The Blood Covenant

The moors were silent, bar the distant hoot of an owl, and the faint rustle of heather. Above them, peering out of the rolling fog like a ghost, was an enormous hill. Upon this hill, was an ancient castle. And within this castle, crouching upon the ornate stone balustrade, was a man.

Rei rose from his crouch, standing tall on the balcony overlooking the hectares of land he and his mate, Gwydion, had claimed as their territory. In all directions, as far as the eye could see, the countryside stretched endlessly. Far left, they were broken by a cliff. Over the side, and far below in the valley, the village of Bannerby sat nestled among the hills, three hours walk away.

His hair, a flawless curtain black as ink, billowed slightly in the wind. His nostrils flared, the faint scent of lifeblood carried to him alongside wildflowers and the acrid stench of rotten apples. Something had wandered onto their lands: something hotblooded…

Silent as a ghost, Gwydion emerged from behind him. He breathed in deep, a faint smirk pulling at the corner of his full lips.

“Seems someone has come a little too close to the castle.” His voice was honey and silk, his brown eyes mischievous. “You’re well overdue for a feed, beloved. Perhaps you should seek out this poor, lost soul.”

“I do not think it’s a human.” Rei took another deep breath. “A fallow doe, perhaps.”

Gwydion raised an eyebrow. “It smells human to me.”

“No. It’s far too sweet. Humans stink worse than boars.”

“Perhaps you’ve been around the wrong kinds of humans.” Gwydion laughed.

Rei grunted dismissively in response.

In both his first life and the current, Gwydion had loved people. How could he not? He was born beautiful, with a lovely lilt to his voice and natural charms that could disarm anyone, be they man or woman. Even now, he took humans as side-lovers on occasion, though he left them before the sting of their short lives could tear at his heart.

Rei… Rei was not quite so fortunate, finding some fault or ill in near everyone he came across. Despite Gwydion’s endless encouragements, he could not find it in himself to seek their company. Not for friendship, let alone anything more intimate. Rei had Gwydion, his one and only mate, and that was more than enough for him.

“I fear for you, Rei,” Gwydion teased one night, returning to their castle with the scent on another on his skin. “The moment you meet one you like; you’ll fall like a stone in a lake.”

“You assume such a being even exists.” Rei rolled his eyes, but when he turned to face Gwydion, he softened. “I already have you. Most go their entire lives without meeting their soulmate, and yet you walked into mine and took my heart like it belonged to you.”

“It did.”

“I know.”

Rei couldn’t help but smile at him, seeing him leaning back against the wallpapered walls, his ashen hair hanging in soft waves to his shoulders.

“I… I do not crave another.” Rei’s voice was small, his words on the very edge of hearing. “Only you. If I should change my mind, I will surely let you know. But… I cannot see myself abiding another’s company right now. Perhaps not ever. Especially not… one of them.”

Gwydion walked over to him, petting his arm gently and offering him a smile. His canines, though retracted, hung slightly longer than a human’s. “My beloved, I am yours now and forever. If it is only me you crave, I will be here to sate all your thirsts. I only ask you keep an open mind, should you meet one that calls out to you...”

Their gazes met, doubt glimmering in Rei’s eyes. At the time, he’d lived his second life for only a few decades, whereas his beloved had already seen centuries. Seeing his expression, Gwydion laughed and caressed his cheek.

“Forever is a long time, my beloved, is all I’m trying to say.”

Gwydion leaned against the wallpapered wall, as he did then, with the same knowing expression upon his handsome face. Rei offered him a weary half-smile, before crouching on the balustrade once more. Before him, the plains melted into forest melted into orchards. It wouldn’t take him longer than a few minutes on foot to reach the source.

“I won’t be long,” murmured Rei, before plunging off the edge of the balcony.

“Happy hunting, beloved. Be it human, or boar, or fallow doe you find.”

