Upon the words of this mysterious woman, Leona was dragged into the room of a vintage flat, where drafts and hand scripts were left all over the beautiful Persian carpet, and outside the window, the moonlight poured in flows of serene silver, and she could hear the watering sound of Danube River.
Leona didn't know why she was so sure it was Danube, probably because the vinyl that was put on the record player was John Strauss Jr.'s An der schönen blauen Donau. The woman was buried on her desk, kept on mumbling with a distinctive Italian accent:
"I did it! I learnt the writing of Cain!" She was ecstatic like a little girl who had her favorite toy, "What you saw was the beginning in the Book of Nod, I merely copied it on my own object…but I will be able to do something original! Now that I made the first step…"
She stopped out of the blue, raised her head up and turned around, as if she finally realized she was talking to someone that was not Garrett. She stared at Leona with her blank eyes behind her glasses, and Leona realized that she was blind—and for unnatural reasons, because there were black webs of veins on her eyelids, spreading all the way to her eyebrows and her cheeks.
"You are not Garrett."
She approached Leona, extended her hand to touch her face, and to Leona's astonishment, she indeed touched her. The woman sniffed, looking confused: "But you smell like him…and if you are not him, how did you enter here in the first place…Ah, you are his Childe, aren't you?"
Feeling unnerved, Leona replied politely, with her fingers on her knife: "Yes. And you are?"
"I'm surprised he didn't tell you about me. Young lads these days, so rude." The woman laughed like she was old-aged, but she looked no more than 40, "The name is Anastacia, I'm Garrett's Sire. Your blood smells extremely young, haven't been in this unlife for a year, have you?"
"Yes." Thought it was time for her to ask something, Leona raised her questions, "What was this place? And you said that was…The Book of Nod?"
"The Book of Nod is not a book. It's memories, memories of our Father Cain and the founders of clans—the 13 Antediluvians—marked on relics in the writing of Cain. They can only be read by Kindred." Anastacia carried on, full of passions on this subject, "Our ancestors were wise. They predicted the rise of mankind and the need to hide our nature by then, so they chose to write down our history in a way that Kin couldn't know…but alas, the writing of Cain—this delicate art, was lost. We were too absorbed in our war, and abandoned the ancient wisdom."
"And you are studying it." Leona started to make sense of what's going on, though the way Anastacia said things was very…old-fashioned and implicit, in a vampiric way.
"Yes, I'm trying to remaster this skill, and use it to record our modern nights. At this stage all I can do is to just copy the Book of Nod, but it is already a huge progress." She fumbled to grasp an old and rusted dagger on her desk, presented it in front of Leona, "This is my second work, containing the memories of how Cain created our kind…and how the 13 Antediluvians betrayed him, just like Uriel's curse foretold."
Staring at the dagger and Anastacia's frightening eyes, Leona felt even more disturbed and couldn't help bring up the subject: "What happened to your eyes?"
The excitement on Anastacia's face fainted on the question. She touched her eyes with tremulous fingers, then calmed herself down quickly, gave Leona a pretty short and vague answer. She said:
"Everything has a price."
But Leona could partly guess what it meant. She didn't know what to say.
"How's Garrett, by the way?" So Anastacia broke the silence, "What's he up to these days?"
It was Leona's turn to face an unpleasant question. She made a sigh in an apologetic tune: "I'm sorry, Anastacia, he is…dead."
Leona tried to go on and explained that how Garrett died because he Embraced her, but she stopped when she found out that Anastacia seemed practically not interested in hearing any reason behind this. This Italian woman just sat there on the desk, facing the mess on the carpet with her shaking breath—she was obviously sad and distressed about her Childe's death, of course, but somehow…she seemed already expecting this, for there was a blazing regret on her face.
"We shouldn't have ever gone to London." Anastacia muttered bitterly, "He must have continued searching…I told him so many times no to meddle with anything political."
Leona couldn't believe what she heard.
"What?" She grabbed Anastacia's shoulders, "What happened in London?"
Did she mean that…Garrett's death was because of something else?
"It doesn't matter now." Compared to Leona's agitation, Anastacia returned to her composure surprisingly quickly.
"Of course it matters…"
"Listen!" Anastacia held Leona's face firmly with her both hands, "Don't you understand? None of us matters in this never-ending curse, because it was written since the very start! We chose to be the outcasts of God's creations, so God damned us to fight and die for his entertainment, do you think one unlife matters, when the bodies of Kindred deceased in this Jyhad have piled up higher than the greatest mountain!? Me, Garrett, or you!?"
Leona couldn't find anything to say. She looked at her, her hysteria, her hatred for her own species, wondered: how long this woman had to live, to turn into such… hopelessness?
Noticing that she had scared Leona, Anastacia softened her face and reasoned with her:"The only thing meaningful that we can do, is to write down the actual history, debunk the lies of those power players and leave our Childes a chance to redeem themselves with truths in their hands…You have to continue my work!"
"No."
Leona stepped back, looking at this elder vampire in fear, gave her answer immediately.
"What?" Seeming to find Leona's defiling intolerable, Anastacia suddenly tore down her mask of a kind tutor, which just made her look more demonic, "I am your Sire's Sire, how dare you deny my command of you!"
The concinnous melody of the Waltz being played became out of tune, like a piece of beautiful satin being twisted brutally by a maddening force. Now, the architectural, repeating structure of An der schönen blauen Donau was no more euphonious, it was...a nightmarish cycle.
"No!"
Leona insisted on her response while withdrawing to the door, but it was dead-locked, even with her supernatural strength she couldn't broke it open, and Anastacia just strolled closer:
"You shall do what I ask."
But Leona just couldn't accept it—Anastacia's request, and more. She couldn't accept this woman to be her future: her despair, her indifference, her arrogance. No. She didn't want that, not after everything she had been through, and the fights she knew she would have to survive in the coming nights.
There have to be some other way…there have to.
"No. I came to this world to be by the side of the person I cherish, no matter how meaningless you picture our life…or unlife is," Leona gripped her knife, but still tried to talk to Anastacia, "So I could not abandon him or myself for your cause. I'm sorry, Anastacia, just let me go."
"I won't let you go." But it looked like Anastacia had lost all her rationality, "If you are unwilling…then fair enough, I will do this myself. I will force this piece of my soul into your body, and took control of it to fulfill my purpose, you feeble Childe!"
What…she's going to…possess her? Is that what she meant?
Before Leona could realize what was going on, floods of rotten, blackened blood gushed out of the eyes, ears, nose and mouth of Anastacia, covering every bit of her body in a thick, sticky and crimson coating, turning her into a frenzied warrior made of blood. Now Leona couldn't even discern what Anastacia's head looked like, for it was now merely a bloody, dripping ball with a big, black orifice on the surface.
"Raagr…"
A beastly growl came from deep inside that mouth-like hole, like the boiling wind from the crater of an active volcano. Leona knew, there was nothing left in there that was Anastacia anymore.
This is going to get very ugly. Leona knew. If she can be touched in this space...she can be hurt, too.
Even be killed.