could not concern me in the least. I had met the man only briefly, and he seemed to me an arrogant pick with a heavy oafish brow. Where some said he had a jaw like an anvil to mean strong and square, if ever I were to make such a comparison, I should mean that they are equally deserving of a strike from a hammer. Worse yet was the knowledge that by whatever measure he was then strapping and chivalrous, he too would in time grow slovenly and slothful, corpulent and cantankerous, it is the fate of …,” and here, there was the slight hitch of hesitation in the woman’s voice, “most men.

“Worse still was the knowledge that this woeful life would steal me away from my Lili. Her Linka would be taken from her; her small, strong hands, hands which had known my body through all its adolescent permutations, would be replaced by the rough and rapacious hands of man. How could I consent to such a trade? How could I desire anything other than the wondrous philogyny I had discovered with my Lili? Simply put, I could not.

“So, taking inspiration from saints and mystics, whose passion astounded me, even if their God did not, I began to forgo all food in protestation against my promised marriage. I did not break my morning fast, midday dinners went unattended, and suppers brought to my chambers were sent away. My maidservants scarcely heard any words from me save for: ‘I have no appetite today.’ 

“In no time at all, my mother and father took notice. My father, blaming my ailment on my mother’s malign influence, barred her from me. Rather, I was seen to by a slew of physicians, surgeons, barbers, local herbalists, and esteemed abbots, each of whom had their own theories and remedies, all of whom agreed that my refusal of food was not volitional but the result of a diseased body and mind, as was my reluctance to marry. There were some at first who suggested that I may be a case of anorexia mirabilis, that my fasting was divinely inspired, but this was ruled out as I refused even the eucharist, perhaps my only misstep. Instead, my condition was declared to be inedia prodigiosa brought on by hysteria. Then there were those who claimed it was demonic possession, though I did not shy away from the crucifix, nor did my skin sizzle and sting from the touch of holy water, and prayers were recited with as much sincerity as they had ever been. Some held the Grecian view of the wandering womb; these dolts would hold sulfur and dung before my nose, and mint and musk oil before my maidenhood, to lure it back into place like an animal. Blistering, bloodletting, and purging to remove excess black bile were all tried to no avail. One man suggested a solution from Roman Galen. Seeing as I was by now nineteen and too old not to have children, he set down retention of female seed as the source of my malady and recommended hasty marriage and sexual intercourse as remedy. My screams at the mere suggestion could have shattered stone.

“After all of these men and their methods failed, my brutish father felt himself left with no option save the rod. He thrashed me, his only begotten daughter, until his hands blistered from the cane. He had me strapped down, my mouth pried open, and had me choked with gruel, which was only swallowed before being spewed back upon the men working at his behest. He berated me, he dared to call my bluff, declaring his intent to let me die should I carry on my childish protest. But I do not bluff, Yvan. 

“I was full willing to waste away to nothing, should circumstances have come to it. The tranquility of the tomb seemed enticing next to the life of a slave and brood sow. What I was unwilling to quit was gorgeous Gislilde. So great was my love that I did intend to deny both man and his claim on my body and cold-fingered Death’s claim to my soul. But it was by barter with fiends that I evaded the inevitable, but through knowledge of Mother Nature and her mysteries. With cunning and craft acquired through my mother, and flora of the forest gathered in secret by Lili, I produced a most potent potion, an elixir of brightest violet brewed from the sharp, star-shaped leaves and shiny black berries of belladonna. By this liquor did I end my life, though not without proper planning. 

“I knew by heart the horrific histories of vampires and other villainous creatures which my mother had handed down to me. And in knowing them, I did know the means by which a soul could assure that their body would not lie still when entombed in the earth. There are but three ways, Yvan, by which a mortal may become a vampire. The first, as I have already stated, is to be slain by that same bloodsucking fiend. The second method is to meet one’s end at one’s own hand. Those who die unmourned are also liable to return to the world in living death. To go ungrieved is the third way. It was these latter paths that led me to resurrection, aided at every step by my Lili.

“If I focus, I can still feel the effect of the deadly nightshade as it forced the life from my limbs, that sickly intoxication, the convulsions, the sense of strangulation that arose with each arid exhalation, the horrible weight in my heart. I can still see those delusions that danced before my eyes—can recall how blinding the light of my room became as the black of my pupils consumed all their color.”

