Valore was born and raised in a royal vampire family. She was properly addressed as Ist Valore by other vampires. She was 388 years old and has been feeding on the blood of willing and unwilling human beings since the fall of vampire supremacy.
When Valore was 150 or so, she
witnessed a change in human beings. For thousands of years their crude weapons
and glinting steel were useless against the physical and mental strength of a
night stalker vampire. Valore was stronger than most, she could break a rib cage
even if they wore a steel breastplate.
Such strength is useless against the
new machines of human beings. The vampire families and society retreated into
the shadows. Valore and her family were no different. She could no longer wear
her royal garments in public.
They were a red and black satin,
fabrics which were never exposed to the light of the sun. The garments were
passed down from mother to daughter, a continuation of the royal line of Ist.
She hid her family clothes in the secret tomb of her great grandmother, and
then did her best to blend in with human society.
Human beings were quite itchy to kill
vampires during this time. If vampires were discovered, armies were mustered,
and they were hunted. Full platoons of righteous helicopters, searching for
vampire lairs. Many of the first vampire houses to fall were the most powerful
and exposed, having lived many years in the confident authority of their age.
Their lairs were full of treasures; gold, jewels, ancient relics, fabrics, and
works of art collected from the dawn of mankind. Of course, the moral crusaders
would sell it to feed armies, shuffling the rare objects back into private
collections.
Valore lived undetected while human
beings set up a new empire of their own order.
Like most predators in captivity, she
grew bored, and her ancient and cruel intelligence invented new entertainments
to pass the years. As a vampire she despised the sun and could occasionally
tolerate its presence. She did not need food except human blood, maybe once
every week. She was old enough to be able to remain perfectly still for days,
her mind glacial and pristine. Like a smooth stone tumbled through the years of
experience, her eyes watched unflinching over the storms of human history.
Hunger and survival demanded a
certain caution, the years built up like fault lines. When Valore did feed, she
preferred willing human beings. She loved them, charmed them, seduced them,
exercising her ancient domination. She kept her skills as sharp as her teeth.
Most of her ambitions were harmless.
She enjoyed flower arranging; stem and leaf, petal and twig, all artfully
placed for a table setting. She liked soft blue flowers, red roses, black
lilies, thorns of any plant, and stinky corpse flowers. Her favorite plant was
Devil’s Tongue; also called Luciferous Crocosmia, a vibrant red and orange
flower used to accent the orange petals of flaming dahlias. This occupation
gave her a place in human society, and many weddings were marked by her style
and beauty.
She also delivered bouquets for
funerals. She tried to include the favorite plants or petals of the deceased;
this meant a lot to the mourners. Valore enjoyed funerals more than weddings,
the truth of death was much more refreshing than the lie of happily-ever-after.
She watched the mourners and took note who might be dwelling alone. Such
isolation meant a fragile heart. Valore would bring a bouquet to the widow or
widower, express her vampire beauty, and step into the shadow of their heart, a
space their loved one once occupied.
Those afflicted by grief were the
easiest to seduce, their proximity to death made love much sweeter. Their blood
would seep into thick dreams of anguish and desire, until the heartache was
unbearable and Valore would usher them into a cool grave. No one was
suspicious, since dying from a broken heart or shortly after a loved one was
not uncommon. Nor did anyone suspect the flower service.
Valore had another hobby involving
the recently deceased. She knew of a secret technique, a preservation method
for the bodies of humans. This method prolonged the service of a human thrall.
Before a corpse started to decompose, special vampire blood could be added to
the eyes and skin of the body. It required a cup of blood, mint, and ashes to
create a vicious salve. Then it was applied to the body and left in a coffin
for 1 week. After the week, the corpse would awaken, with all their
personality, memories, and awareness they had in life, except it was completely
obedient to its creator.
The limitation of such a simple
resurrection, was that the bodies of such servants were brittle. Their skin was
as cold as the grave, and their voice hallow, as if the words echoed within
before finding their way to their mouths. Valore made and kept such servants when
she could, keeping her necromantic art alive through practice. She needed to be
careful, because a cold slave would instantly be detected by any human
inspection.