Rei hit the ground gracefully, with a heaviness that did not match his physique. He stood straight, stretched his back, and flicked the dirt he’d stirred up off his fine clothes. Then, he pointed his nose to the moon, and took a deep, deep breath.

He locked onto the scent and began pursuing it with inhuman speed, the warmth of their hearth and home disappearing into the darkness behind him.

The castle Rei and Gwydion had taken for their own had once been the pride of a large town that had long since fallen. Amongst the wildflowers and old trees, ruins occasionally peeked out, covered in thick layers of moss. When they’d first claimed it, Rei had spent many hours picking through the rubble, trying to find its name. He gave up, accepting that, like the many buildings, it had been reclaimed by mother nature.

The only thing she had not taken for her own was the orchard.

Even now, the trees grew in perfect rows, their boughs heavy with flower and apple alike. They stunk, as they always did, of rotten fruit; neither Gwydion nor Rei having taken the time to care for them. There was no point, as they did not consume fruit, nor any other human food. Only one thing sustained creatures such as them, the very thing he was scenting heavy and heady on the air.

Blood.

Rei stopped his running, taking a moment to breathe in once more. The scent was amplified the closer he got to the orchard: hot and sweet, making his mouth water. It had been close to a week since his last feed, and he was aching for it.

‘Not a fallow doe, nor any other animal,’ he thought to himself, as his nose led him to the source. ‘It’s far too potent for that. Could Gwydion be right? Is it really a human?’

Rei disliked consuming the blood of humans, often finding it bitter and vile. He hated them in all aspects, if he was honest. He disliked their abrasive voices, and the way they bumbled onto his lands like they had a claim to it. Most of all, he hated them because he feared them.

Even in his first life, when he was no more than a human himself, he’d been harmed at their hands more times that he could recall. Foreigners were tolerated when they came to trade, or perhaps to visit, the great city of Paris. But when they are born of a Parisian prostitute, and played in the same streets as their children, they were treated worse than rats.

“Two men,” his mother had wept one night. “Two men that could have been your father. And you had to be born of the wrong one.”

One was a French nobleman, who had taken a great liking to his mother. He was soft, weak-willed, and had a blue-blooded family’s fortune to his name. Truly the perfect husband for one who loved silver as much as she. When he’d heard he may have fathered her pregnancy, he offered to take her hand in marriage. Assuming the child was his, of course.

The other man was a Japanese merchant, who’d stolen past the isolationist laws to make his fortune abroad. He was highly successful, his pockets heavy with gold. She’d taken him to her bed one night for an exorbitant price, with the intention of paying off her gambling debts. He left for his homeland the following day, and was never heard from again.

From the moment Rei was born, his paternity was obvious… And his mother had never found it in her heart to forgive him.

He snapped out of his ruminations and stopped his pursuit. The sweetness was unbearably heavy now, weighing him down. His claws extended, stomach growling. Never in his near century had he caught such a delicious scent…

Slowly, as to not make a single noise, he crouched and stalked through the nearby smattering of trees like a cat. He paused at an old oak, peering past it at the abandoned orchard ahead. Rei froze. His feet bound to the earth. Body unable to move…

‘Such beauty, the likes of which I’ve not known in this life...’

A woman, dancing in the moonlight, her hair like spun gold. In one hand, she held a crumpled black veil, as though torn of her head in a haste. In the other, an apple, cradled gently in the palm of her hand, like a still-beating heart.

Her clothes were black: a nun’s habit. Though she clearly cared little for the cloth, judging by the dirty hem and smears of apple all down her skirts. She stopped her cheerful spinning, facing towards the moon with her back to him.

She turned. Their eyes met across the orchard.

His heart shuddered.

A choked sound escaped her, the apple falling to the ground and shattering into pulp. She gathered her skirts in two fistfuls, and bolted deeper into the orchard like a rabbit. Rei, still stunned, did not pursue her.

Once enough distance was placed between them, she stopped her running, and turned to face him. Her eyes were wide, bright blue as the morning sky. Her breath ragged, heart beating quickly from exertion. The sound of it, and the scent of the heat beneath her skin, made him dizzy.