With that, Sieur Yvan at last ascertained that the Countess’s eyes, when not aflame with passion or ire, bore the dark and dewy quality of those women at court who used drops of that same poison in their eyes to beautify them.

“When I was found at dawn, it was assumed by all that my body had finally succumbed to its long starvation, or so I was told, as I had no awareness of the days that passed before I rose from my deathly slumber. My father was shamed for his hard and uncaring heart. He alone bore the blame for my tragic demise. My mother, I was told, and for this I shall remain forever rueful, was inconsolable. Cloistered in her chambers, her cries could be heard beyond the castle walls.”

Another bloody tear fell from the Countess’s eye.

She continued, “As I laid Interred in the crypt below these halls, for three days, Lili made nightly visits to my tomb in which she would sweep away the salt and seeds that encircled my sarcophagus, and would extinguish the candles which burned in my memory, these being customs used by the pagan Pannonian to keep away the curse of vampirism, no doubt ordered by my mother due to untimely and unnatural manner of my death. On the third night, I awoke, slid away the great stone slab which sealed my tomb, born again in the form you now see me. They all believed me gone, but now they have all passed, while I am still here. It was soon after that bad fates began to befall my brothers as well, but by then I was there to claim their birthrights for myself. I have ruled these halls ever since.”

Finding his mouth able to make words once again, the battered knight barked, “And the peasants and serfs of this place have been content to be lorded over and pay tribute to a blood-drinking demon and witch for two centuries?”

“Perhaps in places farther away, the rumors of my witchery, of my return from the grave, the ones which drove both you and Rothilde to me, are taken more seriously. You are here after all. But no, among the people who dwell in the valley below this summit, such stories are the stuff of jest and children’s tales before bed and nothing more. They believe me in earnest to be my own second great-grandmother. They even believe me to be married!”

“And am I to play the part of this fictitious fellow? Is that why you intend to keep me here?” The knight inquired.

“No, my foolish knight. I have no need for such a man. But trust, I shall come to your role in time,” she replied, before returning to her rationale. “Sure, there are some in the surrounding lands who I strike as queer. That my supposed kin and I are so seldom seen—oft, I’ve sent out my carriage, empty, on long journeys for sake of appearances alone—and my insistence on only maiden domestics on this estate seems eccentric. However, stories of my bathing in their blood to retain my youth and vitality are easily dismissed when these girls have nothing to tell of me, save that I am a most kind and compassionate lady. Regularly, do they return home to their families, well cared for, bearing silver, which I cannot touch and for which I have no need, and stories of their Mistress’s beauty and benevolence.”

The Countess continued to explain the life and ways of her castle. Kalina possessed a coterie of servants—handmaidens, chambermaids, cooks and scullers, seamstresses, laundresses, stable girls, falconers, and gardeners—all women. Her abode was almost shockingly normal, in spite of its utter lack of any men, the knight must have thought. Its supposed ruin and desolation was indeed nothing but a ruse. Her servants lived richly. They themselves dined on the fine feasts prepared for their Mistress, who, in her minimal appetite, always left them untouched. She explained how they thought nothing strange of this, or any other of her peculiarities, as they were all enthralled and ensorceled by her, their focus diverted, and memories moulded through mesmerization. Kalina fed upon them, and they delighted in being fed upon, though these unknown pleasures remained secret even from themselves.  

Some of them, she went on, worked for her but for a short while. They leave once they have earned enough to support their families or start new families of their own. Though several have stayed with her until death came for them at long last. Kalina spoke reverently of the experience of watching their lifetimes pass, of watching the years etch themselves on their mortal visages, their hair, strand by strand, turning to silver. For she who was forever untouched by time, to grow old seemed a special gift.

“I have seen generations of girls-turned-women come and go, and I have kissed them all with fond, if somewhat somber, farewells off into this world or the next,” she told Yvan in wistful tones. “Though I shall warn you, do not expect to find any sympathy with any of my servants. They believe what I tell them beyond question, and what I have told them of you is that you are a thief and a scoundrel of rapacious appetites who preys upon young women.”

“And shall this be Sieur Rothilde’s lot in as well. Is she to be like other women you profess to love even as you enslave and exsanguinate them?”