There were other nuances to the
secret technique, and each vampire family had their own method of creating
human thralls. Valore’s method was methodical and traditional, but she too
added her own stylization. Valore liked having her human slaves very cold, so
frigid they glistened with frost and their eyes marbled over with solid ice.
Valore found herself quite stable
after the collapse of the vampire houses. For many years she lived with human
beings, learning about the new human society.
Even with her preternatural
attention, humans near Valore started to suspect she was a vampire. Her lack of
aging, her beauty, both which were impossible to hide, even when she tried.
Over the years of missing people, strange occurrences, and 60 years of the
flower artist not showing a wrinkle of age, led to angry conclusions.
Valore saw the signs, she saw the
suspicion grow in humans like the clouds of winter. She saw the looks, the
avoidance, the silence of human fear. Normally Valore would use the fear to
lash the village, frenzy them into an ecstatic orgy of love, and drive them
into submission through her terrible beauty and power. Such attempts would be
responded to with a large army of guns and tanks, something her vampire
seduction had yet to obtain.
Valore didn’t know how they found her
secret lair, but luckily she was able to escape in the night before the mob
reached her forest manor, a shrouded mansion left to rot, reclaimed by Valore
as her own.
The outside of the lair was covered
in trees and flowers. Vines were trained to grow over the expansive house along
with briars and gigantic pumpkin plants. The giant squashes spread their leaves
over the broken windows and their vines crawled up the walls. The placed looked
like it was innocently left to rot.
Once the mob finished investigating
the structure, their courage drove them inside. The interior was lavish,
immaculate, rich and opulent. The walls were filled to the edges with artwork
and sculptures with strange design. Paintings of serpents, old vampires, and
castles long since washed back into the tides of time, remembered only in the
fading chemistry of the canvas.
They burst in with a dozen shotguns,
shouting to intimidate, shouting to announce themselves. They demanded the
vampire’s life. They threw insults at the darkness, even though Valore was
miles away, she knew what curses they held in their throats. This was not the
first time a mob discovered her lair.
Their insults did not go unanswered.
Valore’s cold hearted thralls appeared, rising from whatever task the intruders
had interrupted. They greeted the angry mob with kindness. They offered
refreshments, food, and hospitality they would have offered to guests in their
service to Valore. The mob was stunned, open mouthed shocked. The servants wore
the faces from their childhood; grandparents, parents, uncles, brothers,
cousins long since considered buried and gone. Their frosty faces smiling and
eager to serve.
A scream broke the tension, a farmer
who lost his wife saw her bringing a tray of fresh cucumber slices to him. He
was crying with grief, and his heart shook with adrenaline. The scream was
followed by a crash, the farmer took his shovel and smashed the vampire thrall
who resembled his wife.
It sounded like the falling of a
chandelier. The thrall cracked and shattered from the shovel strike and a
pressure escaped from within.
The words within her body exploded
with a scream; her memories, desires, dreams, were vocalized in the noise.
Shards of ice flew out, covering the stunned mob with shrapnel. Icicles shot
out and pierced the bodies of the other vampire thralls. They too burst from
the force of the blast, like icy balloons of words, pressurized, released all at
once.
The chain reaction surprised the
angry mob. Daggers of ice flew in every direction, and explosion after
explosion blossomed as the servants ran towards the townsfolk. Some people
reflexively used their shotguns, adding their own black flowers to the bouquet
of ice and blood. Like frozen ghosts, the vampire thralls threw their fragile
bodies at their loved ones. Some were now trying to hug and kiss their living
kin with lethal embrace.
The moment lasted only a few seconds,
then the ice melted into a red mess of dying moans. There were a few survivors,
and they looted the rare treasures and exquisite artwork.
They described the occurrence to
others, and years later the violence faded into legend.
Ist Valore lived on, she visited
other villages and towns. She spent her time searching for the previous possessions
of her lair, and she knew where to find them; they would bubble up to the froth
of nobility, and she would drink deeply of their blood and riches.
She would make more friends and more
bouquets, and the flowers of winter would regrow.