“I’m sorry!” she called out to him. “I thought it was abandoned! I did not mean to thieve!”

Her voice… there was only one he’d ever heard that could match it in sweetness. Like honey over hot bread. Or strawberries dipped in cream. He took a staggered step towards her, old human memories of being mead-drunk flickering though his mind.

“It is abandoned…” Rei called out to her, breaking the spell she’d placed upon him. She watched him warily from afar, chest rising and falling with quickened breaths. “Please, take as many as you wish.”

Whatever possesses him to volunteer the orchard’s fruits to her, he didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that he did not want her to leave. And that her scent, now so overpowering that it even drowned out the smell of rotten apples, was better than the finest perfume.

To his surprise and relief, she did not run from him. Instead, she held her ground, surprisingly steadfast on trembling legs. Like a fawn, trapped in the gaze of a wolf.

“Are you a Lord?” she called out, voice wavering. “I’ve not seen you in the village.”

“I do not care for its inhabitants, and visit the village rarely,” he admitted, taking a step forward in turn. He stopped to sweep up a particularly red and shiny apple from the ground. “I am no Lord. But I claim these lands as my own.”

She took a step back from him, clutching the veil to her chest. The muscles in her arms and legs tensed, as though bracing to flee. Within, he panicked.

‘I mustn’t frighten her.’ He froze in place, his pulse rushing through his ears. ‘Or I may never see this human again.’

“I do not recognise you. Are you new to the convent of Bannerby?” his voice was steady and soft; the same one he used for his rabbits.

“Yes. Through no will of my own.”

He raised an eyebrow. Most of the women that joined the nunnery did so out of devotion. The ones that were forced often did so because they’ve done something most unbecoming. So much so that their families have no choice but to hide them away, out of sight and mind.

‘I wonder what it could have been…’

Her voice, carried low and quiet on the wind, drew him out of his ruminations.

“They say these hills are haunted,” she whispered.

Rei shifted, suddenly aware of the stiffness of his body. Little discomforted him; he was able to stand as still as stone for hours, but he knew that to humans it came across most eerie. As did his claws, extending a full inch above the tips of his fingers. He withdrew them, and clasped his hands behind the small of his back.

“They are correct.”

She drew in a wavering breath, taking another two steps back. Internally, something within him started to ache: a terrible longing, exacerbated by each step she placed between them.

“What are you?” She scowled, though her voice trembled.

He stiffened, unsure of what to say. Was he not pursuing her for her blood, mere moments ago? He’d nearly forgotten since laying eyes on her.

He thought to himself a while, unsure of how to answer, but eventually found his voice.

“In this moment, nothing more than a man.”

Another step back. Though this time, her face seemed to relax somewhat.

“If that is true,” she called out to him, her voice steadier. “Then you will let me go.”

“You are free, to come and go as you please.” His own voice, by contrast, seemed only to falter more with each passing moment. “As you are free to take from my orchards.”

Her brows furrowed as she thought on his words. “What do they call you, if not a Lord?”

“Rei,” he breathed. “Rei, and nothing more.”

“Rei…” she echoed. “I am Ophelia.”

“A beautiful name.”

She offered him a small, meek smile which set his heart alight. Slowly, and with her eyes still locked on him, she walked around the orchard. Eventually, she sunk to her knees and gathered up a few apples, hiding them in her habit.

She cradled her treasures close. “I may return tomorrow, if your offer still stands.”

“It does.”

Ophelia nodded to herself, before taking a few steps backward. Despite claiming she would return, she clearly remained rather wary of Rei. Though something else flickered in her blue eyes alongside it. Curiosity, perhaps. Or intrigue.

“Will you be here?” She asked softly, not meeting his eye.

“Yes.” He breathed a promise. “If you wish me to be.”

She scowled to herself, holding the apples tighter to her chest. “I do.”

“Then I await your return, Ophelia.”