“She is like them in that they are free. Rothilde, like all the other ladies within these walls, is here willingly. Though they are not like her, for only she is my paramour. Her role is to be loved and nothing else. As for you, Yvan, your role is also most unique.”

“At last. For what wicked purpose do you keep me confined within these walls?” Yvan interjected.

With a grin, the Countess replied, “You remain here merely for our amusement.”

“You expect me to play jester for you wretched women?” asked the knight, caught completely off guard.

“No, nothing so silly as that,” the Countess said coyly, “Think of yourself more as a pet, Yvan; one who we shall delight in training and domesticating. You shall be brought to heel, you shall be neutered, and made presentable.”

“Made presentable how?” Yvan asked, scared and suspicious.

“I am taking it upon myself to reshape your flesh to suit our tastes, young knight. As I said, we have little need for you as you are now.”

As she spoke, the vampiress drew out a vial of shimmering chartreuse liquid from the brocade almoner hanging from her thin belt. She carefully uncorked the elixir before bringing her finger up to meet the end of one of her fangs. She procured a drop of blood from that digit, allowing it to drip into the prepared potion. The color immediately deepened to rich viridian. Saying softly as she did this, “To make it most addictive.”

“Now,” she said, extending the elixir out towards Yvan, “drink.”

Kalina’s voice compelled in such a way that the vial was in his hand before he had even realized what was happening. Catching himself, he hesitated.

“What will it do to me?” The knight’s voice was fragile and shaky.

“It will fix you.” She smirked slightly before her face turned serious. “Now, drink.”

With trembling arms, the knight tried to resist the command, but his tired brain and body were beyond his control. A few pleas escaped his mouth before he pressed the potion to his lips and swallowed it down. The taste was herbaceous and sweet. Yvan winced, however, at the acrid aftertaste. It surely tasted as medicine to the sickly knight, but he did not believe it could be something so simple. 

Intuiting his thoughts, Kalina explained: “It is a rare brew of spearmint, chasteberry, and licorice root—among many other things—steeped in the distilled, golden effluence of a woman whose moon is at its most full, stirred together in silver cauldron beset with adularescent lapis lunae. In this case, it was my darling Tilda who made the necessary donation. While difficult to produce, the purpose of this potion is quite simple: As I drain you of your virility by my bite, I shall, with this elixir, replenish you with muliebrity. This elixir will bring about your eviration. It shall make you shed all outward signs of your masculinity.”

“You intend to make a woman out of me‽” asked Yvan, all aghast.

“If you are worthy of such an honor, perhaps,” she said, “Time alone will tell. For now, however, you are but entertainment.”

At this revelation, Yvan began to pitifully plead with the woman before him. All the while, he felt a tingling in his limbs, a cooling sensation emanating from his stomach as the potion spread through his body. His knotted muscles unwound as a soothing, yet unnatural, languor overtook him. His panicked pleas continued, but his words were coming more slowly, his emotions damped, his affect sedate. 

Softly, he begged, “Please, do not do this to me.” Softer still, “please, just let me loose. I promise to leave you and Sieur Rothilde. I will tell those in my home country that I never found her. And I swear, your story has moved me such that I would not lift a finger against you if you released me. I will speak no word of this place or of you.”

Though even as he petitioned for freedom, the knight knew that even if she were to release him, he would certainly not survive the cold and hunger very long. To cross those mountain crags in his condition could only mean death. The immensity of this dilemma only hastened his surrender into stupor.

Kalina bent down and placed a hand on the knight’s cheek. In her sweetest voice, she said, “It will be better this way. I promise you will thank me before my work is through.”

With that, she made towards the door.

“I shall leave you to your rest,” she said, turning back to the tired body slumped against the wall. “But … before I do so, I am going to take with me a parting gift.”

The knight lifted his lolling head and looked at the Countess with lightless eyes.

“Sieur Yvan de la Motte, I am taking away your name. It belongs to me now. You shall not utter it until such time that you can no longer recall its sound, its feeling upon your tongue. From now on, you will be nothing more than my pet.”

The cell door shut.

[1] Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, p. 139.

[2] Hali Meiðhad (or Holy Maidenhood), 12th-century Middle English tract of virginity.