Harriet Dempsey dreamed of the life of an aristocrat. Harriet became the instrument for the vain wants of an aristocrat. Turned into a vampire just as she was to give birth to a child and then held captive, Harriet finds humanity among the monstrosity. Can Harriet keep hold of her own humanity when faced with betrayal after betrayal, or will she give into the monster within?
September 1604
Stories are meant to amuse, bemuse, regale and tickle the mind. In stories the vampire is a seductive creature as its sexual inferences are to make a man or woman swoon at the romantic notion of being embraced and consumed into the undead through heated flesh upon flesh contact. In stories, those who would become a vampire beg to be so, to be forever with this beautiful being that has chosen them to be their companion, friend and lover. In stories, all of the flaws of humanity are erased for supernatural perfection and performance peppered sometimes with a winsome wish to regain the emotional flaws that an apex predator such as the vampire affords not to have. In stories, or perhaps more the so, in dreams. Harriet Dempsey gave up on such stories and dreams long ago when the tourniquet the lies provided no longer stemmed the draining flow of reality.
Harriet’s journey to become a vampire was far removed from dreams. Harriet had been born a wintery Wednesday’s child in fifteen-ninety to the service of the Lechecul family, a wealthy clan whose claim to fame was being fifth in line for the Hungarian throne. Harriet’s parents’ family line was Irish which was something that she would learn at an early age was inferred as lesser than the Slavic family that her family had been traded for a half century before, in exchange for a dozen quarter horses and two years of cheese. Just as her mother’s mother and mother before her, by the time she had turned four she had already mastered basic housekeeping. Harriet never had the opportunity to know her father, at six weeks old she attended his funeral, her first of many funerals that the sickness that scurried across Europe would create. “Work hard,” her mother had told her often and when Harriet would ask why, her mother would answer, “So we can work as hard in the morrow.” Harriet grew to hate that answer, and more the so, her mother for being satisfied in being around the luxurious possessions of others while their own fell to ruins and to tatters. Harriet vowed that she would not become her mother, she would be better.
Harriet’s revulsion of her mother and grandmother’s choices in life deepened when Harriet turned twelve and her mother remarried the Lechecul’s head groomsman, Roash. Her mother had not married the man for love, but for the two-bedroom cottage that his title afforded him. Harriet believed this when Roash had tried to bed Harriet when her mother had been ill for several weeks. It was a daughter’s duty to be her mother’s proxy as the man who she was told she had to call “Father” had told her. It was her duty to fulfill her mother’s duties as a wife when the occasion arose as Roash told her as he leeringly held onto the front of the bulge of his trousers.
Harriet refused and informed her father that she would be speaking to her mother of the duties that as a daughter she was expected to perform. Roash praised Harriet for passing his test and as a prize for being such a good daughter he would allow her to ride any of the horses she would like, though her mother did not need to know why. Harriet came to the understanding that the hair that had sprouted just above the part in her legs and the ballooning of her chest could be used to her advantage. Her mother had chosen poorly how to wield this power but Harriet would not be as stupid.
Harriet could see that who she was carried no weight with those she served, they refused to ignore where her lineage originated from. Her accomplishments would be passed by, she would be passed by. Harriet saw only one way to achieve her desire for a higher station, which was through association. She had noticed that the master of the house uncomfortably adjusted the front of his trousers when she came close, she could feel his eyes upon her from afar. He wanted her. She wanted to be regarded as he was.
To that end, by the coming of her fourteenth year, she would be bedding Master Lechecul, thrilling in his whispers of what he could give her. What he gave her after two months of welcoming him to her cot was morning sickness, headaches, bloating and bleeding, marking for all to see her condition. Harriet’s mother and grandmother, both strict Catholics, had hoped that their teachings had sunk into the youngster as she mopped, swept and washed, but to their dismay and shame, the pregnant Harriet had been deafened by loftier dreams and promises they were convinced were shouted by the devil. Her family cast Harriet from the small shack off the Lechecul’s garden that they called home, forsaking and cursing her as they did so. Harriet didn’t care what her family had done or said for she thought that she was better than them. She was meant for far better things and her lover would see to her, to those ends.
