InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Imperio!"

★ ☆ ✰ (vespertine) wrote in bellumletale,
@ 2010-07-01 21:36:00

Entry tags:

lucy westenra, van helsing

Slipped under 307's door

Dear 307,

What occurred in Russia to me can never happen again and I am not sure how to prevent it. There is something which germinated within me when I arrived, an awful hunger I have never known and for a thing which I could not at first place, that eventually culminated in the event I'll recount below. I felt miserably faint for half the time I was there and so very ill that I barely ate. I could hear my own heart beat within my ears like the distant rapping of a muffled drum. I thought it was anemia. I've had anemia before, but this was different, more severe. I was at a palace. At the Grand Duke's dinner party, when the sickness became too intense for me to bear any longer.

I went outside for air with someone I had met, when suddenly a sea of chaos began crashing onto seemingly all corners of the palace. A crowd of angry people pursued me, shouted, spat, and I mustered enough strength to out run them. They would have gotten to me if not for the vines that grew abruptly underfoot, which covered the landscape and the people themselves as thickly as a blanket. There was terrible confusion. The vines pricked and stung me, there were screams and torches, other girls I know not the name of who continued to be plucked out and taken away to stakes, a tiger, and eventually a man that had the strength of ten! It all sounds like a nightmare, and I wish it was so that none of it were true, but it was all very real.

I will mention now what changed, with me, and I hope my feeling about you is right--I feel I can believe you when you say you can keep a secret.

With all the spilling of blood around me, I learned that hunger I felt could be satiated, and the sickness taken away by tasting it--by drinking the blood. A voice, a very soothing voice, told me to do it, and that when I did, it would be all right. I listened, I didn't want to but I was weak and desperate and I listened; it was then that I became not myself. I was someone, or something else. A villager struck me with a branch, and I had gotten up to let him finish me...I didn't want to live anymore... but before he could, I became that monster. I leapt at him, and I bit into him, I'm so sorry for it, and I drank the blood. I hurt him. I haven't ever hurt anyone in my life, and every night I think about it. When it was happening, the monster felt no shame... I'm ashamed to admit any of this. I hope you understand now, why that can never happen again. What if it isn't a villager next time ... ?

Is there any way you can help me?

Unsigned

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arcere
2010-07-02 05:46 am UTC (link)

He'd expected a note to arrive, ever since 104 said they were going to leave one, so when something appeared under his door he stayed at his computer for a little while to give them time to get back to their room, or at least the stairwell. Aiden picked it up and opened it - neatly written, lined paper, slightly blurred in spots because of ... something wet, he figured, as his fingers ran over the damp spots. Water? No. Tears?

Oh, that wasn't awkward at all.

He moved slowly as he read the note, making his way back to the chair. Aiden sat down heavily when he got there as the words started sinking in and making unpleasant connections in his mind. A hunger, a sickness, growing and insatiable until something - or, his mind supplied, someone - instructed her to the blood. Joanie's words hung heavy in his memory. She claimed to have seen a vampire, though without much proof he'd only half-believed her. Now, with this - a woman (he assumed, from the handwriting) admitting that she drank blood in Russia - what was he supposed to do?

In all of literature, or at least what he knew of, Dracula was the foremost among vampire novels. There were others, obviously, but it was the classical example. If they were all incarnations of characters from fables and books, then it wasn't too far-fetched for him to believe that whoever'd left him this note was from Dracula, as well. Obviously he couldn't be 100% sure, but it was as good a guess as any, given past experiences. The implications were not good.

He read the last line of her note again and rubbed his forehead out of habit (the headaches had all been pushed back by another wave of painkillers). This was not his sort of situation. There were ways, yes. Aiden didn't think she'd like them, but there were ways.

And at least here, there weren't any voices.

He figured he'd get back to her tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. Tonight he had to compile this list and figure out what happened to everything, where history had gone wrong. Hopefully she'd be able to hold out until then. The only question left, aside from what on earth do I do, was whether to send her a message on the forums or deliver her a note personally. Probably the latter. She was pretty hell-bent on otherwise anonymity.

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